Bonus chapter thanks to @Zenno and @SurvivingBarbarian from Ko-fi!
Sanders saw the scene clearly.
The moment he shouted “Fire!”, something too massive to be called an arrow pierced through the monster, making it uncomfortable to watch.
The monsters “outside” are of a different class. No matter how low their rank, ordinary soldiers find it hard to even cut through their skin.
That’s why the archers’ shooting only slows them down a bit, without significantly reducing their numbers.
But what was that?
Too big to be called an arrow, and too fancy to be considered a ballista, it pierced through the monsters and disappeared.
Sanders saw where it came from. He saw a man who pierced through a monster in one go and was already preparing for the next shot.
He thought he would see the corpse of a child, not yet an adult.
But at this moment, the boy stands more proudly and nobly than anyone else.
And also,
He looked very sleepy.
Meanwhile, Selena beside him was trying hard not to show it.
‘It’s so different from what I heard…’
The information was terribly wrong.
Frondier was supposed to be a collection of laziness, incompetence, and inferiority.
The information from Manggot has never been wrong before.
So by Selena’s standards, today was a first. The information was utterly useless.
‘I thought it was just my imagination back then.’
Selena remembers the murderous intent Frondier showed in the room.
Of course, it was scary. Not terribly, but a little.
But the source of that fear was the ‘Fireworks.’
In Manggot, when Fireworks were spotted from Constel, they put forth the possibility that Frondier was the owner. But that was just talk, and no one really believed it.
However, Frondier mentioned ‘Fireworks’ in the room.
He showed an arrow right in front of Selena’s eyes.
‘What’s incompetence, and what about inferiority?’
At least, those words seemed far too distant from the Frondier we see now.
However.
‘…He does look sleepy. Yeah.’
Laziness was the only part that seemed authentic.
* * *
It was possible to eliminate the monsters invading now. After all, I had ‘Fireworks’.
The objective was to disrupt the repair of the barrier, so the outside monsters were still in small numbers. That made it even easier to kill them all, but.
“Die! Die, you bastards!”
“You, goddamn, filthy bastards!”
I didn’t do that.
Below the barrier, near the city gates, the prisoners were already in a battlefield splattered with blood and flesh.
The gate was currently left open. The state of the barrier was so poor that it was decided to open the gate to lead the monsters’ path. It was possible because the size of the monsters was still small.
My current goal was to level up the weaving itself. To level it up, you need to craft a new weapon of a higher grade or do a lot of simultaneous weaving. Therefore, ‘Fireworks’ weren’t very efficient.
And most importantly, most of the prisoners here were ‘death row inmates’. They were just doomed men dying.
I took a moment to look at the faces of the prisoners. Wondering if my heart would change after witnessing many casualties from now on.
“…I’m not sure.”
I’m not sure. People are dying in front of me, and screams are heard. Whether my heart is rippling from it, whether I’m shocked but pretending not to be, I can’t even tell that.
But then, I made a discovery entirely unrelated to my original intention.
Among the faces of the prisoners, who should have nothing to do with me, there was one I recognized.
“…Grobel.”
At the front gate, it was exhausting to search for buried human bodies while kicking away all sorts of monsters with my feet.
“Indus” that aims to eliminate discrimination. Grobel, a mercenary hired by a Serf of Indus, appeared.
Grobel was the apparent leader of the shack incident, so he shouldered most of the blame. This is the result.
“Gasp! Pant! Wheeze…!”
Grobel was fighting like crazy. He was holding a scimitar that was about the length of his arm in his right hand.
It was considerably bent, so the curvature was high. It was shaped like a half-moon.
Quite some time has passed since the shack incident, but he’s still alive. In Tyburn, that alone is a big deal.
Creak-!
Just then, something huge entered the main gate of the rampart.
The height of two adult males, green skin, and strange lower fangs protruding from its mouth.
It was a troll.
“Kill! Cut down everything you see in front of you!”
The prisoners ran forward, whether it was an order or something they were saying to themselves.
Grobel was the same. The guy moved to attach himself in front of the troll’s right leg.
Naturally, he didn’t see the troll’s club rising above him.
“…Tsk.”
I clicked my tongue and shot “Gram” straight ahead. My mana was completely drained, but this could blow the troll away in one shot.
Gram spun and spun, then cut through the troll’s neck. It got deeply embedded in the gate and disappeared.
The troll fell down suddenly.
Grobel, flustered, checked the troll’s severed neck and turned his head from side to side.
Grobel, who was looking around like that, suddenly looked up. His gaze met mine.
His expression was hard to see from a distance, but he definitely recognized me.