"This fucking duke..." Sylfan cursed under his nose, using his voice just loud enough to carry his emotions out of the system while silent enough for his unit commissioner not to hear it.
"How the hell are we supposed to fight if we cannot even find a single enemy to battle?!" Arty, Sylfan's direct subordinate didn't really care to hold his words back.
Compared to Sylfan, Arty was merely a commoner, nothing more than a tool in the duke's eyes. And no sane commissioner would care about what some commoner was rambling about.
But if this kind of words denouncing the duke's infinite wisdom were to come out from Sylfan's noble mouth...
"Trust me, I wish I knew Duke's magnificent plan," Sylfan replied, making sure to color his words with enough flair to make them passable for the commissioner's ears. "But as mere pawns on the board of his grandiose plans, we can merely lower our heads and toil away in hopes our efforts will bring fruition to the duke's genius."
Sylfan lowered his head whenever mentioning Duke or his plans, just to showcase how much respect he had for the hated despot who just happened to come out from between the legs of the right woman and at the right time.
"It's hard to compile a general report, but things..." Arty ignored Sylfan's poems praising the duke completely as if it was nothing more but a noise that he long since grown used to. So used to, in fact, he could no longer ever perceive it. "If my extrapolation is correct, then we are in deep shit."
Arty raised his eyes and looked at his commanding officer.
As a man losing in rank only to the field commander, general, and the duke himself, Sylfan really needed to get a good picture of what was going on. Fated to suffer under Duke's idiotic orders, he needed all the information he could get to salvage as many lives out of their army as he could.
'If only this fucker wasn't here...' Arty thought, turning his eyes over and giving the nearby commissioner a hateful stare.
That man was just like Sylfan. Born to a noble household, forced to look into making his own place in the world when their eldest sibling enforced their claim to their household's fortune. But while Sylfan refused any connection to his great house and started from the very bottom, rising through the ranks with the help of his dedication, skills, and hard work...
Askha, the duke's commissioner to Sylfan unit, took an easy path. A shortcut that existed only because the duke was stupid enough to become a tyrant... but not stupid enough to fail to realize the fact.
And, in the fat head of that overweight piece of shit, the easiest way to control the loyalty of his army wasn't to raise their morale, give them good pay, or be a generally decent person and commander.
No.
In the duke's mind twisted by the luxurious upbringing that equaled only his household's disregard for the commoners, the only way to keep the commoners in his army in line... was to place nobles in charge of them and then make them responsible for any and all mistakes, problems, rumors or slanders that would be born in their respective units.
In its stupidity, this plan turned out to be extremely efficient.
The common soldiers either loved or hated their superiors. And with all of the officers being noble, it took only a few years before the dukedom's army layered out.
The commoners kept to themselves, scared of doing anything that their noble commander would wrong them for. Feeling excluded, even the decent nobles in charge of the army ended up colluding with other officers, turning into a tight caste that quickly adopted the duke's disregard for the commoners.
"Yeah, Ugo led them away to secure our flank and create a perimeter for this space," Sylfan commented, quickly pulling out the necessary information from the back of his head as he stared back at a simple, ugly drawing depicting what they knew about the current situation in the field... Or rather, the dense, forbidden forest.
"I guess you should cross Ugo's unit out, then," Arty sighed before stuffing up all the papers in his hand into a small bag by his belt and pulling out his sword instead.
"What?" Sylfan asked, raising his eyes from the table and then moving them along the direction Arty was starting. And as the first soldiers of Ugo's elite unit emerged from behind the trees, running as if the devil himself was chasing after them...
"I think it's time," Arty muttered, forcing already distracted Sylfan to look away from the running soldiers and back to his direct subordinate... Only to watch as he circled around the small table.
"Wait, what is he do..."
Swish!
With a single, leisurely even, push of his sword, Arty pierced straight through several inches of fat before the tip of his blade reached Askha's heart, piercing right through it only for now bloodied tip to come out from the commissioner's back.
"I don't know if it's true that they eat man's flash, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to try," Arty muttered, not showing even a single hint of hesitation, doubt, or fear when he pulled out his simple sword from Aksha's frozen body. His face didn't change when the commissioner gave him first a surprised, then shocked, and finally a hateful look.
"I guess that marks the end of our ruse," Sylfan whispered, more to himself than to anyone else. He then looked back to where more and more men came out of the woods, every last one of them more scared by what was chasing them than the ones that came before them.
"That's right," Arty muttered while shaking his head. He then raised his hand, allowing the sword in his hand to slide within his palm all the way to the point where it pointed directly at the ground. Then, after reaffirming his grasp over the weapon's handle, Arty struck his right, blade-bearing fist into his chest.
"Warriors of Etna!" Arty's voice suddenly echoed throughout the entirety of the small, open space where Sylfan decided to set up their temporary, field headquarters.
And contrary to any of the calls Sylfan could make, all of the soldiers in the area turned their eyes away from the survivors of whatever disaster happened further east, focusing on their field commander instead.
"The commissioner is dead! And so is Ugo's unit!" Arty shouted out loud while already making his head towards the survivors with the sword in his hand. "All in all, we are fucked. There's no winning this battle! So, don't bring shame to our dear commander..." a wave of chuckles moved past the soldiers as Arty pointed at noble superior, "and at least keep order while retreating!"
There was no need for Arty to repeat his words. His power over the other soldiers didn't come from his family name, status, or any of the other things depraved by the tyrannical rule of the current duke.
His authority came, just like in the old times, from his experience.
And from the fact that while he ordered everyone to pretty much run with their tail between their legs, he actively moved in the other direction, ready to put himself against whatever was chasing the leftovers of Ugo's unit.
Arty's timing turned out to be impeccable. By the time he crossed barely half the distance that kept him away from the trees, a massive and seemingly shapeless monster came out, looming well over ten meters above the open field of the clearing. Discover more stories at m,v l'e-novelhall.net
And before Arty could swing his sword, stand down, turn around, or do literally anything, several tens of tentacles composed of nothing but bright darkness shot out from the shapeless blob of the monster, piercing through close to half of the survivors of Ugo's unit that made it this far.