Chapter 203 - The First Failure

After throwing the bomb, I turned and ran without even looking back to see whether it had hit its target.

And it was not as though I had any time to check.

The section of the camp around us erupted into activity after the short clash between my squad and the Frosthallow squad. As I ran, I could hear horns blaring and soldiers shouting.

Varric, Daren, and Rokan took up vanguard positions without needing me to give an order. They swung their hammers, smashing enemy soldiers and shields without a care.

And they were not the only ones dealing damage.

The commotion attracted some soldiers who were not completely aware of what was going on. One curious soldier came out without a shield or spear, and I killed him by piercing his neck. A few more curious Frosthallow soldiers were killed by Peter and me in the same way.

But within a few minutes, the soldiers started organizing themselves.

Almost fifty meters away from us, a shield wall started to form.

Pulling out one of my core bombs, I threw it behind the wall of soldiers.

“Use rune bombs to clear the soldiers close to us and core bombs to disrupt them!” I shouted.

I had made a dozen core bombs with Lady Flavia’s help that day and distributed them among my unit, but we could not risk throwing them too close to ourselves. They were chaotic and could harm us as well. Rune bombs, on the other hand, were more controlled and easier to avoid, even while running through this chaos.

Following my order, Barry and Silas also threw one core bomb each behind the wall, causing enough fear among the soldiers that the shield wall broke apart without us needing to use any rune bombs.

But attacks still came from the soldiers around us. Varric’s team countered them, either by deflecting spears or, in Varric’s case, smashing his hammer into a soldier’s head.

Things got worse once we passed those soldiers because we were now surrounded.

While the heavy hammers still made most soldiers afraid to approach us from the front, spears started coming from the sides and behind us.

Some were blocked by shields. Others were blocked by my mana shields. Even then, almost all of us received cuts from the spears, some on the shoulder and others on the thigh or calf.

“Keep pushing! We have only five hundred meters to go!” I shouted.

Then I threw a rune bomb between two Tier-3 soldiers. One of them had attacked me, and his spear had just grazed my calf. My aim was to kill both of them with one attack. As we moved forward, I created a mana shield near the blast radius to protect my squad and myself from the flames and heat of the rune bomb.

After a few more seconds of running, I sensed earth mana spreading beneath us.

“Brace! Prepare for an attack from the ground!” I warned my squad.

Thankfully, instead of attacking us, the mana simply moved the ground beneath us backward.

Thanks to my warning, my squad had already stopped running. So when the ground shifted, we were able to maintain our footing instead of losing our balance, which would have happened if we had kept running.

The problem was that the pause gave the soldiers a chance to reorganize, effectively trapping us between them.

As I tried to analyze the soldiers and their formation to find an exit, Peter unexpectedly sprang into action.

He threw a core bomb at a forty-five-degree angle from the direction in which we had been running.

One unlucky soldier caught the bomb.

A moment later, it detonated in his hand.

“Move in the direction I threw the bomb!” Peter shouted.

My squad followed Peter’s direction, and as we ran, I realized what he had done.

Peter had analyzed the soldiers around us and found the area where their density was lowest. More importantly, following Peter’s direction meant that we would not be heading toward the western gate, which offered the shortest route back. Instead, we would be moving toward the sewage canal.

It added at least a hundred extra meters to our escape route, but the benefits were far greater than those offered by the path we were currently taking.

While the route was longer, we would reach the sewage canal in less than two hundred meters. Once we did, the canal’s structure would funnel our attackers, greatly reducing the number of soldiers we would have to face.

We threw the last of our bombs to thin out the soldiers in our path even further, pouring everything we had into our legs as we looked toward that smelly sewage canal as though it were our only path to salvation.

Just as we were about to jump into the canal, my skill, [Perceptive Instinct (UC)], went wild, sensing something I had never sensed before.

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“Run! Run!” I shouted to my squad.

At the same time, I pushed every ounce of mana I had into creating a condensed mana shield around my torso, concentrating most of it around my heart and lungs. Then I turned to face the attack head-on, wanting to at least see my assailant before dying.

Even after turning back, I could not see who had attacked me, probably because he was flying toward us from hundreds of meters away. Yet his arc of wind struck me directly in the chest.

It destroyed everything.

My mana shield, the rune on my jacket, the chain mail underneath, and even the flesh beneath it.

The force threw me so far backward that I crossed the canal completely.

Disoriented, I forced myself to stand and saw a man, much closer than before, flying toward my squad.

Just as he attacked again, a wall of sewage water rose and blocked the wind blade. At the same time, swords made of silver liquid shot toward the assailant.

I turned toward the wall and saw a mass of silver liquid and a man covered in flames flying toward our location.

“Come on. Our job is done. Let the monsters do their work.”

Through my disorientation, I heard Barry’s voice as he and Peter supported me, draping one of my arms over each of their shoulders.

“Come on. They have lowered the ramp to pull us up,” Peter said.

I tried to look in the direction he indicated, but I could not see anything. Whether because of the pain or blood loss, black spots were already spreading across my vision.

Thankfully, with the Tier-4s guarding our exit and Barry and Peter guiding me, I could finally focus enough to analyze my wound.

Closing my eyes, I sensed it, and after a few seconds, I relaxed a little.

The good news was that I would not die within the next few seconds. My mana shield had absorbed most of the wind mana around my chest and lungs.

The wound was still large, starting at my right shoulder and ending just above my left thigh. But because I had concentrated most of my mana around my chest, my abdomen had been left less protected, causing heavier damage there.

The bad news was that, if not for my tight armor and uniform holding everything in place, my guts would have spilled onto the battlefield.

Literally.

With no mana left in my system, I could only hope that I would get a healer experienced enough to save me.

After what felt like an eternity, Barry and Peter came to a stop and gently placed me on a wooden surface, which started moving upward. My senses remained completely focused on my wound.

Then I remembered that I still had the last few drops of the potion Lieutenant Caeso had given me.

“P... potion,” I mumbled.

“Sergeant!” Peter shouted, and I felt his hand on my shoulder.

“P... potion... backpack,” I mumbled.

After some time, I felt Peter lift my head and place a bottle against my mouth.

The potion felt like an elixir of life.

Only for it to run out far too quickly.

There had been too little left—less than ten milliliters. Through sheer grit, I focused on the mana released from the potion and diverted it toward my abdomen.

I was able to stop most of the internal bleeding there.

Once the wooden surface stopped moving, I was moved again and placed on a stone surface, most likely the town wall.

After that, I just lay there with my eyes closed, trying to conserve what little mana I had while listening to the voices around me.

From the chatter of my squad and the nearby soldiers, I learned that the Tier-4 wind mage was not the only one fighting Lieutenant Caeso and Lieutenant Torquatus. A Tier-4 earth mage had also arrived when the wind mage was injured by their attacks.

“That’s it? Why are they stopping so soon?” Barry shouted, as if someone had stopped his favorite performance midway through.

“What do you want them to do? Fight all the Tier-4s in the Frosthallow army? Look, two more Tier-4s are flying toward them,” Silas said to Barry.

“Well, I was hoping they would kill at least one monster,” Barry said.

Meanwhile, I wondered why the fuck I was not being taken to the infirmary.

I got my answer just a few seconds after Barry stopped speaking.

I felt a cold liquid touch my body, and strange mana began flowing into me at an extraordinary rate. Before I could even react, my wound began healing visibly.

I sensed the wound in my abdomen close within two minutes. In the next minute, the wound across my chest closed as well.

When I opened my eyes, Barry’s smirking face was the first thing I saw.

I rolled my eyes and slowly stood up, only to see Lieutenant Torquatus already prepared to give his analysis of my mission.

Thankfully, Lieutenant Caeso stepped between us and addressed my squad.

“Take Sergeant Edward to the infirmary. He has lost too much blood. Three hours there, along with the herbs they have, should help him recover from the blood loss. But no battle for at least the next twenty-four hours.”

Exactly three hours later that morning, Senior Lieutenant Torquatus arrived at the infirmary, as if he had been waiting outside for Lieutenant Caeso’s deadline to pass.

“Sergeant Edward, you failed to achieve your objective. Moreover, after this mission, Frosthallow is now aware of our ability to sneak into their camp, making any future missions much harder to execute.”

I sighed. “So my bomb did not land,” I said.

Even if it had landed, the chances of it destroying the transmission equipment were low, but it would have given me at least a partial success.

“No. Your last desperate effort missed the target by almost a hundred meters.”

I nodded.

This was the first mission I had failed.

I did not know what would happen now, but I was not too worried about it. I had done everything I could during the mission. Even a delay of a few seconds in my decision to retreat would have cost us our lives.

“But there will be no repercussions for failing this mission,” Senior Lieutenant Torquatus continued. “While you failed your direct objective, you succeeded in the mission Captain Petrae had given you.

“Your unit was able to attract the attention of not just one but two Tier-4s at the same time, and you caused a huge amount of damage to lower-level soldiers.

“Your mission, and especially your new bombs, should affect the morale of the mercenary units and the lower-level soldiers in the Frosthallow army.”

I nodded once more.

Then Senior Lieutenant Torquatus asked, “Do you have any questions?”

“Yes. Do you know how and when my squad was discovered?” I asked.

That had been bothering me.

The Tier-3 Frosthallow leader had known my squad was present. That was why he had first sent a soldier as a decoy to draw our attention. Even his words, calling us Avalon rats, implied that he had already known we were an enemy squad.

“Your squad was discovered almost a hundred meters before you were caught,” Senior Lieutenant Torquatus replied. “As for how, it was not because of any spies. My guess is that it was the sensing skill of the leader who attacked you. Thankfully for your squad, instead of alerting his superiors, he tried to eliminate you by himself.”

He waited for me to ask more questions.

I had a few more, but I decided not to ask them for now.

When no questions came, he left me lying on my bed and made his way out.

Only for Lieutenant Caeso to enter the room a few moments later.

Author’s Note: If you are wondering why Edward and his team did not face more elemental attacks during their escape, with only one earth-mana-based attack appearing in the entire sequence, there is a reason. In a chaotic situation like this, area-of-effect attacks could easily hit Frosthallow’s own soldiers. To significantly threaten Edward’s squad, they would need precision attacks, possibly from elite mages. Such mages are limited in number, so only a few would have been present in the small section of the camp that Edward disrupted.