He heard the boy next to him vomit as the first rock thrown at them broke into small pieces and fell to the ground.
Not only was he vomiting, but he was peeing to his feet. It made even worse when combined with the sour smell of the vomit.
But even though it was a disgusting sight, it was not at a moment when he could have worried about it. On the contrary, it was the least of his worries today.
His feet were trembling from the beating he had received for telling Lady Cornelia that Her Eminence had scolded the silver-haired knight, and he only realized it when the boy vomited on his feet.
“Lord, unleash your wrath on the infidels; Lord, unleash your wrath on the infidels; Lord, unleash your wrath on the infidels!”
The boy standing to his right was praying to the god Azer. The people he called infidels were the enemy soldiers who stood outside the walls and threw rocks at them.
They were Yu Zao's soldiers who had declared war on God and deserved no mercy whatsoever.
A few more rocks fell on them and shattered. Some rocks fell in front of the walls as they were, and rocks that would have hit them or the walls were shattered in the air.
At least they could say that most of them were crumbling. A rock that the magic storm hadn't smashed went over his head and fell on the children behind him. When the screams reached his ears that hidden behind his helmet, and shook his spine, he felt his crotch heat up, he was wetting himself.
“MED! MED!”
While he was afraid to turn his head and look behind him, a child whose voice had not yet even thickened, was looking for the medics who could keep the other children crushed by the rock alive.
Child. The youngest of the one thousand people in this battalion was fourteen and the oldest was only seventeen. He had just turned fifteen, and he knew normally people at his age were getting married, even some has a baby, but he was just realizing that they were only children.
They were children who had never traveled more than ten kilometers from their village in their entire lives, and now they were far away from their village.
Another rock shattered and pieces fell on them. They ducked their heads to avoid being hit in the face and tried to hide behind the large rectangular shields in front of them.
The red shields, with their curved surface, were so heavy that his weak arms had difficulty lifting what he needed most to survive.
“Mom…” Someone whispered. “Mom, why did you send me away?”
The owner of the voice was another boy just in front of him. He knew him, knew his name and lived in the same village.
He knew very well why his mother had sent him here. Just as his own father had sent him here, the other boy's mother had sent him here to hell for the same reason.
For money.
The Church of Andromeda only wanted to see Virgo City and only the rich part of it.
But the villagers living around the city were always ignored so that some in the city could live a rich life and enjoy festivals like the Spring Festival.
This was the case yesterday and will be the case in the future.
At the end of the day they could not even buy a chicken with the money they earned. So the few pieces of silver that Yu Valarfin, the man who had founded this army, had given them, had flattered their parents and they had given them to the army so that they could take care of their other brothers and sisters.
“Damn it, damn it...” His urine ran down his knees and out of his trousers, some of it soaking into his boots.
As the smell of urine intensified, he realized that he was not the only one. Behind him, in front of him and beside him were also wetting themselves.
Added to this was the smell of shit, which only made the situation worse.
The prayers, the names of loved ones, the curses, the moans and wails of the dying behind him, the sound of the storm, the explosion of crumbling rocks, the incontinent farts were so many that he felt as if a world where people laughed had never existed.
A woman shouted. “Raise the shields!”
He recognized the voice, it was the voice of Lady Cornelia. Although he could not see her, he could clearly hear her booming voice that made people tremble.
After Cornelia's voice, he heard another voice. This new sound was a combination of a man's murmur and the whistling of the wind.
Someone had asked him to raise his shield, but he weighed no more than fifty kilos and his arms were not strong enough to lift it. So he took out his spear and ducked down and hid behind his shield.
After a not too long time, the sound, like a murmur, grew louder and louder and louder. It grew louder and louder until it dyed everything red, and when it crashed into the walls and disappeared, new sounds filled the air.
“DAD!”
“MOM!”
“GOD!”
Being in the middle of the battalion, he did not know what had happened to those in behind of the wall, but from the cries that reached here, it was not good.
He looked at the boy next to him, his shield joined to his own. The boy who had just vomited on his feet was now crying with tears and snot, snot coming out of his nose and into his mouth, calling his mother's name.
The spear he held in his hand was constantly swinging and the smell of shit falling from his legs filled the space of a few meters.
“Mom, save me... save me...” He continued to cry as the words left his trembling lips.
Even though he knew it was impossible, he could do nothing but beg his mother, whom he had left behind in his village.
“SHIELD WALL!” The voice of Lady Cornelia, whose whereabouts he could not see, seemed to come from all four directions.
Immediately after he shouted, the murmur-like sound was heard a second time. This time, instead of hitting the ramparts, it hit the shield wall formed by the troops in front.
Two hundred troops stood separately, and the boys in front were stronger than the boys where he was. Nevertheless, when it hit them, the whole place once again turned red.
He didn't know how it happened, but he was rolling on the floor.
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He rolled on the ground for a while. As his body rolled on the ground, he thought that this was better than standing and fighting ahead.
He rolled until his back was in a puddle. Once he was in the puddle, he felt the hot liquid going down his neck.
He couldn't hear anything except the ringing in his ears. There were red flashes around him and every now and then someone would jump over him. The activity was at its peak, but there was no sound whatsoever.
He wanted to speak and cry out, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out except the air rising from his lungs.
He had no idea what happened when someone stepped on him and took his breath away. Another grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him into the air, every bone aching. When he slowly turned around, he saw no one.
A boy grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him around and shouted. “#########!”
He had no idea what he was saying because he couldn't hear his voice, but it was clear that he was angry and scared. He raised his hand and pointed with his finger to where they had just been.
Hundreds of people had gathered there and formed a crescent-shaped wall of shields. Lady Cornelia was running and shouting behind the shields on a huge lizard, the likes of which he had never seen before.
“####!” Boy shouted again as he continued to shake him. “#####!”
He was angry that he was staring at him with blank eyes. He raised his hand to smack his upside the head and snap him out of it, but then his furrowed brow returned to normal and his hardened cheeks relaxed.
He spat blood, and a blank look settled in his eyes. He simply fell to the ground and began to drown in his own blood.
“-DY! GE- EADY! GET READY!” He had not realized what had happened to the boy when his hearing returned and the first words he heard were those of Lady Cornelia. “SPEARS OUT!”
He looked again where the shield wall had been. A small section of the wooden rampart had collapsed and cavalry mounted on rinos were charging towards it.
An unknown man shouted. “SPRINGS OUT!” Then other men repeated the same voice.
Another boy, he did not know who he was, took his arm. He didn't even think to look at him and together they ran towards the shield wall.
Neither of them had a shield, but he realized he was still holding his spear.
Even if he wanted to, he couldn't let go of the spear because his fingers were interlocked. He couldn't move them, he couldn't throw the spear away.
They got behind the shields and thrust the spears out through the gaps, then ducked.
He couldn't see anything because he was bent over, but he felt his spear pierce something hard as the boy in front of him fell on top of him.
“RISE UP!” Shouted a young man with a weak voice. His voice was thinner than any other voice he had ever heard.
He would have liked to obey the order and stand up, but it didn't seem possible because the weight on him was too much to prevent him from breathing.
On top of him was another boy who was in the same army as him, his fifteen-pound shield, and things that he didn't see who or what they were. And some people kept stepping on them.
It was impossible for him to stand up in this state.
“GET UP MOTHERFUCKERS!”
Someone was ordering them to stand up again as an enemy sword descended from an angle he could see and plunged into the face of the boy on top of him.
For some unknown reason, the weight on him lifted after the child died, and he pushed the dead child off him with a strength he did not know where he got it from.
Now he could stand up. First he straightened up on his haunches, then he tried to stand up while still holding his spear, which he didn't even realize had broken.
But he failed, he fell to the ground.
Not understanding why he fell, he tried to get up again and fell again. He continued this several times without realizing what had happened.
“Uh...” It was the first sound that came out of his mouth since the stones started raining down on them. It was the sound he made when he realized he kept falling to the right.
Normally there should have been a foot under his right leg, but now there wasn't. He didn't even know how he lost it, but his foot was not where it should be, where it should be connected to his ankle and leg.
Instead, blood was pouring out of him. He couldn't feel it.
“Have you seen my foot?” he asked the knight who had suddenly appeared above him.
Even if he could see the red dragon on the knight's silver armor, he would not be able to tell that it was an enemy soldier.
The knight raised his spear and stabbed him in the throat.
***
On ordinary days she wore a white uniform, but today she was wearing light armor in the same silver tone as her hair.
Only on top of the sea-green cloak that came down to her waist was the figure of a silver swan, and even in this infernal space her movements were as graceful as those of a swan.
Even though she had lost her mount, she continued to fight. Her sword, resembling a rapier in shape but with a wider width of steel than any rapier, decapitated an enemy soldier and she defended another soldier's sword with the steel on her wrist.
When she felt a sword swinging behind her and ducked, the swan's head ornament of the helmet she wore on her head was torn off by the sword.
Sivina leapt forward and blocked both swords coming down on her head at the same time with her own sword. Surprised by her agility, she took advantage of the soldiers' gap and drove a dagger from her waist into the throat of one of them.
Their opponents did not wear plate armor, and the armor they wore was hollow at the throat so as not to impede the movement of the head. So it was ideal for stabbing a dagger.
As one of her opponents fell to the ground, she pulled out the dagger and swung it at the other. Unlike her fallen comrade, this soldier was more agile, he took a step back, but that didn't stop him dying.
When a Virgo Cathedral soldier thrust a spear into his neck, he spat the blood from his mouth into Sivina's face and died.
The soldier who killed him was a boy who was just beginning to grow a mustache. The strength in his arms was not enough to pull the spear back, so he dropped it, pulled out the short sword hanging at his waist and ran forward with a shrill cry.
They had taken precautions against the rocks, but none of them had suggested that there might be mages on the enemy side.
If they were ordinary wizards, it wouldn't be a problem, but they had wizards who could cast powerful fire magic.
“At least the level of mages in Mora is still low.”
Those who destroyed the walls were strong, but still strong by Mora standards. Only a small section had been destroyed and they did not attack the other sides of the wall with magic, but charged in through the hole.
The enemies had managed to get in, but at least they could assume that since the mages had not continued to attack, they had used up their mana. So she assumed that they would not face a flame attack for a while.
“Sivina! Kill those inside!”
It was Cornelia who called out to her. Cornelia had built a shield wall in front of the collapsed section of the city walls, preventing more enemy soldiers from entering.
Sivina was truly amazed, Cornelia had a voice loud enough to be heard at this distance.
While Cornelia returned to her own affairs, Sivina took action to prevent enemies who had passed them from attacking from behind and destroying the shield wall.
“Follow me!” she shouted to the surrounding soldiers. She raised his sword, pointing at the enemy who had charged to destroy the shield wall.
She ran and started charging at the enemy soldiers, followed by the other soldiers around her.
She had reluctantly heard the derogatory ideas that many of these adolescents had about a girl being a warrior, but now Sivina's warriorism gave them courage.
As Sivina slashed at the enemies in her path, Cornelia's shield wall fended off the charging cavalry with rinos. When she came to the white komodor Cornelia was riding, she looked up and called to him.
“Let's use the archers. Yu said we can use the ones with the magic stones if we need them. We might need some right now.”
As she said so, she dodged a spear coming at her, catching it with her hand to prevent it from lodging in Cornelia's komodor.
Cornelia shook her head and shouted to her soldiers. “TURTLE!”
“So that's why he gave them rectangular shields,” she thought.
Usually round shields were used, but for the army Yu had chosen rectangular and bulbous shields. It was very easy to build a wall with these shields and the formations were really solid.
The soldiers were covered on all sides with shields, and the soldiers in the center put their own shields over their heads.
This formation resulted in some enemy soldiers getting on the shields, but the spears rising through the shields made them realize that this was a bad choice.
“Give orders to the archers,” Sivina said. With the komodor under her, Cornelia could get to the archers faster.
Without saying a word, Cornelia turned her komodor around and sprinted up the hill. She went up a little and made a predetermined gesture with her hand, instructing the archers to fire their special arrows.
“Enemy troops are concentrating on the collapsed wall. It will be bad for them.”
When the wall collapsed, the enemy had reinforced it from the other flanks. If even half of the four hundred or so arrows with magic stones had hit, thousands of enemies in front of them would have been wounded or killed by the explosions.
Her own soldiers were almost safe. The shields allowed for a tight interlocking, and when the archers began to fire their regular arrows, Sivina ordered the soldiers to thrust their spears in and interlock.
As some of the enemy troops were coming up on the shields, they fired three volleys. The first two shots hit their own shields, but they managed to hit the enemy with the third shot.
The next shot would be with magic stones. As Sivina moved to a safe zone, the archers on the hill stretched their bows and released arrows tipped with magic stones.