Ducking lightly, he finished off the assassin with his sword.
“Block the way to the Princess!”
He issued commands without pause.
At the General’s order, the soldiers quickly began to form ranks.
The soldiers gathered around the tent to establish a defensive line, but the enemies had already deeply infiltrated.
Inside the tent where Aisia was staying, a few soldiers wielding swords struggled to protect her.
“Your Highness!”
“Minna, you must escape… I have no power…”
However, she had no time to escape and was frozen in fear, biting her lips.
She didn’t have the strength to wield magic as powerfully as before, nor could she hold a sword, so she tried to at least help her maid flee.
But when the soldiers forcibly grabbed her arms to evacuate her, she panicked.
“What are you doing?!”
“J-Just calm down, Your Highness…”
She shouted, but only the maid’s voice urging her to calm down could be heard, and there was no response from the panicked soldiers.
In an instant, an assassin slashed through the tent and entered.
The assassin bypassed the soldier trying to support her and aimed the blade at her neck.
As the sharp blade lunged towards Aisia, she tried to dodge despite her heightened nerves, but the space was too narrow.
She barely managed to evade the blade by stumbling to the side and collided with a tent post.
The sound of the blade cutting through the tent echoed as Minna stepped forward to protect her.
“So you’ve survived this stubbornly, Princess of Liberia.”
‘So they targeted me…?’
With a low mutter and a despicable smile, the assassin spoke.
“Today, your life ends here.”
Aisia tried to gather mana to protect Minna, trembling with fear, but her body wouldn’t obey.
Her unstable mana failed before this sudden attack, and her past injuries prevented her strength from regenerating.
Under normal circumstances, she could have easily dealt with such an assassin.
Aisia realized that in this foreign land, both Minna and herself would d*e.
‘Really… am I going to d*e here…?’
Her vision wavered.
A fleeting, negative thought crossed her mind that perhaps d*ath would be better than enduring all this humiliation, but the instinctual fear of losing her life rose again.
‘I want to live, I want to live, I don’t want to d*e, I don’t want to d*e like this…!’
At that exact moment, the assassin’s blade fell towards her.
There was no more space to dodge.
Thus, she involuntarily closed her eyes.
SWISH—
A sound slicing through the air accompanied a searing impact.
But it wasn’t the pain her body should have felt.
The blade hadn’t pierced her flesh; instead, someone had tightly grabbed her shoulder.
Aisia thought she had been struck, well-trained as she was in the sounds of battle, yet felt no pain.
‘Is this… mercy from the gods before my d*ath…?’
Just as she thought the gods had granted her a painless demise, a familiar voice reached her.
“Princess!”
He was protecting her, pressing his body close to block any attack from the blade with his own.
The blade pierced deeply into his left arm, but he gritted his teeth and endured.
Aisia’s eyes widened.
“You… why?”
It was Adolf Kareha.
He had leaped in at the last moment, using his arm and torso as a shield to protect Aisia.
“Why…”
She asked in a faltering voice, but before he could answer, he swung his sword and pierced the assassin’s heart.
“Are you unharmed?”
He pushed away the assassin’s corpse and checked on Aisia, but she shook at the sight of Adolf Kareha approaching her.
bl**d was flowing from his arm, and red was spreading through the cracks in his armor.
She felt both panic and shock but could only gaze at him.
Why was he risking his own life to protect her?
She had always suspected and doubted that he would use her as a shield, but now it was him who became the shield.
“Quick, go outside. It’s too dangerous here!”
He tried to grab her hand urgently, but Aisia instinctively resisted.
The shock hadn’t completely faded yet.
“I.. I’m fine…”
She declared in a hoarse voice and tried to stand on her own.
As she took a shivering step forward, fierce battling was still underway outside the tent.
“Absolutely, we must protect her!”
The imperial soldiers shouted and fought the assassins, but the enemy’s numbers and combat skills were formidable.
The clash of swords, the tearing of metal, and screams intermingled in the grim night air.
Meanwhile, several assassins gathering around the tent aimed for Aisia.
“Eliminate the princess!”
A sharp voice cut through the dark, and about three shadowy figures circled around the fire.
“That way! There’s nowhere to hide!”
An assassin swung his sword and approached.
At that moment, Adolf Kareha stepped forward, panting heavily.
His soldiers tried to stop him, but his sharp gaze spoke.
“Stand aside.”
An ominous energy filled his voice.
The menacing aura spread even to his own troops who trusted him, causing them to hesitate.
Although his left arm was clearly in excruciating pain, he held his sword high without a waver.
“I don’t know what you seek, but whatever it is, you won’t get it.”
He declared coldly.
The enemies mocked his near-disabled state and attacked simultaneously.
As blades flashed from all sides, Adolf Kareha dodged or blocked the attacks with the agility of an acrobat.
Despite the bl**d flowing from his injured left arm weighing it down, his quick thinking and dexterous footwork kept Adolf away from danger.
Had his relentless training driven by the desire to protect the world where his beloved ones lived not been real, such maneuvers might have been impossible.
The clash of his blade against iron sparked flames, and after brief screams, two assassins fell.
However, the last one sidestepped and lunged towards Aisia.
“I’ll end your life!”
Just as the slash was about to reach her, Adolf Kareha grabbed the assassin with his left hand with every ounce of his strength.
Though a groan escaped from his injured left arm, he held firm.
“The only place for you is the afterlife.”
He swung his sword with his other hand.
The assassin, unable to counter, was beheaded and fell backward.
With that short yet intense battle over, the area around the tent was heavy with the smell of bl**d.
Aisia was already trembling in shock.
Seeing her state, Kareha approached as if uninjured.
Louder than the clashing swords earlier, the sound of his bl**d dripping echoed over the battlefield.
“Are you injured anywhere?”
The handmaids and nurses standing beside her were frozen in terror, unable to move, while Adolf Kareha struggled while gripping his injured arm.
“I’m fine, but you…”
Aisia whispered, her eyes flickering.
Without averting his gaze, he placed his bloodied sword on the ground.
“We need a healer immediately. You must have some injuries too.”
“I’m alright…”
She said, but in fact, her whole body was sore, and she was not fully herself.
Above all, what stunned her most was the fact that the man she had endlessly doubted and hated had thrown himself between her and d*ath.
‘If it was only for political motives, he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths…’
Her thoughts were in turmoil.
The sight of his bl**d falling to the ground resonated in her heart.
Witnessing what happened before her eyes seemed to prove his actions were genuine.
Just then, a soldier’s voice shouted from outside.
“The enemies have been driven off! There doesn’t seem to be further infiltration!”
Even so, the casualties and injuries from the previous battle were considerable.
Soldiers began cleaning up, and medical staff arrived to help treat the wounded.
“Is everything clear here? Is the situation resolved?”
An officer rushed in to check inside the tent, surprised at the sight.
“General, are you alright? There’s so much bl**d…”
“Please give me first aid first.”
Adolf Kareha replied calmly.
“Check on the princess first.”
The officer carefully approached to check Aisia’s condition.
“Princess, are you injured anywhere?”
Aisia still had a shocked expression but shook her head slightly.
“There are no serious wounds… Rather, please see to Mr. Kareha…”
“It’s fortunate.”
The officer bowed in relief.
She hadn’t called him ‘Mr.’ since being taken hostage.
No one noticed this fact since they always respected Adolf Kareha for his amazing accomplishments and thus were already familiar with any slight changes in her address.
“Most of the assassins have been eliminated. Some escaped, but we’ll dispatch pursuit teams after identifying the remaining numbers.”
Upon hearing this, Adolf Kareha, who was receiving temporary treatment with bandages on his wounds, glanced into the darkness.
“I don’t know who sent them, but clearly they were exploiting our weaknesses. Especially the fact that they targeted the princess…”
He murmured, then grimaced in pain as the bl**d continued to flow from his arm.
Despite his pain, Adolf considered it unusual that the enemies were targeting the princess whose condition was not entirely stable due to the stress of the recent hostage situation.
“Grrr…”
As the bandage was applied, a sharp pain surged, and nearby soldiers hurried to bring more bandages and herbs for emergency treatment.
Aisia watched this scene in front of her.
Contrary to his reputation as a ruthless warlord, the fact that he had thrown himself at her to protect her, even when she was on the brink of d*ath just moments ago, played repeatedly in her mind.
“Is the wound… not too deep?”
She asked hesitantly in a small voice.
Without turning his gaze, he simply replied.
“The treatment will mend it. Don’t worry.”
“Worry…”
The word lingered in her, sparking a strange emotion.
That she, who would have never imagined herself worrying about this man’s wellbeing in the past, was doing so now.
As night deepened, the encampment escaped the crisis situation.
Surviving soldiers tended to the wounded and gathered their fallen comrades’ bodies.
Aisia stepped out of the tent, rendered speechless by the ghastly scene.
“Another battlefield situation unfolded.”
A soldier sighed.
Despite being known to enjoy war, the Urth Empire soldier’s reaction to such horrors was surprisingly sensitive, which puzzled Aisia.
“To think we’d see bloodshed even in a place like this.”
Aisia cautiously looked around and spotted Adolf Kareha in a corner of the camp, taking deep breaths as his injury was being bandaged.
An officer was bustling nearby, reorganizing maps, and orders were issued to reinforce defenses against potential follow-up attacks.
“Sir, your wound seems to need more treatment.”
The imperial healer, saying so, rolled up his sleeve.
Unbuttoning the shirt revealed a vivid wound as the healer’s magical light faintly enveloped it.
“I can’t believe General would receive such a severe injury.”
As the healer carefully examined the wound while unwrapping the bandage,
The Kareha he’d known until now had always been overwhelming. He had faced even more severe battlefields personally, probably due to his inherent talents, without sustaining damage.
Yet this time, he had been badly injured.
Upon seeing Kareha’s injury, everyone realized that something serious had happened.
“Regaining full use of your arm will take some time. Any strenuous actions are forbidden.”
He nodded silently with cold eyes.
