--
"Hey, hey! Come on! Don't die on me now."
"I can...still...fight! Let me at 'em!"
"No, sir! I'm taking you back behind the walls, and you will be receiving treatment. Only when the medics say that you can return to the frontlines will you be able to go back. Don't be stubborn now."
Ulfric Hawkeye, one of Cedric's batchmates now turned into an Army officer along with Garrick and Isabella, dragged one of his comrades back to the safety of the walls while deftly avoiding the flashing lights.
Seeing that he has a gravely injured person with him, the people manning the baricade let him through, and Ulfric made his way straight to the medical bay.
Ulfric was briefly stunned when he saw the scene inside. He was greeted with rows after rows of injured people groaning and grunting in pain, along with designated medics working very hard to nurse them back to health.
A distressed cry shook him out of his stupor, and he personally witnessed a fellow soldier breathing his last. Ulfric saw grief marring the medic's face for a few seconds before it morphed into a hardened expression. That medic turned to him, and upon seeing that he's carrying a badly wounded friend, he said:
"Lay him on the bed."
Ulfric regained his mobility after hearing that. As he placed his wounded comrade on the bed, he briefly saw the medic closing the eyes of the deceased soldier before calling the movers who came to take the dead soldier away.
The medic then waved her staff and started treating the person Ulfric brought.
"This is no place for you to rest." The medic's voice echoed in his ears. "You're still an abled body; that means you still have a duty to uphold."
"Your friend's injuries aren't as bad as the previous one. He will live, that I will guarantee. As for you, go make yourself useful somewhere else. Don't be swallowed up by your fears now."
Ulfric had this idea that the last sentence of the medic was told not only to him but also to herself. He's unable to refute her words, so he stood up and planned to make his way out there on the field again.
Once again, he saw the grim scene playing out in the medical bay and was reminded how horrible war truly was.
There's at least several thousands of injured soldiers here and not enough medics. Because of the imbalance between numbers, other medics had to operate on more than one person at the same time. God knows how demanding that can be.
Each second he spent here meant at least hundreds of people holding on for dear life as the medics tried their best to save them. How many survive depends on chance.
How many of these dying people will leave a grieving family behind? How many were unwilling to die? How many died because they weren't able to get treatment in time? How many were successfully healed but then told to go out there again, risking their lives just for the small chance of survival?
And these so-called medics—who looks after them? The majority of them looked like they weren't even in their 30s yet. For all he knew, this might well be the very first time they witnessed someone die despite trying their best. Lord knows what that kind of scene does to someone, but they had to suppress it because the injured just keep coming.
Once they reached a certain distance, Chrissy suddenly leapt up and threw a bunch of black roses behind them.
The black roses turned into a steak of light, which flew to their designated targets. They all landed at the same time, and when they did, something incredible happened.
Fwooosh!!!
A cloud of gray mist suddenly erupted out of nowhere, turning into a cloud of purple smoke a minute later. It's as if a chain reaction was triggered, and all of a sudden, there was a tall wall of that smoke in the middle of the horde.
Because of the frenzy of the demons' march, none of them were even slightly perturbed by the appearance of this smoke. They weren't alarmed either, because nothing happened to them when they made contact with it.
But how can it be so simple?
Why would Team Elric use the underground tunnel network to penetrate deep into the enemy lines and risk their lives just to help Chrissy set up this massive-scale poison array?
Of course, that purple smoke did something. It's Chrissy's creation; how can it be useless?
The effect of the poison isn't something that these dumb demons could easily sense or decipher. Just merely seeing it already gave them an affliction. which dulls their nervous response and poisons their bloodstreams.
Dulling their nervous response makes them susceptible to carelessness, making it easier for the soldiers to kill them. The poison in their bloodstreams will be triggered once they're injured, causing every injury that they will suffer from then on to be considered so lethal and extremely painful that it paralyzes them.
With Chrissy's Black Rose Calamity Physique, this poison was also considered a hex and a curse. Meaning that getting rid of it was close to an impossibility.
Oh, and the best part? This poison, given time, will penetrate their souls. Meaning that even if the afflicted demons were to be reincarnated through the Soul Network and the Flesh Incubator, they would still suffer from its effects. No amount of rebirth will get rid of it.
This was Chrissy's latest magnum opus. She calls it the 'Immotal Demon's Bane' and it represents her hatred against the demon race. She held nothing back from the creation of this concoction. All the spite, hate, disgust, and her wishes to eradicate them were used as fuel for the birth of this thing.
A vindicative sneer appeared on Chrissy's face as soon as she saw their enemies ignoring the purple smoke. She also instinctively knew that Erica was also seeing this and was grinning too.
"That's the eastern wall dealt with. We have three more sides to go. Let's move," Elric stated as they activated the transportation array nearby.
That's right. The plan was to set up this poison array on all sides of the wall. This was the mission that Fiona gave to Team Elric earlier. She didn't require them to do this and merely suggested it; still, the team insisted on taking it because they knew the stakes.
With the boys protecting her, Chrissy was confident that she could do this again and again.
If people knew how sinister her methods were, they'd probably call her a witch. Chrissy didn't care, though.
If becoming a sinister witch meant that she could save many lives and eradicate their oppressors, she didn't mind becoming one.