Chapter 336: Love At First Sight

The arrows whistled down, a lot of them going straight for him.

But right before they reached reached him, a blur of motion suddenly appeared directly in front of him.

Someone stepped squarely between Brandon and the falling arrows.

This person was slightly taller than him. They had long, luscious silver hair, and they were holding a massive, six-foot-tall tower shield.

The person didn’t even bother turning around to look at him. They just casually lifted the extremely heavy shield up with one arm and tilted it at an angle over both of them.

Instead of hearing the usual, dull thumping sound of iron arrows burying themselves into soft wood, Brandon heard something entirely different.

Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

It sounded exactly like metal hitting metal. The rapid pinging noise echoed loudly under the shield as dozens of arrows harmlessly bounced off the solid steel plating.

Brandon’s remaining strength completely vanished. He just fell straight back onto his buttocks in the dirt.

He didn’t even fully understand what had just happened. He just looked up at the person standing over him and slowly came to a realization as he took in their gear.

The heavy plate armor they were wearing didn’t look anything like standard military issue armor. It was incredibly well-fitted and far more sleek and polished than anything he had ever seen. Not even the baron of his town.

And they weren’t wearing a helmet.

Just looking at the back profile and the slender waistline gave Brandon a sudden, ridiculous thought that the person standing in front of him was actually a female soldier. That was something he had literally never heard of or expected to see in a real army.

So he just quickly shook the thought off.

’Maybe this is just a rich noble guy who likes having his hair really long,’ Brandon reasoned with himself. ’Nobles are pretty weird sometimes. Our Baron likes to show off his weird-looking mustache all the time after all...’

Once the heavy clanging of the arrows finally stopped, the soldier smoothly lowered the massive steel shield and turned around to look at him.

It was definitely not a man.

It was a girl. And she looked pretty young.

Brandon’s lower jaw completely fell open. He just stared up at her from the ground like an idiot.

In his entire eighteen years of life, he had never laid his eyes on someone this pretty. She had striking silver hair, cold eyes, and a flawless complexion. But she was also weirdly tall for a girl. In fact, standing next to him, she was much taller than most of the grown men he had seen in his village, including himself.

He looked up at her, and before he could even process the situation, his mouth just moved on its own.

"Um, my name is Brandon. What’s yours?"

The girl just looked down at him. She didn’t say a single word. It felt almost like she was judging his entire existence.

After what felt like ages, even though it was really just two or three seconds, she raised her gaze. Brandon turned his head and saw that she was looking back toward the distant military camp where they had originally marched from.

When he turned back to face her, she was already staring right back down at him.

"Go back to the camp," she said flatly. "You have already lost your weapons. You are completely useless here."

Brandon opened his mouth, closed it, and finally just nodded.

He immediately scrambled to his feet, gritting his teeth against the searing pain in his pierced legs. He leaned to the side a little, taking a quick peek around the edge of her massive steel shield to check if there were more arrows incoming.

There were.

Octavia didn’t even need to look up. She just stared into his eyes and saw the reflection of the falling arrows in his widening pupils.

She reached out, grabbed him by the collar of his cheap tunic, and violently shoved him back down onto the ground.

This time she didn’t even bother raising her shield over her head. She just stood there, planting the heavy steel tower shield firmly into the ground and angling it slightly to cover his body.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

The arrows rained down and slammed into the metal face of the shield without touching either of them.

Once the last arrow fell to the ground, she reached down, grabbed his shirt and the cheap leather armor strapped over it, and effortlessly hoisted him back up to his feet with a single hand.

"Now run," she ordered.

And then, weirdly enough, something completely shifted inside Brandon.

In a magical sort of way, a massive bloom of courage erupted in his stomach. It was an insane level of bravery that he never expected someone like himself to actually have.

"What is your name?" he asked again.

This time there was no doubt or lack of confidence in his voice.

The girl raised an eyebrow.

"You can call me Octavia," she said. "Now if you actually want to get to safety, you run right now. Or I am just going to abandon you here because I have other people to save."

Brandon immediately nodded. He turned around and began to run back toward the camp as fast as his injured legs could carry him.

As he scrambled away, he shouted back at her over his shoulder.

"You are from Lord Adrian’s army right? I will thank you later!"

Octavia just looked at him for a split second before turning around, paying him no mind.

She got right back to work.

Brandon wasn’t the only one being rescued. Multiple soldiers from the elite Oresfall army were actively moving through the kill zone, raising their massive steel shields and saving however many injured or panicked men they could physically reach. And it was a staggering amount of people.

Octavia watched as hundreds of terrified peasants broke rank entirely and ran back toward the safety of the main camp.