The battle is still far from over, but we have already managed to bury Swidok under the rubble and provoke her warriors into a suicidal attack, driving them straight into the «killbox». So we began to shoot the hordes of cultists and while we were doing this, Swidok got out and made her lightning attack, illuminating the wall with a sudden flash. Fortunately, we prepared lightning rods in advance by placing them on the walls, thanks to which the walls remained intact. Trained people raised the wands and were able to direct the charges through the "wires” into the ground, causing the highly concentrated electrical charge to dissipate without harming anyone.

So we were able to temporarily neutralize her lightning magic, but with other magic like fire we had no protection. According to the idea, the unsuccessful attack by Swidok was supposed to be a signal for the trio of magicians to join the battle on our side, which happened a little later, but in the end it happened. Granid, Camellia and Incartia managed to join the battle and immediately began to distract her attention. They, like us, had no chance to defeat her; their task was only to distract her and nothing more.

Meanwhile, I continued to shoot at the invaders while I had cartridges, but they were already running out. I fire a shot and blow up the head of another native, another shot and tear off the hand of another. I hear a click, throw out the empty magazine, insert a new one, and immediately pull the shutter and reload.

"I'm out of ammo!"

One of the platoon soldiers shouted, and then the grenades were launched.

Esko at the top of the tower was shooting at the cultists with his sniper rifle. Of all the people he could see, Esko did not shoot only at Swidok, since she stopped the cartridges in the air and changed their flight path just like Yasmi did. Our weapons against these magicians are useless, so an urgent question arose in my head: are they equal to us? And if the answer to this question is «yes», then we are in big trouble.

We can hardly trust even these three only because they are capable of crushing our squad at any moment while protecting themselves from fire from our rifles. There are only three of them here, and they are already many times superior not only to us, but to an entire battalion of Republican troops. I can’t imagine what will happen if we stumble upon a hundred such magicians, and moreover, what will happen if our 127th army stumbles upon these hundred magicians, it is unlikely that it will be able to cope with these magicians even on equal terms, and there are a lot of reasons for this.

Behind the wall could be seen fiery flashes, the sound of magicians fighting against each other. For now, we were fighting a more mundane battle, fortunately it was already coming to an end. The ranks of the cultists were rapidly thinning, and the royal soldiers were already beginning to rejoice seeing that there were practically no enemies left. The entire yard was strewn with corpses, the stench of blood and decomposition wafted in the air, and the sight made me dizzy.

It's war again.

I think we've shed enough blood here to deserve to return home, and I don't want to shed any more.

We've done enough, enough is enough!

I fire another shot and blow up the man’s head.

Moreover, if the king finds out that we are behind the massacre in Itsqueen, then he will definitely not let us go alive. I really hope that Ripun's prediction works. However, now he was not "dying”, which means he did not see the negative consequences of this battle, at least for himself. And yet there were too many dead people strewn throughout the yard, the very appearance of this fleshy carpet was disgusting, and yet a fierce battle continued to simmer here, if you can call it that.

At this time, the commander of the royal troops gave orders forcing his warriors to hold their positions and not attack the thinned ranks of the enemy, as he was well aware that right now outside the castle walls was Swidok, who is currently the most dangerous person on this planet.

The clash between our forces and Swidok would lead to unpleasant consequences, this is quite obvious, seeing how the trio of magicians outside the walls are barely holding off this witch.

"Keep in line!"

The garrison commander shouted.

"The battle is not over yet!"

Another shot, a new corpse, and soon I heard another click, giving me a mechanical signal to reload. However, when I reached for my belt, I didn’t feel anything and realized that I had run out of ammunition and had nothing to shoot with.

Crap!

We all left one clip so that Granid could then duplicate them, and that’s why we weren’t going to waste them now.

"I'm empty, no bullets."

I informed the platoon and immediately gave a general order.

"To the tower, quickly!"

While I was getting to my feet, one of the natives, with wide eyes, asked me a fair question:

"What was that? Was this a battle?"

Looking at him for a brief moment, I saw his gaze directed at the bloody carpet and immediately understood what he meant. I did not hesitate to answer and told him straight as it was, as I and my people believed.

"This is extermination."

Immediately after these words, I jumped up from my knees and ran at the head of the platoon line inside the castle, moving along the corridors towards the nearest tower. Everything went according to plan, but I was still scared. Adrenaline made my heart beat like crazy, my throat became dry from rapid breathing, and my face was covered in cold sweat. This is not surprising, since it is not every day that you are at war with thousands of angry cultists, and you only have one clip left on your loadout.

While we were running along the corridor, I suddenly heard an explosion, causing the walls of the castle to shake quite violently, and rubble fell from the ceiling. I did not hear the noise of the shuttle accelerators, and the explosion itself echoed from the walls, which meant only one thing:

They've broken through!

The native officers who were still outside did not linger long with the instructions and then ordered their relatives to retreat against their background, the loud cry of the maddened crowd of invaders grew louder:

"Everyone inside!"

"Leave positions! Retreat!"

"Stop them! STOP THEM!"

Crap!

I cursed myself and, quickening my pace, finally climbed to the top of the tower, where the king himself, in his noble attire, was waiting for me under a clear sky.

It was not difficult for me to guess what he forgot here. He used himself as bait to prevent the cultists from attacking the dungeon where the servants and civilians were hiding.

"Barricade the entrance!"

I ordered and my people, together with the native soldiers, began to carry boxes, barrels and other accessories to close the passage and at the same time the only exit from this tower.

Approaching the edge and looking down, I was convinced that what had just happened was indeed a breakthrough. The main gate and the labyrinth of barricades were strewn with corpses, and a little to the left one could see a wide gap filled with piles of stones, through which the cultists filled the entire space of the courtyard in which we had set up a "killbox”.

They really were so crazy that they slaughtered everyone they saw, including each other.

What's wrong with these people?

I wondered and at the same time perfectly understanding how tenacious they really were, that even having lost half of their body they could crawl on their hands.

The situation was even more desperate and catastrophic than we could have imagined, and meanwhile the battle of the magicians seemed to have already come to an end.

There is too little time.

"Is that all you could do?"

Suddenly, Draun Rudrin said behind my back.

"Is this how you defeated a hundred robbers? And why did I rely on you?”

Turning to face the king, I saw confidence in his eyes, or rather a mask of confidence that hid his animal fear. He, like me, was horrified by what was happening, trembling with his whole body, trying not to show it, but continued to proudly stand in place, accepting his impending death soon. He did not retreat, did not run away, but stood here when death was so close.

And there was no way to escape from here, in any case, he would never have agreed to leave the city and organize defense somewhere in another part of the kingdom, but we didn’t need this either, since we didn’t want to stay here for long.

"That's not all."

I said and took out the detonator and immediately pressed the button.

The next moment the entire courtyard of the "killbox" rose into the air with a roar, raising a high column of dust in the form of a black mushroom into the sky. A powerful shock wave almost knocked down all the walls of the castle, causing a small earthquake to occur. While the echo of the explosion gradually faded away, body parts fell from the sky, blood dripped like rain, thick dust and parts of broken weapons settled. The explosion was powerful, but alas it was not enough and after a few moments the cultists, having recovered slightly, immediately continued the assault.

Approximately several hundred more people died, but the cultists still continued to attack thoughtlessly and without fear, as if what had just happened did not matter to them. We, in turn, no longer have any remote fuses left, and the current place of defense can be safely called a tactical dead end, from which it is not that we cannot get out, not at all, but rather we will meet our death here if we try.

"Fuck!"

I hissed in frustration, already hearing the sounds of battle and painful screams of people coming from the lower floors of the tower.

"General, hurry up, fucking hell!"

Looking at the daytime horizon towards the east, I saw nothing but clouds and an endless green forest. There was no sign of the approaching shuttles, and time was getting short and short. The likelihood that in this timeline Ripun was simply captured and left alive was high, otherwise I don’t know how else to explain this delay.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Maybe they really decided not to save us and instead decided to just abandon us, or maybe there really is no army, or maybe the message didn't even reach the 127th. All of this can be the cause of death for us, and seeing the battle here, I can say with confidence that it’s all over.

No! Boris, it's not over yet! Keep standing, keep fighting! You're giving up too quickly, we still have time!

I continued to hope, clenching my palms into fists.

"My people." The king whispered, watching the invaders drown the city streets in blood.

"All is lost, all is lost."

I had nothing to answer. We ourselves understood how deplorable the current situation was. The attempt to detain the enemy completely and completely failed, help never arrived, and we would end up just dying soon. I can already see how the natives, out of frustration, began to hug each other and say goodbye to life, then preparing their blades for the last battle.

My fighters loaded the very same clips that Granid was supposed to duplicate. However, now it didn’t matter since the battle of the magicians had stopped for a long time. The trio had bought enough time and now retreated away from Swidok, where they would continue to fight the cultists or regain their strength. In any case, they won’t be able to help us anymore.

At that moment, I decided to load the last clip and at the same time prepared to throw several fragmentation grenades behind the barricades. There was nowhere to get out, we were trapped, and the enemies were about to rise to the top of the tower and it was unclear what they would do to us. The noise from below grew stronger and stronger, and then the first cultists appeared behind the barricades and behaved like animals, starting to attack the barricades instead of dismantling them.

They growled, spat, pulled out their arms and weapons, hoping to catch us, and it also seemed like they created a stampede there. Even so, they still broke down the barricade little by little. I could hear the creak of barrels and tables that had already begun to bend under the weight of the crowd. A little more and they will break through here, and we obviously must not allow this under any circumstances.

When a whole bunch of them had gathered behind the barricades, I threw a grenade through the gap, which then produced an explosion that scattered dust, iron and guts in all directions. Meanwhile, the barricade at the descent was not damaged, but still the crowd of enemies began to move it. I threw another grenade and the same picture was repeated, an explosion, guts and a new wave of cultists taking the place of the previous one.

However, this could not continue indefinitely, and the next moment the barricade suddenly simply exploded. Fragments of boxes, ropes, bags, barrels and parts of bodies flew into the sky, and the view was obscured by a thick curtain of dust. There was a ringing in my ears, and ahead I saw the natives swinging their blades in desperation against the hordes of mad invaders.

My soldiers and I surrounded the king and threw the last grenades to thin out the ranks of the enemies, and we killed the cultists who were distracted by us with single shots to the head. The royal soldiers stood in tight formation and killed anyone who tried to attack them, but the cultists pulled out one fighter after another from the pile so that they could then attack them en masse. Some kind of devilry was going on everywhere, we no longer saved cartridges, but grabbed our blades and fought back as soon as we could.

I picked up the sword of the fallen cultist and, with difficulty, made a swing and cut off the madman rushing towards me. My strength was not enough to kill him, he was bleeding, gushing from his throat, but he, as if not feeling pain, simply ignored it and tried to pounce on me again, wheezing, spitting out a clot of blood. One more blow, and I ripped open his stomach, spilling out his intestines, and then I stepped back, fighting off another cultist and this time I managed to cut off his head.

I felt like my hand, tightly holding the blade, could simply fall off at any moment from the weight of this primitive weapon, and yet now it is my only chance for salvation, or rather not even so, this slightly bent sword is the only chance to remain a defender of humanity, to remain person.

I'm not a monster!

I said to myself and at the same time cutting the face of another person with a horizontal blow.

The cartridges had already run out, we raised our shields and approached the edge of the tower where we could fall if this crowd decided to push us down. And at the moment when we were already on the verge of our strength and capabilities, the cultists suddenly stopped for us, froze in place as if time had stopped around us. Crowds of cultists stood in place, not taking any breaths or exhalations, as if they were really dead. And yet their same dead glances watched us no matter how we tried to move from one edge of the tower to the other.

Something was wrong, I could still hear the battle raging below, and the sound of the wind whistling behind me. Time did not stop, it was the cultists who suddenly froze, but why? It was this question that Will voiced, holding a bloody blade in his hands and hunched over, taking deep breaths and exhalations:

"Why did they freeze?"

The question soon disappeared by itself when the crowd of the dead nevertheless began to move, but not in order to attack us, but in order to let a man dressed in heavy armor pass forward.

Who else is this?

I wondered.

The ringing stomp added to his proud appearance a sense of awe, and the blood on his armor also inspired fear, as if we were facing the most dangerous cultist in the world who had decided to end the battle with his personal participation. And there were also pits and bullet marks on his armor, which indicated that he was an unusual person, and a rather dangerous one to have such serious attire. I can only guess what other fighting skills he has, he is quite capable of getting even with all of us and alone why I simply could not stop my trembling.

He stood a couple of meters from us and, holding a blade in his right hand, took off his helmet with his left, revealing to us the face of a mature man with short black hair and a sparse beard. The expression on his face was one of pure rage, or perhaps a wild sense of thirst, it was hard to tell, but his gaze was definitely hungry, as if we were just food to him.

He looked at us one by one, but his eyes stopped only on one of us, namely the king, after which he grinned in a low voice and said:

"Here I am, Draun Rudrin."

"Who are you?"

I asked the question while holding the blade in my hands while my hand was shaking like a hammer drill.

A little more... just a little more.

I still hoped.

Maintaining a satisfied expression on his face, the man replied:

"I am Prince Monrid, or rather... King Monrid. I did not expect that you would kill so many of my people. However, fortunately you did not kill them all."

Suddenly the king hissed behind me:

"You sang with the cultists, Monrid! You know that everyone will hate you for this!"

"Who dares to hate me?"

The prince spread his hands.

"I am now the king, I am the law and now this country belongs to me. I can and will do whatever I want here."

"You can't do that."

Said the king.

"This is not what you were raised for. This is not so you can endlessly kill everyone you want. A monarch has a duty and...”

"Grow up?"

Monrid interrupted the king, clearly angry at his words.

"I was not raised... I was abandoned! I grew up on my own, got my own food and survived on my own. No one raised me, I grew up on my own, without you, without your stupid instructions. It’s not for you to tell me what I can do, but which is impossible, usurper. If I want people to die, then they will die, if I want them to work, then they will work, and if they are disobedient, not to do everything I order them, only death awaits them!”

Listening to his words, I began to understand the king better and realized that giving the throne to such a psychopath was the same as giving it to the new Hitler or Mtsakeran only a thousand times worse. A person with such shallow and cruel thinking would only have one fate: death. And his country, in addition, would face anarchy and destruction.

Since he does not know such basic things about what a ruler should do and what not, then Draun Rudrin did the right thing by not giving him the throne, but a lot of blood was shed because of this. It would be better for people here to die than to live under a ruler like Monrid.

"Brother."

I heard a familiar voice behind the prince.

Swidok.

I swallowed my saliva in fear.

The prince turned around for a moment and looked with a radiant smile at the golden-haired witch who almost skipped like a child and ran up to the prince, and then, to our surprise, Monrid pulled her to himself and sucked her lips. From such an obscene sight, we could only ask one question:

Are they out of their minds?

A moment later, their lips separated from each other and Swidok, looking at us predatorily with her sparkling red eyes, decided to ask:

"Brother Monrid, how are you feeling?"

"Just flawless."

He did not take his eyes off the girl.

"I'm glad to hear that."

The golden-haired woman said, and then snapped her fingers, causing the prince to fall to the floor like a doll that had fallen out of his hands or an android that had suddenly switched off.

We couldn't believe what we just saw.

"W-what?!"

The king said, opening his eyes wide.

The real enemy turned out to be not the prince at all, but his servant, Swidok. The red-eyed one turned in our direction while the cultists dragged the prince’s body down. The witch instilled fear in us with her appearance, and her pride with her arrogance.

"What does it mean?!"

The king muttered angrily.

"Shut up."

Swidok said briefly and, snapping her fingers, released a discharge from her palm, causing the king to instantly turn into ashes.

"I'm curious about something else, namely all of you visitors from another world."

She looked around the entire platoon while we stood in shock and did not understand what had just happened, and only then a moment later did a terrifying understanding come to us. The king had just died before our eyes, turned into ashes, as if there had been a flash from a short circuit and the person was no longer there. We could barely notice it, when suddenly he was already lying here in the form of a hill of ashes.

For her, killing us all is just a piece of cake, and her look after killing the king said it all, she absolutely didn’t give a damn about him, not just about his life, but about him himself, just like the life of any living creature on this planet. This filled us with even more awe than we could have imagined. All we did all these two months was keep our way here, we were able to find a way to contact the rest of the army and it’s not a fact that it worked at all, but at the same time our death stood before us.

This... is the end.

It was simply impossible not to be afraid of her, not to shake in front of her, and if this is possible, then I must do everything so that we can survive.

"I will ask questions, and you, my little ones, will obediently answer them. Have I made myself clear?”

Having looked at all my people, I ended up simply nodding to her, not daring to rush at her and kill her. If cartridges are nothing to her, then this sword is even more so.

Lightning rod.

I thought and a plan began to form in my head, which very quickly seemed dubious to me.

"Speak."

I said it and Swidok immediately asked me the first question.

"Who did you call for help?"

One of my people could not stand it and spat out with anger in his voice:

"Do you think we’ll answer you that easily, bitch?”

A moment later, Swidok rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers again, and before our eyes another pile of ash appeared behind a bright flash. I immediately shouted, not believing my eyes:

"Glate! No!"

I fell to my knees.

No... no, no, no-no-no, NO! Not again!

I held my head in panic.

I know she will do it again, kill our man, and if we don’t answer her questions, she will finish off each of us here.

"So who did you call for help?"

Swidok repeated the question and added with sternness in her voice.

"Answer, otherwise I will kill everyone one by one."

I took a deep breath, understanding the prospect of what was happening, but we had no other choice. I had to lower the blade down and answer her question:

"Reinforcement."

"I understand that, but who exactly? Who should help you? I need to know.”

"This is...the 127th Army of the Human Republic Military Forces."

Swidok, hearing this, raised an eyebrow, clearly understanding almost nothing of everything that was said.

"So these are not dark ones. I remember them under a different name, you would call them pantorians. Is this true?”

I nodded, and Swidok continued.

"I thought you were using dark artifacts, but it turns out you are just people from false worlds, walking inventions. In this case, I no longer need to leave you alive. You are too insignificant and weak to pay more attention to you than you deserve. Although it’s worth it I must admit, you were able to surprise me. It’s been a long time since you drove me into a trap, and yet you didn’t manage to kill me, much less detain me. I started talking, it’s time to say goodbye to you.”

"Wait!"

I begged while still sitting on my knees.

"I beg you, don't touch us! We just want to go home!"

"Me too."

Swidok grinned.

"I also want to go home, or rather, to find him. Because I was never welcome here, but in the arms of Mr I felt like I had found a place in my life. To do this, I will fulfill his will and bring to these lands everything that people have always deserved. Suffering."

Well, now we're definitely finished.