Longmen Memoirs

He knew he shouldn't expect too much, but he couldn't help it.

"W and Ines are still missing..."

"We'll find them."

"grown ups……"

"I can't guarantee you that they are still alive, but whether it's a body or something else, I will find them."

Hedley hung his head.

"……This is enough."

He said this until Mudrock hurried over and carried the unconscious Hedley onto a stretcher. His empty right arm was ultimately not found in the corner of the battlefield.

Later, Chen Mo learned that he had used that hand to take the life of a sin pardoner during the attack from the front and back.

Perhaps Hedley was indeed the one who hated war the most among the mercenaries who later joined the Tower of Babel. He hated the civil war in Sakaz even more than he imagined, but in the end he stayed.

In fact, Chen Mo had been waiting for Hedley to cross him and express his intention to leave to Theresia. But what surprised Chen Mo was that during this long war, this mercenary who hated war in his heart had , trapped in the battlefield until death.

Very strange and unexpected.

Because sometimes people's ideas are somewhat contrary to reality.

The words of the Pardoner before he left made Chen Mo a little uneasy.

The battlefield is being cut, and Li Ting is already passive. Their first move has exposed them to the sight of the Pardoner. The most frightening thing is that the information Li Ting currently has in hand is how many of his own troops there are. There may be deep involvement with the Forgiver, and several people will defect in this war.

So before he left, he sent Hogg [%|

"How much information did you get?" Chen Mo turned to ask Ni Yan beside him.

"The news coming from the direction of Su Enyang and the Tower of Babel, the situation may be the same as you speculated before, or rather, it is probably worse than that." Ni Yan replied with a heavy face.

"In other words, we were indeed betrayed."

"...Yes, but we are also trapped here, sir."

"This is their purpose. We are excluded from the battlefield. Some people are eager to kick us off the chessboard. I don't know where they get the confidence."

Mudstone didn't answer.

"You left Hogg at camp?" he asked.

"I gave him a mission, and we were not unprepared for it."

"So, we are actually also trying to contain the Pardoner, right?" Ni Yan's serious face softened a little.

Chen Mo was a little surprised.

"You have grown beyond my expectations, my lieutenant."

"The way you praise people can actually be more clever." Ni Yan's face dropped, as if he was dissatisfied that his superior treated her as a fool.

"This is not an outing, Mud Rock." Chen Mo said: "The next step is to see the doctor. I hope he won't disappoint me. I have great expectations for him."

"Does the Doctor know?"

"Never." Chen Mo shook his head: "The battlefield will end in an unexpected place. We have to put an end to this, but it is not the end of Sakaz. The Pardoner is different from his previous opponents, Mud Rock."

"...You don't have to remind me."

------

"Um...me! What are you doing!"

When Ines woke up, she was being buried in the rubble by W. She subconsciously wanted to struggle, but then she noticed that her hands had already been helped by W.

In her sight, w was standing above her head.

"Hey, it's really not the right time to wake up." W closed her mouth unhappily.

"Isn't it obvious what I'm doing? Of course I'm burying you."

W put down the stone in her hand and moved the abandoned and rotten cabinet from the side. She pulled the cabinet and made a scratchy sound.

"You..." Ines opened her eyes wide. She saw the frivolous smile on the corner of W's mouth, still the same as before, as if he didn't care about anything.

She seemed to suddenly realize something, and the rest of her words were choked deep in her throat. Ines only felt some tremors and congestion in her numb heart.

"It's useless, w, don't do these meaningless things."

"Shut up, why are you always so nagging? This time I don't want to hear your reasoning. Don't forget, you are no longer my captain, you have no right to order me!"

Ines wanted to use magic to observe her surroundings, but W's words stopped her.

"If you don't want to kill us in advance, I mind you'd better not do that. I don't know how many enemies there are around us now, but there are just a lot of them."

The spell was extinguished in her eyes, and Ines stared at W who said these words.

"Then untie me..."

"Impossible, don't even think about it." W refused directly, his tone unquestionable: "You know what I hate most about you, Ines, what I hate most is that you pretend to understand even though you are not Sakaz. Our appearance, how much you know about us, you are nothing like Sakaz, Ines, and your annoying spells are as annoying as you."

She let go of her hand and looked down at Ines.

"This is a war started by us Sakaz ourselves. Irrelevant people like you should not die here."

What a surprise, that w could actually say such a thing.

Hedley said that W has changed, and I also think that W has changed, but I didn't expect that W would change so much. I thought that W just became calmer, not so crazy, but she, the W that I know, she is paying attention. life and companionship.

If it were in the past and someone told me that w would become what it is today, I would never believe it. I would rather believe that she would use her companions as bargaining chips for sacrifice than that she would use herself as this role.

"...Let me come with you, you can't escape alone."

"Who said I was going to run away?" W sneered softly: "Do I look like someone who will run away? Ines, Ines, you really haven't changed at all."

"Are you crazy……"

"In your eyes, haven't I always been like this?"

"Have you finished speaking?" she asked. She stood up and Ines saw him standing behind the abandoned cabinet: "It might be a little dark. Although I know you hate the dark, there is nothing you can do about it. It’s something.”

She even had time to joke around.

"Stop! W! Don't do this, W...I told you to stop!"

"Oops, Miss Ines is angry, but no, I don't care what you think now." She reached out and pushed the cabinet, and darkness obscured Ines's sight.

Fear and uneasiness spread in Ines's heart, and she called W's name eagerly.

"W! W... *Sarkaz swears*"

w can still hear Ines shouting.

But she didn't seem to hear anything.

She didn't respond.

She leaned against the abandoned cupboard, looked at Ines buried underneath, took a deep breath, forced her exhausted body to pick up the gun that was on the ground with few rounds of ammunition.

But she was calm and she didn't laugh anymore.

A long time ago, w thought about how she would meet her death. She thought about many possibilities, including dying on the battlefield, being abandoned, betrayed, or even just dying in an accident.

The Sakaz mercenaries had no way to choose their own way of death. Their deaths came suddenly and unprepared. They couldn't even think of their last words, remember each other's names, and even have tombstones.

No one knows whether they can survive the next mission, and no one knows whether they can see the sunrise tomorrow. This kind of life is already the normal state of Kazdaele, and it is already the inherent concept in every Sakaz's heart. .

They don't value life and death that much, and their values ​​are pitifully thin.

But nonetheless...

Despite this, W still felt a little bit reluctant to give up. She didn't know what she was reluctant to give up. She was reluctant to give up her life, or she was reluctant to never be able to follow His Highness from now on.

"I'm really not reconciled..."

She murmured softly, but without any hesitation in her steps, she stepped out of the ruins, walked into the night, and headed towards the fate of Sakaz mercenary W.

Chapter 26 A free Sakaz, a soil of freedom and equality

[When you face something that you know the outcome of, you know you can't change anything.

But you still have to do it.

Try, try... try your best before the results actually appear.

Some people say this is ideal and hope...

It's stupid, paranoid, unrealistic, and pointless.

But everything is not absolute. Most everything has another choice. When you think you have only one way to go, in the final analysis, you have already accepted this result in your heart. 】

------

w has no regrets, and she will not regret it even if she is asked to make another choice.

She rarely regrets what she has done, whether it has not happened yet or has already happened. In W's outlook on life, regret is not a common word.

She just has some regrets.

She couldn't help but feel a little regretful, a regret that she couldn't explain clearly.

For more than 20 years, in her early twenties, during the short life of this ordinary, impulsive and paranoid Sakaz girl, she had never been able to find out what she was living for.

For this war, for the mission as a mercenary, or for the near future, he is destined to die in an unnoticed corner of the battlefield, waiting to rot and stink.

Of course she was used to life and death, and many Sakaz were used to life and death. As long as she could remember, she had always been surrounded by these two people, and some people said that she wanted to live.

She actually didn't quite understand what it meant to survive, whether it was to find food from the ruins and the corpses of mercenaries, or to hide in the collapsed building and look up at the pouring rain outside, or to stare at the dim and dim bonfire. Faint firelight.

What does it mean to be alive?

She doesn't understand.

Breathing can be considered a blessing, but in Kazdare, the choking smoke can even block breathing, and death always comes easily in Kazdare.

With the migration of refugees, she was dressed in rags but alone. She was forced to take up arms to protect herself, and was also forced to learn how to kill. She always learned very quickly, and she was very talented no matter what she learned, because she was slower. The person has now disappeared and is nowhere to be found.

w feels that he has been able to adapt to this kind of life, this kind of gloomy night that seems to have no end and no tomorrow.

Unfortunately, she met Theresia.

The last thing a person should do is to find someone who can see hope in despair. Just like a moth encountering a torch in the dark, it will always want to pounce on it, get close to that touching warmth, and touch it. That lovely light.

Even if that puts her in danger, even if it might cost her her life.

But like a moth to a flame, like an insect to a deep pit.

Even if you pay the price, people always want to pursue something.

She finally stopped.

The arrow passed over the top of his head, and the sharp whistling sound broke through the thick darkness and sounded deep in his ears.

She threw forward, dodging the deadly arrows behind her, and rolled several times on the collapsed stones and road surface before stumbling up.

Without enough time to breathe, she hurriedly pulled out the dagger with her bruised arm.

Amidst the sparks and crisp sounds of the collision of steel, her thin body flew backwards and hit the half-collapsed wall hard. She gritted her teeth and endured the pain of rolling and impacting her internal organs.

Keep your knees on the ground.

"Cough-cough-"

After coughing violently and continuously, she spat out the saliva mixed with blood, and raised her hand to wipe away the blood oozing out of her mouth. The sweet smell of rust filled the mouth, followed by a sharp stinging pain, as if she was being touched. Every nerve in her body seemed to be tearing her soft internal organs apart.

A pair of black military boots appeared in the slightly blurry field of vision, stepping on the ruins and gravel.

W raised his head and saw the tip of the black sword hanging down.

"You have nowhere to run, W." The visitor stopped in front of W, looking down indifferently at her kneeling on her knees and the dagger she held tightly in her hand.

"You are very good, cunning, alert, with keen judgment and excellent battlefield sense. These have caused us a lot of trouble. You even used your little traps and scheming to kill one of my careless partners and several others. You are not a weak player, so I will give you a chance to choose."

"Are you praising me?" W asked in surprise, forcing a frivolous smile on his embarrassed face: "But I don't really need your praise."

"You deserve some of my time."

"what chance?"

W clenched the dagger in her hand and asked curiously. She didn't stand up from the ground. She needed to rest, even if the time was short.