Chapter 142: 077. Hashashins and King Rahamma -1 (Part Two)
The dead soldier’s colleagues flinched in shock and hurriedly turned their heads in the direction of that ray of light. Unfortunately for them, by the time they looked, their heads also blew apart into gory bits and pieces.
“It’s magic!”
“Hide yourselves!”
As if to prove that they were better trained than most other combatants, the surviving Aslan soldiers quickly took cover among the buildings.
The child flinched in fear, but that ray of light didn’t come for him or his grandfather. No, it only came for those Aslan soldiers peeking their heads out to take a look, before cleanly piercing right through them.
‘Someone is protecting us!’
The child realised that an unknown magician was protecting him and his grandfather. Having understood that fact, he turned his head and watched on as more rays of light flickered from the distant fortress to instantly kill off the Aslan soldiers.
The child grasped the old man and did his best to drag the latter away.
‘We, we’ve gotta reach the fortress!’
“Grandpa, grandpa!”
The old man’s current condition was so grave that it was hard to tell whether he was still alive or not. He had lost far too much blood by now.
But just as the last gasps of pain leaked out of the old man’s mouth, a ray of light flew in and penetrated him.
The child jumped up in shock before clamping his mouth shut.
That magician wasn’t protecting them!?
But not too long after that, the child couldn’t hide an even bigger shock.
The wound on the old man was healing at a visible rate. As a matter of fact, he was so perfectly healed that not even a scar remained now.
“G-grandpa?”
“My, my body…? N-no, hang on. Now isn’t the time for this!”
The old man touched his back in stupefaction, but then he quickly lifted the child up and began running away.
“Grandpa! The fortress! We must head to the fortress!”
At the child’s shout, the old man urgently turned his head to look.
On the distant wall of the fortress, he could just about make out the shape of a person in white armour busy firing magic to shoot down the Aslan soldiers.
“Y-yes, let’s do that!”
It wasn’t just the old man and his grandchild, however.
All the citizens and slaves of Evelyum were now headed towards the fortress up on the hill.
Only that place shone with the light of salvation for them.
**
(TL: In 1st person POV)
I continued to pull the trigger.
By relying on the [Snipe] skill, I kept hitting the heads of the distant Aslan soldiers.
While standing on the fortress wall, I breathed deeply into the musket.
“Ohh, wow. Hey, son? That looks like a fun little toy, doesn’t it? Is that a new type of weapon developed by the Theocratic Empire?”
White Olfolse tried to chat to me in a friendly tone of voice.
This dude had the gall to abandon his son for the past eleven years, so what gave him the right to act so friendly towards me like this?
More importantly, though, I might be his biological son, but that was only applicable to the shell I was in. Honestly, we were more like complete strangers as far as I was concerned.
I formed a wry grin and addressed him. “Please go and aid the citizens arriving here.”
“That’s a good mindset to have. I bet you’ll become a good Holy Emperor someday.”
“I’m not planning to become one, and something like that will be taken good care of by my older brothers, anyway.”
I resumed pulling the musket’s trigger.
White remained there and stared at me for some time, then while scratching the back of his head, headed down to the foot of the fortress wall.
Tina and Hans were currently evacuating the citizens into the fortress at the moment. If we utilised the interior of the fortress including its basement and the prison, then it should be possible to protect tens of thousands of people quite easily.
“Man, I’m constantly stumbling into all sorts of weird sh*t, aren’t I?”
Yup, and it’s the turn of a freaking war this time.
Not only that, I was stuck inside the enemy nation, protecting the citizens of said enemy nation by massacring the enemy nation’s soldiers.
What an absurd situation this was.
“Lord Angel! Lord Angel!”
Tina was calling out to me.
I looked at the ground below the fortress wall. A carriage was parked there, and Ruppel, Tina, and Hans were waiting for me next to it.
“We are ready to escape now!”
I quickly climbed down from the wall and summoned the skeleton horse before attaching it to the waiting carriage.
Before leaving, though, I turned my head and stared at White Olfolse. He chose to remain in the fortress, because he wanted to act as the lone bait to attract the attention of King Rahamma and his underlings.
“Well, their ultimate goal is me, anyway. If I fight outside the fortress, that should keep the Aslan citizens safe, at least.”
“What are you planning to do once King Rahamma and the feudal lords show up?”
White shrugged his shoulders at my question. “Just like what I told you earlier, I’ll just fight for a bit before getting out of dodge. Even for someone like me, King Rahamma is a challenging opponent to handle, you see. I mean, that guy is strong enough to fight my father and still survive, so that should be good enough proof of his strength.”
He then smiled bitterly and placed his hand on my head.
“It’s been too long, so I wanted to talk to you for a bit longer, but… it seems that fate has interfered with us again.”
His bitter smile gradually changed to a caring, gentle one.
I quietly watched him, before climbing into the carriage. “I will pray for your safety, father.”
“Thanks. You also take care of yourself, too. Let us see each other again back home.”
The skeleton horse reared up and snorted angrily before powerfully dashing forward, causing the carriage to break into a sprint as well.
I continued to stare at White standing in front of the fortress gate, rapidly getting smaller in my view, before finally turning my head away.
From a certain moment on, his figure was no longer visible, and the carriage entered one of the city’s alleyways below the hill.
The skeleton horse crushed the obstructions blocking our path and viciously rushed forward.
“What the hell?!”
“A skeleton horse?”
“Halt! Necromancer, which division do you belong to-!”
The Aslan soldiers pointed their spears at us, but the skeleton horse simply trampled on them and continued to sprint forward.
Meanwhile, a bitter grin didn’t want to leave my face.
It seemed that he was still a father at heart, indeed – especially when judging from how he chose to stay behind by himself in order to protect his two sons.
The skeleton horse exited from the alleyway and began running on the wide city street next. It was also around this time that I noticed a bunch of shadows agilely darting across the nearby rooftops.
Some ‘things’ were pursuing us. I flinched and hurriedly raised my head. There they were, a group of unidentifiable people wearing masks to obscure their faces.
While freely running on the rooftops, they tirelessly chased after us.
“Holy cow! Just who are those people?!”
Were they seriously managing to keep up with a skeleton horse by using nothing but their own legs? How could that even be possible?!
While I made an astonished face, Tina raised her head and stared at our pursuers. Her expression froze up as she muttered out their identity. “The hashashins!”
They were the offspring of King Rahamma. A special forces ‘squad’ possessing varieties of skill sets that were mostly geared towards assassination – that’s who they were.
Their eyeballs beyond the masks’ holes were darting around to stare at me and Ruppel. Then, one of them focused demonic energy in his hand before shooting it in the air like some kind of a signal flare.
Was that the reason?
More and more hashashins that were previously scattered around the city began gathering here with every passing second. A group of demi-humans wearing black leather clothing and steel masks fiercely chased us down.
And when about one hundred of them gathered around…
They unleashed their wave of attacks on us. They fired crossbows and the bolts penetrated through the carriage.
“Uwaaahk?!”
Ruppel and Hans hurriedly shielded their heads. Tina quickly cast a protective barrier around the carriage.
I raised my musket and went on the counteroffensive. The holy bullets were about to hit the hashashins, but they nimbly dodged out of the way.
“The front! The front!!!”
I shifted my gaze to the front.
The signal from the hashashins seemed to have reached the Aslan soldiers as well. An encampment of soldiers was waiting ahead of us on the road. Meanwhile, the narrow side streets were also blocked off by more soldiers.
“Allen, what will we do now?!”
Ruppel cried out, but I simply snapped my fingers as my reply.
What do you mean, ‘what’?
“Obviously, we break through!”
The ground around the sprinting carriage split open and bones leapt out. They combined to create summoned skeleton horses as well as skeleton riders. Light enveloped them and the dwarf-made items stored in my item window were summoned into their hands – items that included the likes of armour for the horses and the riders, helms, and cavalry lances.
-Ku-oooooh!
The heavily-armoured skeleton cavalry rushed forward. The Aslan soldiers freaked out and hurriedly raised their shields and spears.
Unfortunately, that was all useless. The soldiers were frightened by the front hooves of the skeleton horses kicking down, and stumbled back.
Their formation broke down in an instant.
Their spears were simply too inadequate to penetrate the armour covering the skeleton horses and their riders. Actually, the dwarf-made armour was more than sturdy enough to shatter the incoming enemy spear blades instead, while the bony hooves easily trampled and crushed the shields of the Aslan soldiers.
The undead mounted troops trampled on them and continued on with their advance.
< 077. Hashashins and King Rahamma -1 (Part One and Two) > Fin.
