A few days have passed since Vigil departed from the No Man's Land and said his goodbye's to Maltena.
Not much has changed in that short time span...
Scratch that, a decent bit has changed.
The reason?
Well, that was because he now knew the feeling of getting shot. Not by an arrow but instead by a gun. Although he had not been shot by an arrow yet and hoped that he never would.
"Arrgh!"
Vigil let out a stifled groan as he gripped his right calf - the one that currently had an opening the size of a grown man's pinky finger.
Quickly, Vigil rolled the right leg of his previously scavenged oversized pants, up to where his knee was. As he did so, he was able to get a better look at what damage he had received within the span of his previous fight.
While his face contorted into a small grimace - that was currently being blocked by his helmet - the boy swiftly took some glances around him, making sure that this time he was truly the only living person left in this failed excuse for a cemetery.
At the moment, all around him was a view that he had gotten much too used to much too quickly, even by his standards.
The aforementioned view being a field full of corpses, some with near to no wounds and others with limbs just lying about with no clear owner.
After finishing up with confirming that he was truly the last one alive - at least within the general vicinity - Vigil shot a final, spiteful glare, at the person that laid no more than a foot away from him.
Right beside Vigil was a body that was fresher than most.
However, that was not to say that it looked the best out of the lot, because as of this moment, there was a long sword lodged vertically into the woman's head, pinning it to the ground.
Vigil then muttered something to himself before directing his vision away from the corpse and towards his freshly injured leg.
"What did I ever do to you?"
As he said this, he was unable to resist the urge to glance back on what happened a few minutes prior to this moment.
***
While Vigil was thinking about ways to rig his sword so that he would no longer need to waste energy by dragging it everywhere, he happened to stumble upon yet another field full of bodies.
Seeing the carnage strewn about, Vigil promptly crouched down and began to survey the area, hoping that no one and nothing was still lingering around.
After thirty seconds of warily scanning his surroundings, Vigil slowly stood back up and began to walk forward - directly towards the scene of the massacre.
In his head, he was thinking that, while he was here he-
'Might as well restock on supplies.'
Only a minute or two had passed when Vigil began to hear the quiet sounds of a woman weeping.
Looking to his left, Vigil was able to see an oddly large looking corpse with its lower half completely gone, showing off the once alive person's intestines clearly to the rest of the world.
However, this was no corpse at all... Well it sort of was, as instead of it being just one large person, it was actually two.
One was undeniably dead, while the other was a very much alive woman laying on top of the corpse, hugging it while balling her eyes out.
'Well at least I found the source of the noise...'
As he looked upon the scene laid before his eyes, Vigil took a moment to think about what his next action should be.
'Should I just ignore her and leave? But what if she happens to be hostile and attacks me while my back is turned... Alright, then I guess I will either have to confront her or kill her. But...'
While Vigil was trying to come to a conclusion on how to take care of the crying woman, he thought back to the conversation he had with Maltena a few days prior.
More specifically, he thought back to when the gentle giant had told him about who he could and couldn't trust.
In other words, how he should trust no one but the people from Lumarta, Mercy, and Ygultra.
However, that only caused even more questions to spring up within his head with a very specific, as well as reasonable, one weighing on his mind the most.
'How exactly can I tell where she might be from... Wait! I got it. Ygultra is in the far west, so that should rule them out. Mercy is... Well pretty much everyone there is a mercenary, hence the name mercenary city so... And Lumarta is in the north! But am I more northern or southern right now...?'
It was when he had gotten to that point in his thoughts that he gave up and instead decided to try and approach the woman while exercising utmost caution.
So with that plan in mind, Vigil began to slowly walk over to the sorrowful woman while making absolutely sure that he did not make a sound so as not to startle her. As he did so, he also kept one hand wrapped firmly around the hilt of his now unsheathed sword and the other around the sheath itself just in case things went awry.
After a short and unclimactic minute, Vigil had made it to his destination - the crying woman.
Now that he had gotten close to her, a solid three to four feet away, he was able to better see the situation.
Currently resting her now limp body atop a mangled, disfigured corpse with her face buried within her palms, was the crying woman that had become the center of Vigil's attention for the past few minutes.
She wore the same thing that most of the corpses surrounding them wore, a mix of plate, leather, chainmail, and a lightweight yet durable piece of clothing in the shape of a vest that Vigil could not put a name to.
Off to the side was the lady's helmet. One that Vigil did not recognize as it was not even made out of the same material his was, steel.
But out of everything that Vigil could see of her, the thing that caught his attention the most were the two short yet distinct horns protruding from the sides of her head and curving downwards.
'... This woman is not human... Right?'
Quickly shaking off the useless thoughts, Vigil gently called out to the wallowing ball of sadness before him while preparing himself for a fight.
"Excuse me miss. Are you... in need of help?"
The second those words left his mouth, the woman abruptly stopped crying and slowly raised her head from her cupped hands.
She then gently turned her head to the side just enough to be able to see the young boy out of the corner of her eyes.
"Help... Do I need help? You disgusting-!"
Without even finishing her sentence, the woman turned around and swung her clenched fist towards Vigil's head.
Seeing this, he reacted as quickly as he could and raised his sword high enough for its edge to meet head on with the woman's fist. When it did, to both Vigil and the lady's surprise, the blade of his weapon got lodged into the woman's knuckles, stopping her attack dead in its tracks while also incapacitating her right hand.
Taking advantage of this abrupt moment of shock, he then swiftly let go of his hilt and rushed at the woman, tackling her and pinning her to the ground.
However, only a second or two after he had done so, a loud pop rang out from just beside him. Looking down towards the ground and to the right, he could see the woman that he had pinned down holding the gun that had just gone off, in her hand - seemingly ready to lift it and point it directly at him.
Noticing this, without a second thought, Vigil raised his leg just enough to set it on top of the arm that currently held the deadly firearm, buying him some time, no matter how minimal.
He then quickly looked back, found his weapon, took it into his hands, lifted it up, and with his full force including his weight put behind it, stabbed down with the tip of the blade pointed towards the woman's face.
And with that, we are now back to the present, where Vigil had just begun to try patching up his newest wound.
'I can only assume that it is similar to how Professor Shtil taught us how to clean up an injury from an arrow... What on god's green earth was he teaching us?'
As he was thinking about the weird, borderline crazy teachings of his lady's, and therefore his, former instructor he began to rip off a small piece of cloth from his oversized trousers.
Soon after he did so, he tightly wrapped it into a knot higher up on his leg from where the wound was in order to help stem the bleeding, creating a quick yet useful makeshift tourniquet.
Vigil then inspected the wound just a tiny bit more.
Noticing how the bullet was able to go all the way through, Vigil let out an audible sigh of relief. This was because now, at least, he knew that would not have to try digging into his own wound and risk an even worse infection to get the foreign object out of his body.
Calming down at the revelation of some good news, Vigil then began to tear more fabric from his clothes in order to better patch up the bullet wound.
As he did so, he could not help but remark on the fact that each and every encounter he has with another person within War Field has been... less than ideal.
"What is wrong with the people out here? I can understand being on edge and a bit aggressive, but attacking a kid? Seriously! I have only met one person, who was not even a person by the way, who was nicer than everyone else I have met so far... Hah, I already miss Maltena."
While going on about his misfortunes, he had grabbed the shin guard off of a nearby corpse and strapped it to his leg, using it as a half-way decent substitute for a splint.
Although the shin guard was quite big on him, what other choice did he have?
Now finished with the patch-up work for his injury, Vigil paused for a moment to admire his less than ideal first aid, then turned away.
Instead, he was now looking at the corpse of the woman that he had just killed.
More specifically, what was resting in her hand.