Chương 51: Chapter 50: The Survival and the Fallen

The knights made the battle look easy, and Ren hated how little that mattered to him now. Twenty armored men entered the village from the far side of the road, split into smaller groups without needing to shout instructions across the chaos, and started killing goblins with the trained efficiency of people who had done this many times before. One knight caught a large goblin's club on his shield, turned the impact aside, and drove a sword through its throat before the creature recovered.

Another passed him and cut down a smaller goblin trying to slip around the fight. Two more advanced together toward a cluster near the broken barricade and forced them backward until the goblins had nowhere useful to move. The contrast with the villagers was immediate. The defenders had spent the battle scrambling to decide who should cover which opening, who needed help, and when they could afford to move. The knights already seemed to know. Ren watched through the upper window while tears cooled against his face.

Individually, most of them looked almost comparable to Hadrik. Almost. Ren had watched Hadrik hold five large goblins at once while the less experienced defenders recovered around him, and something about his timing and economy still placed him above any single knight Ren could see. He suspected Hadrik could defeat one of them alone, perhaps even most of them. There were twenty knights, though. Together they were terrifying.

They covered one another with nary a thought, and closed openings before the goblins could exploit them. When the goblin leader turned away from the villagers and charged the newcomers, four knights met it together. The fight lasted longer than the others, but only slightly. The hateful monster still managed to wound one of the knights in that short exchange. Normally, Ren would have been delighted by all of this.

He would have watched every movement, tried to understand their skills, compared their equipment, and started imagining some absurd future where he could fight like them while still being young enough to require help getting dressed. These were the goblins that had killed him, terrorized his family, and destroyed the village in earlier loops. Now they were finally being cut down, and the village was being saved. And Ren couldn't care less. Instead of triumph, he felt emptiness.

Elna held him tightly against her, but his hands still felt cold where they pressed into her dress. His jaw trembled whenever he breathed, and the shaking refused to stop even while the rest of him felt strangely numb. Bren was still somewhere below. Ren had lost sight of him now, but that hardly mattered. He could still see the moment clearly enough in his head: the goblin leader rushing forward, Bren raising his spear, and the strike that followed. Ren pressed his forehead into Elna. Should he have stopped him?

He had known Bren intended to join the defense and had watched him train for days. Ren had even been proud of how quickly his father improved. What if that had been the mistake? He could have told Bren to stay in the church with them. He could have pushed harder, insisted that someone else take his place, or tried to convince him that protecting his family meant surviving with them. Would Bren have listened? Ren doubted it. His father had known what would happen if the defenses failed.

Elna, Tessa, and Ren were all inside the village, depending on those lines to hold. Bren had spent days bruising himself with a spear because sitting safely behind stone while other people fought for his family was never going to feel acceptable to him. Still, Ren felt as though he should have tried harder. Maybe he should have kept pushing Bren to stay out of the fighting. Maybe he should never have told them the truth at all. That possibility hurt in a different way.

By telling them, Ren had forced his family to carry the fear he had already been living with. Bren had known for days that he might die. Elna had stared through windows and made small mistakes in fear of monsters to come, knowing her husband and children had died in earlier loops. Even Tessa had been pulled into warnings and preparations until she understood far more about the danger than any six-year-old should have needed to. Had telling them actually helped?

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. The answer came almost immediately, and Ren hated how certain it was. Yes. Without the truth, the village would never have prepared this much. Bren would not have trained, Hadrik might not have received the warning and concrete enough proof early enough, and Little Yara would not have prepared the extra medicine and charms. The barricades would have been worse, the defenders less organized, and far more people would have died.

Possibly all of them. Ren squeezed his eyes shut. Knowing that did nothing to change what had happened to Bren. For a moment, his mind tried another direction. He could have stayed quiet, trained harder, and eventually become strong enough to defend everyone himself. That idea collapsed almost as soon as it formed because Ren had already tried exactly that. He had spent entire loops pushing his infant body as hard as it would go.

The magnificent result was a five-month-old who could walk competently, speak far better than he should, throw small objects, hide badly, and manipulate enough mana to impress one cute teenage witch. For a baby, his progress was absurd. But he was still just five months old. And the progress simply wasn't fast enough. Everything that had changed the battle on a meaningful scale had required people who could actually act on the information Ren gave them.

Hadrik organized the village, Tovin helped prepare the defenders, Little Yara made the charms, Bren joined the line, and the messenger rode for the knights. Ren had helped make those things happen, but he could not have done them himself. Not yet. Not with enough loops of training under his belt. Loops ending with his family dying, over and over again. That was simply unacceptable. Even now, he could barely reach a windowsill unless someone carried him to it. The reasoning made sense. His grief ignored it.

Another knight killed a fleeing goblin below, and Ren looked away. Then a far uglier thought slipped into the space Bren's death had left behind. The village was safe now. The knights had arrived, and Ren had learned more about the invasion than he had known before. He knew roughly how many goblins came, how they adapted, where the defenses failed, how useful Little Yara's charms were, and when the knights finally reached the village. This loop had given him information he could use next time. Ren's body went cold.

Should he just end it now? The idea made something inside him recoil. He was grieving hard enough that every thought seemed to bend toward getting Bren back as quickly as possible, and dying would turn the loop into exactly that kind of escape. Ren did not even know whether he could deliberately kill himself if he chose to try. … Maybe with Invocation. But he promised his Master not to even try. More importantly, Elna and Tessa were still here. The village had survived.

Bren was dead, and Ren wanted him back badly enough that starting over already felt tempting, but that did not mean he should make the decision while the pain was still this fresh. He could not trust a choice made only because it promised to erase what he was feeling. Ren tried to breathe. The first breath broke halfway through when his chest hitched and his throat tightened. He swallowed, waited until he could force some control back into his breathing, and tried again. Focus helped.

It did not erase anything, but it gave Ren enough control to hold one thought at a time instead of letting regret, guilt, anger, and desperation crash together. He concentrated on breathing, on Elna holding him, on Tessa's hand beside his, and on the horn sounding outside. Whenever the image of Bren falling tried to force its way back in, Ren pushed his attention toward something he could actually feel. His body kept shaking anyway. That was fine. Ren did not need perfect calm.

He only needed enough control to keep himself from making a decision while part of him still wanted to tear time apart with his bare hands. [Skill Level Increased: Composure Lv. 7 -> Lv. 8] … Stupid System. Ren almost laughed at the message, though he doubted the sound would have come out properly. He lowered his face.

"Sorry." Elna looked down at him. Her cheeks were wet, and Ren had never seen his mother cry like this. Every breath seemed to pull another expression of pain across her face.

"Sorry," Ren said again. Beside them, Tessa made a small, broken sound. Elna tightened her hold.

"No." Ren shook his head.

"I told. Papa fight. Sorry."

"No, Ren." Her voice cracked, and somehow that hurt worse than being shouted at.

"I knew. Should–""No." This time Elna cut him off harder and pulled him against her chest until his cheek pressed into her dress.

"You did not do this." Ren had no answer. Tessa was crying openly now.

"Mama." Elna reached for her with the arm not holding Ren and pulled her close as well. For several minutes, the three of them stayed tangled together. Tessa kept saying Papa between sobs, while Elna tried to soothe her even though she was crying too hard to make the words sound steady. Ren apologized again until Elna finally told him to stop. He still felt responsible. Watching them comfort him only made the feeling twist harder.

They had lost Bren, and somehow they were spending what little strength they had left trying to keep Ren from falling apart too. The fighting outside gradually changed. The clash of weapons became less constant, and the shouting moved farther from the church. The knights pushed the goblins back, killed the ones that kept fighting, and pursued the rest until Ren could no longer hear the larger brutes roaring between the houses. There was no single moment when the invasion clearly ended. The chaos simply thinned.

And then it was too thin to notice. People began speaking normally again. Sister Calia's prayers softened into quiet conversation and comfort. He noticed how the smoke that kept drifting inside during the entire battle thinned too. Time kept moving, waiting for nobody. Not even for him.