“`
Unbeknownst to them, the demons… had all been killed?!
Rocky, who was scanning the high walls left and right, could hardly believe the outcome, but sure enough, as he looked around, he found that all the demons on the walls were lying on the ground, indeed there were no living demons left!
They… had actually won?
This battle, they had won!
“We’ve won!!!”
After confirming that there were no living demons left, Rocky finally roared towards the sky!
With his roar, all the soldiers who were still standing on the walls, even those barely breathing, let out a cheer together! Many of them shed tears in their cheer.
They truly had reason to cheer, they had every right to shed tears for the victory of this battle, because it was all well-deserved!
With a force totaling no more than three hundred people, plus ten skyships, they faced off against more than a hundred demons and ultimately achieved victory. Such a military feat was something to be proud of no matter where they went or who they mentioned it to.
In the battles of humankind against demons, numerous fights involved more troops than theirs facing fewer demons, yet resulted in defeat, not to mention those were not few in number, but this time Rocky and his comrades had won. Perhaps this victory could not be considered unprecedented, but it certainly qualified as a splendid and outstanding triumph!
“All able-bodied men, immediately tend to the wounded!”
After the cheering and shouting had subsided, Lin Feng immediately gave the order. The final outcome of the battle was their victory, but the number of wounded soldiers was also countless. So, after a brief moment of joy, everyone began the urgent work of treating the wounded.
Rocky, who had performed exceptionally well in this battle, exhausted his last ounce of strength in the cheering, and finally collapsed on the ground due to exhaustion, just as he had done previously. He was placed on a stretcher and urgently carried back to camp.
The reason Rocky was able to return to the battlefield so quickly, rescue Liliya at the critical moment, was not because his Void Magic Armor was fully recharged. In fact, when he returned to the battlefield, the Void Magic Armor had only replenished a third of its mana. Therefore, in the final stages of the battle, the Armor’s mana was already depleted.
This meant that the Void Magic Armor was effectively useless during the last stages of the fight!
After this mission, he had reflected carefully on the situation and still had no answer; he didn’t know how he had managed to fight to the end in his heavy armor.
But now none of that mattered because they had won this crucial battle, and that was enough!
Completely exhausted, Rocky fell into a deep sleep as soon as he was placed on the stretcher. He didn’t even know how he was carried back to the tent. Fortunately, all post-battle operations were managed by Lin Feng and others, so it was no big deal that he slept through it all.
He slept straight through to the next day, and only then did he wake up from his deep slumber and, unsurprisingly, saw Liliya.
“Has the casualty count been tallied?”
As soon as Rocky opened his eyes and saw Liliya, his first question was about the casualty count because he knew that although they had won the battle, the victory must have been incredibly harsh. He wanted to know how many soldiers of the Guard Corps were left.
Liliya, who had been joyful at Rocky’s awakening, saw her smile fade away by half at that moment, then she sat by Rocky’s bed and nodded at him: “It has been tallied, the losses of both units are very severe…”
Then, Liliya went on to relay the casualties after the great battle to Rocky.
In this battle, not including the skyships and the guards on them, a total of 267 people from Backhill Village and the Guard Corps participated in combat, of which there were 100 ranged troops, and 167 soldiers engaged the demons in direct confrontation.
“`
But when the battle ended, only 178 soldiers were left alive, among whom only 92 soldiers who had directly participated in the combat survived, with 75 casualties!
Also, during the battle at the tall wall, two demons had broken into the village, resulting in 14 deaths among the 100 ranged troops that had been withdrawn.
In other words, after the battle, Backhill Village and the Guard Corps combined suffered 89 deaths, a casualty rate of nearly forty percent!
And this was only the death toll. The number of injured soldiers was beyond counting, because there wasn’t a need to—every soldier who survived the battle was injured, with the only difference being the severity of their wounds.
“……”
Although he had anticipated it, Rocky still fell into silence after hearing everything Liliya had to say.
Casualties were an inevitable price of war, especially in the war against demons. In fact, if judged solely on the scale and outcome of this battle, a forty percent casualty rate was not only not high, it was actually quite low! Facing a battle against hundreds of demons, not just a forty percent, but even a fifty percent death rate, or even total annihilation, would not have been surprising!
Yet such heavy losses were still hard for Rocky to accept, so after a brief silence, he asked,
“How about the casualties of the Guard Corps?”
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“The Guard Corps… they are… not too bad, I guess…”
With a sigh, Liliya replied to the question, “The Guard Corps lost 32 people in combat, and among those injured, another 13 will never be able to serve as guards again…”
“Sigh… the casualties are so heavy…”
After hearing Liliya’s report, Rocky let out a long sigh. Previously, nearly ten guards had died in the successive attacks by demons, and now 32 more had perished in this battle. All in all, of the hundred guards Rocky had brought to Backhill Village, nearly half had died, and among the remaining half, many had completely lost their fighting ability and could no longer serve as guards…
Saddened by such a grim outcome, Rocky didn’t know what to say. He sat on his bed, lost in thought for a long time, then suddenly seemed to remember something and hurriedly asked, “What about Monte? And Dusa, is the little girl alright?”
“They’re all fine.”
“That’s good… that’s good…”
Monte, Dusa, and Liliya had not met with any accidents in the battle, which was probably the only thing that could make Rocky feel happy and relieved. So after this, he got up from the bed.
“What are you going to do?”
Seeing him rising to leave, Liliya quickly asked because his condition wasn’t good, and he should continue to rest.
“I need to see Lin Feng and Old Jack, it’s time for them to make a choice,” Rocky responded.
Although the losses of the battle pained Rocky deeply, it was exactly because of such a painful cost that he felt it was time to reveal his identity and purpose to Lin Feng and the village elder, Old Jack. They either had to follow him and leave, or stay here and wait for death, but Rocky was absolutely not going to take care of them anymore!
PS: Three chapters today, ask for recommendations!