Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 187. Confidence and Resolve.
“Yo, missed me?” Laien asked his pitch-black horse, Bellicose. He rubbed Bellicose’s neck as the stallion carried him towards the north-east basically on his own. In response, Bellicose raised his head briefly and pushed against his hand, as if wanting to be petted more. “He’s acting so friendly and obedient now, even though he became an elite mount. He used to be so rowdy, hah,” Laien thought in amusement, then glanced to his right, at Yin and his brown War Horse.
“Hey,” he began saying. “Don’t you think it’s the highest time to name this guy? Calling him ‘the brown one’ and things like that is just too sad,” he mentioned with a slight, meaningful smile. He knew that Yin wasn’t as fond of his horse as he was, but that was only because he liked his Bellicose a lot more than a normal person liked his horse. It by no means meant that Yin didn’t get attached to his brown stallion during their two-plus months of travel or didn’t come to like him.
“Well,” Yin smiled back at Laien, then glanced at his horse. He was in a very good mood at the moment, so even though he had been delaying this little issue for the longest of times, he gave in to Laien’s urging. He pondered for a bit, wondering what a good name for his horse would be. He didn’t feel like using any of the common names though, and he didn’t want to give him a half-hearted name either. “Oh, I know. What about Arion?” he asked his mount. He was curious to see if the brown one was going to find likeable the name of a horse he had read about from one of his Grandfather’s countless books when he was around six or seven years old. Though, as it was soon proven by his horse’s overexcited reaction and a joyous jump upwards, which made him have to clench his legs tighter as to not fall off, the brown one… well, Arion seemed to love his new name.
“Arion, huh,” Laien said with a laugh. He didn’t know for sure where had Rune heard the name of ‘Bellicose’, but both the name of Yin’s horse and the name of his own horse sounded quite good to his ears. How to say that, they sounded almost ancient and mysterious, they definitely were right up his alley. “Good for you, huh, Arion,” he said with a grin and even though he couldn’t discern the expressions of their horses, he could swear that Arion looked at him gratefully and nodded his head slightly. However, just as he was wondering exactly how intelligent those two War Horses had become after advancing to the Realm of Heroes, the second series of the three blows of a horn resounded loudly and apparently, from not that far away.
“Right, right,” Laien remembered only now. “How many points did you get?” he asked Yin with a grin, causing some consternation to appear on the faces of those who were listening in to their conversation. They didn’t want to imagine it, but could it be that those two made a competition out of how many enemies they would be able to kill? If so, then they truly had no words to describe that. They had almost forgotten about it, but those two really were only around thirteen years old, eh?
“To be fair,” Yin replied after a second of thought. “I lost count midway through, so we can count it as your win,” he said lightheartedly, though he had a feeling that something else was on Laien’s mind. Laien should have been able to tell that he had stopped counting his kills while he had been creating his Thundercloud Sword Art since he wasn’t hiding these thoughts. He would have been able to count his kills quite accurately from memory alone, but he wouldn’t be sure about the cultivation bases of those people, especially of those weaker ones as they all had seemed the same to him.
“I lost count too,” Laien said with a merry laugh in response to Yin’s doubts. Just like Yin, he would be unable to tell precisely how many people and of what cultivation bases his Phantasmal Essence had killed in its surges. “So, since we both lost count, how about we treat it as both of us losing?” he suggested and took a look at Yin, only to see a look of amusement appear in his emerald-green eyes.
“Then,” Yin said with a playful smile. “Since we both lost, does it mean we both get to make a request of each other?” he asked, already looking forward to what they were going to do. Given his and Laien’s tendencies, whatever they were going to come up with would be both very amusing and very enjoyable.
“Mm, yup,” Laien confirmed, a clear hint of playfulness shining in his eyes. He would have liked it the best if he won this little game of theirs, but since both of them truly lost count, this outcome wasn’t half-bad either. “It would have been nice if we had some time to chat about our new insights, but I’d rather not do it in front of all these prying ears. I wonder if Yin came up with a name for this new fighting style of his? It was for just three seconds or so, but it looked quite dangerous and also incredibly lethal,” he mused in his thoughts. Regrettably, their Spiritual Bond wasn’t at a level where they could straight-out have a detailed conversation through it just yet. Had it been, they would have never again had to worry about anyone listening in to their more important conversations.
“I did,” Yin said seemingly out of the blue just as they were about to ride onto the wide road in the middle of the whole battlefield and thus, he managed to confuse everyone but Laien. They didn’t have time to chat about details and nor was it the best place to do so, but since Laien was so curious, then sharing a name wouldn’t be a problem. “I called it Thundercloud Sword Art,” he said with a smile and gave Laien and inquiring look right afterward. He did reveal the name of what he had obtained, so, by all means, he wanted Laien to do the same. He was curious, too!
“A great name,” Laien said honestly. He hadn’t seen much, but what Yin had shown him fit very well to this domineering naming sense of his. “For me, I guess it would be my Phantasmal Essence and Phantasmal World,” he said briefly. He knew that Yin was already familiar with the first concept since the two of them had awakened the Phantasmal Essence of Inferno together. The difference was that unlike him, Yin wasn’t able to put the wild Phantasmal Essence of Inferno to any use. However, now that he thought about it, once he shared his discoveries with Yin, Yin’s power would undoubtedly soar. After all, with Yin’s talent, it was unlikely for him to fail to comprehend Phantasmal Essences once there was someone to explain the essential basics behind their inner workings to him.
“Phantasmal World?” Yin repeated even though he knew they had no time for explanations. He had heard Phantasmal Essence being briefly mentioned back when he still lived with his parents and extended family, but even his Grandfather’s books hadn’t mentioned anything about Phantasmal World. Was it something that Laien only named on his own? Logically speaking it should have been like that, but Laien appeared to be strangely convinced that it was an established concept in itself.
However, before he had much more time to worry about this matter, they rode onto the road and emerged pretty much right next to their central unit. He and Laien had allowed their horses to pick the way and since they felt they were going in the right direction, they hadn’t tried to adjust it. By the looks of it, it had been the right decision as they emerged neither too far in the front nor too far in the back. The latter of those two options would have been the most worrisome as even now, the path three hundred meters behind them was blocked by Julien and Abdain exchanging blows.
“Good, you’re…!” At the sight of Laien and Yin riding out of the forest to his left, Casimir spoke with relief. Though, the anxiety he had been feeling also did show in his voice right before the end of his sentence got stuck in his throat. He had noticed the riders behind Laien and Yin, of course, but once dozens more of them came out of the forest within the next seconds, he became speechless. He had been predicting that at worst, close to half of the hundred and twenty men they had sent to the western part of the forest would die. Even then, his optimistic prediction involved at least two dozen of them dying! Yet, a quick head count revealed that no more than fourteen of them didn’t return.
He didn’t know the details, but a simple look at all the injuries those elites and a quick sweep of his aura revealed that all of them had engaged in tough battles. Just what could have happened there for the number of casualties to be so low despite the fierce fighting, which he was convinced must have taken place? Could it be that it was Laien and Yin’s doing? They came here leading the entire group, but did it also mean they had gone around the forest and personally helped with the retreat?
“It was their doing.”
“We’re here thanks to them.”
First, the captain of the White Sword, then Zalar, one of the lieutenants under Julien, gave Casimir a few words of explanation. They intended to give a report to Casimir either way, so the moment they noticed the startled look on Casimir’s face, they guessed what the Crown Prince was thinking about and gave him the answer he was looking for. Subsequently, the two of them showed understanding smiles once the emotions of shock, consternation, and finally, acknowledgment appeared on Casimir’s face in this very sequence. They had gone through similar emotional disturbances when they had been rescued by those two boys, so they could sympathize with Casimir.
“Okay.” Casimir closed his eyes for a second in order to calm down his chaotically flowing thoughts. “It’s good you’re early,” he said while looking towards Laien and Yin. “I hope you managed to accomplish something towards your Shadow Trials. I wanted to give you more time, but we couldn’t afford it. Anna already went with her Royal Guard to help the eastern front, but they won’t be able to hold on for much longer. I knew Yimar Maar and his elites specialize in such scattered small-scale and mid-scale battles, but I didn’t think they would be this powerful in their favorite environment,” he explained hurriedly. He suspected that Anna and the rest of their men from the eastern front would return any second now and he had been worried that they would need to stall for too long for Laien and Yin and the bunch to come. Fortunately, they had arrived even before those from the east, so once Anna, the Black Sword Unit and the rest of Julien’s men returned, they would be able to move northwards at full speed and reset the entire engagement or even end it altogether.
Having said all of that, Casimir expected Laien and Yin to show some concern or to need to digest the information for a moment before accepting the reality. After all, he had assumed that those two hadn’t had enough time to reach for any significant breakthroughs and in consequence, had done little to push their Shadow Trials towards their conclusion. Yet, to his surprise, the two boys didn’t look too anxious and in fact, their gazes were calmly focused on the eastern part of the forest.
“We made big gains,” Laien said truthfully. “But we don’t think it’s enough to conclude the Shadow Trials,” he stated outright, then gave Casimir a level-headed, inquiring look. With Yimar Maar’s unexpected display of competence, whether they would be able to more or less safely engage in further battles wasn’t certain. The two of them weren’t aware of the details concerning the eastern battlefield either and from Casimir’s words, there was little time left for them to talk. Thus, the two of them thought along the same lines, that it would be best to leave the final decision to Casimir.
Once again somewhat startled, Casimir couldn’t help himself and smiled slightly. He knew few people who were able to communicate important matters without using many words, but those two boys were doing just that. The two of them were looking at him calmly, as if they would be fine with whichever decision he made in the end. This further reinforced the extremely favorable impression he had of them in his mind, but no matter how much he wanted to help them, he thought that he shouldn’t allow his personal feelings to influence his decisions.
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Out of the hundred men of the Black Sword Unit, forty had perished by the time of the last report which he had received about thirty seconds ago. Out of forty-plus men of Julien’s, more than ten had also lost their lives, all in a matter of minutes. Anna’s Royal Guard had sustained a dozen casualties, too. At this rate, given that Yimar Maar’s elites sustained barely any casualties at all, Anna and the others would end up getting completely overwhelmed in just a few minutes. This basically meant that they couldn’t spread out their forces ever again else they would risk having a portion of them wiped out. Looking at Yimar Maar’s personal display of power, too, it would be far too risky.
However, would a team-oriented battle truly mean much? If such a thing had been enough to finish the Shadow Trials, then their earlier battle with Abdain’s elites would have been enough. Those two had just told him they had actually experienced breakthroughs and as it seemed, they had aided all of their men on the western front, too. So, if this much wasn’t enough to complete the Shadow Trials, then only a truly dangerous gamble that would also result in huge gains would be enough.
“But,” Casimir mused sourly. “It’s also possible that the Shadow Trials have ended already and those two simply weren’t informed of it yet. However, seeing how far those bastards were willing to go to put Laien and Yin in more and more danger, I don’t think this option is all that likely. I’d even go as far as to disregard it in my calculations,” he told himself. Yet, right afterward he urged himself to think faster as the sooner he made his decision, the more beneficial would it be for their party.
Yet, no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t do it. In the best case scenario, Yimar Maar still had around ten thousand experts at his disposal, about two thousands of which were his or Abdain’s elites. If they were to stop somewhere and engage in a direct battle, they would immediately be surrounded and would suffer heavy casualties just in order to get out. This would be entirely pointless as even Laien and Yin wouldn’t benefit from it in any way. However, wasn’t there something, anything, that had an acceptable chance of success that he could do to help those two out? He didn’t want to allow his personal bias to mislead him, but he really wanted to do something more! By now, it wasn’t simply because he felt that Laien and Yin’s favor would be beneficial to him and his Kingdom in the future, but because he truly came to want to befriend those two youths.
On the spur of the moment, he looked into the northern sky for the third or fourth time today without getting his hopes high. However, his eyes widened the next instant and a smile emerged on his face. The eagle he had been looking for the entire time was finally there! It was only coming from the northern horizon, too, so he had spotted it at the best possible time! He silently thanked the Heavens for this good fortune and raised his lance, then twirled it three times over above his head. Once he confirmed that the eagle turned around and started flying back where it came from, his smile only grew wider. With just that, a light of hope at the end of their path had been reignited!
The very next moment, he turned his head to the side and looked at Laien and Yin with a gaze that seemed to be burning. However, before he could explain what his intentions were, their forces from the eastern part of the forest came tumbling onto the road alongside Anna’s distressed shout.
“Speed up now! We have to go at full speed, quickly!”
Thankfully, be it Casimir, Laien and Yin, or the rest of the high-ranked people were close to the forefront, all of them were able to react once the first three words sounded. In this way, the overall speed of their column soon reached almost six hundred kilometers per hour. After all, all of their horses were excellent, so even if some of them were pushed to ride at a speed exceeding their limits for a period of time, it would have no lasting consequences for the mounts. In fact, even riding at such a speed for a few hours wouldn’t be much of a problem for those Tempest Horses and those few dozen high-quality mounts their group had kept for themselves after pillaging them in battle.
“How many of you are left?” Casimir asked Anna, but at the same time, he was having trouble suppressing his killing intent from erupting. He knew that trying to avoid all wounds in battle was a fool’s way of thinking, but seeing the burns on Anna’s right hand made him furious. He couldn’t see more since Anna had put on a new set of clothes for herself, but judging from how she was restraining her movements, those burns likely stretched all the way to the middle of her chest.
“I don’t know if some of those who stayed behind are still alive,” Anna started saying with a grim look on her face as their group sped northwards at full speed. “But only fifty-three of my men returned with me. The Black Sword Unit had it even worse off as they have barely thirty-something men left, while Julien’s forty was reduced to twenty-one. Also, one of their two lieutenants there died in order to allow their water-element lieutenant and her unit to escape at the last moment,” she elaborated without getting into any unnecessary details for the time being. She did, however, decide to add two more things as he considered them to be crucial pieces of information.
“We underestimated Yimar Maar. He’s only a peak martial master of the fifth rank, but it wasn’t without a reason that he was one of the three who cooperated to cripple Mustafa. I’d say that his strength is comparable to either Abdain or Julien from before their cultivation breakthroughs.”
“Also, he and his men employed vicious and frighteningly effective tactics in our encounters. We can’t fight them in a series of smaller clashes, their skill and ability to cooperate is too far beyond any unit at our disposal. I fear that only Royal Guards of our fathers would be able to stand on even ground with them in an environment like this forest and with numbers kept under a thousand.”
When those at the forefront heard this assessment from Anna, the heavy casualties she had reported beforehand started making more sense to them. The likes of Casimir or Sirius had already expected the things she said to be true, but for the other experts and for those who had arrived from the west mere moments ago, this was a shocking piece of information. Even Laien and Yin couldn’t help but frown in worry as they hadn’t expected the situation to be this bad when Casimir told them that the east wouldn’t be able to hold for much longer. They had assumed that Yimar Maar wasn’t much to worry about since he hadn’t accomplished anything worth mentioning with his own abilities ever since this war started, but it looked like the field of battle had simply been ill-suited for him.
“Worse than I thought,” Casimir commented without beating around the bush. With so many of their allies dead, the confidence he had in his last plan suffered a serious blow. If he miscalculated the right time, if they got overrun at the end a bit too fast, then instead of a comeback victory they would be slaughtered or even worse, captured and taken prisoner. “I didn’t want to reveal it if possible, but I don’t feel like I’ll be able to make this choice on my own anymore,” he thought with a quiet sigh. Their chances would be higher if he kept the details of his plan secret from everyone, even from Anna, but seeing as the risk factor grew considerably, he opted to ask these two for their opinions. Thus, he used some of his Qi to control his voice and sent it towards Laien and Yin.
“I’m thinking of the last gamble,” he said to begin with and crossed gazes with first Laien, then Yin. “If this won’t be enough to help you pass the Shadow Trials, then I’ve got no other means or ideas. I will do my best to choose the correct time and a good spot for us to stop in about five to six hours, somewhere in the early evening. However, do be aware that if I miscalculate or if our ranks are breached too soon, then only the few strongest of us will survive. I, Anna, Julien and some of our faster subordinates, and perhaps you two, that’s the limit. Your friend, Arslan, will be captured by Yimar Maar and those three White Guards will undoubtedly stay until the end and get killed,” he said bluntly, planning to conceal only one thing from those two. As for everything else, he would state it exactly as it was since he trusted that those two wouldn’t make a needlessly greedy decision.
“I originally wanted to decide myself,” he added after giving the two boys a few seconds to contemplate what they just heard. “But once I learned how many of our men died to Yimar Maar and his elites, I couldn’t make a choice. It will be dangerous, surely more dangerous than our initial rescue attempt. Deaths on our side will be inevitable. So, that’s why I’m telling you all of that. I want to ask you, do you see a way to pass your Trials if we take this last gamble? Because if you don’t, then there’s no point trying and we should just flee all the way to the Aegis,” he stated in a very serious tone. It pained him to lose his loyal Royal Guards and he was sure that Anna, who had lost many more of her trusted aides, was in even greater distress. So, if at all possible, he didn’t wish to risk any more of their lives if a path to victory wasn’t solid enough.
Compared to going into another battle with Yimar Maar without a solid hope for the final victory, he would rather take chances that the Guild of Shadows would stop them on their way to the Aegis or get directly involved within the Holy Union. At the very least, in such a case all the potential casualties would have been unavoidable instead of being the direct result of his wrong choices.
Meanwhile, as Casimir continued to wait patiently for a response, Laien and Yin were weighing the arguments for and against taking one more gamble.
Just like Casimir said, it was less likely that the two of them would end up killed or captured in the end. They had grown strong enough and even had elite mounts, so unless they chose to stay and fight to the bitter end themselves, they would be able to somehow survive. However, many more men of Casimir, Anna, and Julien’s would die. Johan, Sarah, Albert and the father of the first two, alongside Rakar who was tagging along to protect them… not to mention all of their old guards who were here. All of those people would die if this last battle Casimir mentioned went wrong. Did they really have enough confidence to stake the lives of all those people against their Shadow Trials?
Had they been ones not to care about the lives of their friends and companions, this choice wouldn’t have been hard at all. Yet, they understood that it was exactly because they did care about such things that Casimir was willing to go as far as to ask them directly for their opinion and leave the choice to them. Only in this way would their answer be reliable and possible to be trusted.
That being said, there existed other positives were the tactic proposed by Casimir to succeed. Laien and Yin understood very well what the First Prince was aiming for, but compared to the lives of all those around them, those benefits were of negligible value in their eyes. Thus, the ultimate question was simple. Were they, or weren’t they confident in holding on against Yimar Maar, Abdain, their remaining two thousand or so elites, and the eight thousand… well, probably more like six thousand by this point, of the regular martial masters from their army? Because if they weren’t confident and if they didn’t trust Casimir’s judgement enough to allow him to pick the exact time and place of the final battlefield, then they indeed should just answer that they would rather not do it.
“Let’s try,” Laien answered as the first one, though Casimir didn’t really know that it didn’t matter which of the two youths answered first. After all, neither of them would have said anything if they weren’t able to come to an agreement on the matter through their Spiritual Bond. They only would have spoken earlier if they wanted to discuss something between themselves in case the level of connection provided by the Spiritual Bond wasn’t enough for them to make up their minds.
“Yeah,” Yin agreed with a nod. “Nothing less will satisfy whoever is our examiner, or whoever are our examiners,” he added with a grim smile. The idea of reaching a ‘conclusion’ to the battle while actively displaying their abilities to the fullest and pushing themselves to their very limits, Casimir’s suggestion would allow them to do just that. It would be a risk for those around them, of course, but if they didn’t pass their Shadow Trials soon, then those risks would never end.
There was no one to say that more of their acquaintances and friends wouldn’t be put in danger in the future, and it wasn’t like the two of them didn’t wish to survive and live on themselves. They had a feeling that a golden opportunity was presenting itself before them, all to end those ridiculous Shadow Trials, so they weren’t about to get cold feet and turn away from it. However, they weren’t planning to sacrifice any of their friends and at the same time, they wanted to limit the casualties on the part of their companions as much as possible. As for how they would be able to claim that they had done everything in their strength in order to reach this goal of theirs?
In the same way they obtained their most recent breakthroughs, they would put their lives on the line and pass those Shadow Trials or die trying!