"Mister Peter, a word please."
All things considered, it took the members of my unit a lot longer than I expected to come to protest my latest decision. After all, here I was going around sparing random people while they were busying themselves killing as many of them as they could!
So, some sort of protest was given... But I expected it to appear as soon as the two humans I decided to spare were brought away, not after we had already moved on, finished all the wounded in the area before moving on to keep up the chase.
"What seems to be the problem?" I asked, turning my face to a slightly oversized dear with a crown of horns so big, that he had to actively use his aura just to keep himself stable.
What was the point of assuming his animalistic form in the middle of a thick forest where every tree would be an obstacle hard to move past with horns of that size, I couldn't fathom.
But thankfully, figuring out the answer to that wasn't an issue at hand.
"I would like to know why you decided to spare those two humans," the celestial spoke, only to weird me out with how the movements of its snout translated to actual words that had no physical right to come out of a deer's throat.
Still, instead of answering, I simply gave the celestial a long, exasperated look.
"Do you want the short or long answer?" I asked, making sure to keep up the pace of a slightly hurried walk.
Contrary to what one could expect, this relatively peaceful stroll was more than just enough to keep up with the rate at which the humans were retreating from the forest. As long as we kept this pace steady and ignored all the obstacles on the way, the stumbling and chaos-stricken units of the invaders could never outmatch... or even match our speed.
"I would like both," the celestial spoke again, only to throw its massive, horny head to the side when the far, right flank of our loose line encountered a small number of humans.
Not stopping even for a second, I continued to lead the group ahead.
Given the disproportionate strength of humans, celestials, and divines, as long as the number of combatants was more or less the same, there was no need for me to worry about even the slightest losses. Read exclusive chapters at m_v-l'-novelhall.net
"The short answer is, just because," I gave the response locals were sure to hate. "I'm the one leading this unit and I'm the one behind the general plan for the defense of this forest. And in no army in the whole world do commanders have any need to explain their actions and decisions to mere foot soldiers."
Antagonizing my own allies wasn't the best of my ideas. But it was something I had to do to establish one, very simple fact.
I wasn't just their slave, helper, or convenient ally. I was someone with my own agenda that I was securing while helping them on the side. As such, there was absolutely no reason for me to care what the locals would think in the short term, for in the long term, I had no plans to stay in this damned forest for any longer than necessary.
As a distant echo of machine gun fire reached my ears, I simply took a breath before pulling Fay one step ahead. And then another.
Then, following my example, our allies picked up the slack and started their march yet again, heading straight for the source of the cry and ever louder noise of gunfire.
Yet, the closer we got to the edge of the forest, the slower our march became. Bit by bit, more and more of my troops had to engage with stragglers and deserters of the human army, quickly grinding our advance to a nearly complete halt.
'Well, it's not like there's any need for me to be there,' I thought, stifling the annoyance that continued to grow in my soul the slower our unit marched ahead. 'Makary should be more than capable of dealing with it by his...'
"Mister Peter!" Once again, a celestial rushed to my side. This time, however, rather than a deer, it was one hell of a massive crane.
'Just how in all hells did it get through all the trees? Or, assuming it flew above, how did it spot where we are?'
I shook my head, leaving this puzzling topic aside as I watched the massive, white crane turn into a cloud of mist, only for a handsome, young man dressed in just a simple, knee-long tunic to walk out of it.
"Your friends at the forest's edge," the young celestial lowered himself down and rested his hands on his knees, taking a second to regain his breath. "They urge you to come and see them. There's some sort of problem they underestimated and they seek your advice."
This was weird.
'What sort of problem a modern army could have when they sit in well-entrenched positions with damn firearms with nothing but a crowd of defenseless soldiers running away from them?'
I took a deep breath, using the time this lone breath bought me to analyze the situation.
"And how were things looking when you left to pass the message?" I asked, raising my eyes and squinting them a bit as I looked at the celestial.
"Okayish, I guess?" the young celestial's eyebrows moved to the center of his head, meeting right above the two wrinkles that emerged. "They were running, your friends were killing them en masse," he explained with a shake of his shoulders.
"I will have to go and see what problem they have myself, I guess," I muttered before shaking my head. "Thanks for the message. If you have the strength to come back, could you go and tell them I'm coming?"
The celestial simply nodded his head before turning around, exploding into a cloud of dense aura, and then emerging from it back in his crane's form.
"What problem could they have, I wonder," I muttered to myself before taking a breath and picking up the pace once again. "I guess we will have to go there and find out!"