Chapter 219 - This Place Has Grown Busier

Chapter 219

“How?” I asked, a little anger leaking into my voice.

As I looked at Senior Lieutenant Caeso, it was clear from my expression that I blamed him.

I wanted to know how Silas had died.

Why had Caeso not been able to save him?

If he could save the rest of my squad, why had he failed to save Silas?

He was a Tier-4 healing mage. Healing a Tier-2 soldier should have been easy.

And I knew that blaming Caeso was wrong.

Being a Tier-4 did not make him a god.

More importantly, Caeso had hundreds of other injured soldiers to deal with, many of them just as close to death.

Even knowing all of this, I couldn’t help but blame him.

Mostly because he was a convenient target. I had no way to take out my anger on Frosthallow.

Thankfully, Senior Lieutenant Caeso did not react.

He simply sighed and said, “Silas had the weakest constitution in your squad. He died before reaching the town gates.”

With one statement, he answered all my questions and stripped my blame of any justification.

I closed my eyes and took a slow, deep breath.

Then, surprising everyone present, I stood up from the bed, gritting my teeth as I ignored the intense pain spreading through my body.

“What are you doing?” Leif shouted as he rushed forward to support me.

Once I was steady on my feet, I slowly pushed Leif’s hands away.

Then I looked at everyone present.

“I am going to the graveyard.”

Slowly, I took a few steps forward.

My squad and Leif followed behind me, only for me to stop and shake my head.

“Alone.”

Just as they were about to argue, Senior Lieutenant Caeso’s voice cut through the room.

“Let him go. Leif, create a walking stick for him.”

Then he looked at me.

“Edward, you are a healer. Don’t do anything you would not allow your own patient to do.”

Surprisingly, everyone followed his order without question.

Only Leif followed me outside, and even he did so only to create a walking stick for me from the ground using earth mana.

“Take care,” Leif said, passing me the stick. “He is buried next to Oren and Brakk.”

He paused for a moment.

“And if you get into trouble in town, let people know who you are. Believe it or not, almost everyone thinks of you as the savior of Velkar.”

Taking the stick and leaving Leif behind, I began my slow and excruciating walk through the town.

I did not know why I wanted to go there or why I wanted to go alone.

Maybe the thought of lying there on the bed scared me, especially after learning that everyone was celebrating me when, in reality, almost my whole squad had nearly died. Sure, Silas had a lower Constitution stat, but the Constitution stats of Rokan, Daren, Barry, and me were not much higher either.

After seeing the damage to my own body, I knew that our survival had been less about stats and more about luck.

The chaotic mana from the mana ball had spread in random directions. I was sure the damage among the soldiers had not been uniform. Some could have been affected more severely, while a lucky few might have received only minimal damage.

For the second time since waking up, I replayed the final phase of the assault in my head, this time trying to determine whether I had missed something or if there had been a better way to stop the cannon attack.

Only to realize that I had done everything I could.

That did not mean my response had been free of mistakes or flaws.

The result might have been different if I had first sent out a small mana arc to destabilize the attack, then used the mana bubble to protect us. Sure, it still would not have been enough to protect us completely, but it might have reduced the damage, even if only by a fraction.

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But in that instant, with so little time to think, I had done the first thing that came to mind.

Any delay in my response, and it might not have been just Silas.

And while it could be argued that I had misjudged the trajectory of the attack, after analyzing the position of the cart—which had been only four rows behind us—and the size of the blast, I knew it would still have struck our upper bodies.

Or it might have exploded directly behind us. An unstable mana ball would have caused a concentrated blast that could have been even more devastating.

That meant destabilizing the attack had been the right decision.

My thoughts were interrupted when some soldiers overtook me on the way to the graveyard, carrying another body dressed in the same plain, loose infirmary clothes as mine.

As I watched them carry their comrade with solemn expressions, I sighed and continued on my way.

By the time I reached the graveyard, I realized that my walk had been so slow that more than an hour had passed, even though the distance was less than a mile.

A sad laugh escaped me as I looked at the graveyard filled with people.

Because the first thought that came to mind was, This place has changed a lot. When I came here to bury Oren and Brakk, it was much smaller.

And the next thought that followed was even worse.

This place has grown a lot busier.

I realized why people said that wars involving humans were different from wars involving beasts.

During the grand beast tide, I had consoled myself by telling myself that those men had died fighting for humanity.

This time, I was struggling to find a good reason.

All these graves.

All these lives lost on both sides simply because someone did not want the Count to achieve a Tier-7 breakthrough.

Half of the north had been ravaged because of a power struggle between two houses from enemy kingdoms.

And ironically, seeing all of this only made my desire to gain more power grow stronger.

It reminded me of Lieutenant Cicero’s words.

The noble world keeps only what can survive it.

Now that quote felt a lot like survival of the fittest.

If that was how the game was going to be played, I would rather actively participate.

Lieutenant Cicero had already given me a safety net. If I could complete my research into forming a non-elemental core, I might add another layer of protection.

Shaking my head, I focused on the reason I had come here and made my way to Silas’s grave.

I looked at the three graves—Brakk’s, Oren’s, and Silas’s—lined up beside one another. I prayed that they would have a peaceful afterlife. Then, after cleaning all three graves a little, I sat beside the stick marking Silas’s grave.

Not knowing what to do or say, all I could do was sit there and remember the time we had spent with Silas.

The expression he made whenever I forced him to cook.

The excitement on his face when he and Barry developed throwing knives and gained skills from them.

Or his frustration whenever Rokan and Daren failed to understand why merchant guilds were necessary in large towns.

“Edward, are you okay?”

A voice disturbed my thoughts.

I tried to stand in one quick motion, raising my guard and reaching for my walking stick, but the pain made it impossible and forced me back down onto one knee.

Thankfully, the person in front of me was someone I knew.

It was Peter’s sister, Eleanor.

Before I could fall face-first onto the ground, she rushed to my side and supported me.

“I am sorry. I am sorry,” Eleanor said as she helped me sit back down. “Father has told me many times not to startle a soldier after a battle, but when I saw you sitting here crying, I couldn’t help but approach.”

Listening to her words, I realized that a few tears had wet my cheeks.

Wiping them away quickly, I shook my head.

“It’s all right. Did Peter send you?”

“No,” Eleanor replied, shaking her head. “He did tell me that you were injured. As for why I am here, I was passing by on city administration business when I saw you sitting on the ground in infirmary clothes. I was afraid you might need help.”

“Thank you,” I replied.

I was a little embarrassed that Eleanor had seen me in such a state.

I was not just crying. I was so weak that I could not even stand properly.

And if it had been anyone else, they would have let the topic go after seeing how embarrassed I was.

But Eleanor was not just anyone.

When I saw the smirk on her face, I knew that the serious city administrator, Eleanor Roscoe, was not here.

Instead, it was Peter’s little sister.

The same girl who came home with muddy shoes and picked fights with her elder brother when he returned after eight years away.

“So,” she asked, “do the members of your squad know that their big, bad, heroic sergeant cries?”

Even with everything going through my head, I couldn’t help but smile and glare at her.

“No. And it would be better if you kept it to yourself.”

As her grin widened, I pressed my point again in a more serious tone.

“I am serious. As a sergeant, showing weakness gets in the way of leading.”

While I did not think my squad knowing that I had cried at Silas’s grave would make me look weak, it was still better if people like Barry and Varric did not know about it.

Maintaining her grin, Eleanor raised her hands.

“Don’t worry. My lips are sealed. No one will know.”

Then she did something that surprised me.

Instead of leaving me there, she sat on the ground opposite me and started asking questions about Silas.

Slowly, I began to answer.

After that, she moved on to stories about how Peter and her father were dealing with their losses. Then she started asking about the rest of my squad and my friends.

She kept talking for more than half an hour.

At some point, I realized what Eleanor was doing.

In a very subtle way, she was distracting me and showing me how to deal with loss. She had started by embarrassing me, then let me talk about Silas. After that, she reminded me that even a Tier-4 captain struggled with loss before gently shifting the conversation toward my friends.

And even after realizing it, I continued talking to her.

Finally, Eleanor brought the conversation back to me.

“So, how long will it take for you to recover completely?” she asked.

“My external injuries should heal in a day or two, but the internal injuries could take a week,” I replied.

Hearing that, Eleanor clapped her hands in delight, as if my slow recovery were good news.

“That means you have nothing to do for the next week?”

“Yeah…” I said with a frown, almost afraid of what she would say next.

“Then why don’t you and Peter come with me to the slums?”

I blinked.

“We talked about this last time, but because of the invasion, we never got the chance,” Eleanor continued. “A few of your militia soldiers are already training young kids in the slums, trying to give them some combat experience before their awakening.”

Then her smile turned slightly teasing.

“But if the hero of Velkar joins the training, the kids will take it more seriously.”

I paused and thought about it for a moment.

Then I nodded.

It was a good idea.

With my mana nodes damaged, my experiments with forming a non-elemental core would have to wait, leaving me with a lot of free time.

Maybe training young kids in combat skills was the most useful way to spend that time.