Savage Ascension: Starting with God-Tier Plunder Ability-Chapter 105: Fear Blood

The war cry filled the valley for a moment, then died just as fast. These were elite soldiers, one burst of noise to get the blood pumping was all they needed to hold their edge. No reason to keep screaming. They went in silence.

Rookie soldier Roben was visibly on edge, but he had several veteran soldiers flanking him. One of those veterans spotted Roben's breathing going haywire even before they were inside, grabbed him by the shoulder, and gave him a hard shake.

"Ugh."

"Get it together. If your breathing falls apart, you won't last. And if you fall behind, someone has to stay back to cover you: that means less fighting power."

Being a soldier meant killing people up close and personal. That wasn't something you could just muscle through on attitude alone. Sure, people had more psychos in them than you'd think, but also way more people who genuinely struggled to take a life.

Rookie Roben consciously drew long, slow breaths as he silently recited the advice he'd drilled into himself over and over. The wisdom passed down from soldier to soldier was full of real gems. Most of it was about finding your own courage, being able to cut down the enemy without hesitation, and building the kind of mental armor that kept your head intact.

'To have your name in the military rolls, to be brought into this rank: it means dirtying your hands for others. If you can't handle that, go back to farming.'

'Fear blood, and your comrades will die. Don't fear blood, and you will die. The call is yours alone, and it'll spread to everyone around you without a word.'

'Work for what you're paid. Don't forget: you eat, sleep, and live on tax money. Your pay comes from your superiors, but that pay comes from the citizens who give it.'

'Carry honor like a knight. Sure, to practical people it'll sound like bullshit, but it'll be the thing that keeps your mind from breaking.'

...Roben's lips moved silently, and gradually his breathing settled. If anything, he felt something hot rising inside him.

"Enemy contact!" 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

One shout was all: it never made it deep into the cave. But the soldiers' unified footfalls rumbled through the tunnel like a drumbeat.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Among humans, who are mostly right-handed, it was always the left foot that hit hardest. To bring maximum force with a right-hand weapon strike, the left foot has to lead.

Fifty soldiers split across two cave entrances, their synchronized footsteps booming through the stone. Signs of life inside the cave exploded into chaos. The bandits' voices rang out, and mixed in were the cries of a child and a woman's scream.

At the front, naturally, stood Commander Gesilian Faerun in full plate armor, a square shield with a sharp bottom edge gripped in his left hand and a drawn longsword in his right. A claymore was strapped across his back.

The helmet blocked a huge portion of his field of vision, with additional iron pieces sweeping down over both cheeks and under the chin for extra throat protection.

This helmet, the kind that made even turning your head a struggle, was a magic item. As a member of House Faerun, of course Gesilian had magic equipment. The magic helmet, called the Three-Mirror Helm, featured small mirror inlays on both sides and the rear that let the wearer see those angles even while looking straight ahead.

You could watch your flanks and your back without ever taking your eyes off what was in front of you. On top of that, it had all kinds of built-in specs: durability boosts, impact dampening, the works.

That was how a nobleman could afford to stand at the front.

"Halt!"

Thud. Thud. Thud!

"Ugh!"

The soldiers stopped with three hard stamps and a grunt, sweeping their eyes around the area. Commander Gesilian realized the cave was deeper than expected: there were three branching tunnels ahead. Splitting the force was out of the question.

Just then, an arrow flew out of the darkness and clunked against a soldier's shield. With torches placed well throughout the cave, the targeted soldier had no trouble blocking it with his shield.

Clunk.

The moment that soldier lowered his shield, the soldier behind immediately thrust his own shield up and forward, just barely overlapping with the edge of the first one. Holding a shield high for extended periods required distributing the weight.

'Arrows. Most bandit outfits sell everything they've got... so for them to still have arrows means there really is a connection here.'

"Build a fortification here and take them down slowly."

Rowan had been thorough. The report had already confirmed there were no other entrances or exits. For that, Dono the brown wolf and Kaiya the crow's speed and mobility had been put to full use, combing through every natural crevice in the area. The valley had a stream running through it, so there was no secondary escape route anyway.

These weren't the kind of bandits who'd bother putting in the hard work to dig out an escape tunnel. They'd been safe for years, figured they'd keep being safe, and never even entertained the thought of building a way out.

It was like knowing that going to the gym will get you in shape, and still never going.

'Just starve them out.'

Twenty of the fifty soldiers turned and headed back outside. Rowan, waiting out there, was able to get the situation report from them.

'It's a pretty big natural cave, apparently.'

The same story over on Senior Soldier Bulsheben's side. They'd hit a fork in the path. Construction kicked off fast. Forty soldiers total, twenty from each entrance, went out to chop wood and gather rocks. Since the valley had water running through it, they hauled some over and mixed it into mud with the rocks and timber to throw up a rough wall.

It took less than five hours. The whole time, the bandits yelled and fired arrows, but got zero response. A few soldiers took minor hits, but nobody died. The breastplates and helmets held up.

And none of the bandits were good enough shots to hit a neck.

Once the fortifications were up, Commander Gesilian left twenty soldiers in place and pushed into the rightmost tunnel. The resistance there was pretty fierce, but there was no stopping soldiers who just kept coming forward. Arrows clattered to the ground and soldiers stepped right over them without breaking stride.

Not a single trap. Instead, signs of everyday life were scattered everywhere. Laundry hung on rope lines, and underneath sat a fairly large furnace to drive out the cave's moisture; in front of it, a bowl held several charred root vegetables.

The tunnel didn't branch any further. There was a crack in the ceiling that kept going upward, but it showed no sign of being modified for use and clearly wasn't being used as an exit.

"They're coming!"

"Damn it, we gotta do something!"

At the far end of the cave, over fifty people were crammed together. Around them was a chaotic heap of anything they'd grabbed on the run. Twenty were men; the rest were women and children.

"Surrender! Do that, and we'll spare your lives."

"Go to hell! You aristocratic piece of shit!"

The most worked-up bandit couldn't handle the mix of death-fear, the combat adrenaline bearing down on him, and the smell of iron rolling off the soldiers.

'Don't even need to waste arrows on this.'

Commander Gesilian was only twenty-seven, but he had plenty of combat experience under his belt. Guaranteed safety had translated directly into a wide range of experience.

"Advance. Kill anyone who charges. Bind anyone who cowers."

As Commander Gesilian and thirty soldiers closed in, the bandits hurled everything they had and fired off their last arrows. All of it combined didn't even hit thirty rounds: they'd burned through most of their ammo losing their minds over the fortification work outside.

Fruit, rocks, looted daggers and other blades: all of it came flying, and all of it thudded into shields. The gaps between shields were plugged tight by the weapons of the soldiers behind, so nothing was getting through.

"I— ugh! AAAAHH!!!!"

One bandit charged. That set off the rest, and they all screamed and rushed forward.

Whump!

The charging bandit had completely misjudged the distance. The Back-Door Gang was used to robbing people by sheer force of numbers, not actual fighting. He'd come in way too close to swing a weapon, and the soldier at the front didn't waste the opening. In one snap motion the square shield shot forward, and was pulled right back.

That was all it took. The bandit took the edge of the shield straight to the body and toppled backward.

"Ugh!"

His head cracked against a large rock jutting up from the ground, hard enough to bleed. Another bandit stepped right on the fallen one's chest and lunged forward.

Bang!

Longsword met shield. This one at least knew his reach. Behind the soldiers, movement rippled through the formation in an instant: a switch to close-combat formation now that the ranged barrage was done.

"Spearmen! Forward!"

The axemen who had moved up to fill shield gaps fell back. The handles of their one-handed axes had cross-shaped (+) ends specifically designed to plug the gaps between shields.

In the moment it took the axemen and spearmen to swap out, the bandit wielding the longsword hammered the shield with wild, frenzied swings: like a shaman lost in a trance.

"RAAAAHH!!!"

Whether he thought the noise scared them or not, the bandit kept screaming at the top of his lungs, right up until a spear punched clean through his throat. One second. The shield soldier had been dangling the shortsword in his right hand this way and that, drawing all the focus there, so when the spear thrust came, there was no reaction to it.

"Gck."

Skewered on the spear and dragged forward, the shield soldier smashed him hard with the shield, to separate the neck from the spear. Blood poured out, the bandit's knees buckled, and the upper body crashed backward.

A dozen or so bandits dropped their lives just like that, and the remaining four stumbled back and threw down their weapons. The crushing sight of Commander Gesilian cutting down five bandits in just two breaths had shattered whatever morale was left.

"On the ground! Hands to your waist! Cross your legs!"

Whump!

"Augh!"

Anyone who didn't comply fast enough caught a shield edge to the head. One bandit got a boot to the ribs: purely because he was big and it seemed like a good idea.

"Waaah. Waaah."

Even a crying child hit the ground under a fist if they didn't get down. The soldiers couldn't afford to let their guard down. They knew well enough that even a child could kill.

A soldier kicked a child in the stomach, one who was just crying and nothing more, then bound the kid without a second thought. The child couldn't even breathe, just opening and closing their mouth, curled up tight like a fetus. But that looked like resistance.

Shick.

The throat was cut right then and there. Over it all came Commander Gesilian's voice.

"Kill anyone who resists! Show no mercy! These are traitors, rebels, wild animals that have preyed on the safety of citizens! No compassion!"

Rookie soldier Roben, splattered in blood, hands trembling, planted a steel boot on the back of a bandit's neck and tied him up. Roben wanted to cover his ears but couldn't. He had a duty to carry out.

Thick saliva dripped from his mouth, but he didn't even notice. He hadn't blinked in so long that his eyes were slowly going red.