Shadowed Gaze: The Highserk War Saga - Chapter 33

Walm felt a strange sensation in his mouth. It was soon followed by an intense pain in his brain, as if it were being repeatedly struck with a war hammer. His limbs wouldn’t move freely, and his chest hurt with every breath he exhaled.

“Ah… huff…”

The feeling of suffocation and pressure enveloped Walm’s entire body. A rich smell of earth and the stench of decay assaulted his nose. As he tried to move, he was initially met with slight resistance, but then the darkness cleared.

Walm exhaled air from his lungs as if he had been longing for it, along with clumps of soil and moisture. It took him some time to realize that he had been buried underground. Even after emerging, half of his vision was still shrouded in darkness.

The remaining half displayed the night sky. The familiar smell of the battlefield, now more intense than usual, lingered in the air. Only moving his right eye to look around, Walm saw the final resting places of soldiers, carelessly discarded in disarray. He felt a dull pain as if his head was being clamped in a vise, and a stabbing pain in his eyeball like being pierced with an ice pick. Checking his eye with the reflection on the blade of his longsword, he saw no significant injuries, but his black eye was clouded and discolored.

His clouded eye reflected nothing. It was then Walm realized that the light in his left eye had been extinguished. “Ah, was it scorched by magic?” he thought, oddly accepting. He had been subjected to an excessive and dense projection of magical power, enough to bury a person. It was no wonder one of his eyes was affected.

Walm began to assess his body’s condition. His head might have a fracture. Strangely, any cuts had already clotted and begun to heal. All fingers on his left hand were pointed in random directions. Each breath brought unbearable pain. There was no part of him left unharmed. After a brief period of activity, Walm looked up at the sky again. It was a full moon. The shape of the moon, which should have been waning, had changed.

“How many days have passed since then?”

Walm voiced his question aloud. All around him was death. The concentrated use of magic had created several large holes, into which corpses had been indiscriminately thrown.

The partially buried and exposed bodies were beginning to decompose. Rats and maggots covered and devoured the flesh.

They were all from the Highserk army. Walm guessed that the enemy forces had carelessly buried their dead. There was a faint smell of holy water mixed in.

The explosion of a large amount of earth and dirt that had hidden Walm underground had saved him from harm by beasts or enemy soldiers.

“Ah… Reinus, Tibard, Danfan…”

Walm uttered a few names. They were veterans of Duwey’s Squad. They weren’t particularly close, but they had been comrades for nearly a year, passing through life-and-death situations together.

They were men loyal to their desires rather than comrades, but they had saved his life on occasion.

In Walm’s mind, a bright red alert was screaming. Stop. Don’t search any further—

Bright red hair, a crushed bow, the broken war axe of Squad Leader Duwey.

“Ugh…”

His empty stomach contracted, and stomach acid surged up. The taste was terrible.

Unconsciously, Walm brought his hands together. What to do now? He couldn’t concentrate for several minutes.

The military flags illuminated by the moonlight all belonged to the Four Nation Alliance. Most of the ramparts had fallen, and the one Walm had been defending had turned into a massive gravesite.

It was too quiet to be the front lines. Walm groaned, realizing that this area must have become a safe zone completely cleared of resistance by the Four Nation Alliance.

He understood that the enemy’s main force had filled the ramparts previously held by the Highserk army.

How far had he fallen? Was everything lost, or only the walls remained? What should he do? Continue pretending to be dead and look for an opportunity to escape, or surrender?

As Walm lowered his gaze, he saw the empty eye sockets of a comrade who had been stabbed repeatedly. There were other bodies too, their faces unrecognizable. And not just one. Walm remembered his brother telling him that those who lost both eyes before death would never reach the underworld, destined instead to wander in the darkness of the in-between. Whether the eyes were gouged out before or after death was unclear. The corpses were bound at the hands, suggesting they were killed after being captured.

Was it the rampage of some soldiers or an organized act?

Soldiers’ emotional outbursts were common. From his experience handling prisoners, Walm knew well that prisoners were burdensome, requiring food, guard, space, and effort.

The Highserk army, to avoid worsening sentiments in occupied territories and for labor force retention, officially refrained from the massacre of prisoners. Yet Walm had seen many times when, due to shortages of supplies for prisoners or to relieve soldiers’ stress, prisoners were killed. In the 3rd rampart, countless soldiers of the Four Nation Alliance were killed or wounded. In an army without a unified command, the treatment of prisoners varied, leading to mass killings. Still, Walm could neither understand nor empathize with the need to destroy the eyes of the dead.

“It’s war. It’s not unheard of, but…”

Was there a need to despise and violate the enemy to such an extent? The idea of a ‘rational war’ came to mind, and Walm laughed bitterly, showing his teeth.

“Ha ha, huh… iih…”

Despite having killed and been killed, was he still clinging to notions of decency and intelligence?

He didn’t know how many days had passed. Yet in his mind, the memories of joking with his squad members just a few hours ago were vivid.

“Ah, that’s right. Death always comes suddenly. It was the same before. And this is war. This is war. Killing and being killed.”

Walm tried to make sense of the situation, but his emotions interfered.

It was then he noticed a light approaching in the dim darkness.

“Hey, something’s standing over there.”

“Another undead? Highserk soldiers are a nuisance even in death.”

“We’ve crushed the eyes and limbs around here. They can barely move. Let’s just smash his head quickly.”

The carefree conversation of Felius soldiers reached his ears. The thought of surrendering and begging for mercy flickered in Walm’s mind, but then he saw the body of a comrade, hands bound and breathless.

“Surrender? To hell with that, what a joke. They’ll just gang up and torment me.”

Even if he begged for mercy, the best he could hope for was a quick death.

“Risk it all, escape after pretending to be dead smeared with maggots? Ha, not a bad idea.”

It wasn’t a bad plan, ignoring the fact that he was in the heart of enemy territory, surrounded by tens of thousands of soldiers.

Duty, responsibility, vengeance.

A tribute to his squad, loyalty to his homeland, hatred for the enemy.

“What does one wish for with the clouded eye?”

“…”

“Hey, is he muttering something?”

“Just groaning, I guess.”

“He’s dirty, but his eyes aren’t crushed. Might be one we missed.”

“Doesn’t matter, just surround him and beat him.”

Words circled endlessly in Walm’s mind. Suddenly, an idea struck him. Demon Fires were also called lights guiding to the netherworld. If he lit a large fire, perhaps his comrades wouldn’t wander lost.

Walm declared to his comrades, their eye sockets gaping.

“Even if you can’t see, you can feel my ‘Demon Fire’. I’ll make a bonfire for you. A grand one.”

As Walm spun words for his fallen comrades, the Felius soldiers finally realized he was alive.

“He’s not undead. He’s alive.”

“The battle ended 5 days ago. He’s a coward who survived covered in corpses.”

“5 days in a place like this…?”

Something hit the tip of Walm’s unmoving foot. Lifting it, he muttered happily.

“Handy, aren’t you? Come along, we’re about to light a grand fire.”

The mask nodded, rattling affirmatively. Walm slowly put on the mask and exhaled a white breath. Perhaps stimulated by the breath or the thought of the upcoming pyre, the mask trembled ecstatically.