‘Chew this, Samal; it will help with the pain, and from time to time,e you need to realize pressure from the belt on your arm; the arrow in your leg needs an Eliza to heal you; I can’t pull it out, ok? You will bleed out.’ Asher took a deep breath.

  ‘It hurts so much... but it is starting to... Alright… thanks.’ Samal looked up, his back leaning against a wall.

  Asher tapped it on Samal's shoulder and left the shed he was in. He was trying to pass the chaos by finding other injured soldiers, calling for help, and patching them up to the best of his abilities. Right now, he was detached from his squad like all the other medics, who were busy helping the injured or patching them up enough to continue the fight.

  They were advancing at a fast pace, even with the heavy resistance from the monsters. There wasn’t cover for them, as the rifle shots punched through most of them, or they didn’t use any cover at all.

  Being out in the open or rushing towards the duchy soldiers made them suffer heavy casualties, but their numbers made up for that. As they advanced, the number of duchy soldiers who couldn’t fight anymore grew because of the severe injuries.

  Now, ?Edmund’s presence was an enormous factor in the duchy soldiers' ability to advance so fast the way they were doing. Because of the attention he drew to himself, he gave time for the duchy soldiers to patch up and distribute batteries to recharge their weapons among themselves as the battle raged.

  Edmund was death to the creatures, but they couldn’t do anything other than try to rush against him. The soldiers pushing forward saw how he used everything against the beasts, using pieces of wood, broken swords, and his bare hands to kill, and one soldier saw him splitting a goblin in half with a kick. He thought that if there were a word for what he was seeing, it would be brutal.

  ‘Shadow three, this is light; we have a corridor inside of the walls from this point on; a team from Shadow 1 is going to take the right side; you need to hold or push the left side at all costs.' Lieutenant Bartel's voice could be heard on Egor’s radio.

  ‘This is yours, Ethan.’ Egor looked at Ethan.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Ethan nodded.

  ‘Light, this is shadow three; the red team is on it.’ Egor spoke to the radio.

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  ‘Let’s go.’ Ethan looked at Oran and Caleb and ran to the wall.

  ‘Edmund is just on another level; I saw him fighting against the duchess, but this is crazy.’ Oran was distracted by seeing Edmund fighting against the creatures.

  ‘Hey, Oran, we need to go.’ Caleb pulled Oran by the collar.

  They ran toward the aim, cover to cover, as arrows still flew towards them, and the tree returned fire against the monsters. They noticed two goblins coming out of the entrance in the wall, shot them without hesitation, and proceeded to enter the structure. The light was purring from the gaps in the wall, but it was more complex; it used rocks and some sort of mortar to hold it together, and it looked surprisingly sturdy.

  The sounds of the fighting outside were audible, as it was happening right beside them as they moved through the corridor, killing any creatures that appeared, but at some point, the creatures were using a variety of things as cover. Ethan thought that it was things they looted from the villages or trade caravans coming from the kingdom, and as his team came closer to another entrance, he got his radio.

  ‘Blue, this is red; we are at the end of the corridor; we encountered low resistance.’ Ethan looked at the two behind him.

  ‘Red, you need to draw more attention to yourself; the right side is being... ’ Egor’s voice was cut.

  ‘Blue?’ Ethan tried to call the blue team.

  Ethan looked at the two and shook his head. The two nodded at him and fixed their eyes on the entrance right in front of them.

  ‘Let’s go; we need to draw more attention. Does anyone have grenades?’ Ethan spoke while walking towards the entrance.

  The two soldiers behind him grabbed each other and held them with their right hand. The two passed Ethan and put their backs against the wall with their shoulders next to the entrance while the corporal was pointing his rifle at it.

  ‘Go!’ Ethan stepped to the side and leaned against the wall.

  The two soldiers threw the grenades in, and moments later, they exploded, and screams of pain coming from the monsters were heard. They saw the monsters' corpses on the ground as the tree entered the room. Still, there was one ork that used another as a shield to protect himself from the blast, and as he dropped the dead body of his companion, the soldiers noticed that he had another pair of hands coming from his back and were now glowing blue and pointing towards them.

  ‘What is that?’ Oran spoke with fear in his tone.

  There were marks on the creature's body; they all scattered and jumped for some kind of cover. Only rocks were around them, enough to protect the trio against the magic the creature was shooting.

  The ratio was almost the same as their rifles. Using their numbers, they started to return fire against the creature that jumped to the ceiling, started to behave strangely, and could hide behind some flipped wooden table, but continued to shoot with only its arms visible behind the wooden table.

  Its position was next to the wall on the right side, and the moment Ethan tried to look for a way to flank the creature, the wall exploded, and Edmund came from it, stunning the creature. Right after, the white-haired young man just used a makeshift sword he was holding and cut the strange ork's head in a swift move.

  ‘Edmund… ‘ Ethan was cut off by an ork scream from another entrance.

  Edmund briefly looked at the strange creature before dashing towards the ork scream, giving no time for talk.

  ‘Sir, there are stairs here.‘ Oran pointed at it with his rifle.

  ‘Let’s check; we can’t have monsters on our backs.’ Ethan spoke while moving toward the flight of stairs made of rock.

  As they came up, Caleb, who was at the front, noticed Shafran in chains, all cornered far away from the stares, looking at him terrified.

  ‘We found them, sir.’ Caleb looked behind him toward Ethan.