**Half an hour earlier**
"Come on, boys, keep it up! The princess is watching!"
Luan rolled his eyes when he heard the major's encouraging words.
"He could stop reminding us," Luan muttered while fixing his hold over the reins. "It doesn't make it any easier to ride while maintaining a formal position."
With their backs straightened and legs only loosely sitting in the stirrups, a rider could hardly compensate for the movement of the horse's back. And with how their legion's cavalry used the evolved horses for the mounts...
The effects of not cooperating as well with their horses only grew harder and harder to endure.
And with the shifting body of their mounts below their asses wasn't enough of a bother, keeping a perfectly straight back and looking ahead with their chin raised at all times...
It was a recipe for a dental disaster!
"Shush, you moron," Carl, riding to Luan's left, scolded his friend. "Do you want him to hear you?"
The noise made by the hooves of their mounts could easily drown even the most whiny of Luan's remarks.
But just like their horses, the legionaries themselves prided themselves on being the best of the best of what humanity had to offer. One could only gain the entry and then the ranks within the legion by the way of merit, not money or social status.
What it boiled down in the moment, though, was that their major, one of the highest charges a common man could achieve anywhere in the army... Had to be one hell of a monster of a man.
And expecting him to miss Luan's remarks over something as insignificant as the general noise of five hundred massive beasts running down the old, decrepit road...
"He won't care," Luan muttered in response... but with a much shallower voice. If not for the formal requirements of his position, all in the bid to impress the golden princess, he would likely lower his chin and hide his face.
With his haughty words contrasting with his meek physical reaction, Luan pursed his lips.
He had enough of letting his company pass time at the expense of watching him get punished for his loose lips. And after serving as the company's entertainment for some months by now, he finally started to grow a little bit restrained when it came to his words.
"As long as I keep the formal posture, ma..." Luan gulped down his saliva. "Sir Major shouldn't complain."
"And that's why you started to refer to him per sir?" Carl laughed out, his shoulders shaking a little as he carefully maintained his straightened back.
Luan looked to his left, giving his friend a long, thoughtful stare.
'I guess he will be the one I will be competing for the promotion with,' he thought.
They were both sergeants, commanding a small unit of nine each. And as long as they could bring glory to the empire on the battlefield, they just might be able to jump a rank higher by the end of the campaign!
"His strength, though?" Carl continued to speak, more to himself than to his friend.
His eyes were absent, locked on something far, far beyond anywhere Luan could see.
"The great war is over, all that's left for us is to rot some..."
*BOOM!*
A huge explosion shook the air right as a cone of fire suddenly filled the leftmost quarter of Luan's vision.
Thrown off the saddle by the discharge, he shifted his body mid-fall, ensuring that his armor would take the brunt of the damage, as opposed to his joins or vital parts.
'Wha...'
Luan's reaction was fully automatic, based on nothing but muscle memory alone. His mind, though...
His mind stopped.
It wasn't the first time for Luan to get thrown off his mount during an attack.
But the last time it happened was at Lunagar fortress, not in the...
Thud.
Falling down to the ground, all thoughts escaped Luan's mind along with the breath that squeezed out of his chest and escaped through his lips in a dull sigh.
And the last thing he saw before his vision started to go dark, was the lower body of Carl, his friend, casually sitting down on his horse's saddle...
With everything above the man's belt cleanly severed off, the blood spewed by the attack seemingly exploding in flames and leaving a burning trail along his mount's path.