She was excited to fight shoulder to shoulder with Yu. She had only fought in small skirmishes before, not counting the siege battle at night, and this would be Sivina's first real battle.
Needless to say, doing this side by side with the man she loved was a source of motivation for her.
She was also afraid because Yu was in a much more dangerous environment than a siege war. At first she thought that Yu should be out of the whole battle, but when Keichi said in a firm tone that it could result in Yu's certain death, she did not object to Yu being in the army himself.
She did not know Keichi and therefore did not have a strong sense of trust in him, but Yu seemed to trust him, or at least his interests. So Sivina would also trust Keichi's word.
“Congratulations, sir, you have sent all the infidels to hell!”
Sitting behind the komodor Keichi was riding, Akalda put her arms around Keichi's neck. Through Sivina's eyes, Keichi looked like a pathetic person controlled by Akalda and she didn't understand why Yu trusted him.
“With Yu's help,” Keichi said and pulled Akalda's arms away from his neck. “Don't get too cozy with me here...”
“His Eminence's charms are everywhere, and it’s blowing my mind.”
Akalda had a sly smile on her rose-red lips peeking through her helmet. In Sivina's eyes, this unchaste woman was as pathetic as Keichi.
“Liar woman,” she thought of her.
It made her angry to see others imitating the feelings Sivina had for Yu. These noble feelings should not be the stuff of intrigue.
“Yu, are you going to let your success be stolen? It was your plan!” Yurine grabbed Yu's left arm and pressed it to her stomach and yelled at Akalda. “It was Yu's idea! Don't steal his success, unchaste woman!”
She directly insulted Sivina by calling her a perverted woman and Akalda unchaste. It was natural that there was a difference in her attitude towards the two, but she still wanted to interpret it as Yu getting special treatment from his daughter.
“Yurine, let's not start arguments between factions. As long as we win this battle, I don't care to whom success is attributed.”
First they divided their troops and set up ambushes on hills and in wooded areas. Then, when the enemy's cavalry force of three thousand men arrived, they surrounded them and destroyed them without allowing anyone to escape.
She didn't know whether Keichi or Yu had a bigger role in this plan, they both spoke in complementary sentences, but she knew one thing for sure; Yu was lying.
And Yu was definitely lying. She was even more sure of that than she was sure that her own name was Sivina. She could see that Yu's character had changed after the dragon incident, but that didn't change the fact that Yu was lying now.
“Yu can't be someone who will leave success to someone else... Absolutely not.”
He told Sivina not to tell Keichi that they came from the same world, that he didn't want Keichi to know about him. Sivina, of course, said that she would obey Yu and told Link, Ana and the roarons not to tell about Yu either.
But this morning Yu himself had given Keichi the information that Sivina had asked him to keep secret. And the way he did it was so out of character that Sivina couldn't tell that it was Yu.
She couldn't explain how Yu, who had previously looked at Satoshi with annoyance, who was afraid to even look at people he didn't find beautiful, could be so friendly to Keichi, who looked exactly like Satoshi.
“Is it because of the difference in status?” she thought, but that couldn't be the answer either.
“When he told Satoshi that he was from the same hometown, we didn't get such a big reaction. Why did Keichi treat Yu like a prophet? Or is Yu afraid of the Blessing he carries?”
Yu was not a fearless person. He might have been afraid of him knowing the future and decided it was better to be friends with him, but was that really why he was doing something out of character right now? And even if he was scared, Sivina still couldn't explain why Keichi had approached him in a special way.
“Yu, did you lose the boards in your head like you lost your hand?” Yurine knocked on Yu's head a few times like knocking on a door.
“That was quite hurtful,” Yu said.
“Get back to normal!” Yurine pretended to grab something in the air with one hand and pulled it down. “If you didn't have a helmet on your head, I would have pulled your ear.”
“Let me return to my normal self... Then I say, ‘He who trusts in his own light is not afraid of others shining.’”
“You should have said that in the first place!”
Yurine was deadly serious and right, even if their interactions had an element of comedy for those watching. This was not the Yu Valarfin they knew.
“It is a fact that the Libra Cardinal is brighter than the Virgo butler,” Akalda said.
“Even the Cardinal of Libra himself doesn't believe that,” Sivina thought.
Yurine only smiled wryly. If even this little girl, who defended Yu in every situation, could not take Akalda's provocation seriously, then this unchaste woman was truly worthless.
“Okay, back to the topic at hand,” Keichi said, he was watching the discussion boredly. “What are we going to do with these?”
They looked at the prisoners of war. About two hundred had been taken prisoner and the others had been killed.
“Do you know exactly where that wizard is?” Yu asked Keichi.
“I don't know the exact location, it was just coming from the back.”
“Coming-?”
“I mean... In my visions.”
Here, too, there was a strange detail that caught Sivina's attention. Yu must have noticed some information about Keichi that Sivina had failed to notice and acted accordingly.
If he was still Yu, there was inevitably ulterior motive behind his actions. For Yu Valarfin, the opposite was not possible.
“So,” Yu whistled and a few roarons stepped forward. “Let's start the interrogation... Hmm... With you.”
Two roaron warriors dismounted from their rinos and grabbed a cavalryman Yu pointed to and pulled him to his feet. A third roaron warrior came down and removed the knight's helmet, and the man's sweat-drenched blond hair fell in front of his eyes.
“I have heard that there is a mighty wizard among your army, a descendant of the god Azer. Tell me where this wizard is now,” Yu said.
“I don't know,” the knight replied.
Yu nodded to the roaron standing in front of the knight and the roaron struck his axe over the man's heart. The armor on the man's chest split and the axe tore through his rib cage and then his heart.
When the other roarons let go of the knight's arm, he fell to the ground. The other prisoners, sitting with their hands bound, bowed their heads at the sight.
“Next,” Yu said. The roarons raised another soldier.
“Do you know where the wizard from Azer's lineage is?”
“I-I don't know.” When roaron raised his axe again, the man spoke without taking a breath. “I really don't know!”
His last words did not prevent his death. When Yu nodded, roaron struck again with his axe over the man's heart, slicing through his armor and taking his life in one blow.
“Yu is killing people...”
Yu would take turns bringing people to their feet, ordering the death of anyone who didn't give him the answer he wanted, without any expression on his face that showed he was uncomfortable with what he was doing.
“Next... Next... Next...”
Only today she had heard that he had killed some people and thought that he had killed more people. Yet it pained Sivina to see it in person now. Yu shouldn't have been someone who could take lives so easily.
Even though she would have loved him as he was, she didn't want him to be like this.
She wanted Yu to be a hero, not a killer. She knew it was selfish of her to try to turn him into someone else, but she couldn't help that selfishness.
“I know...” said one of the prisoners lined up like a rope.
At Yu's command, the roarons continued to kill those who did not respond, while everyone else watched as if approving of what Yu was doing.
Far away from the line of questioning, one of the prisoners raised his head, looked at Yu and spoke. He was helmetless and his hair was blond, like the hair of most of the prisoners.
“His tent was in the sixth division, on the river side... Of course he was there last. You can't expect us to know where to find him now.”
Yes, they were just ordinary knights and cavalrymen. They were not authorized to pinpoint the location of anyone powerful enough to be a secret weapon.
“Where is the sixth division?” Yu asked. Dark clouds were beginning to gather in the sky.
“Behind our left flank,” replied the captured soldier.
“Yu, we must leave now,” Keichi said. “These dark clouds don't bode well. It's... it's starting.”
“I too feel the ever-increasing mana,” Yurine said.
The rain began to beat down lightly. Sivina had never seen rain clouds gathering at this speed.
Sivina spoke. “Didn't he need noble blood for magic? Is it starting now? I thought our army was supposed to prevent the transfer of nobles from the city.”
“I thought so,” Yu said. “But why shouldn't he use nobles from his own armies?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Then why did we try to prevent the nobles in the city from being transferred?” Sivina asked.
It was Keichi who answered the question. “Because I hoped he would perform the spell later.”
Sivina began to feel a pain in her chest and heard the sound of thunder in her ears. At the moment there was no lightning in the sky, it was just an imaginary sound that Sivina heard, but soon she would hear it for real.
“What should we do with them?” Yurine asked.
“Let some of them stay here and tie them to the trees, and we'll move forward. Those left behind will catch up with us later.”
***
“Why isn't he here? We're ahead of time.”
Keichi was looking around nervously, but neither he nor Yu could see what he was looking for.
“This is what happens when we obey a steward! Your Eminence, tell us what to do!” Akalda shouted.
Hearing his voice irritated already stressed Sivina. They had failed to attack the enemy from the rear, had to improvise and found themselves between the fourth and sixth divisions.
They managed to break through to the sixth division and dismantle it, but they had suffered too many casualties to do so and now they could not find the wizard.
“Shut the fuck up, woman!”
Yurine set up a wall of wind around Yu, then sent a wind spell at the arrows coming at Keichi and Akalda. The spell shattered the arrows, but also struck Akalda with enough force that they almost fell off their komodor in reaction.
“I don't care what happened to that woman, but I'll be sorry if you hurt Keichi.”
“I don't accept request pieces!”
“That's... I'm not sure if that's a phrase to use here...”
They were talking about things Sivina didn't understand. Sivina didn't have time to try to understand them anyway. She was riding her rino and fighting the enemies around Yu.
The blood of the men he had slaughtered mixed with her already red armor, ran down her chest and dripped down her knees.
“Fighting on the rino only slows me down...”
For ordinary people, a mount would have been really helpful, but for someone like Sivina, who is normally already fast and agile, it was no help. On the contrary, her mount could not keep up with Sivina's speed and lagged behind.
Because of this incompatibility, Sivina's battle was made more difficult than it already was. That is why when the leg of the rino she was riding was cut off, she was not upset, she jumped off the rino and landed on the ground, kicking an enemy in the head.
“Sivina!” Yu shouted when he saw her leave her rino.
She had broken the neck of the man she had kicked in the head. She was glad that Yu was worried about her and she ducked under the two blows to her head, turned and when she stood up again, the legs of the two royal soldiers were separated from their body.
As the blood of the soldiers whose legs had been cut off mixed with the puddles of blood on the ground, the voices of the men she had entrusted to death penetrated Sivina's brain.
But there was so much screaming in this space that the screams, wails and insults Sivina caused were too small details to be noticed in the overall picture.
“Yu! The mana density here is shifting to our old place!”
“By the old place, do you mean the south?”
“I'm confused!” Yurine raised her finger and pointed south. “There it is!”
Sivina was careful to keep an eye on Yu. Yu was her top priority here and she would not let even an aggressive fly near him.
But right now Yurine was doing a better job of protecting Yu than Sivina thanks to the wind wall. So Sivina could focus on mowing down enemies while Yu and Keichi led their armies south.
“Die, witch!” With the mildest insult she had ever heard on the battlefield, a royal knight charged at her.
He was a knight in almost full body armor, with a white dolphin on his chest.
He might have been more than a knight, a nobleman, judging by the way the armor was adorned with expensive jewels, but right now he was just a man. His noble blood would not save him from Sivina's sword.
The knight leaned forward with a clumsy lunge and tried to thrust his sword into Sivina. It seemed that although he was a noble, the mana in his body was human average. Otherwise, at least he would not have made such a slow move for Sivina.
Sivina did not even need to meet his sword, she tilted her upper body to the left and the knight's sword went into the gap. The knight's head was left defenseless as he ducked while bringing his sword forward. Sivina plunged her sword into the only open place in the knight's helmet - his eye.
Before the knight had time to scream, he gasped and made no sound. Sivina drew her sword back as blood poured out of the visor of his helmet.
When she looked in Yu's direction, she saw that Yurine was the one fighting.
Yu hugged Yurine tightly with one arm and held the horse's bridle with the other. Yu's young but majestic horse, Virgo, soared through the enemies while Yurine cut and slashed people with her magic.
“All Yu needs is a sword...” she sighed. When he drew the black sword at his waist, he would become the hero Sivina wanted to see.
Right behind Yu, Keichi's komodor was fighting. All Keichi was doing was riding the beast on top with in his safe armor. Akalda, sitting behind him, was using water magic to create ice particles and support the fighting komodor.
“God please help me... God please, please, please, please...”
As she continued to advance, she heard the sound of a rino and a komodor piled on top of each other. Sivina plunged her sword into the throat of a soldier with a spear and looked where the sound was coming from.
“Please God...”
The man who begged his God was a royal soldier. He had dropped his helmet and lost an eye. He was a thin man in his thirties with a black beard.
His remaining blue eye widened when he saw Sivina and he clutched his broken spear.
Even if he was a frightened man who had lost the will to fight, it would be bad if he later found the courage to kill one from her army. So she raised her sword and brought it down on the man's throat.
“Sivina!”
When she heard the voice of the man she loved, she immediately turned to face him. Next to Yu was another rino he had found in the field for Sivina.
“Don't dawdle!”
Sivina nodded, giving a smile barely visible behind her helmet, and in one leap she was on the rino Yu had brought.
“The weather is getting worse, it's already started,” Keichi said. “We must kill him now.”
The rain picked up speed, and the drops falling on Sivina's steel helmet made a quick and loud sound. She raised her head, shielding her hand so the raindrops wouldn't hit her eyes.
The sun of a few hours ago had disappeared, replaced by dark clouds. The clouds were so dark that Sivina felt night falling.
First a few lights appeared in the sky, then a bolt of lightning struck a distant point with a sound as if it had split the sky.
“Keichi…” Yu said. His voice seemed to be sinking into darkness. “Haven't you learned what to do at this point?”
“Ha... No...” Keichi turned his eyes to the ground. “I have never seen this spot... In my visions...”
“This is it,” Sivina thought when she saw Yu's gaze. “This is the real Yu Valarfin.”
Keichi couldn't see how Yu was looking at him because he was looking at the ground, but through his helmet Yu was looking at him with disgust and hatred, as if he was looking at a pathetic insect.
She was happy that he could finally see Yu's true face. This was the Yu Valarfin who could give them something, not the fake love flower.
But Yu put his old friendly expression back on his face before addressing Keichi. “We will still go on until the end. Don't give up Keichi, you lose when you give up, not when you fall.”
She wanted Yu to turn into a good person, but it was fake. Yu was deceiving Keichi and pretending to be his friend. A fake Yu Valarfin was not what Sivina wanted.
“Yu, the mana there is getting more and more intense,” Yurine said.
“They are also sending soldiers from other divisions against us. The king must have already prepared something for us,” Akalda said.
Sivina was surprised to see that her brain could work on different things.
“There is nothing to do, if we don't kill the sorcerer we will all die,” Keichi said. “We must get to him now.”
“I don't think they will allow it.” Yu's horse reared at the noise of the approaching cavalry, and he tried to rein it in.
“Let's move forward like a spaceship, leaving pieces, but let's reach it, even if it's just us.”
When Keichi put forward his impromptu plan, no one understood him except Yu. Yu, who understood the plan, nodded.
“We will advance and ask our army to hold off the enemies that come our way. With the roarons, our only chance will be to try and kill the wizard.”
“Vixa, Rhae, Minue'e!”
Yurine shouted a spell and Yu galloped his horse forward. Yurine's spell came out in three parts, three long, sharp waves of wind. It looked like Sony von Bishory's light wave cutting through the trees.
Yurine's triple wind spell split the enemies in front of Yu's horse in two; horses, rinos and komodors fell to the ground and Yu's horse, Virgo, jumped over them all and continued on its way.
Keichi and Akalda went after them with their komodors. Sivina and the roarons accelerated their rinos, caught up with them and soon took their places beside them.
Yurine's magic drove those in their path out of their way, enemies attacking from the flanks were repelled by the roarons and Sivina, and those coming from behind were met by Virgo soldiers.
The Virgo soldiers were not very strong, but their numbers were not insignificant and together they could accomplish things.
As the rain increased abnormally, so did the number of lightning strikes. It was now striking them as well, and some lightning strikes even began to fall on the soldiers, regardless of side.
“FUCK!” Keichi shouted. “WE HAVE TO BE FASTER!”
“This is the fastest these animals can go!”
Yu shouted too, but his voice wasn't as loud as Keichi's. Yu wasn't usually a loud person anyway.
“The banners of Libra!” Akalda's voice, like a mouse in excitement, scratched Sivina's ears. “THE BANNERS OF THE LIBRA!”
In front of them were the banners of the Cathedral of Libra. They went around the back and managed to reach the point where the vanguard was fighting.
Even though the battle was still raging behind them, they were in a good position at the moment. If the Virgo soldiers managed to do something and defeat at least half of the royal soldiers behind them, Sivina could even say they had won.
“Keichi! How much-” Yu cut his voice abruptly.
This was because a huge column of flames rose up in the direction they were heading and then immediately came down and charred people.
“There's Yu Zao!” Keichi shouted. “It's Yu Zao!”
“Where is the wizard! How much time do we have left!” As Yu finished, the number of lightning bolts increased.
Sivina could not see a wizard, he must have been even further ahead.
“Very little, but there's still some left! If the sky is turning red, we're fucked!”
“Yu...”
The last sound was very calm, unlike the previous ones. Even Sivina barely heard Yurine's voice, even though she was riding a rino right next to them.
“Mana...” Yurine raised her hand up and pointed to the dark clouds. “Something is coming-“
And as soon as Yurine had finished, a storm hit them, knocking them off the animals they were riding. Sivina could hear Keichi's surprised voice over Yu's curses.
The only question Keichi asked was, “Why?”
Suddenly the lightning began to fall to the ground like mad.
“VUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!”
“VUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!”
“VUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!”
As the lightning struck, Sivina knew she had to become a very small target to be protected. So she knelt on the ground and pulled her knees to her, hoping that a cavalryman would not crush her.
Meanwhile, her ears heard a bugle blowing three times. The bugle sounded so loud that it seemed to come not from one direction but from all four directions.
“FETAL POSITION!” Sivina shouted.
The sky was constantly brightening and darkening, she madly curious about Yu but didn't know where he is right now, but they had to shrink themselves.
So he shouted for them to become as small a target as possible. “FETAL POSITION!”
There were voices other than the thundering sky. Those seeking refuge in God, those seeking help from their mothers and fathers, those cursing recklessly, those repenting...
Sivina could not see, but the thunderbolts seemed to be indiscriminate, for among those who repented was the voice of a man asking Azer's forgiveness for being in the army of the unbelievers.
“Lord forgive me, forgive me for following the unbelievers! Forgive me, Lord! Let me live! Let me live! I swear, I swear I repent, I will be good! I will not stray from your path!”
The sound came from right next to Sivina. Somehow an enemy soldier had come close to her.
The rain was falling so fast that Sivina realized that water was filling her mouth and nose. Not only that, but she also felt a tingling sensation in her body.
“CrhĞaaAAAAcHKKKKĞKKKKKKKKAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!”
She could not describe the strange and loud sound she heard. It was unlike any sound she had ever heard. All she understood was that something had exploded.
“CCCRRHHĞĞAAAAKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!”
Sivina's whole body trembled when she heard the same sound, shorter but more powerful. The lightning didn't hit her, but the sound was so strong that Sivina's chest hurt as if it were being torn apart, and the pain made her tremble.
And after this brief lightning feast, which lasted less than a minute, both the lightning and the rain suddenly stopped. Sivina was still shaking. When she managed to open her eyes, she realized that smoke was rising around her.
These were the fumes rising from the charred corpses of the dead, and among the smoking corpses were roarons.
“Oh God... Sh-Thank you...”
She heard the voice of the man who had just begged Azer again, but she didn't care about him. The first thing that came to his mind was Yu, so she immediately looked up and called him.
The valley was full of puddles from the rain, but in some places the grass was burning even though it had been wet before.
There were no banners around her because the banners were burnt. There was so much smoke rising over the people that it was hard to see, but she could still somehow make out soldiers running left and right, or regrouping and preparing to fight.
She thought as the burning smell made her cough. “Yu... Where are you...”
She didn't want to lose him. A girl from Elhaven had found the love of her life in another part of the world and she didn't want this story to have an unhappy ending.
“YU!” Sivina shouted.
“I guess I'm not the ‘Yu’ you're talking about. I'll ask anyway, what are you asking?”
She turned her head at the majestic voice she heard. The speaker was a man as majestic as his voice.
He was very tall. On his blood-soaked black armor was the figure of a red dragon, the same brightness as his eyes. In his hand he held a white sword, a combination of grace and majesty, and in the center of the sword was a glowing red line.
Sivina could not tell what color his hair was because it was covered in mud and blood. His skin, which appeared to be white, was also covered in mud and blood and there was a long horizontal scar on her face.
“This man is a real king,” Sivina thought.
Yu Zao raised his sword and pointed it at Sivina. “I don't like killing an enemy I didn't bring down myself, stand up.”