Chapter 196: Veteran Pompey

More tonight.

Two updates tomorrow = one update a day.

The equation holds!

—

Neffeli recognized at a glance that the guy was also a Tarnished.

“Hey, give me a hand!” Neffeli shouted to Roger.

“What?” Roger was still confused.

He didn’t know this woman who had fallen from the sky at all.

“Wait a minute, who are you? What are you doing?”

Neffeli’s entrance could hardly be called ‘friendly.’

She crashed through the church glass, fell from the sky, and immediately rushed for the main doors.

Seeing the doors were locked, her first instinct was to pull out her axes.

Before he could question her further…

There was another series of crashing sounds as the Spirit Wolves also smashed through the glass. Colorful glass shards fell like raindrops, and Roger instinctively shrank back against the wall.

Glass fragments fell onto his hat.

This made him feel a bit flustered.

The Spirit Wolves landed in the church hall, surrounding Neffeli, who had her back to the doors, in a triangular formation.

“For the sake of both being Tarnished, help me out,” Neffeli shouted to Roger.

If she dealt with the wolves, she wouldn’t be able to open the doors in time.

If she turned to open the doors, the wolves would surely pounce.

Roger looked around somewhat helplessly.

The wolves didn’t seem to notice him.

“Alright…” He gritted his teeth and waved his staff.

Although most Tarnished preferred to fight alone, if a fellow countryman asked for help, they were happy to lend a hand.

There was a sense of solidarity among the Tarnished based on their status—ethereal, but definitely present.

The power of Roger’s Glintstone Pebble seemed somewhat underwhelming.

The Magic Pebble flew over and made one Spirit Wolf stagger back a few steps, and then the Spirit Wolves noticed him.

“Good job!”

Neffeli swung her axe, knocking Texas away. After getting a brief reprieve from the attacks, Neffeli aimed her axe blade at the doors.

A storm swirled around the axe blade.

It was just a door; it couldn’t be sturdier than a carriage, right?

Roger rolled around clumsily, dodging several lunges from Red, and then saw this scene.

“Wait a minute, I have the key—”

Too late.

With a boom, the doors were shattered by the blade carrying the power of the storm.

However.

The wind wasn’t blowing from the inside out.

It was blowing from the outside in.

Wood chips and nails swirled in with the wild wind.

Lappland let out a whimper and pressed herself to the ground, but was still flipped over by the gale.

Roger felt a wind as hard and powerful as a wall hit him in the face, blowing his hat away.

As for Neffeli?

She was sent flying back several meters. One of her two axes even slipped from her hand as she collapsed at Roger’s feet.

When the wind slowed slightly, Neffeli painfully propped up her upper body. Roger also opened his eyes, which had been stinging from the wind.

What came into view was a halberd bound with a military standard.

The heavy-armored figure almost completely blocked the entrance to the small church.

The Veteran with a long, pale beard scanned the two Tarnished present with his one eye.

It was a murderous gaze that only a commander who had stepped through mountains of corpses and seas of blood to achieve victory over ten thousand bones could possess.

Stared at by such a gaze, Roger felt the tips of his limbs go cold.

It was like a pika seeing a falcon, or as if a living ancient battlefield had appeared before him.

Neffeli felt her blood pumping.

This was a true warrior, a warrior accompanied by the wind.

The Veteran swung his military standard. It wasn’t just a flagpole, but a halberd much heavier than a normal Banished Knight’s Halberd, with a bright red flag tied to it.

The halberd whistled as it thrust out. Neffeli rolled to the side, picking up her other dropped axe in the process.

A warrior’s weapons are their second life.

Neffeli, holding her dual axes, clashed with the suddenly appearing Veteran. In the instant their weapons collided, Neffeli was already at a disadvantage in strength.

Both had rough and fierce fighting styles. Even if there was a difference in strength, to Roger, the battle before him still seemed like a struggle between a bull and a brown bear.

The Veteran stomped his foot, and the wild wind answered his call, turning into a powerful shockwave that blasted toward Neffeli.

Neffeli considered herself an excellent warrior capable of fighting alongside the storm, but the Veteran’s strength far exceeded hers. His mastery of the storm was as skilled as instinct; the air pressure from his step disrupted Neffeli’s breathing and even dispersed the storm gathering on her axe blades.

Neffeli staggered back, and before she could launch a counterattack, the flagpole struck her heavily in the chest.

‘Pfft—’

A mist of blood sprayed from Neffeli’s mouth.

Roger covered half his face with his hand, shrinking into the corner of the church and trembling.

“I knew I shouldn’t have helped!”

Twice now.

The last time was in the city’s entry tunnel; he had intervened without clarifying the reasons and suffered greatly for it.

And this time, even when asked for help, he had provoked a trouble he completely couldn’t handle!

Why was it so hard to be a good Soldier?

Roger watched as the Veteran walked toward Neffeli with the flagpole in hand.

The opponent raised the flagpole, pointing the tip of the halberd at the female warrior.

‘Should I take this chance to run out?’

A bold thought rose in Roger’s heart.

But that Tarnished was going to die.

To hell with it, he couldn’t even save his own life, and he didn’t know that woman anyway.

Neffeli dodged the Veteran’s thrust, and the tip of the halberd sank deep into the floorboards.

Roger took the opportunity to dash past the Veteran’s back. The Veteran turned his head slightly, his peripheral vision already catching the Tarnished trying to fish in troubled waters.

The military standard swept across. The wind blew off the standard’s cords, and the crimson flag fluttered loudly.

It made it impossible to see where the flagpole was or where the halberd blade was; the military standard flickered in a dizzying way.

“Bad luck, bad luck, bad luck—”

Roger wailed while dodging. The whistling military standard fanned the surrounding wind, making Roger’s face sting as if cut by knives.

The military standard swept against his shoulder; the cloth of the flag felt like a swinging iron plate.

Roger felt a burning pain where he was struck.

Neffeli tried to counterattack, but the Veteran’s military standard flashed before her. Before she could see anything clearly, the dual axes were knocked from her hands.

The Veteran pulled back the great flag, and with a tap and a press from the end of the flagpole…

Roger took two heavy hits to his back and was smashed flat on the ground, seeing stars.

The Veteran looked ahead again, strode forward, and kicked Neffeli.

The female warrior flew backward, leaving a web of cracks on the church wall.

Neffeli’s eyes rolled back, and like a broken sack filled with stones, she hit the ground with a thud.

The Veteran’s falcon-like gaze scanned the other things in the church.

The tables, chairs, and glass had long been reduced to dust by the wild wind.

When the three Spirit Wolves met the Veteran’s gaze, they couldn’t help but shrink back a few steps.

“Hmph.”

Facing the beasts, the Veteran’s lips curled slightly.

“Lord Pompey!” a shout from a Soldier came from behind him: “Lord Godrick wants them alive!”

“Oh!” When Pompey spoke, the surrounding air vibrated: “Tell that boy, I’ve left them alive.”

Pompey turned around, his black cloak swaying behind him.