Chương 20: Fall of the Desecrator!

With Husher's death, the sovereignty of Sufil was preserved, yet the cost had been devastating. His final sacrifice had felled the monstrosity known as Wutta, and in that moment the war on this front seemed won. We did not yet know the cruel truth: the real goal of the SIS Bandits had always been Plew itself. We tried desperately to return things to normality. Even without a leader, the remaining bandits laughed like drug-addled lunatics, undermining our hard-won peace at every turn.

They hid in the shadows of alleys, striking at civilians and wounded soldiers alike. In the day that was still ongoing, we hunted them down without mercy. My heart burned inside with inner rage also for the first time a small flickering fire that made me feel somewhat stronger ignited in my heart. I cut indiscriminately through the vermin with savage thrusts and wide, brutal slashes, my longsword reaping lives in a red haze.

Galer concentrated on the main square, protecting the dead and wounded from ambushed attacks with precise light cut, decapitating those running lunatics. Seventeen thousand bandits in total met their end by our blades and moves before the last of the vermin in Sufil were finally exterminated. Then came grim news from one of our reinforcement groups. A rider galloped into the blood-soaked square, calling for immediate support back home.

Even as he spoke, his eyes were wide with horror at the carnage around him: women weeping and broken, violated by the bandits' dark hands; children chopped and discarded like refuse; severed heads impaled on spikes; men hanged from every lamppost and balcony. Sufil was a total disaster. The once-proud city lay in near ruins, its spirit shattered into many pieces. Graf Vermono, who had already healed the wounds he had suffered against Wutta, moved among the survivors, trying to restore order.

He personally oversaw the loading of Husher's body onto a carriage alongside the fallen soldiers and citizens, determined to find them a worthy resting place. That was when the second blow fell. The messenger arrived finding Vermono, breathless and pale on telling the tale of latest news. The self-proclaimed leader of the SIS Bandits, Treksar a white man with long black hair with a strong soldier beard, was marching on Plew with a monstrous force of 34, 000 men.

The order to return had come from the highest authority: if Plew fell, or if Sufil's damage proved too severe, the entire network of Moesia would collapse but looking at Sufil demise was building up on the messengers face. The citizens were already broken, their Graf dead, and too many good souls had perished. Our forces were exhausted and far too weak to continue. Vermono listened in silence, then shook his head.

"This is not an order I will obey as a command," he declared, voice steady despite his pain looking over all of us.

"I will go myself. My family is under attack! Even on my weakest end of the stick, I walk toward death. Who among you will freely join me on this suicide mission?" The fury was still ignited in my chest, the raw emotion, burning rage over Husher's death. Without hesitation, I stepped forward. Galer, equally enraged, hesitated in his steps. In the end he chose restraint.

"Preserving Husher's resting place means more than letting my anger rule me right now," he said quietly. But I was young, brash, and ignorant to caution. All I wanted was to slice and dice every last dirty bandit from the Gothian Secret Imperial Saboteurs. Vermono, myself, and two hundred of his most loyal soldiers answered the call.

Fuixs, the Merc Leader, insisted on joining as he was the healthiest among us, but Vermono ordered him to remain in Sufil to restore peace as much he could and bring back order at minimum. Fuixs accepted begrudgingly, anger flashing in his eyes, before he turned to organize the defense and recovery. And so our small, doomed force ran toward Plew. There were no ambushes along the way, only the growing stench of smoke and the distant roar of flames.

As we drew closer, the horror unfolded before us: the once-mighty walls of Plew lay shattered and broken. Thousands of bandits swarmed the city, doing to Plew exactly what they had done to Sufil... raping, pillaging, and slaughtering without restraint. Vermono's face darkened with rage and disbelief at the continued inhumane savagery.

"You cannot call yourself a ruler if there is no one left to rule," he muttered to himself in disgust. With no safety net and no grand strategy left, we attacked the enemy's rear in a desperate, uncoordinated charge. Exhaustion, weakness, and our blinding rage left no room for tactics. We simply let loose and charged to die. In that hopeless, tearing darkness we killed only 49 bandits before our momentum collapsed. Soldiers fell around me, one after another.

I fought like a man possessed by Husher vengeance, cutting whatever I could reach, yet the sheer weight of numbers began to crush me as well. Then, like a miracle from the heavens, light broke through the chaos. From the western woods emerged the forces of Lezhane in Illyricum, one of many from the Michaelanius Order 0355. Four hundred disciplined soldiers marched in perfect formation, led by a single radiant figure riding a ghostly horse woven from pure Animo spirit.

His voice rang out like an angelic trumpet across the battlefield:"In the name of the Path-Giver Michaelanius, we will end their path forward! Your bloodied ways end now, vile desecrators!" It was Paladin Guardo the Weaponaire, a towering man of 1. 84 meters with dark roots fading into bright blonde hair. In one hand he wielded a massive lance, in the other a towering shield. He was a master of Bensions, able to control weapons with perfect precision, knowing instinctively where to strike.

His current mount was no ordinary horse but a spectral steed born of his own shadow Animo. Behind him, his Order 0355 charged from the treeline like holy zealots, their eyes burning with religious fervor. They fell upon the bandits, now branded as heretics who had deceived the grace of Michaelanius, with terrifying efficiency. Where our desperate attacks had been slow and costly, the Paladin's forces moved like a divine scythe. Guardo's aura alone dwarfed even the brutal presence of Treksar.

His lance pierced through ranks of enemies with surgical grace while his soldiers carved a path of righteous destruction. The Paladin rode straight into the heart of the city, seeking the enemy leader. He found Treksar in the middle of butchering a group of mercenaries. Without a single word, Guardo struck, his lance finding a critical weakness and piercing deep into flesh. Treksar staggered, yet instead of falling, he laughed.

Before their eyes, the wound closed in mere seconds, flesh knitting together with unnatural speed his white skin turning slowly....

"I did not expect your arrival to this banquet so quickly, Signore Guardo," Treksar mocked, licking blood from his lips.

"So you are the leader… and not yet dead."

"You should have lain down and died. It will only become more painful the more you learn how I operate on heretic scum such, as you Treksar." Treksar clapped back with "Me? Scummy? Look at you and your vile God! That is the Scam here not us!" spiting on the ground with a disgusting tone. Both warriors clashed with ferocious intensity. Meanwhile, reinforcements from smaller cities and villages arrived, swelling our numbers. Vermono, myself, and the surviving soldiers rose once more, fighting despite our exhaustion.

Sometimes strategy fails and all that remains is the raw desire to let loose. The bandits, though still numerous, began to falter under the combined assault. Yet they still cut down many of our men. I watched in horror as soldiers and even Vermono himself fell around me. I survived only because I was young and small enough to fall underneath a pile of bloody corpses, as i was cut on the back. There I lay, cursing my weakness, my burning fire once again proving insufficient.

I accepted my fate and prepared to die where I had fallen. But Guardo was far from finished. Exchanging blow after blow, he realized his Bensions alone were not enough. With a radiant cry, he activated his shadow Vestuto. Holy armor materialized around him, glowing with divine shadowy light befitting a true Paladin. His lance illuminated with powerful shadow Attribute energy.

He commanded the very shadowy ground beneath him, raising makeshift earthen paths out of shadows that allowed him to attack smoother, faster, and with devastating precision, striking, cutting, and piercing Treksar again and again. Treksar endured, losing blood by the liter yet still standing. Finally, after a deep pierce to his left leg, he activated his own pseudo-aetheric form.

His body twisted into a demonic green partial transformation with dark red outline skin: the lower half remained vaguely humanoid, but everything above the torso warped into a monstrous, green plus red outline demonic shape. He grew stronger and more resilient, yet he revealed no new techniques.

"You should have lain down and died. It will only become more painful the more you learn how I operate on desecrator scum such as you." Both warriors clashed with ferocious intensity. Guardo moved like divine judgment, his lance blazing with shadow Attribute energy as he summoned jagged shadow stone spikes from the ground and shadowy barriers to restrict Treksar's movement. Each thrust of his lance carried the weight of mountains, piercing deep into the bandit leader's demonic flesh.

Treksar countered with brutal, sweeping blows that shattered the shadowy stone and sent shockwaves through the square. For long, grueling minutes the duel raged. Guardo's spectral steed allowed him unmatched mobility, leaping over attacks and striking from unexpected angles. Treksar's raw power and monstrous regeneration let him endure wounds that would have felled lesser men, his green with red outline demonic form growing more grotesque with every passing second after receiving more and more damage.

Yet his lower body remained vaguely humanoid, but the upper half had now fully warped into a bigger hulking, nightmarish beast with elongated arms ending in razor claws and a maw filled with jagged teeth. Guardo pressed the advantage, commanding the very shadow earth to rise and trap Treksar's legs while driving his lance straight toward the bandit's heart.

"Your path ends here, desecrator!" Yet Treksar endured. He grew stronger and more resilient with every blow, his pseudo Blood attribute fueling unnatural regeneration. Guardo did not realize until too late that Treksar was not Earth-attributed at all. In the decisive moment, as Guardo prepared the killing blow, his lance glowing with concentrated shadow imbued earthen might... a grotesque bloodsucking eel-like creature burst from Treksar's split skull, undoing the transformation in a spray of gore.

The worm like eel fell writhing to the ground, its slimy body convulsing. Treksar's head lolled open as he grabbed desperately at the dying parasite, his demonic form collapsing back into something almost human with light red skin remaining.

"You don't know the beauty… the true path I saw… the future this world of our Terrarum would be under…" he rasped.

"You ruined it. The Bloodifiers will return. I curse your Order… your God… and the current Path itself!" He spat a mouthful of blood at Guardo. In that exact instant, Guardo drove his illuminated lance straight through Treksar's dirty heart.

"You should have stayed in your small world of affairs," the Paladin said coldly, "speaking of Bloodifiers to us." He seized the dead worm brain-eel as proof and, riding his ghostly steed, raced out of the ruined city toward the port to deliver the dire news to his peers. The remaining Order soldiers finished the grim work. The surviving bandits, now stripped of their leader's influence, reverted to terrified, weeping humans, fear and anxiety flooding back as they realized the full horror of their crimes.

But it was too late. The slaughter continued until not a single member of the Gothian SIS remained alive. The last screaming bandit fell silent beneath holy steel. Only then did I rise from beneath the pile of corpses, my body super weak and trembling. I staggered toward the broken city walls and gazed upon Plew, more bloodshed, more destruction, more death. The Moesia Network lay ruined beyond easy repair. Yet hope was not entirely extinguished.

The Michaelanius Order 0355 pledged both gold and manpower, vowing to stay until recovery was in sight. A small, weary cheer rose from the surviving citizens as the long work of cleaning and mourning began. Later that day, Galer arrived, searching desperately for me. His face lit with relief when he found me still alive. I asked if he had found a good resting place for Husher. He nodded and helped me onto a carriage despite my weakened state.

He took me to a beautiful hill overlooking the land, where apple trees grew in gentle rows.

"Husher ate the most apples while staying at my cabin," Galer said softly. I managed a weak, tearful jest: "Yes… he always had a mouthful of them." Together, with light tears streaming down our faces, we prayed for Husher's new path and hoped that one day, though not soon... we might join him there. In our broken minds and still-recovering bodies, we returned to the cabin. We were no longer hopeful, only shattered by everything that had happened in such a short time. A long break was desperately needed.

Regret weighed heavy on our hearts, and time was required to rethink it all.