Aster lay on the cold ground, bleeding out. The colour in his face had drained drastically, and his vibrant green eyes looked near lifeless.
He was in pain; both his body and his mind felt like they had been subjugated under torture. The weakness felt absolute, no hidden burst of strength emerged from the depths of his soul like some fictional main character in a novel.
Even in pain, the thought nearly made him laugh.
'Main character!?'
'He was probably some background noise at best.'
His body slowly began to grow cold. He was dying. The odds of survival didn't exist at this point. Either from the continuous blood loss or the ravaging vines that rampaged around him, unless someone intervened, he was going to die.
He didn't accept it, but he couldn't fight it either. The thought that his current chances of living depended on someone saving him felt depressing, and slightly infuriating.
'He was powerless, and this was the fate of a powerless man. To grovel helplessly until someone came to his rescue.'
A vine slid beside him, its thorny surface bleeding his skin as it wrapped him in a deadly embrace. Aster felt the force in its grip slowly crush his ribs. His mouth flung open to let out a scream, but the sound never came. The air in his lungs felt like they bled out alongside his blood.
After a few agonising seconds that felt like an eternity, his vision began to darken. Death had finally decided to seize him; he could no longer evade it. The darkness swallowed his gaze completely, and the world, for the first time, grew quiet.
The silence didn't last long. Aster's ears picked up on what sounded like a blade cutting through the air, sharp and destructive. One moment he was dying, and the next he was falling. He felt a pair of arms grab his small body; the touch against his skin was cold and metallic, armour.
The pain from having his ribs crushed and air bled out still lingered, agonising enough that he felt that dying wouldn't have been so bad, at least the pain would have ceased to exist. Through much effort, he parted his eyelids; the sharp light rays of the surrounding torches gave them a moment to adjust.
When they finally did, Aster saw a pair of bright gold eyes staring back at him. Strands of pale blonde hair obscured his vision slightly, but for that brief moment, he couldn't help but marvel at their beauty.
His saviour turned and walked a short distance to the last intact wagon. There, she laid down his broken body. Her full face came into view; the moon's light rested on her face like a gentle touch, and Aster's breath hitched in his throat.
She was beautiful—breathtakingly so.
Aster's mind, still dazzled by her appearance, heard a soft, calm voice register in the small space between them.
"It's okay. You can rest now, I'd take care of it," she had said.
The words resonated with him, and for reasons unknown to himself, he decided to trust her.
The Sword Saint lowered the frail child she held in her hands. After reassuring him of his safety, she rose to face another unaccounted variable. Her expression grew dark. Countless vines dominated both the sky and the ground that surrounded her, all originating from the darkness.
The beast hadn't shown itself. She brandished the silver blade in her hand and stepped forward, her mind recounting the events that had led to this moment.
A few minutes earlier.
The Sword Saint's blade cleaved through the body of an ape-type beast, while she flung a kick towards an aerial predator. The sole of her boots caught the monstrosity mid-flight as the pressure crushed its carapace skull.
'Damn it, they just keep coming,' she voiced internally.
She couldn't keep track of the time that had passed during combat. The battle had raged on past midnight, and since then she had lost all sense of it. Her mind's focus was on the survival of as many of them as possible. But the beast waves never stopped, never got tired, and didn't hesitate. Every brief second of reprieve they got was treasured like gold, allowing them to catch their breath before the force of another wave descended.
The Sword Saint looked around her. Every adventurer within her line of sight was moments away from collapsing from fatigue. Their breaths were laboured, and their muscles ached from the countless claws and maws that they had defended against with their lives.
Piles of littered corpses surrounded them. The last wave had been cleared, but another one was fast approaching.
The Sword Saint's voice travelled to the defensive line.
"Hold," she said.
The incoming wave crashed into battered shields and broken spears, maws and claws flashing against worn-out silver. The defensive line barely held, initiating the same tactical strategy of manipulating the terrain to their advantage—disorienting the beasts and giving them a moment to press back the assault.
The Sword Saint led the charge in Vivian's absence. Unlike Vivian, whose strikes felt direct, controlled, and precise, the Sword Saint's battle style didn't focus on one beast at a time. Each swing of her blade decimated at least three beasts. Each strike came like a wave carrying a thousand cuts. With this, the pressure on the adventurers holding the defense weakened.
They fought. With aching muscles and nearly shattered minds, they kept on fighting.
During the heat of battle, an ear-piercing screech travelled across the bloodied battlefield, washing over man and beast. The sound bled their ears in the split second it lasted, and in that single moment, they grew disoriented.
Many steeled their hearts, expecting a claw they had missed to slice through their armour. But nothing came.
When the feeling faded, they finally noticed that the beasts that had rampaged endlessly, fought against them tirelessly even when their kin fell beside them, had turned tails and run.
It was simply absurd.
"What in the hell is happening?" an adventurer voiced in disbelief.
Although it seemed unbelievable, it looked like they had won.
The battle was over.