Chapter 21: Confrontation

  With one of its legs cut in two, the body of the massive spider started to fall.

  Scrambling to find a balance with its other seven legs, its gargantuan appendages flailed and thrashed, causing the hill that Ruby and Ashford stood upon, to tremble and quake under its massive, and frantic weight.

  The two individuals likewise struggled to keep their own balance — it was like the earth beneath them was a ship withstanding the ocean’s stormy and violent waves.

  Suddenly, the female knight whipped her head to the battle down below, then to Ashford.

  Realizing this short moment would be all that she would have before an intense battle, Ruby raised her voice with the amplification of her mana. Echoing through the waves and waves of a tumultuous battlefield, her voice was heard by all, “Gather and break through the weak point located to the northwestern crux!”

  “Adelaide! Giselle! You! Blue eyes! Rally the remaining disjumbled battalion under one force! Act both as vanguard and the leading strike team to carve a path out!”

  Smashing the ground with her foot, the female knight reappeared explosively before Ashford. Along with the shouts and cries of battle all around him, the flying debris of dirt and leaves made on her subsequent arrival only added to the chaotic atmosphere.

  Suddenly he felt a hand placed on his chest, and at that single point gathered a mighty and extreme force. Luckily it was made to be a pushing force rather than a destructive one, and in the next moment, his body and heavy suit of armor flew away from where he stood like an arrow released.

  Ashford was surprised to be flying through the air, but the stoic and adaptable man quickly regained his grace. Using his excessive momentum, his metal fist landed on a carriage-sized spider, and caved its head inwards, splattering flesh, brains, and blood everywhere.

  Just coming out of the dense greenery, Adelaide, Laelin, and the rest, saw as a man with black hair and blue eyes stood up from out of a giant spider carcass.

  Their eyes were darting from Ashford to the human-sized spider beneath his feet, when someone asked, “Are you…blue eyes?”

  “You are…?” Ashford asked.

  “Adelaide.” He spoke curtly, without an ounce of warmth or welcome in his tone. Towards other handsome men, he was secretly hostile!

  Ashford nodded, “You must’ve heard. Let's go.”

  Thudding heavily on the ground, his steel-plate footsteps transitioned from a fast walk to a blitzing run.

  The group’s eyes followed his figure, when they saw exactly what he was charging into. Under the moon’s benevolent illumination, a battle was being held between dire wolves, four-armed bears, and giant insects. Further beyond their immediate vision, were waves upon waves of that battle spilling out chaotically into the forest. In that vast expanse of pure carnage and massacre, caught between their war, was a human battalion struggling not to drown in the ensuing bloodletting.

  Ashford, without a hint of fear or even stress in his eyes, dived into a smaller bloodbath, cutting down and slicing through anything that blocked his path.

  The rest of the group…was not as staunch. In an era of relative peace, their battalion, or more accurately, their ten-thousand unit division, had never participated in a large-scale skirmish, much less, in a war between countless hordes of otherworldly beasts.

  The wolves were bigger and larger than any species they had ever seen, almost reaching the heights of horses, while there was not much to say about the man-sized spiders.

  A moment of silence took place before Adelaide hesitantly spoke up, “We’ve…got to go.”

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  “...Are you fucking nuts?” Evelyn replied.

  “He…can’t last that long by himself.” Giselle interjected.

  “We’re all gonna fucking die! Do you see all that out there!? Or do we need to get to even higher ground!?”

  As they were on a relatively elevated slope, it was much easier to see how far the battle stretched to, and as far as their eyes could see, the hordes stretched on for at least miles.

  The thousand unit battalion only took up a small pocket of that battle near its edges, but as they were embroiled, separated, and battered, their hope of ever escaping the conflict dwindled and dwindled.

  Although certainly…a small group not yet absorbed into the battle, could definitely just sneak away.

  “I— W— We can head back to camp first, and come back with reinforcements!”

  “...The main camp is situated ahead of us.” Giselle spoke up again.

  “Even if we circled past the battle and reached the main camp, there’s no telling if we would just be coming back to reinforce corpses.” Adelaide said.

  He sighed with a smile forming on his lips, “Besides…her Ladyship called my name specifically. I at least have to go.”

  “What, so if you don’t follow her orders, that bitch will find you later on!?” Evelyn shouted.

  “...Heh. Well, that’s one way to look at it.”

  “But in my eyes…it’s because she thinks I might actually be able to do it.”

  “I can’t let down a woman’s faith in me, and honestly, I think we can help.”

  “I won’t fault any of you guys for leaving, but if you want to come with me, you’re welcome.”

  “I’ll go. She said my name too.” Giselle spoke up. Although she mostly stayed silent, evidently, it wasn’t out of meekness.

  “I’m going too…” Said a voice so soft almost no one heard it. Although, her voice didn’t need to be loud, for the action of standing by the other two spoke volumes.

  A few individuals left, promising to come back with others, while a majority stayed. Evelyn, however, stood stuck between doing both. She stared at the ground in sadness, as her hair dropped down to cover the shameful, and guilty expression on her face.

  That was, when a soft voice spoke closely in front of her, “It’s okay. Whatever you do, I’ll love you always.”

  Evelyn’s mouth began to move, but what replaced its usual loudness and ruckus, was a soft vulnerability, “I’m scared of spiders…”

  ‘And they’re fucking human-sized! No, actually, they’re bigger!’

  To which Laelin replied, “I am too,” she smiled helplessly.

  Evelyn felt her hand taken into her friend’s own, feeling how trembling and weak it was.

  Her surprise only lasted for a moment, before she gripped Laelin’s hand so tight it started to tremble less.

  She walked forwards ahead of her friend, taking the lead while still tightly holding her hand.

  “Stay behind me at all times.”

  ‘Depend on me. For my sake too.’

  “Let’s go.”

  “W— Will you be fine?” Laelin asked with concern.

  “Yeah.”

  “As long as you’re with me.”

  …

  Each slice, slash, pierce, and cleave was done with rigid and mechanical precision. So rigid and mechanical in fact, that Ashford almost seemed like a construct.

  His stoic face was unflinching in the wake of rivers of blood, and apart from his breathing and the rapid movement of his eyes, he all but fit the description.

  Only a minute had passed by, but he was sure he had slain at least fifteen foes; a giant spider, or a dire wolf every four seconds.

  In the carnage around him, wolves were tearing and biting apart a spider’s legs until it had none left, and giant spiders were feasting on wolves still alive, caught in the webs they spun between trees and the ground.

  Within the brief respite of a slain foe, he ignored the horrors around him to look ahead.

  His goal was close. Just a few meters away from him was one of the separated chunks of the thousand-man battalion.

  They must have heard Ruby’s shout from earlier for they were moving in the direction she mentioned. However, at the front of their formation, the vanguard was halted by a ten-foot bear with dark-blue fur and four arms. Each swipe of its arms threw around multiple bodies of human, spider, and wolf alike.

  But if he could just join up with them, he had absolute confidence of slaying the monster, then leading the separated group to rendezvous with the other disjumbled remnants.

  He breathed in deep, before slicing two legs off from a man-sized spider, and burying his sword inside its head. Its odd screech stopped then in an abrupt instant.

  As blood and brain juices sputtered out from his sword’s removal, the spider’s carcass began to fall, and a wide berth opened up to him.

  Ashford prepared to advance, when he realized why exactly such a wide berth appeared.

  A twelve-foot, three-ton bear emerged from out of the forest darkness.

  Under the moonlight, waves of spiders climbed atop it, but it broke whatever webs they tried to weave, and with its four arms, the creature laid waste to everything around it.

  Picking up the spiders like dolls, the bear smashed them into each other. Only difference, was that dolls would be broken into pieces, while the bodies of the spiders at his mercy were turned into broken limbs and bloody gore.

  In the chaos if it all, a new wave of wolves rushed out from the same forest darkness, yet luckily, they ignored the human and monstrous bear, deciding instead to steer clear of their confrontation, and assault the corresponding army of spiders.

  After wiping out every spider in the surrounding vicinity, the bear then turned its gaze towards Ashford. Each stomp towards him, shaking the ground beneath.

  Although his expression didn’t change, the weight of the enemy’s sheer presence bore heavy on his shoulders.

  Ashford readied his sword into a defensive stance— his thoughts racing, trying to come up with a solution to take down the beast, if not at least hold onto his own life.

  Tides of wolves rushed out all around them, yet as if ordered, left a circular ring between the two like some kind of makeshift arena.