Volume 3 Chapter 6 Battle of Mildwind Town

Chapter 6 Battle of Mildwind Town

I

Normanian soldiers were fighting Reauneian soldiers.

Reauneian soldiers looked like small versions of Hoemuo. They were half human and half mutant. The skin of their mutant part looked like some sort of magmatic rock. They were roaring fiercely, killing every single Normanian in their sight.

Although those mutant soldiers were not as strong as Hoemuo, they all could fly and flying was their greatest advantage. Most of those soldiers were archers. They flew on the sky and shot flaming arrows. It was hard to fight them.

Fortunately, soldiers as well as most adult men in the town had been trained to use bows. Their archery was not as good as Floria because her physiology had been enhanced, but they were still excellent fighters. Those soldiers and armed populaces were invaluable protectors of this town.

Burning arrows were shooting down from those mutant Reauneian soldiers flying on the sky.

Dodging those arrows from the sky, Floria, Yanni and Stasha were looking for Hoemuo in the town with Marcus.

They had fought Hoemuo before in the Camp of Wildshadow Tribe and they knew how powerful he was. Though Hoemuo was extremely strong, it was highly likely that they could beat him if fighting together.

Anyway, it was not difficult for them to find Hoemuo, since he was rather big in size.

When they saw Hoemuo, he was slaughtering innocent Normanians. He slashed one man in half and scorched an old woman to death with his whips … The scarlet colour of blood and the purple-red colour of fire were merging together into a inhumane scene of massacre.

“Hey, Hoemuo!” yelled Yanni.

“Barbarians! Wow! You have travelled across the whole continent to find me! That’s a surprise!” smirked Hoemuo.

“Where is Cuore Celeste?” questioned Floria.

“Why will I tell you that?” teased Hoemuo.

“If you don’t tell me its position, we will make you suffer,” threatened Yanni.

“That’s hilarious. Win me first before trying to negotiate with me!” roared Hoemuo.

After those words were spoken, Hoemuo began to whiplash towards the four.

Courageously, Yanni stepped forwards and put himself between Hoemuo and his teammates. Roaring wrathfully, Hoemuo entwined Yanni’s shield with his burning whip in an attempt to pull his stellarite shield off his hand.

Last time, Hoemuo disarmed Yanni with his move successfully because Yanni was fighting alone with him at the top of a hill. However, he had gotten three teammates now.

Floria ran beside Yanni and helped him to pull against Hoemuo. Roaring madly, Hoemuo tightened his muscles on the arms and started to pull even harder. Seemingly, the strength of Hoemuo was even greater than Floria and Yanni put together.

The temperature of the whiplash was heating up Yanni’s stellarite shield. Soon the shield became scorching and began to burn Yanni’s hand.

Fortunately, when the siblings were about to be not able to go on, Stasha charged towards Hoemuo. Hoemuo lifted his fiery sword in defence, but out of his expectation, Stasha was not trying to attack him, but trying to disarm him.

The whip of Hoemuo could not counter the blade of Stasha’s stellarite daggers, and the latter cut off the whip of the former from its hilt.

Roaring wrathfully, the skin of Hoemuo were giving off barbeque-like sounds.

He kicked Stasha to the ground. With the fiery sword held in his hand, he decided to kill Stasha once for all.

Noticing that Stasha was in danger, Marcus ran up to him and stroke his belly with the mace. However, unlike the three who had been enhanced by the power of Sylvanus, Marcus was only a normal human. When Marcus was about strike him again, Hoemuo clutched his neck, flew towards a building and smashed him violently on its wall.

The impact of Marcus on the building broke the whole wall of this building. With a gust of deafening sounds, the building collapsed into ruins of broken stones. Several bones of Marcus had been broken and he was moaning in irresistible agony.

Drawing his sword, Hoemuo was ready to kill his opponent.

“No!” shouted Floria. She loaded her bow and shot an arrow towards Hoemuo, but he parried her arrow easily with his sword.

Yanni and Stasha were running towards Hoemuo in rescue of Marcus, but they were too late.

Hoemuo pierced the Marcus’ chest with his long burning sword.

“You bastard! I will kill you, Hoemuo!” roared Yanni.

“See you next time, kids,” sniffed Hoemuo. He flipped his batwings, soared into the sky and flew away.

Though Hoemuo had run away, the city had been fully destroyed. Everything was turned into burnt embers. Nearly nothing was left in this city.

Under the ruins, some survivors were climbing out, crying in fear. The smell of blood had filled the air. There were corpses everywhere in this city and some parts of the ground had been dyed red by the blood streaming down from those broken limbs.

Unluckily, those bloody scenes would not make them hate war but make them hate Reauneians more. As long as the hatred carried on, the war wouldn’t stop until this two kingdoms both perished.

Marcus was dying, and nothing could save him. If Aisling was here, she might be able to save him. However, Aisling was not here and they had gotten no information about the position of Cuore Celeste yet.

“Bianca …” Marcus was moaning.

“I’m sorry, Marcus, we cannot save you,” apologized Floria soothingly, lowering her head.

“I could have left this town, but I haven’t. I could have lived happily with Bianca though I may be a deserter … But I haven’t … But I haven’t,” groaned Marcus weakly.

“Do you regret?” asked Stasha.

“I don’t know … Maybe I regret … In front of death, my faith, my belief, and my values mean nothing. I just want to live … happily … with Bianca,” answered Marcus, hesitating.

“No, I’ll save you, I’ll save you! Is there a way to save him, Floria?” shouted Yanni anxiously, looking at his sister.

“No … He has bled out too much. I really wish Aisling were here. Only her magic can possibly save him …” murmured Floria.

“When I was young, I always eat dinner with Bianca and Mister Edwardson. After the dinner, we’ll take a walk alongside a river near our village … That river was beautiful … I could remember the sounds of streaming water in that river … I could remember those swimming fishes … Everything was beautiful because there was no war here when I was young,” recalled Marcus.

“You’ve died bravely, Marcus. You’re a hero of Normania. People will remember you and carve your name in the monument as the greatest guardian of Normania,” Floria reassured him.

“I don’t want to be the guardian of the kingdom … I only want to be the guardian of Bianca … But I haven’t realized it until … until now …” muttered Marcus.

Slowly, Marcus closed his eyes. He was not unique. Marcus and Bianca were just one of those millions of pairs of lovers that had been torn into pieces by the war.

II

The three left this town.

Vultures and other carrion birds were flying towards this city. They had smelt corpses, which were the greatest food. They landed on the ground and began to enjoy their greatest dinner.

Soon it was dusk.

Although they had found no information about the position of Cuore Celeste, they were pretty sure that Hoemuo must knew where it was now.

Since Hoemuo was the imperator of Reauneian Army, it wouldn’t be difficult to find him in Reauneia. The only problem was that as Normanians, Reauneians would hate them since Normanians had hurt Reauneians much. Therefore, their adventure in Reauneia would definitely be a difficult one.

Soon, they arrived at the border of Normania and Reauneia. It was a strait. Normania was to the west of the strait while Reauneia was to the east.

After all, Normania and Reauneia were two different continents.

They stood on the beach, thinking about ways to cross the strait.

“How will we cross the strait?” asked Yanni.

“I don’t know. Maybe we shall make a ship,” guessed Stasha.

“Do you know how to make a ship?” pursued Yanni.

“No,” Stasha shook her head.

“How wide this strait was?” queried Floria.

“Maybe three kilometres,” speculated Stasha.

“Since that, we could swim across the strait. Even normal human swimmers could swim for three kilometres, let alone us,” proposed Floria.

“However, what if we felt too tired and got drowned?” questioned Yanni.

“Then let’s make three kickboards. Making kickboards were far easier than crafting boats,”

“Good idea, let’s make kickboards,”

The three began to craft kickboards. It was not a difficult task. Stasha used her dagger to cut some trees. Stellarite was very hard and cutting trees was a piece of cake for her pair of daggers.

After cutting a tree into stout parts, simple kickboards were made successfully.

Carefully, the three walked into the cold seawater.

It was dusk now and the twilight was bright in the west.

They must swim across the strait before the sun went down and everything was hard to see clearly.

Seawater was hugging their skin. It was cold because the night was coming. Luckily, they had bathed in the Spring of Sylvana and thus they could resist coldness and hotness better than normal humans.

Fishes were swimming with them. However, the three felt weird when looking at those fishes. After observing those fishes carefully, they finally knew the reason.

Those fishes were not common fishes at all.

They were whacky and unnatural. Some fishes had three eyes and some only had one eye. On the body of some fishes were disgusting tentacles that only belonged to octopi. Those tentacles were swinging eldritchly.

Some eels even looked more disgusting. They became nightmarishly long and they only swam in the depth. The three could only see blurry figures of those long and ugly abomination from the surface of the sea.

For some unknown reasons, the whole sea was becoming very weird. Some unutterable forces were changing the environments inside the sea.

Now they were only swimming on the surface of the sea. They could never imagine what was hiding in those deeper places.

After witnessing those obscene mutant fishes, they swam faster to escape this sea, because the fear for aberrational creatures were carved deeply in the genes of humans, including the three.

They thought about what Marcus said. The mutation of those fished and eels must be caused by the radiation. The sea must have been polluted by radioactive elementium …

The sun kept going down, and the twilight that illuminated the world was dissipating.

Fortunately, before the last ray of the twilight disappeared, the three arrived at the continental Reauneia successfully.

There were only some fishing villages on the coast and there were no large cities at all.

They had to find where Hoemuo and his army’s base of operation was. When they were thinking how they could know that, they saw two Reauneian soldiers walking along the coast, chatting in Reauneish which they couldn’t understand a single word of.

“They two are Reauneian soldiers. Let’s track them down to Hoemuo’s base of operation,” whispered Floria.

“Good idea,” consented Stasha and Yanni.

III

After approximately fifteen minutes of tracking, the three arrived near the stronghold of Hoemuo, which was built exactly near the river.

Although they three had been enhanced by the Spring of Sylvana, they were not superheroes. Sneaking into a stronghold full of soldiers was still an impossible task. They had sneaked into guarded place before, like the Umbra Fortress of Achnosiris.

However, Aisling was with them at that time and her magical power was far beyond the three.

Now, without the protection and power of Aisling, they had to make a better plan instead of breaking into the stronghold recklessly.

While they were brainstorming, they saw a river streaming by the stronghold.

“Water! Those Reauneian soldiers had the power of fire. We could beat them with water,” guessed Floria.

“But how?” asked Stasha.

“Follow me. I think I’ve gotten a good idea,” proposed Floria.

Led by Floria, the three walked upriver.

After about half an hour, a building came into their sight.

That was a dam which barriered the river water from upstream.

“What will happen if we destroy this dam?” Floria began to introduce her plan.

“The area of downstream will be flooded for several minutes,” guessed Yanni.

“Including the Hoemuo’s stronghold,” added Floria.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea!” consented Yanni.

“However, if we destroy the dam right now, when we arrive back at the Hoemuo’s Stronghold, the flood may have been already tackled by its drainage system,” Stasha pointed out.

“Therefore, I think we shall split up. Stasha and Yanni shall sneak into the stronghold, while I will stay here. I’ll destroy this dam forty minutes after you set out. Let’s attack that Hoemuo by surprise,” advised Floria.

It was a perfect plan. Since Hoemuo and his soldiers possessed the elemental power of fire, attacking him by water would be a valid plan.

They split up.

Yanni and Stasha headed towards the stronghold and Floria stayed put.

IV

After thirty minutes, Yanni and Stasha arrived in front of the gate of Hoemuo’s stronghold which was built right beside the river.

Stasha created a silence barrier with her tuning fork so that they two would be not likely to be discovered by those soldiers.

The style of Hoemuo’s stronghold was rather exotic. It was like neither Normanian style nor Desertian style. The whole stronghold was made of white marble, with domes and pillars.

Obviously, this stronghold was well guarded. There were soldiers patrolling and guarding beside all the gates.

Although Stasha and Yanni were not afraid of those soldiers, they didn’t want to alert Hoemuo, after all, their task was to retrieve Cuore Celeste and rescue Aisling, instead of assassinating the imperator.

Therefore, they had to break into this building through a wall. Quietly and sneakily, the two stalked to the front of one of the walls which no soldiers were guarding. She cut a small hole out with her sharp stellarite daggers.

She crawled into the building through the wall and Yanni followed her.

It was rather dark inside the stronghold. Maybe it was because those soldiers were mutant and their flaming bodies were sources of lights themselves. Upon entering the stronghold, Stasha and Yanni saw some soldiers bathing in some sort of red rays.

After bathing in the rays, some parts of those soldiers’ skins would mutate and became like magma rocks. That red rays must be the elementium rays that Marcus told them which was radioactive and able to make humans mutate.

When bathing in the fire elementium rays, twisted expressions would appear on the faces of those soldiers. To them, elementium rays must be like some kind of drugs.

“Come one, let’s go. It’s not a place to dawdle,” Stasha urged Yanni, who was absorbed in observing those soldiers.

Anyway, Stasha and Yanni were good at sneaking. No one discovered them and soon they arrived in front of Hoemuo’s office. There was a window on the wall, through which they could peek inside.

Hoemuo was there, talking to a weird person in black robe.

Held in Hoemuo’s hand was Cuore Celeste.