Chapter 1700 - 236 - Heroes First Campaign (3)

Kaori's POV

The battle was happening right in front of me.

Looking at the battlefield alone, anyone would probably think this was exactly the kind of place where they should never step foot.

Honestly, I would have thought the same thing if someone had shown me this place before the war started.

Yet somehow, I was standing here now.

I was actually in the middle of a battlefield, surrounded by soldiers, weapons, explosions, and people fighting for their lives.

This was something I never would have imagined happening to me.

If someone had told me years ago that I would eventually find myself fighting in an actual war, I probably would have laughed at them because the idea seemed completely ridiculous.

I wasn't a warrior.

I wasn't someone who had dreamed of fighting on a battlefield.

I didn't wake up one morning and decide that I wanted to spend the day surrounded by people trying to kill one another.

Yet here I was anyway.

I was fighting in a war that I didn't even want to be part of.

My legs were trembling so badly that I could barely feel them anymore, and the fear running through my body made it difficult to properly understand everything happening around me.

People were fighting everywhere.

Weapons were clashing against one another.

Soldiers were shouting orders.

Explosions could be heard in the distance.

The entire battlefield felt like one enormous nightmare, except this wasn't something I could wake up from after closing my eyes.

I wanted to move.

I wanted to run.

I wanted to get as far away from this place as possible.

My body, however, wasn't cooperating with what my mind wanted.

"Kaori!" someone suddenly shouted beside me.

I immediately recognized the voice.

It was Ayaka.

I tried to look toward her, but before I could properly react, I noticed someone approaching from directly in front of me.

A soldier was already standing there.

He was holding a sword in both hands, and the weapon was already being swung toward me.

For a moment, my body completely froze.

I could see the blade coming closer.

My heart began pounding violently inside my chest, and my legs were shaking so badly that I wasn't sure whether I could even move them properly.

Everything seemed to happen at once.

I could hear the sounds of the battlefield around me, but they suddenly felt distant, almost as though someone had pushed me underwater.

The sword kept coming.

My mind screamed at me to move.

Then, before I even had enough time to consciously decide what I was doing, my body reacted on its own.

I swung my sword.

It was pure self-defense.

I wasn't thinking about killing him.

I simply remembered what Leon had taught me.

If someone attacked me, I had to defend myself.

The sword in my hands met the incoming blade with enough force to stop its attack.

The impact was stronger than I expected.

The enemy's sword broke.

My own sword, however, continued moving forward.

I couldn't stop it.

The blade struck his body and continued through him, cutting from one side to the other before the attack finally ended.

For several seconds, I couldn't even understand what I had just done.

I simply stood there, staring.

The soldier's body, now cut in half, fell to the ground in front of me.

My hands were still wrapped around the sword.

My legs were still trembling.

My breathing had become uneven.

I stared at the body lying in front of me, unable to tear my eyes away from it.

Only moments ago, that person had been standing there alive.

He had been trying to kill me.

Now he was dead because I had defended myself.

I had actually killed someone.

I trembled the moment I looked at what had happened, because the reality of the situation finally hit me all at once, and I suddenly understood something that I never thought I would have to accept in my entire life.

I had just killed someone.

I had actually killed another person.

For the first time in my life, my own hands had taken someone's life, and the realization was so overwhelming that it felt like my entire world had suddenly collapsed around me without giving me even a moment to prepare myself for it.

I stood there frozen, staring at the man I had just killed while both of my hands continued trembling uncontrollably. I couldn't seem to look away from him, even though some part of me desperately wanted to turn around and pretend that none of this had happened.

He was still looking at me.

His expression remained filled with anger. My mind kept trying to find some kind of explanation for what I had done, but there wasn't anything that could make it feel better.

Was he looking at me because I had killed him?

What could possibly have been going through his mind at that moment?

Did he regret something?

Did he have a family somewhere who was waiting for him to come home?

Maybe he had someone he loved, someone who had absolutely no idea that he wasn't going to return after this battle.

I didn't know.

That was the worst part.

I knew nothing about him.

I didn't know his name, where he came from, whether he had anyone waiting for him, or even what kind of life he had before we ended up standing on opposite sides of a battlefield.

Yet I had killed him anyway.

The longer I remained standing there, the weaker my legs felt, and I honestly thought I was going to collapse onto the ground if I stayed frozen in place for much longer.

"KAORI!"

Someone suddenly shouted directly in front of my face, and the sudden sound finally managed to drag my attention away from the thoughts that were swallowing me whole.

It was Ayaka.

She was standing right in front of me, looking at me with an expression that was much more serious than usual.

"Keep yourself together!" she shouted while grabbing my attention before I could completely lose myself.

"B-But..."

The words barely managed to leave my mouth, because I didn't even know what I was supposed to say after that.

"I killed someone too," Ayaka said firmly.

She raised her blade and showed it to me, and the weapon was stained with the blood of the person she had just fought.

"So you don't have to carry the burden of killing someone by yourself," she continued while looking straight into my eyes. "You can bear it together with me, so don't think you're the only one who's going through this."

Her expression softened for only a moment before becoming serious again.

"If you keep standing around like this, however, someone is going to kill you next, and I really don't want to watch you get yourself killed because you froze at the worst possible time."