Chapter 424
He listened to how, when that betrayal occurred, when the great wall began to crumble because of the traitors' actions, when the soldiers of the Obrim Dynasty started flooding in through the gates that had been thrown wide open, Xavier—dying in a pool of blood—suddenly rose with a strength no one knew the origin of.
Xavier, whose body had been pierced in many places, whose breath had nearly gone out, whose eyes had almost closed forever, suddenly stood up and confronted the group of black-armored soldiers with the last strength he still possessed.
He blocked them.
He slowed them down.
He held them back, even if only for a few precious minutes.
His small body became the final shield between those demonic troops and the friends who were still trying to escape.
Every slash of a sword that struck his body, every thrust of a spear that tore into his flesh, every charge of a shield that slammed into his bones could not stop him from continuing to stand in the same place, continuing to block the same path, continuing to become the final wall for those who were still trying to flee.
And at the same time, while Xavier fought desperately at the front line, another boy—the one now sitting before Xavier with a bitter smile and a shattered body—tried to carry out a different task.
He tried to close the entrance that the traitors had opened.
He tried to return the iron bars to their place.
He tried to shut the gates of hell that had been thrown wide open.
But that boy, who since childhood had always possessed the weakest physique among the members of the little gang, who was always left behind when they ran, who always ran out of breath first when they played chase, who was always teased as the most whiny whenever he fell, turned out to have a courage that far surpassed his fragile body.
He fought alone against dozens of traitors.
He tried to reach the iron levers that weighed many times more than his own body.
He tried to close the gate that was continuously being pushed from the outside by thousands of soldiers who were desperate to enter.
And when he was almost successful, when his hand had already touched the final lever that would lock the gate forever, when a glimmer of hope began to ignite inside his exhausted chest, the traitors' swords danced around him.
One slash took his right arm before he could avoid it.
The next slash severed his left arm while he was still screaming in agony.
And when he collapsed to the ground, when blood sprayed everywhere and soaked the dry earth, when he could still see that final lever only a few inches away from the tips of fingers that no longer existed, a sword pierced directly into his right eye, ending his struggle in the cruelest possible way.
"They didn't give us any choice."
Between the bitter story flowing from the lips of his mutilated friend, between the tears that continued falling without restraint, between the trembling of his body that he could not control, Xavier heard another part of the story that had long troubled his mind.
The part about how they survived.
How his dying body and his friend's shattered body could now be inside this cart, moving farther and farther away from the hell that was still blazing behind them.
And his friend, with the single eye that remained, with a voice growing hoarser from exhaustion, explained everything.
When the battle at the great wall reached its most horrific point, when corpses lay scattered in every corner and blood flowed like a small river between the cracks of the stones, when the soldiers of the Obrim Dynasty kept arriving endlessly like a flood that never receded, a group of civilians from the eastern region appeared out of nowhere.
They were not soldiers.
They were not part of the defense forces.
They were merely ordinary residents who lived not far from the boundary wall between the east and the west—people who had spent their lives peacefully behind the protection of that massive wall, people who had never once imagined that one day they would witness the wall collapse and watch demons from outside enter with all their savagery.
But when the chaos reached its peak, when cries for help echoed from every direction, when smoke and dust blinded anyone who tried to see, those civilians suddenly began moving with a clear purpose.
They shouted instructions.
They pointed out which paths were still safe to pass.
They guided anyone who could still run to immediately move away from the wall before it was too late.
And amid that suffocating panic, amid the deafening screams and shouts, amid the thick clouds of smoke that made everything look like the end of the world, some of them saw two small bodies lying not far from the main gate.
Xavier, completely motionless, his blood flowing endlessly, his breathing almost undetectable.
And his friend, whose arms had both vanished, whose eye had been pierced, who could only groan in pain without being able to do anything else.
Those civilians, without thinking twice, without considering the risk, without heeding the soldiers shouting for them to leave immediately, rushed toward the two small bodies.
They lifted Xavier carefully even though their own hands trembled with fear.
They dragged his armless friend with great difficulty even though every passing second meant they were moving closer to death.
They carried the two children away from the wall, away from the gate that was still being forced open from the outside, away from the death that continued to gape wide behind them.
And when they finally reached the place where the evacuation carts had begun gathering, when they saw the long line of people also trying to save themselves, when they heard the orders to climb aboard and leave this place immediately, they threw the two small bodies onto a pile of straw in one of the carts.
"And they will not stop there."
Xavier sat leaning against the wall of the cart that continued to sway violently, his eyes closed yet his mind clearer than it had ever been.
Every rumble of the wheels rolling across the rocky ground, every pounding hoof of the horse running ahead, every groan of pain coming from the corners of the cart—all of it entered his awareness like tiny nails being hammered in one by one.
He did not need to open his eyes to know what was happening outside.
He did not need to see to feel that this defeat was a total defeat.
The murmur escaped from his cracked, dry lips almost unconsciously—a murmur nearly drowned out by the chaos of panic, a murmur that only his own ears could hear.
This is the end of the village.
A miserable failure that no one will ever be able to stop.
That conviction settled in his chest like a gravestone marking the death of all hope.
And that conviction was not born from blind despair.
It came from what he had seen before he collapsed, from what his friend had told him after he awoke, from what he had heard from the conversations of wounded soldiers in the other carts.
The soldiers of the Obrim Dynasty never stopped arriving.
They emerged from the fog like floodwaters bursting through a broken dam, like swarms of locusts covering the sky, like nightmares that constantly changed form yet never ended.
The first wave.
The second wave.
The third wave.
They kept coming tirelessly, showing no sign of stopping, caring nothing for how many of them had already fallen at the tips of the village soldiers' spears.
And the Village Defense Forces—outnumbered from the very beginning, relying only on whatever equipment they had, their morale eroded by betrayal and defeat—became more overwhelmed with each passing day, more cornered, more incapable of continuing the fight.
To be continued…