Chapter 119: My Sister Will Win
Holy light poured down from the sky above, illuminating the battlefield sprawling across the wilderness.
Outside Alectine City, the large-scale battle was nearing its end. In the area where heretics had once gathered, bl**d and smoke raged wild. Human corpses, horned horse bodies—bl**d trickled down the slopes and flowed into the canals. At the edge of the valley behind, a handful of circling heretics still resisted or were hopelessly surrounded, smashed to bits by divine miracles, and slaughtered. Finally, some began to kneel and surrender.
On the grasslands swept by the night wind, cheers erupted now and then. Members of the Faith Organization, clerics and nuns, rushed to the most intense battlefields to heal the heavily wounded knights with miracles. Meanwhile, horned horses galloped across the plains, chasing after the fleeing heretics. When they stopped, the golden-armored knights took off their bl**d-soaked helmets and joined the jubilation.
The stench of corpses and remnants of war lingered, creating a brutally tragic scene. Downhill, Captain Williams’s body was finally lowered from the flagpole, wrapped in a great cross banner by the knights passing by, who bowed their heads in respect.
Not far beyond the city walls, the footprints were a chaotic mess. Over a thousand heretics were retreating through breaches and gates, while hundreds of elite cavalry members rushed in from various directions to annihilate them. Pope Angel, mounted on a horned horse on a hill, surveyed the situation, listening to the cheers from the wilderness. He tapped his fingers lightly on the saddle, tilting his head, deep in thought.
“Call back the elite cavalry… Stay alert. Let Isaac and Silvya lead the infantry and elite cavalry to breach the walls… We haven’t won yet; we can’t let our guard down…”
Outside the city, the heretics were collapsing.
But within the city, conservatively speaking, at least five thousand members of the Gate of Truth were still inside. Soon, when they regrouped and regained their composure, they would surely defend the walls to the last. At that point, defeating the heretics would require even more sacrifices. Angel didn’t know much about warfare, which is why he didn’t meddle in the details. When orders were issued, people would naturally step up to execute them.
Before long, the messenger knights began racing across the fields. Hundreds of elite cavalry were sent back from the city walls, and the knights gradually regrouped outside the town, led by Isaac, preparing to launch a new charge. The Faith Organization stood in the rear, casting sin barriers and divine miracles. Shadows gathered on the city walls, as the foul winds blew through the wilderness. I stood before the formation, beside Isaac. The bl**d on the bald man hadn’t dried, and he turned to me, saying, “That fog user escaped into the city?”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“Little guy, you saw it yourself?”
“Not really.”
Hearing this, Isaac scratched his head, his thick eyebrows furrowing, “Then…”
“My bird saw it.”
I pointed to the sky. In response, the goat cheese, hidden in the night sky, flapped its wings and let out a hoarse ‘caw’ as it circled in Isaac’s line of sight before landing on my shoulder.
“Pepé! City, city—”
The goat cheese turned its head, its scarlet eyes staring at me, then looked at Isaac, opening its beak to squawk loudly.
I patted its head, “Lead me to him.”
“Caw—”
The goat cheese fluffed its feathers and flew back up.
“…Is a raven really that smart?”
A voice beside me, slightly incredulous, interrupted my thoughts.
“……”
Actually, I shared the same question.
Before I could respond, Isaac turned to the knights behind us, instructing, “Inform the Faith Organization; the fog may appear again. Have them prepare for it.”
“Understood.”
The knight turned and departed, and Isaac faced me again: “Well then, little guy, I’m leaving that guy to you.”
“Okay.”
No need for you to tell me twice.
“One more thing, Isaac.”
“I get it, you want me to find someone, right?”
“Yeah.”
I nodded: “You, and your knights. Once inside the city, help me look for a guy named Barry. He’s a bit older than I am, a newly initiated knight in the Third Knights Order.”
“Got it.”
The bald man rubbed his bloodied head and said it straightforwardly, then asked, “But are you sure he’s still alive?”
“Alive.”
I stared firmly at the towering walls ablaze with fire.
Though, in my heart, I didn’t quite believe my own words. The battle was so brutal; Barry had barely been in the order for a year. It was hard to imagine he could survive among such a pack of lunatics…
But right now, all I could do was believe, repeatedly telling myself that Barry wasn’t dead; he had to be alive.
…I knew I was avoiding something.
But I really couldn’t fathom the aftermath of his d*ath; I couldn’t bear to think of how heartbroken Grandma Claire would be. I carried feelings too complex to express to anyone, hoping he would survive the harshness of war, just as I wished…
I simply hoped…
No more lives would be lost.
Now…
Let it all end quickly.
The bl**d already cold on my body began to congeal in the wind, sticky and dry—quite disgusting. But I deliberately ignored those sensations, my gaze focused on the enormous city ahead. Inside, the flames still raged, spreading fiercely, and faint screams echoed.
Surely there were still knights alive…
There had to be…
Beneath the darkened night sky, the wind whistled sharply, blowing across the bl**d-stained, brownish plains. Fire arrows shot down from the city walls, golden halos blooming quietly. Soon, fierce shouts erupted again in the deadly silence of the wilderness.
…………
“Whoo—, whoo—”
A young knight named Barry leaned against the wall of a dark alley, covered in bl**d and gasping for air. The burns on his arms had gone from painful to numb; his neck and face were blistering. He felt utterly exhausted, unable to stop his trembling legs.
Beside him, a disheveled woman knelt in the mud, gently wiping the pus and bl**d oozing from his wounds with a not-so-clean white cloth. She cried softly, her voice low, “Barry… does it still hurt? What… are we going to do…”
The young knight looked up at the sky, his gaze lost, unresponsive.
He was just too tired.
“The knights lost… Dad, big brother… they might all be dead… the north side’s crawling with those demons, we… can’t escape… we’ll be caught… Barry, I don’t want to be caught by them… if only…”
“It won’t happen.”
Barry sighed deeply, offering comfort, “Reinforcements have arrived, they’re fighting the heretics outside the city. They will win; they’ll drive those demons out of here. You won’t be caught.”
The woman looked at him, murmuring, “Really… can we really win…?”
Before this brutal siege began, all the citizens and soldiers of Alectine City, if not filled with confidence, at least believed they could hold their ground. At that time, the Third Knights Order had just come back from the Mosley Coast, and their father hosted a welcoming feast that very night.
Even though Captain Williams had emphasized the fearsome nature of the heretics more than once in his pre-battle mobilization, Lilith still remembered her father drunkenly boasting that when those Eastern continent mutts arrived, they would be smashed to pieces, saying he could do this and that. He believed strongly in his Warhammer Army, only to see the north gate breached on the very first day of battle.
Everyone was caught off guard by the madmen’s reckless attacks. They had the power to burn everything; soldiers without divine blessings found it hard to resist, charred and fleeing in horror. Not long after, the Warhammer Army experienced infighting; some turned traitor with their soldiers to those dreadful heretics.
Over the next few days, the city defense struggled terribly. People no longer felt secure, trying every way possible to escape the city. Many died outside, and even her mother had come to tell her to hide in a bunker. But her father and brother were on the city walls; Lilith didn’t want to believe such strong figures could lose, yet she still felt an overwhelming sense of dread.
As the lord’s daughter, she thought she should do something in these desperate moments for the survival of Alectine City. But being clueless about what she could do, and not knowing how to use a sword, she finally gathered her courage and volunteered at the wounded soldiers’ camp to lend her modest assistance to the brave warriors.
And that’s when she saw what war really was, what d*ath truly was.
Ghastly burns, dark brown bl**d, dismembered limbs, and the anguished cries of soldiers dying in pain. Chilling fireballs came crashing down with terrible booming sounds. Lilith woke from those noises every night only to fall back asleep, over and over, until eventually, she didn’t sleep at all anymore.
Raised in luxury, she’d been greeted with politeness from everyone, living in an environment that made her think the world was just that way—until those terrifying demons attacked. Lilith saw their power, saw countless people she thought were strong and formidable dying gruesomely. At that moment, her world crumbled in a way that made it hard to breathe.
This was a war beyond her understanding, a conflict between faith and divinity. Alectine City faced the most ruthless and terrifying enemy in the world, one ordinary people like her couldn’t even begin to fathom.
Even her powerful father had no chance against such overwhelming might…
After the city fell, those demons rushed in, and even the valiant Church Knights couldn’t stop that kind of force. Many died… so many people died… At this moment, Lilith was nearly hopeless. She couldn’t imagine what kind of power someone would need to stop these demons’ atrocities.
She didn’t believe, and she didn’t dare to believe that anyone could defeat these horrifying demons. Even if the reinforcements seemed to have arrived outside, the sounds of fierce fighting hadn’t stopped since earlier. She and the wounded knight hid in a dark alley in the northern part of the city, listening distantly, as if trapped in a dream.
Then, she saw the young knight bow his head and utter weak yet resolute words.
“It will win…”
The knight named Barry’s murmured words seemed to comfort the woman while reassuring himself: “In the reinforcements, my sister is there… she will win. Those demons are no match for her… she will definitely win…”
Lilith was taken aback: “Your… sister?”
“My sister, she’s the Pope Knight… Silvya.”
