They finally reached that pocket of air, surrounded by soldiers and knights arranged in a circular formation, fighting against the unknown enemy. They had to fight a little longer before they could push past the first line of the formation at the top of the hill. Finally, at the center of the formation, they were able to breathe for the first time in what felt like centuries and observe what was happening on the battlefield. What they saw left them pale as ghosts.
It was complete chaos. The world around them was a nightmare made real: men fighting their nightmares incarnate—and what incarnations they were. They were large, heavy, and distorted. Just looking at them created a deep sense of wrongness, as if they stained the world simply by existing. It was agony just to breathe the same air as them; it was as though every part of one’s being twisted in despair and irritation. They needed to destroy every single one of those demons.
Several other groups, like theirs, struggled to reach pockets and enclaves that gathered together to fight more effectively. They were submerged in a sea of abominable creatures as far as the eye could see.
Strangely, aside from battle cries, no one spoke a single word. Their faces displayed every kind of emotion. At the center of the formation, some had curled into themselves, their expressions frozen in shock and terror so deep and horrifying that no one even thought of trying to wake them.
[I wish I were like them right now,] he thought.
[Hey, you pathetic bastard, there’s no point pissing yourself with fear now! I’m not dying here for anything in this world, another one, or wherever the hell these terrifying things were spawned. Not now that I’m finally a knight and can shove it in the faces of those rich assholes.] He shook the thoughts away. Despite everything, he kept a stoic, serious air on his square face, with a powerful jaw, amber eyes, and straight, furrowed brows. His hair was shaved, though golden tones still showed through; all of it created a strange and striking contrast with his well-tanned, almost dark skin and his imposing height.
His rest was interrupted by a powerful voice coming from somewhere beyond the first line.
— Switch!!! — the voice roared.
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[Damn it,] Filipe sighed.
They were soldiers; everyone knew what they had to do…
It was time to fight again.
Dragging their exhausted bodies back into the battle just a few miserable meters away, they gripped their weapons and reignited the fire in their hearts.
[Pathetic!] he whispered, casting one last glance at the men lying on the ground.
As they marched, their boots felt even heavier, and the mud more slippery.
[When did it start raining?] He looked up at the sky as he put on the helmet of his barbute-style armor, his vision severely restricted, leaving only a horizontal slit to see what he had to kill and small holes to breathe through.
—I hate this! — he muttered.
[Here goes everything…] he said in his mind as he gripped the Black-Prince sword tightly and threw himself into the front line.
The noise and death returned stronger than ever.
The creature that appeared before him was especially frightening and muscular.
[Oh, you ugly bastard from hell…] the voice in his head said as he struck with a generous amount of Lumyrr gathered into his sword, making it glow blue. His blow hit the left side of the vaguely humanoid profane being, ricocheting off some kind of armor… shell??? It was hard…
Not wasting a second, he used the momentum to twist the blade and cleanly sever the demon’s left leg, effectively cutting it off.
The monster, however, was no mere observer of the battle. It reacted so quickly that an ordinary person’s eyes wouldn’t even be able to follow its movements, throwing a punch that would have killed him if he hadn’t raised his shield of blessed wood plates and enchanted steel, redirecting the force of the blow to the right while simultaneously turning his body in the same direction without losing his center of gravity, cushioning the impact and dispersing the force. Even so, it hurt badly. His skeleton creaked, and his shoulder nearly dislocated.
[Holy shit, that was close!] he growled.
Refocusing on his opponent, he advanced again, aiming for the creature’s limbs. It reacted with full force and cast a look of scorn and hunger as a bone blade suddenly formed in its hands, stabbing downward toward Filipe’s back.
Executing a roll—something not exactly comfortable to do in the bloody mud of a battlefield, especially inside plate armor—once behind the creature, he didn’t hesitate to increase the volume of Lumyrr hovering over his sword’s blade and decapitate the beast. It was hard and resilient like few things in the world, but with a CRACK, its resistance was cut through, and the head rolled across the ground. A kind of putrid blood sprayed in jets from what seemed to be the demon’s arteries, and with a dull thud, its body collapsed onto the ground.
[Haaa… I’m awesome!] Filipe panted.
[Personal note: use Lumyrr to slow the creatures’ self-healing effect and cut off the head just to be sure,] he recorded mentally.
With no time to recover from one fight, he was dragged into the next, and then the next, until his world was nothing but battle.
[How long…?] his neurons complained.
