Chapter 288 The more the merrier

They were already moving toward the western streets when John suddenly raised a hand.

“Stop here.”

The small group halted in front of the village church. Lantern light from the open doorway of the church spilled across the packed dirt of the street they were standing on. On the whole way, there were very few people on the road. The whole village looked empty, with everyone inside their houses. 

Mitsu stood close to Melanie, still catching her breath from the earlier run and now this speed-walk. Bezos had also come with this team. 

Behind them, Elder Verna and the Fiora hunters waited in loose formation: Kaela, Shila, and Mira, all three of them with them. Only Pell, the adventurers, and some Fiora hunters were left behind to handle the eastern gate, as the situation over there had calmed down a little by now. 

Verna turned her head. “Why are we stopping here, Priest?”

John’s expression was tight. While walking toward the church, he said simply, “We need every person who can help us in this fight. Wait here for me.”

He did not explain further. He simply pushed open the church door and disappeared inside, leaving everyone confused.

----

The side room near the back of the church was dim and quiet.

Inside, three men lay on simple cots. Bandages still wrapped their wounds. Only one of them kept his eyes half-open, listening to the distant noise of fighting that had grown steadily louder. As the church was in the middle of the village, it was a little far from the fight of both sides of the village, so the sounds were barely there.

Suddenly, the door of the room creaked open.

Priest John leaned in.

The leader of the three men’s eyes opened fully. His voice was rough from disuse.

“Oh, Priest. It's you! You need something?”

John stepped inside and closed the door most of the way behind him. He did not waste time with soft words.

“I know the three of you are still weak. You were only healed a couple of hours ago, and none of you have had proper rest. But I’m still asking you to come with me.”

The man on the cot studied John’s face for a long second.

“Where?” He asked.

“As I mentioned before, trouble has already reached our village. At the western gate,” John answered. 

“It seems monsters are now inside the walls. So, if this village is going to see morning, we need every pair of hands that can still hold a weapon. Including yours.”

Nobody spoke for a second. The boss just looked at John’s face in a little confusion.

Then the man exhaled through his nose, swung his legs over the side of the cot, and reached across to shake the shoulder of the man beside him.

“Oi, get up. Both of you. We need to go out.”

The other two groaned, and after opening their sickly red eyes, looked at their boss’s face in confusion, not knowing what was going on.

----

Outside, Verna was the first to speak when John reappeared in the church doorway alone.

“Well?” she asked. “You said you were going in to get more people. Where are they?”

John glanced back over his shoulder.

Footsteps sounded on the wooden floor inside. A moment later, the three men stepped out into the lantern light. They looked exactly as worn as expected, bandages still visible under the clean spare clothes John had given them earlier, faces drawn from blood loss and lack of sleep. But all three were on their feet, and the leader already carried himself like a man who had accepted the night would not allow rest from now on.

He stopped at the top of the short steps, eyes moving across the waiting group: Bezos, the Fiora hunters, Melanie, the quiet girl Mitsu, and the priest who had just pulled them from their cots.

His voice was steady despite the fatigue.

“So? Where do we have to go?”

***

Lys stood over the knight he had just killed.

The polished armor no longer reflected the faint moonlight cleanly; dark blood had already begun to dull the steel plate. Through the ragged hole in the wall, ranks of similar armored men waited in disciplined silence. They were easily a hundred men. 

Their spears were upright, swords drawn, every face looking directly at Lys, with their dead eyes.

Lys’s voice carried into the dark beyond the breach.

“Why are you all here? What do you want with this village?”

“Were you the ones who tore the hole in the gate as well?”

No answer came from their side.

Without a word, only three of the armored figures simply stepped through the broken wall and into the village. Their movements were unhurried, professional, as if they were simply following orders. The rest of the formation remained outside, watching.

Lys took an automatic step back. His eyes flicked to CorpseSlayer, still lying near the dead knight’s outstretched hand. He started toward it…

But before he ever moved, the nearest of the three charged.

Lys barely got his fingers around the hilt in time. He brought the blade up and caught the descending slash on the flat side of his sword. 

CLING-gggg

Steel against steel rang. 

The force of the slash drove him down on his knees fully. Instinct and the skill he had poured points into earlier activated without him even thinking about it.

His Sword-Shield flared into the contact between steels.

As per the skill's function, a portion of the impact redirected straight back into the attacker. The soldier’s boots skidded. Surprise flashed behind the visor for half a second. Though, as this knight had his visor on, unlike the one he killed, Lys couldn’t see the eyes.

He didn’t also get the chance to attack back on the guy.

The second knight was already on him. A heavy overhead cut forced him to twist aside, still on his knees. Then the third also closed from the left, spear thrusting low for his thigh. Lys got up a little, let the spearhead scrape past his shoulder, and answered with a short horizontal cut that the man blocked on his bracer.

They did not speak. They simply attacked Lys one after another, in clean, overlapping sequences, the way trained men fight other men instead of monsters.