TALES OF A WITCHER - Season 9 Episode 14

“The demonic beasts have fled! They all fled!”

Cheers were heard across the battlefield. The demonic beasts that were previously gathered at the entrance of the cave had all fled away leaving several corpses behind them. The machine gunner released the trigger only to find out that his finger joint had gone numb. Because there was no time to change the gun barrel, it had turned red which, according to the shooting regulations, meant that it was scrapped.

“Their numbers were intimidating, but once we start fighting them, they didn’t look so scary.”

“The Church’s God’s Punishment Army was much more fierce.”

“They are only beasts after all.”

“Beasts? Why are you talking nonsense? Go fight them with a bow if you dare. Three years ago, these things were terrorizing the Western Region. Everything changed because of His Majesty, do you understand!”

“Ye-Yes, Captain!”

“Instead of celebrating, change the gun barrel.”

Edith was standing in the back of the battlefield. She had a thoughtful look while watching the busy yet orderly First Army. After following Roland’s army to participate in the Tooth Extraction Campaign and the Church’s destruction, she always tried to imagine how would she command the army in order to achieve the maximum effectiveness of the firearms.

Without a doubt, this was a completely new kind of army and so the combat strategy was different from that of the knightages and the mercenaries from before. It was not easy to forget her previous successful experience of fighting through charging, relying on excellent weapons, and personal bravery. But when she realized that knights could no longer compete against the new army, she promptly discarded all of her previous experience and started watching all of His Majesty’s actions closely. Through today’s battle, she was able to verify that her thinking was basically correct.

The most notable feature of the firearms was their ability to kill opponents with extreme efficiency before they could get closer without regard to the spacing between soldiers and their physical condition. Therefore, the narrower the shooting area, the more intense the firepower would be. As long as the ammunition supply did not stop, they could fire from morning to night.

Two platoons of soldiers could be arranged in a battlefield where previously only three to four knights would be able to charge from. They could only arrange three machine guns not because more could not fit but due to limited ammunition. But even so, their fierce firepower still made it hard for the demonic hybrids to advance—they did not even get tired or need to aim. They just had to pull the trigger. Whenever the opponents were too close together, she would even see a thick blood red mist arising in the entrance.

If His Majesty was in command, he wouldn’t have done anything different.

The only thing she did not understand was the behavior of the demonic beasts.

Obviously, some of them had basic intelligence. When it got difficult to attack the cave entrance, many of the demonic hybrids began to wander outside the cave, occasionally howling, but still not advancing as if they were encouraging the other demonic beasts to sacrifice themselves. But since they had the ability to think, why did they still obey the weird commanding voices? The demonic beasts apparently did not need a relationship between lords and subjects, which was about mutual support and protection. As long as they escaped into the Barbarian Land, they could totally survive alone, unlike humans who had to be part of a group in order to survive.

Could it be that there was an inexplicable connection between the demonic beasts and the owner of that voice whose importance was above the beasts’ own survival?

It was hard for her to imagine that.

She thought she should ask His Majesty Roland after the search was completed.

Currently, the only thing in Neverwinter that she found surprising and hard to figure out was His Majesty’s thoughts. Whenever they were talking, she would always ponder over the same question: how vast could the human mind be?

“Miss Edith, you were very helpful this battle…” Brian’s voice interrupted her thoughts. She turned around and saw the young officer’s face full of gratitude. “I’ll definitely mention your contribution to His Majesty in the battle report!”

“I only did my job,” Edith smiled, “I wasn’t sure it would be successful at that time so you don’t need to mention my suggestion in the report.”

“Unacceptable!” Brian shook his head again and again. “His Majesty said that in the army, the result and not the process is the only thing that matters. A victory is a victory. If I don’t mention your contribution, then I’m no different than a thief. Plus, it’s also unfair to you!”

“Fine… ” The Pearl of the Northern Region shrugged. “If you insist.”

“Of course.” At this point, he paused and then made a military salute. “Furthermore, I now understand more what you said before about trust. The First Army thanks you for your advice. I’ll leave now as I also have many things to attend to.”

Looking at the captain leaving, Edith suddenly understood why His Majesty chose a patrol captain of the border to serve as an important military officer. Battle achievements were the basis for the knights when requesting a reward from the lord and the last thing they would want was to share with others. There were countless cases that involved faking and lying, and not even her trustees could resolve them.

In general, though the First army was different in many aspects, promotions and rewards were still linked to battle achievements. She was not a member of the army so even if the other party had completely concealed this matter, she wouldn’t have personally argued her case to His Majesty. To be able to calmly share with others whatever benefits he had gained just to be fair, in fact, compared to other knights, this former patrol captain was actually much more of a knight.

Loyal to his king and honest, this was probably why Roland entrusted him with such an important task. Commanding and knowledge could both be learned, but a person’s character was hard to change. Edith had noticed very early on that the spirit and manner of His Majesty’s First Army were completely different from those of the knights. It was something new completely. Probably the key to creating such an army was abandoning the noble’s power and selecting only civilians to enlist, coupled with the ideological education in the primary textbooks.

And now, she had also left her name in the army.

…

Half a day later, Roland received intelligence that the situation had been resolved. At this point, the one hundred emergency reinforcements had already embarked on the boat while the rest of the reinforcements were also preparing their belongings, waiting for the dispatching order. Even the newcomers of the Witch Union—Annie, Broken Sword and the rest were prepared to go support them. From the City Hall to the First Army, the whole of Neverwinter was nervous as if the city had been attacked by demonic beasts, but in the end, it all proved to be just a false alarm.

The messenger was, once again, Maggie. Looking at her tilted head and slightly opened mouth, Roland did not know whether to laugh or cry. He took out some beef from the drawer and threw it on the table. She immediately picked it up happily.

However, taking morale into account, he eventually did not order the first platoon to return but instead replaced Annie’s team with Soraya and Summer in order to conduct a more comprehensive exploration of the ruins.