After moving along the city’s sewers, Rio and the rest waited right at the sewer’s exit because they could still hear the sounds of the undead’s cries. Maria extremely hated it but she had to put up with the smelly environment for a few days before Richard finally decided that it was now safe to go out.
“I don’t hear the undead anymore…I think it’s time we headed out.”
“Captain…Willy didn’t make it…”
“...Take his body with us. We’ll give him a proper burial outside of the city and honor our fallen comrades there as well.”
“Yes sir.”
A few of the people that had managed to escape into the sewers couldn’t survive the rough few days that they had to stay there. Those people were injured by the undead and, since no one could administer any proper treatment to them, their conditions deteriorated, and eventually, they died.
Some of them even turned into the undead but were put down immediately. To prevent any more diseases from spreading inside the already disgusting sewers, Richard asked the only magician who lived in the party to burn the corpse. It was a very harrowing and miserable few days for the survivors. Maria was also feeling the same but she had to put on a neutral and uncaring front because she was roleplaying as Rio.
Richard was the first to step out of the sewers. He scouted the area to make sure it was safe before telling everyone to quickly follow after him as they made a run for it to the hills nearby. They moved during the day because the undead was weaker during the day than they were at night. If they moved during the night, it was disadvantageous for them because the undead had many advantages during that time of day.
Once they made it to the hills and continued running for a bit longer, everyone stopped and turned around to look at their home city. It was an extremely devastating sight to behold. The walls were broken in numerous areas and the gates had been toppled down. The city was even still on fire in some places despite a few days having passed by. Black, ominous smoke was spiraling towards the air above the city and at the center where the city lord’s castle used to be, some kind of strange structure had replaced it.
“Our home…”
“Dammit.”
“...”
A few of the survivors began to weep while the others remained silent as they looked on in grief. Richard angrily clenched his teeth and balled his hands into fists. He took his sword and began digging out the ground.
“...Captain?”
“Sir?”
“...We need to bury Willy’s body before it turns into an undead. Help me out with this everyone.”
They all silently watched as Richard dug the ground with his sword and hands before moving over to help him. Once the hole was made, they made sure to decapitate Willy’s head so that he wouldn’t turn into a zombie before lowering his body inside. They began filling the hole back up and began building a mound of rocks to act as a headstone.
Richard plunged his sword into those rocks before saying, “This isn’t only for Willy…what we’ve buried are also our fallen comrades that we’ve lost in the city. Let this serve as a memorial for those of us who have survived.”
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“...”
“...”
“From this point on, I’ll be moving on my own. I won’t stop any of you if you want to regroup with the city lord and the rest.”
“Where will you go, Captain?”
“Sir, let us follow you!”
“...I won’t stop you from following me, but know this. The path that I’m taking isn’t a peaceful one. I won’t let our comrades’ sacrifice be in vain…I’ll continue to fight…fight in place of those that can’t. I will stop the dark army…or die trying…”
“...”
“What I’m doing is akin to a suicide mission. You don’t have to follow me.”
Richard stood up and began walking away. Rio naturally followed after him without saying a word, but the others remained in place for a while, contemplating what they should do. One by one, the survivors stood up. Most of them were soldiers, so they took their weapons and plunged them into the rock mound. After that, they turned around and chased after Richard and Rio. Those that weren’t combatants and were only medics, took the small dagger they had in hand and did the same as the others before they too began chasing after the Captain.
Only the mage stayed behind, but it wasn’t that he didn’t want to go or anything. Once everyone placed something on the stone mound, the mage cast a fire spell and melted each of the weapons together to form an odd-shaped headstone. He then began engraving something on it before turning around and leaving as he too went to chase after his captain.
One of Maria’s recording devices was still in the area and on the headstone, it read, ‘Here lie our fallen comrades, Kurt, Jefferson, Willy, Blake… We who have survived will not forget your noble sacrifices and we pledge to prevent this horrible tragedy from happening again. Survivors of the Dark Night.’
Maria was walking alongside Richard, but when she saw the memorial headstone, she was somewhat touched deep down in her heart.
‘...This is just a game…this is just a game,' she inwardly reminded herself.
*******
Richard and his team didn’t move to regroup with the city lord and the other refugees, who successfully made it to a city nearby and took refuge there. Most of the people there had no family members or acquaintances among the refugees, so they didn’t feel the need to go back to them.
For those that did have people, they resolved to leave them behind for now. They had been royally screwed over during this time’s defense because their retreat path was blocked, so if they returned to serve under the city lord, something like this might happen again.
They didn’t want to blame the city lord but they held some resentment towards him who had ‘abandoned’ them though he was forced to. If the city lord had stayed to help, the undead would’ve caught up with him and he’d be uselessly sacrificing himself to give Richard’s team false hope.
They understood this, but the people in Richard’s team still felt resentful. It couldn’t be helped because this was just how humans were. So, instead of regrouping with the city lord in the nearby city, Richard and his team bypassed the city and continued on towards the capital.
Richard’s goal was to set up a mercenary group there with his team and acquire some equipment. He had a few friends from the capital that could help him and, as a mercenary group, he could act more freely, but before that, he needed to visit a friend that could forge some false identities for him and his team.
It wasn’t a good idea to go to the capital as they were now because they were still registered as citizens of Dor’ian city and, what more, they were soldiers. If they went about willy-nilly like that, some people might misinterpret their actions as desertion, but that was far from what Richard had intended.
He was making a mercenary group just so he could move around more freely. With the freedom, he would take on any mercenary request that had anything to do with the dark army, while in his spare time, he’d train and equip himself along with his team to better fight against the forces of the dark army.
Holy weapons, equipment, and enchantments were necessary to fight against the various dark creatures of the dark army, but he wouldn’t have easy access to those if he was still part of a noble’s army, as they wouldn’t be able to procure those kinds of items so easily, especially en masse.
Acting as an independent group would work to his benefit. Also, he wouldn’t have to take orders from anyone since he was a mercenary. The last time he stuck to taking orders, his entire team had been screwed over and most of his people had died. He wasn’t going to let such a thing happen again. Instead of the city lord, Richard directed all of his hate and resentment towards William, the commander.
Richard saw the schadenfreude in the bastard's eyes when he left him and his unit to die, so Richard naturally had the inclination to believe that William had planned for all of it.
‘Next time I see him on the battlefield…I’ll kill him by ‘accident’...’
After acquiring false identities for all of his team members, Richard and the rest immediately made their way to the capital. Using the connections he obtained during his time in the capital’s knight academy, he was able to acquire a full set of equipment for his team and establish themselves as a mercenary group.
Richard decided to call the group Hovet Lys, which meant something along the lines of ‘light of hope’ in the planet’s ancient tongue. This mercenary group would soon rise to prominence in a very short time as the group that brought down the hammer of judgment onto the dark army and brought hope to the people who were attacked by the dark army’s forces.
The dark army’s activities began to spike in the following month after the Battle of Dor’ian City, which gave the Hovet Lys mercenary group time to develop, so when the dark army started wreaking havoc across all of the nations on the continent, the mercenary group was always there to fight back.