A Wish to Grab Happiness

Volume 9, Chapter 218: The Battle in Sanyo

The weather was sunny. The wind blew gently like a spring breeze, and the sunlight had the brilliance of clear days. It felt warm, but bitter at the same time. In the Sanyo Plains, the Heraldic Order’s army and the Great Holy Church’s army both stood up against each other.

A series of loud sounds that were either barbaric or strange echoed on the battlefield. No one was able to grasp the true nature of these sounds.

The axes pulled the intestines out and made blood splash. The spearheads ripped the flesh while wearing the smell of iron. The lives and deaths of soldiers created an extraordinary place called “Battlefield”. “Were my comrades beside the dead still alive or wielding a sword? Ah, I didn’t even know how I was still alive.”

There were swords, spears and shields. They bit into each other with their teeth, and began to play a battlefield-specific music while overlapping with dust.

Everyone’s eyes greedily devoured the enemy’s soldiers. They struggled, but their instinct and desires spoke louder. There was a place here where life could be put on the cheapest price tag.

Both the Heraldic Order and Great Holy Church fully deployed their forces within the plains. The soldiers, who were up to three thousand if combined, sang and danced to the music of the ongoing battlefield.

If God had dared to embed the instinct of struggle in the creation of human beings, He would surely have been listening to this music.

「…Is the flag color bad? I wonder what is going on, really. I know that we’re supposed to push further, but it seems rather hard to do so.」

The Philos City Corps was pressed at the vanguard. In the midst of the war, Philos Trait muttered while complaining. Under her monocle, her white eye was shining in the sunlight.

The Heraldic Order’s soldiers were inferior, but they were wielding the spears with their fingers to grab a slightly visible chance. They were led by the witch Matia and the lord of vice Lugis. Philos heard that they had the power to move people with their tongues and blindly make them believe in anything else but them.

Was it because they were led by such people? The enemy soldiers rushed against Philos’ soldiers with the force of a muddy stream, as if they were pushed by something. On the other hand, the Philos City Corps could not have the same momentum and spirit. They just held the shields to protect themselves from the piercing spears. They endured in order not to get wiped out.

If one just compared with spirit and toughness, then the Heraldic Order may be superior to the Philos’ soldiers, of course, and the Great Holy Church’s soldiers if one included them in the spectrum.

Involuntarily, Philos struck her tongue in her mouth. What a terrible sight and what an awful noise.

The raging rage of these soldiers bit Philos’ skin. It was the first time for Philos to be threatened by the human voices at the core of her body. Were the human voices so powerful?

「Philos, go down a little more. It will be dangerous if you stand here. You’ll die for sure if you don’t go down to the position of the Great Holy Church.」

In a voice with a little accent, the captain who led the city soldiers spoke aloud. There were wrinkles between his eyebrows, and the poison contained in his tongue pierced Philos lightly.

As always, Philos raised her eyebrows to the man who didn’t know how to close his mouth with reluctance and care.

However, it couldn’t be helped. After all, this man had this attitude even after being appointed captain and commander of the city soldiers. Perhaps, he was the creature that would die if he didn’t say what he really thought.

Even so, it was much easier than having poison in your stomach. Philos answered with her lips raised upwards.

「That’s impossible, because I’m the general commander of this unit. I told them to die and sent them to the battlefield, so I can’t just go away from here. I want them to call me the ideal commander.」

The captain snorted as a response to Philos’ pretentious words. He didn’t seem to like it. Philos was terribly envious of him, who was free to do everything he wanted to do.

The ruler of the city was farther from the concept of freedom than one might think.

If she was not a good one, she wouldn’t be fit to rule. No matter how much she pursued, there would be no salvation in that position.

「I will endure it for now. The center will be pulled out. Well, but we have no choice but to aim at the enemy’s army.」

The captain muttered, occasionally echoing his anger by taking the command. There was no sense of crisis or impatience in his voice, but there was a sign of observance. He said what he would do as feasible as possible. Philos didn’t know much about the battlefield, but for this captain, the battlefield may be that way.

She narrowed her white eye as she watched the flag sway.

Certainly, if she took a closer look, as the captain said, the flag of the enemy’s army was often swaying in the center. On the other hand, the left and right wings only had a few spears to fight. That said, the captain told why he felt that way.

In other words, because the number of enemies was small, by concentrating the troops in the central part and breaking through that line, the fangs would be extended to the main area of the Great Holy Church. On the other hand, if they could prevent the enemy from gaining momentum, and if the left and right armies swallowed them alive, then victory would be accomplished for sure.

The work of defense and offense was probably the best of the Philos City Corps and the fellow allies. Defend firmly, prevent it, and take the chance to win. The problem was that Philos wasn’t leading enough troops to hold back the momentum of the enemy forces.

This was the only thing that was no good. The number of troops that was less than a thousand was the number used to face the Great Holy Church without damaging the city to the maximum.

First, even if she won this battle, Philos had nothing to gain from it. It wouldn’t be that easy too if she were to grab something from Garoua Maria. Was it a good call to devote a great deal of the city troops to such a battle? Moreover, the food was scarce due to the extremely cold weather of the cold season.

Philos wet her lips and screamed in the midst of savagery.

「Don’t let the soldiers die. Use your strength to make excuses for the Great Holy Church, and then, retire the soldiers.」

Philos spoke in a voice that no one but the captain could hear her. What Philos needed was not the victory, but to decrease the damage as much as possible. Besides, behind them stood the 20,000 unscathed soldiers of the Great Holy Church’s army. Even if her soldiers collapsed a little, it wouldn’t affect the outcome.

“That old-looking general of Great Holy Church must have intertwined this much. Then, at best, I will do what I must do.”

The captain showed his back and looked forward after hearing Philos’ words.

「…If we can do it, let’s do it. 」

At this point, for the first time, something that seemed to be tense appeared in the captain’s voice. The voice itself didn’t change that much. However, the previous intonation slightly disappeared from his voice. Philos looked at the battlefield through the big back in front of her.

A horse ran on the battlefield. It was like tearing pieces of cloths apart.

It looked like it was one small unit. Some units in the enemy’s army seemed to foolishly protrude and jump out to the front line.

Usually, such troops got killed by the enemy’s army in a single moment. To be isolated in the battlefield, that was, to die. Everyone knew that, so everyone moved forward with the mass of soldiers.

Nonetheless, that little unit didn’t seem to disappear over time. Rather, it seemed to be gradually approaching Philos and her captain. At some point, other enemy soldiers began to turn forward to follow them.

「Lord Philos, you mustn’t come this way. Those people are crazy. Lord Philos, you are in the way, so please run away right now so that you won’t die.」

The captain spoke angrily, but with a trembling voice and a sweating nape. Then, he slowly pulled out the sword he was carrying on his waist.

Perhaps, because of his angry tone, Philos took a step back while the soldiers around them screamed and held their shields.

Philos’ white eye reflected the crawling threat.

A man, wearing a green military uniform, moved forward while trampling the soldier’s heads with the horseshoes. She remembered hearing about him. She remembered that figure in her head. She remembered seeing a sentence about that man.

…The immoral behavior that does not fear God is a double act with malice itself.

“Oh, there’s no mistake. Yes, there’s no mistake about it. His eyes can trample on people without moving one eyebrow, and his violent behavior does not even show a single color of fear on the battlefield.”

Philos’ white eye clearly captured that person.

“…That’s the lord of vice, the Heraldic Hero named Lugis.”