The sun was setting by the time we got to the camp, which made it difficult to see in the forest. But there was no way we would lose our direction, given the fire that seemed to be raging in that area. The sounds of swords clashing, paired with the shouting, was also more than enough to lead us to the right place.

When we eventually did get there, the scene unfolding in front of us was abysmal. The wooden octagon was exactly where it had been, untouched. Next to it, almost hugging the structure, was the body of one of the family members, covered in blood. It flowed from her stomach, and was spreading throughout her clothes. I tried to go towards her, but Hess ran away towards the tents, which made me turn my attention too. That was the more important place right now, since people were still fighting. I ran behind her.

The small areas in between tents had become mini battlefields with five or six people fighting each other. Half of them, I recognized as the mercenaries from our band. The others were wearing different clothing, with armor. They had come prepared for this raid. I did not know how many there were, since they were spread all over the camp, but there was at least one enemy for each fighter, and then a bit more.

Hess jumped straight into one of the fights and sliced through two of the enemies with ease, setting the mercenaries free from their battle and allowing them to join a different one. In the distance, I saw the reason of the flames. Even now, new flames were licking the sky every now and then. The location was pretty close to the armory, so I looked at Hess once for confirmation. She wasn’t even paying attention, so I ran towards that area.

As expected, Sylvia was right there, fighting two enemies at once. Their armor must have been resistant against magic, because she was having trouble attacking them through it. One of her hands had an ethereal, white dagger, while the other one was glowing red. Seeing that both of the enemies were completely focused on her, I kept myself quiet and jumped on the back of one of them, which startled the two. Sylvia took the time to close the distance between her and the other one, and start a regular fight with their blades.

The one I was on, stumbled around for a bit before throwing me to the ground. I took out my sword and held it towards him. All of my limbs were paining, and my head most of all. There was no telling how long I would be able to fight here, but all I could do was keep going. The enemy also had a similar sword this time, so it was much fairer than before. I was used to this a little due to my practice with Wellath.

The opponent ran forward and tried to go straight for my neck. I held my sword up and blocked it. Once we met, he still tried to push it in, which caused my own sword to slowly inch closer to my neck. I pushed back, but my arms were stressed, which made it much more difficult to fight back. Even then, I twisted my legs to gain a slight advantage of angle before pushing once more, and breaking through. The enemy stumbled back, and I took the chance to push forward and land an attack of my own, on his thigh.

The sword cut right through the flesh, and the enemy groaned before stepping back and readying his sword once more. I got prepared for the second bout too, taking deep breaths and trying to relax my muscles.

This time, I tried to take initiative. It had eventually worked in the last fight, so it would hopefully be the same here. The enemy was still focused on his injured right thigh, so I went straight for the left shoulder, since that hand was covering the wound. He tried to move back, but the injury did not let him move freely. My blade reached his shoulder and sliced through it once more. It was shallow, though. I still couldn’t bring myself to make a deeper cut. My heart hesitated every single time.

Fortunately, though, the enemy was using his left hand to swing his sword, which meant that this was still a fair victory. The sword fell down and he mumbled something before picking it up with his right land. His left one still moved, but it would probably pain if he tried to swing with it. That was good. One thing that I did not understand, however, was why these people kept using their second hand, even when they knew it probably wouldn’t work.

The enemy sighed and threw his sword down right then. I was about to attack, but that made me stop. He sat down on the floor, breathing wildly, and started to sob, while looking at his cut. Had I unknowingly made some kind of permanently damaging attack?

“I-I can’t. Just st-”

He died.

I kept staring as his neck was sliced off out of nowhere. But there was nothing to be done about it, I turned my attention to the one Sylvia had been finding, and saw her right on top of his head, with her legs around his neck.

She used one of her hands to open the man’s mouth and pushed her red hand a bit inside. His body glowed from the inside for a second, and he fell face-first to the ground. She picked herself up with a sad expression and turned his body around. She looked closely at his face before giving a melancholic smile, and closing his eyes.

“I’m going to go and find Typhen. Most of these people use swords, so he can’t be in a good position.” She told me.

“I’ll come too.” I started to walk towards her.

She stopped me, “No. Go and look for Kaisel. Let him know that the two of us are safe, or else he’ll die of worry. He must be in one of the tents, healing the wounded.”

She ran away towards another one of the battles.

There was only one place I could think of to go, based on what she had told me. There was a medical tent in the camp, but I had already seen it completely broken on the way over here. That had been the largest tent to accommodate the most people. So, the one that Kaisel would switch to, to attain the same effect, would be the next best thing - Ginzari’s tent. I started off for there.

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Most of the battles on this side had been resolved. I counted eighteen dead enemy soldiers on the way, and two of our own. Most had probably made it to Ginzari’s tent on time. At least that was what I was hoping. After the tent came into sight, I started sprinting towards it.

Once there, I tried slowing down, but couldn’t completely stop, causing me to crash through the flaps and barely pausing myself once on the inside.

Before I could even gather my senses, there were two swords on my neck. I turned my eyes to look at the people, and saw that they were the mercenaries. They noticed my clothes and removed their swords. I thanked them and stood up straight to look at Kaisel.

He was sitting in front of one of the mercenaries, using his healing magic. All over the tent, people had been lined up in a sitting position along the edges. Two had been kept on the table, while some were resting under it. The bed itself held four people, all squeezed in. Close to it, pushed into a corner were three people that I recognized as Wellath’s family members. I would probably get into trouble if those people got to know my name, so I looked at them for just a second before turning back to Kaisel.

He turned around and gave me a soft smile before continuing his healing and asking, “Yes?”

“Sylvia wanted to let you know that me, her and Typhen are fine.”

“Good. It’s up to you, but please see if you can find any more injured people. If they can walk, tell them to come here. If they cannot, then I would be grateful if you carried them over. Otherwise, feel free to help out the others however you can. Go on.”

His voice was as calm and collected as ever, but even I could see his rather rushed body movements. He was looking around at the people at very small intervals, his entire body was slightly shaking and he seemed quite unsettled in general. There was probably a lot of things worrying him right now, especially the number of people in here. I hoped that telling him about Sylvia had bettered his mood. Maybe he had been fearing someone coming in here and telling him that something happened to her. Those two were close.

I nodded and left the tent.

The outside hadn’t gotten any better in that short time.

I was back in the place I had been before, with the bodies of those two men on the ground. I passed by them and tried to look for any mercenaries. There were none, though. It seemed like we hadn’t taken a lot of direct losses. Many were hurt, yes, but I had only seen two dead bodies till now. Compared to the enemies, that was more than good.

There was particularly loud shouting and movement in the area opposite of where Sylvia had gone. So, with sword ready, I ran there.

Once I got to that place, however, I quickly realized that I wasn’t needed.

Around thirty enemies were concentrated on one spot alone. All of them had made a circle around three of the mercenaries. While two of them were regular members who I did know, the third was Ginzari. And he was killing the attackers like a madman. His axe swung left and right, without stopping. One hit disarmed them, another disabled them, another killed them. He kept going in varied patterns, fighting all of them. After some time, five people decided to attack him together, which stumped him for the time being.

The other two were also fighting two people each. The other enemies, on the other hand, just seemed to be itching for a fight against Ginzari, as they had all gathered in that area. I took the chance to run forward and attack one of them in a small chink of the armor. The sword did not go deep, but pricked enough to attract attention. That too, of two of the attackers. Perfect. I jumped back and got ready to fight once more. I had no idea how I was going to handle both of them, but any weight that I could take off Ginzari’s shoulders gave him a chance to fight longer and better.

The two enemies rushed me together, and I got ready with my sword to block. Both of their swords were raised for an attack from opposite directions. I was a bit confused at what to do, but if I could make a judgement on which one was a bit faster, I could logically make a quick horizontal swing and block both of them due to their difference. That was exactly what I did.

The left one seemed a bit slower than the right, which meant that I would have to block the right first. I moved the sword in my hand to hold it in the opposite direction, putting the blade behind me. It was a move I had seen Typhen use with a dagger, but I hoped that it worked even in such a situation. The enemies came rushing in, and I swung the sword like that, backwards.

My wrist twisted a lot to keep up with the angle of the sword, but it managed to block and send the first enemy away. The second however, removed his sword from that path immediately, which startled me. Before I knew it, he was below my swing, and had landed a punch on the edge of my stomach. I groaned and moved back while holding the injured place. For a second, it seemed like I would be able to handle it, but then my vision started to dwindle.

A sword came down on the heads of both of those men, one by one, and they went flying. Hess stood right there; her face and upper body covered in blood.

“How long do you plan on being saved like that?” She gave a small sigh before running away towards the enemies that Ginzari was handling.

I stood up and looked at the other two mercenaries, who had killed the ones who they had been fighting, but were injured themselves. I went and told them about Kaisel, which they thanked me for and then went towards Ginzari’s tent.

Out of the corner, a few other mercenaries, led by Sylvia and Typhen appeared. All of them seemed fine, which made me feel a bit better. It looked like the only major group of enemies still fighting was the one in front of us. That, however, was not much of a problem.

Hess and Ginzari, together, were tearing through them as if they were dolls. Heads, arms and legs were flying everywhere. Both of them were getting splattered with more and more blood, but they kept going without a single expression on their faces. How were they even able to kill all of these people? That too, so mercilessly. They directly chopped their heads and kept moving to the next person. All of the others just watched in shock and awe.

Soon, all of them were dead. Their bodies and body parts piled around the same area. The tents nearby had been slashed to oblivion, and were painted red with all the blood. The ground below them was a pool at this point. Ginzari and Hess got out of the mess and walked to us, giving a small nod before starting to walk towards Kaisel’s tent. All of us followed behind them.

“Are you fine?” Typhen came towards me and asked.

“Yeah. Thank you. You?”

He nodded and gave me a pat on the back.

Without another word, we kept walking until we reached the tent, which still looked fine.

Most of us stayed outside, while only Ginzari, Hess and Sylvia entered. Typhen opted to stay with me and sit down on the ground.

Through the tent, we could hear their conversation.

“How many dead?” Ginzari’s voice boomed.

“Six. Seven if you include Wellath’s sister.” Kaisel replied.

“Alright.” Ginzari said.

Typhen and I got a bit closer to the tent to see what he was going to continue with.

But then, someone else spoke. A voice I didn’t recognize, so probably a normal mercenary.

“Sir,” She said, “They got Prince, the chef. The bandits just dragged him off as a hostage.”

“Bandits?” Ginzari asked, “Are you sure they were bandits?”

Hess sighed and spoke up, “It was Jillesha. The one I was following told me.”

“Jillesha?” Ginzari asked, “Hmm. That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. He must have a death wish to mess with us.”