“Ugh, I’m dying here.”
“If you keep fighting like that, your body won’t hold up, kid.”
“Welt, don’t you think I know that? But fighting this way is the only way to stay alive.”
“If you keep piling it on, it’ll eventually break you. You have to know your limits. Besides, isn’t it pointless for us to fight so hard to begin with?”
In the end, it’s nothing more than a war that takes lives.
The man known as “Problem Solver Welt” around these parts, with salt-and-pepper hair and a rugged, muscular physique, murmured wearily.
The young giant, with notably pale skin, who had been vehemently opposing Welt’s advice, fell silent.
“You’ve been fighting like a madman, so your notoriety has spread. Both the regular army and the rebel forces know you. The whole country must have heard of ‘Mad Dog Eson’ by now.”
“Mad Dog, really?”
“It means you fight like you’ve lost your mind. Do you want people to gossip about your origins?”
“…Not particularly. I don’t care who knows. What’s so bad about it anyway.”
Welt internally scolded the naive Eson, then stood up.
“What’s this? Done resting already?”
“I’ve told you before, rest periods should be as short as possible.”
“I was just wondering… It’s impressive how spry you are for your age.”
“Do you think you can get away with relying solely on your natural strength? It’s all from rigorous training. I keep telling you to train regularly…”
Eson sighed at the familiar lecture about training. Looks like another hour or two being wasted today.
It had been less than half a year since Eson met Welt, but since then, they had fought together continuously, making their bond deeper than it appeared.
For Eson, who never had a father figure, Welt felt almost like one.
‘If only he didn’t nag so much…’
Above all, Welt was exceptionally skilled. Watching him fight often led Eson to wonder just what Welt did in his past.
Simply by emulating Welt’s fighting style, Eson was able to handle enemies more effectively. That pretty much said it all.
Sometimes Eson wondered if Welt had trained in the Empire, but then he would shake his head. Welt wasn’t only proficient with the sword but also with spears, axes, hammers, daggers, throwing knives, and even scythes. The Empire’s swordsmen were said to be fanatical about solely practicing with swords.
Welt’s combat style was closer to that of a mercenary than that of a refined swordsman or knight.
‘To surpass knights, he must have an extraordinary background, that’s for sure.’
As he half-listened to Welt’s seemingly endless nagging, Eson rose to his feet, mimicking Welt. Suddenly, Eson’s gaze sharpened.
“What is it? Enemies?”
Even amid his rapid-fire lecture, Welt didn’t miss Eson’s reaction. He scanned the surroundings with narrowed eyes and asked. Eson nodded.
“There are quite a few, at least twenty. Judging by their heavy steps, they’re heavily armed.”
“Tch. Regular army?”
“Most likely.”
There wasn’t the slightest hint of an unfamiliar presence. But Welt trusted Eson’s words. He had survived multiple times thanks to that inhuman sense of Eson’s. Doubting him would be foolish now.
“Can we escape?”
Welt immediately considered fleeing as an option. It wouldn’t be easy to handle at least twenty well-armed soldiers without sustaining injuries, especially right after a battle. Suspecting that reinforcements had arrived, it would be foolish to assume there would be no further reinforcements.
However, Eson’s next words dismissed Welt’s plan.
“They’ve really got us surrounded. All exits are blocked.”
“So, it was a trap from the start.”
“…Damn it. Using people as bait because it’s not their own lives on the line. I’ll twist their necks with my own hands someday.”
“You can only do that if you survive. Get ready.”
Instead of retorting as usual, Eson grabbed the glaive he had set on the ground. This specially made heavy weapon, which most would struggle to lift with both hands, was easily lifted by Eson with one hand—a testament to his extraordinary strength.
“We can’t head straight for the hideout. I don’t need to explain why.”
“We can’t bring them back with us. I know.”
“We’ll break through in the opposite direction. We’ll shake off the pursuit entirely before returning. It won’t be easy.”
“Worry about yourself, old man. I could fight for days and still be fine.”
“You brat. I could outlast you any day.”
“Want to bet on it?”
“The loser buys the drinks.”
“Just don’t cry later. You know my capacity.”
Thus began their desperate flight.
Even if the regular army held a grudge against Welt and Eson, they couldn’t afford to expend too many resources on capturing just two fighters. A maximum of forty or fifty men, perhaps.
‘Any more, and the revolutionaries would come for their throats.’
Quickly assessing the situation, Welt predicted the enemy’s armed state and drew two short swords. While it was easier to crush enemies with a heavy weapon like Eson’s glaive, breaking through a blockade required more agility and precision, which short swords provided.
‘We don’t need to kill them. Ignoring vital points protected by armor, I just need to incapacitate them by targeting their joints.’
“There they are… Ugh!”
The first soldier Welt encountered received a hard kick to the chest. Welt’s instinct was to finish him off, but he stopped himself and instead kicked the soldier’s helmet off before hurrying forward. Likewise, Eson used his glaive to knock another soldier off balance and immediately followed Welt.
Technically, reducing the numbers whenever possible was the right strategy. Both Welt and Eson knew that. But the war they were fighting wasn’t about killing everyone.
‘This damned revolution.’
This accursed war. Welt and Eson continued to dispatch any enemies they encountered easily, only resorting to lethal force when absolutely necessary.
Despite being called a regular army, in reality, it was mostly composed of forcibly conscripted men—an incompetent force. Many of them had never wielded a real sword, much less practiced with even a wooden sword.
Such men, no matter how many, were no match for Welt and Eson—veterans who had survived countless battles.
‘Their leaders must be aware of that.’
Even as he kept moving, Welt’s mind was racing. The absence of a competent force meant something. The enemy commander’s objective wasn’t extermination.
Like hunters driving their prey to exhaustion, they planned to capture us by first sending out scarecrows to tire us out. Welt’s understanding of their tactics made his face grimace.
‘Vicious bastards.’
It wasn’t long before his prediction was proven correct. The way they responded in close combat was different. When Welt closed the distance in an instant, most of them would stammer, but the soldier in front of them calmly widened the distance and thrust his spear.
Crash.
Of course, Welt could suppress them without much difficulty. However, it was an ominous sign that the enemy’s skill level was gradually increasing.
“There are too many of them,” Eson muttered as he crushed his opponent’s thrust and their spear shaft with brute force.
“Was I mistaken? It seems like there are three times more of them than twenty.”
Eson quickly dismissed the possibility. Initially, there were indeed twenty. But since then, they had been sending in reserve forces one after another, as if they had known Eson and Welt would appear here in advance!
“Betrayal…!”
As soon as Eson arrived at the conclusion, a scorching heat grazed his cheek. Cold sweat flowed naturally. If he hadn’t instinctively pulled his head back just before the arrow hit, he wouldn’t have even realized he was dead. It meant that the skill of the archer was exceptional.
“Pale skin and an eerily good sense. You must be the mad dog Eson. Then, the old man beside you must be the problem-solver Welt.”
A voice followed in the direction from which the arrow had flown. Upon the appearance of the voice’s owner, Eson’s instincts blared loudly.
“A knight…!”
And not just any knight. It wasn’t Eheram, the strongest in the principality and the head of the regular army. But it was clear from the aura emanating from the suddenly appeared knight that he was a formidable presence just as powerful.
“I never heard there was another knight like this. Damn it!”
“How foolish. No matter how much the principality is in decline, do you think simpletons like you can gauge its might? Vigilante bands that are not even proper revolutionaries?”
The knight, with a mocking smile, had a massive bow made from the materials of monsters strapped to his back, and blood was dripping from the halberd in his hand.
“Ah, does this blood bother you?”
“Not particularly.”
“You should listen. Because it’s the blood of those we once considered comrades.”
“What?”
Be careful-!
With Welt’s sudden warning, Eson’s sight flipped. It all happened in an instant. The knight had precisely aimed for the moment Eson was distracted and swung his halberd, and Eson couldn’t react. But Eson only rolled on the ground slightly and wasn’t severely injured. But then who was hurt…?
“Ugh, cough!”
“Oh, you managed to block that? Impressive, old man.”
“Welt! Geezer─!”
Blood poured from the wound stretching from the chest to the waist. Seeing the red waterfall, Eson lost his reason. But even in a calm state, his opponent was too formidable. Naturally, the knight toyed with Eson with ease.
“Gah…”
“Oh, did I hit too hard? Our prince ordered us to capture them alive… Well, as long as he’s breathing, it should be fine.”
The flippant knight shrugged and waited for his subordinates to arrive on the scene. Eventually, a group appeared.
“Huh? Who are you? This area is restricted…”
The knight’s flippant gaze scanned the group, then stopped at the woman with crimson hair and the girl with silver hair. The meaning was apparent. The gleam in the knight’s eyes was exceedingly blatant.
“… The soldiers should have stopped you, which means you ignored the regular army’s actions to come here? That implies rebellion.”
The knight, with a blood-stained halberd over his shoulder, chuckled.
“Looks like I need to show you what happens when you defy the regular army. With your own bodies…”
Heh heh─.
The knight fixed his lecherous eyes on the woman with crimson hair and the girl with silver hair, his demeanor anything but that of an honorable knight. He looked more fitting to be a bandit chief. What was more curious was that the group seemed to disregard the flippantly laughing knight.
Rustle-.
Perhaps irritated by this, a murderous intent welled up in the knight’s eyes. But he realized too late.
“Hmm… I came to the right place, but the condition of things isn’t great.”
“What?”
The group before him was not good fortune to fulfill his desires but a living disaster. And they were deeply displeased by the unexpected situation before them.
‘The leader of the revolutionary army that saw the revolution through to success can’t possibly die at this time…?’