Chapter 221: Serena Is Back
The others just didn’t say anything.
They just sat there in silence for two to three minutes.
And that was when Sigrid rushed back toward them. She ran past them, heading straight towards the dark forest.
The soldiers didn’t even react to her. Some of them looked up at her, but they did nothing else.
After another two minutes, Sigrid came running back.
And this time she stopped.
The soldiers looked up and saw that she was carrying a man on her shoulder. Wang Lei was unconscious and they could see that Sigrid looked pretty worn out and tired already.
She looked down at the group.
"Your lord isn’t dead." Sigrid told them. "And we are getting help from some of the best mages in our empire. So you don’t have to worry. Head back and rest up."
She tried to force a tired smile, but it looked more like a grimace.
"Besides," she added. "When Adrian wakes up, he is going to be pissed if you guys are still out here sulking."
But her voice cracked. The words just fell completely flat with her own doubt. And the soldiers could easily sense it in her voice.
But they still grabbed onto the tiny shred of hope in her words.
All of them slowly got up, picked up their gear, and started walking back to the Marquis’s territory.
Just a few minutes after the war started against the monsters at the wall, the teleportation gate in Draven’s estate lit up.
Serena appeared inside the gate along with Celeste and Caelum.
She walked out of the gate, smiling and looking pretty happy. While Caelum and Celeste looked around casually and followed behind Serena silently.
But right at that time, they noticed that a lot of soldiers were running around in a panic.
One of the soldiers running nearby noticed the three of them standing there in nice clothes.
"Please get out of the estate!" the soldier yelled at them. "Follow the civilians out of the town! Please evacuate the whole town! We do not know if we can win, but the citizens must be saved. If you are a non-combatant, please leave!"
Serena frowned. She thought to herself about her own standing in a war and if she’d even be useful. Then she thought about what Caelum and Celeste could do.
She looked back at them.
"I can’t really fight." Serena said nervously.
"Me neither." Celeste replied with a sigh.
Caelum hesitated for a while before he shook his head and sighed.
"I can use supportive magic." Caelum said. "But it is not really useful against a massive horde of monsters. I’ll just join you guys."
So the three of them walked out of the Marquis’s estate. They joined up with the massive crowd of civilians who were currently being escorted outside the gates.
The whole group walked for a while.
They kept going until they were around one kilometer away from the town. There were quite a few soldiers who were stationed with them as guards.
The soldiers just got the civilians to camp there. They told everyone to just sit down where they were, and wait for further orders.
Serena walked over to the nearest soldier.
"Why are we waiting here?" Serena asked him.
"We will get a signal if the army manages to defend the wall." the soldier explained quickly. "And we will also get a signal if the monsters have breached the wall and we couldn’t kill them all."
He pointed back toward the town.
"If we see the first signal, we go back." the soldier said. "And if we get the second signal, we leave this place for good. So, until then, we wait here for the signal."
Serena nodded slowly.
She walked back to Celeste and Caelum, and the three of them just sat down together on the grass.
And they waited.
Serena looked up at the sky, and thought back to what she did during her time at her house and in the capital.
She smiled as she recalled the way Duke Silas cried happy tears while he hugged her tightly. She also remembered how she spent time with her siblings for almost the whole entirety of the trip.
And then there was also the job that Adrian had given her. She thought about how she went out shopping in the capital with Caelum and Celeste. She thought about them hitting the auctions, throwing gold around and just having fun.
Then she let out a long, heavy sigh.
"We really picked a terrible time to come back." Serena mumbled, pulling her knees to her chest. "It would have been great if we didn’t walk straight into a war."
Celeste and Caelum just sat there, staring at her in silence for a while.
"Well, don’t worry." Celeste said calmly. "Lord Adrian will take care of everything. You know that he can solve almost every problem."
Serena nodded because she knew exactly how capable Adrian was.
He basically took an impossible case, which was basically herself, and helped her fix it. He increased her mana veins rank, and he was the reason the rank of mana circle got boosted up to the second circle.
She knew exactly what kind of miracles that man could pull off.
"Yeah." Serena let out a chuckle. "He’ll figure it out. He always does."
The three of them just sat there and talked for a while to pass the time.
Until they finally saw it.
A bright yellowish orange light suddenly shot high up into the sky from the direction of the town. It sparkled brightly as it kept going up. And then it hung there for a while before it dissipated.
The soldiers standing nearby turned to the civilians and everyone with them.
"The town has been defended!" the soldier yelled happily. "We’re heading home!"
The entire camp instantly erupted into cheers. People grabbed their bags and sprinted back toward the gates.
Once they finally got back into the town, Serena ditched the civilian crowd. She made a beeline straight for Draven’s main estate to find out what happened.
But the second she stepped onto the courtyard, she stopped moving.
Draven was sprinting frantically towards his mansion. And he had a bloodied, mangled body in his arms.
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