Chapter 278 Volume IV - Chapter 125: The Last Battle
The day before the big battle, I went back to my room to sleep, at least for an hour or two.
Inside the unlit room... this time there was really no one.
'They are dead.'
Gurdas' death came to my mind for a moment. My mind was filled with thoughts. And then... I felt a force on my shoulder as if someone had put a hand on it.
"They're dead too, Aiden."
It was a familiar voice, a voice I'd heard whispering in my mind almost every time I'd been in battle, a voice I'd gotten... used to.
"Shut up."
I ignored my thoughts, ignored him, and let myself fall directly onto the bunk bed in the quadruple room.
I remembered the days when this place was full. I used to play chess with Gurdas and lose every now and then, Rulhan and I sometimes fought but it didn't take long for things to get better between us, and Durvan usually just watched what we were doing with simple facial expressions and reactions and didn't interfere too much. As he himself said, he was not very sociable.
And now... Gurdas is gone. Durvan and Rulhan were on a night mission, at least as far as I know.
This room of four, where someone was talking every minute, was now silent... with the presence of only one person.
I closed my eyes and gave myself over to sleep.
Tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow... this war would enter its final phase. Caleuche would be destroyed, and within the next few days, the South Holar would collapse completely.
*******
Durvan and Rulhan didn't come back all night.
But I didn't think about it, I didn't want to think about it. Instead, as soon as I had slept for two hours, I jumped up and jumped into one of the aircraft that had been sent to the area where Caleuche was.
It was explained what would happen in the war.
Caleuche was now attacking one of the most important cities in the border regions of the North. Not far from this city was the main battlefield.
We were going to stall the troops as long as we could. We would try to prevent the city from being taken until Colonel Vulnar, with the modified Durandal, was ready on the battlefield.
It was a simple plan, maybe not even a plan... But if we succeeded, the South would no longer have a mobile base, a ghost ship, a slaughter machine that could dominate entire battlefields.
With the Caleuche alone accounting for almost half of their military strength, losing it would be tantamount to losing the war.
So, although the battlefield I am about to step onto was not the last battle, technically it was.
*******
Later that night, when the sun had not yet risen, we arrived at our destination, Buraun City.
The city had been evacuated long ago. The streets were empty, no lights were on in any of the buildings even though it was night. It was literally a ghost town.
Aside from the city, the battlefield could be seen from the area where we landed from the aircraft. It was so huge that everywhere as far as the eye could see was a black blur. Soldiers, robots... literally fighting all the way to the horizon and even beyond.
Although we were quite far away from the battlefield, even the ground trembled from time to time, and distant echoing sounds gently caressed our ears.
Caleuche was also visible. Even farther away from the battlefield, in the sky, almost at the level of the clouds, it was a gigantic shadow. It was constantly glowing, raining bullets and rockets down on the battlefield. Not only that, it was casting spells with the help of runes, but it was also constantly dropping new soldiers and robots onto the battlefield from within.
I swallowed, even shivering for no reason.
Was I excited? Maybe...
Was I scared? The chances of us losing were not zero...
It could have been something else, of course.
I gripped the sword at my waist tightly, not unsheathing it, but just holding it gave me a slight sense of security, so I contented myself with that.
Meanwhile, Dorhud looked at us lined up in front of the aircraft. He narrowed his eyes and shouted loudly.
"We'll be landin' right onto the battlefield in a moment! Ye all know the drill, fight and give those scoundrels a good wallop! We'll stretch this battle for as long as we can, and then..."
We will prolong this battle as long as we can, and then..."
"We're fixin' to shred that colossal ship to bits, and win!"
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of soldiers lined up side by side shouted at the same time.
"Understood!"
Dorhud normally smiled when he saw his soldiers so alive, but this time his expression did not move an inch. On the contrary, he turned around and looked at the battlefield.
"Let's go!"
The whole city shook again, with every soldier in it.
"Roger that!"
With that last shout, our troops quickly began to descend from the city toward the battlefield.
*******
It was no different from a normal battlefield, actually...
The scale was much bigger, much more brutal, much more casualties, of course, but... I was doing nothing different from what I was doing before.
My main task was to kill every enemy I saw. If I saw someone too strong for me to deal with, I would report them to AVRES and have someone sent to fight them, and the dwarves at my level... I fought almost all of them.
How many minutes had passed?
I hadn't paid attention, I hadn't cared, but now... for some reason I wondered.
Another dwarf died in my hands, another dwarf lost his head to the sharp winds, another dwarf burned to death in the blue flames...
Everything became abstract for a moment. My feelings, my thoughts, my actions...
I was on another side of the battlefield when I realized what had happened. I had lost consciousness for a moment, I had fought for a few minutes purely instinctively, and the moment I realized this, I transferred mana to the Absolute Mind.
I'm not even supposed to blink...
The moment I thought that, I heard a voice echoing in my mind.
'It's coming from behind you, too fast!'
I threw myself forward, though it wasn't hard to realize that I was hurt by the sudden pain I felt in my leg.
Blue flames flashed over the wound in my leg. I ignored the pain and lunged at the dwarf attacking me.
When I realized that the mana was concentrated not far from me, I formed several layers of barrier, and then a bolt of lightning struck me.
It didn't take me long to kill the dwarf attacking from behind. The dwarf who had struck me with lightning tried to escape, but he was killed by blue flames.
For a moment the whole battlefield seemed to tremble. The huge blur in the sky, Caleuche, glowed for a few seconds.
Then... a huge beam, almost the size of a lake, shot out of it and landed on the battlefield.
It didn't even care about its own soldiers, it was just determined to wipe the enemy's most concentrated area off the map, and... it did.
The gigantic beam from the ghost ship had indeed wiped the targeted spot off the map, along with everything in it... And so, the last battle continued.
*******
I kept fighting for hours, I kept doing what I had to do without blinking an eye.
My enemies didn't blink either. At least... that's what I thought.
I was wrong.
There were those who blinked. Both among the soldiers of the South and among the soldiers of the North.
There were those who hated this war, those who were forced to be here.
I realized that every single one of the soldiers I killed looked at me with absolute hatred.
Yet... some of their hatred was not against me. It was directly against this war. And yet, as the one who ended their lives, their last gaze was inevitably on me.
It was a burden, not easy, knowing that most of them were innocent. But I had gotten used to it a long time ago. So I went on without a care, I couldn't and wouldn't hesitate.
I paused for a moment, and my gaze involuntarily drifted back to the black blur in the sky.
It really was a ship built for war... So many things were happening on it at the same time, so many things were leaving it and landing on the battlefield that it almost seemed unreal. It was like the embodiment of fear for those in front of it.
At this moment a voice echoed in my head, a familiar voice.
"Aiden, there's a high-level armored enemy on Captain Dorhud's side. Can ye handle him with your rifle?"
Hearing Durvan's voice for the first time in a few days, I smiled, even involuntarily.
I didn't wait for him to continue, and he didn't. I turned quickly to the east, ignoring the huge ship above me.
Then I saw an armored dwarf somewhere in the distance. I could see him smiling, almost as if he was... enjoying crushing my allies as he fought. He was giving Dorhud, whom I saw fighting for the first time in a long time, a hard time.
My sword disappeared into the atmosphere, and in its place, the rifle entrusted to me appeared in my hand. I drew several layers of barriers around me, just in case, then took aim at a spot where I could be safe, at least for a few seconds.
I waited and waited, with the bullet growing in the center of the rifle, and then... I pulled the trigger.
The bullet, which looked like a blue beam, entered the dwarf's chest before he realized what was happening. The dwarf's face, with a huge hole under his neck, was that of someone who still hadn't grasped what had happened. He fell to the ground, dying instantly.
Dorhud looked up at me, shook his head slightly up and down, and focused again in front of him.
The battle... continued.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺