"What the hell are these things supposed to be?"

One-Eye tightened his grip on the long blade and brought it down in a sharp vertical slash that split the air before cutting into flesh.

Blood sprayed across his face. The blood was already cold when it hit him. The sound of bone colliding with steel was horribly clear. Through the shredded cloth and torn meat, he could even see the organs inside, already blackened and ruptured...

And yet even so, that Kingdom soldier—the one who had taken Beck’s blow, then three more from him, whose heart had long since stopped beating, whose belly had been split open with his intestines hanging out, whose neck hung at a twisted angle—still refused to rest.

"Heh heh... die..."

The Kingdom soldier staggered forward one step at a time, like some cheap toy on the verge of falling apart. Every time he moved, One-Eye could clearly hear the damaged joints in his body grinding against each other with dry little creaks.

The throat One-Eye had already slit no longer supported anything like "speech." All that came out of the wound, bubbling with blood-foam, was some vague, broken sound.

It sounded like laughter.

It sounded like sobbing.

Flames burned everywhere across the battlefield, but not even the faintest trace of light was reflected in the eyes of the soldier still dragging his sword toward One-Eye.

"Christ, has the Kingdom gone that crazy? Did they start digging up those damned walking corpses from the graveyard and drafting them into the army?"

One-Eye swallowed hard and cursed furiously. He had been a soldier for a long time, and aside from his earliest days as a recruit, he had never been this shaken on a battlefield.

No—even when he was a recruit, he had never run into anything this goddamn wrong.

"Beck, you coward, think of something!"

Since hacking at it did no good, and the damn thing could still get back up after all its vital spots had been destroyed, One-Eye simply kicked it flying.

"Didn’t you say you studied at a church school for a few years?"

"I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!"

Beck was already huddled there with his head in his hands, shaking all over, his words tumbling over each other in panic.

"They never taught me how to deal with something like this at church school..."

"They don’t teach you how to deal with the undead at church school? What kind of garbage school was that?"

One-Eye glared with his one remaining eye.

But before long, he had no time to argue about what church schools did or didn’t teach, because a few yards away the Kingdom soldier casually stuffed his own intestines back inside and hauled himself upright yet again.

"Why the hell would church school teach that?" Beck stammered. "It was funded by the Church so poor people could learn to read and study, with a little doctrine mixed in on the side. As long as you were a devout believer in the Goddess, you could get in for almost nothing... they don’t teach Holy Light there!"

"If they don’t teach it, you could’ve stolen a little of it anyway. Damn it, how are you this honest?"

"Holy Light needs Holy Light affinity. If I had talent like that, I would’ve been sent straight into the Church. I’m just an ordinary person. Even if I wanted to learn it, I couldn’t."

"Christ, so after all that, you’re still useless. Think of something!"

One-Eye cursed again, then charged back in to keep tangling with the Kingdom soldier.

"Damn it..."

Blades flashed. Cannons thundered. Whether it was the smoke and blood stinging too sharply in his nose, or whether everything that had happened today had already pushed his mind past what it could bear, Beck felt a splitting pain begin to build inside his skull.

"What... what am I supposed to think of?"

Beck muttered under his breath, angry now at One-Eye for doing nothing but cursing at him. What good did yelling do? He had been born this cowardly, this useless. Was yelling at him supposed to turn him into some fearless brute like One-Eye?

"Beck!" 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

He was a coward. So what? It wasn’t like he’d ever wanted to enlist. If it hadn’t been for scraping together money to treat his mother’s illness, he never would have joined the army and come out here to kill people.

And not only had he been forced to enlist, his luck had been rotten too. The moment he arrived, the Empire’s army had already begun falling back again and again. Hadn’t everyone said the Empire always held the advantage against the Kingdom?

"Beck!"

He had never seen any advantage. All he had seen was their side retreating over and over. And now look at them—they were surrounded by the Kingdom, and even the Kingdom’s soldiers had turned into things like this. What chance did they have of winning now?

"It’s over... we’re finished... Mom, I don’t think I’m making it home..."

Beck curled in on himself. He felt like no matter what he did, he could not stop his body from shaking. Even his vision was starting to blur from fear...

"Beck!!"

"Stop yelling at me!"

Beck broke down.

"I really don’t have that kind of courage—"

Thrust.

A sword punched through flesh, and blood ran slowly along the fuller of the blade until it dripped across Beck’s face.

The blood was already cold. It stank of rot. It trickled down from his forehead little by little, and in his stunned expression, little by little, it pressed his tears back where they had come from.

A Kingdom soldier had come charging out of nowhere, his eyes blazing red like some beast that had lost all reason. The sword in his hand was raised high, less than four inches from Beck now...

But that sword point, the point of death, stopped there in the end.

"You little shit..."

One-Eye grabbed the soldier by the back of the neck, kicked away the Kingdom soldier he had just stabbed clean through the chest, then lunged forward and caught Beck by the collar. Veins stood out on his forehead, and his expression was savage.

"If you want to die, I can run you through myself right now. But if you still want to go home and see that half-dead mother of yours, then get your shit together!"

"I..."

"What 'I'? What the hell do you mean 'I'?"

One-Eye lifted the hand holding his sword. The joints were thick, the palm was hard with calluses—the hand of a battle-scarred soldier.

But now, even that hand was trembling slightly.

It was faint, but Beck could see the shake in it. And through that shake, it was as if he could finally see the fear inside One-Eye himself.

"You think I’m not scared? You think all these brothers of ours aren’t scared? We are! Who the hell isn’t scared? But that’s not an excuse for you to fold! The more afraid you are, the more you shrink back, and the harder it gets to stay alive on a battlefield. You understand # Nоvеlight # me?"

"But I—"

"There is no 'but'!"

One-Eye’s fist smashed into Beck’s cheek. Though his hand was shaking, the punch was still brutally solid.

Beck stumbled and fell to the ground, stars bursting in his vision. The sharp pain nearly made him cry again—but it also snapped something in his head back into place. Countless images began flowing past his eyes: his mother, sick in bed; the priest from the church school; and One-Eye standing right in front of him.

"I... I..."

Beck had never seen One-Eye this angry before. Usually the veteran acted more like a street thug than a soldier, with hardly an ounce of seriousness in him. Aside from the occasional stern moment, most of the time he was sneaking other people’s jerky with a shameless grin, or thumping his own chest while telling heroic stories no one knew whether to believe.

And yet it was exactly that anger that smashed apart every excuse Beck had been clinging to. Reflected in his eyes was that ugly face that somehow still made him feel overwhelmingly safe. A moment ago, he had wanted to beg, to plead, to say something pathetic—but at the last second the words changed on his tongue.

"I... I understand now..."

Beck spat out one of his teeth, then wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I’ll do better. I will. I’ll do better..."

"That’s more like it!"

Seeing Beck finally pull himself together a little, One-Eye changed face just as quickly as before, drawing back all that rage and viciousness. He reached down, hauled Beck back to his feet, and grinned.

"If you’re gonna die, die like a man with some guts. Don’t make me look down on you!"

"Heh... you jerky-stealing bastard..."

Beck managed a weak smile too.

"What right do you have to look down on any—watch out!"

At Beck’s sudden scream of terror, the lone pupil in One-Eye’s eye shrank sharply.

Smoke still filled the air. The sounds of slaughter had never stopped. But maybe because he had been too focused on dragging that coward back out of his fear, he had let his guard slip for just a second and failed to notice the enemy drawing near.

A Kingdom soldier with half his skull blown apart suddenly crawled out of the crater a magitech cannon had blasted beside them. Like a crippled lizard, he twisted his body forward and drove the broken half of his ruined sword toward One-Eye’s back.

"Shit... too late..."

One-Eye spun hard—but the attack had come too suddenly, too secretly. There was no time to react. Even forcing his body around only let him do one thing at the very last instant...

See the broken sword about to take his life.

Thrust.

Steel pierced flesh. Blood splashed out.

One-Eye stood there in a daze for a long moment. Then, trembling, he raised a hand and touched that thick, sticky blood. His pale lips twitched, and he spoke what sounded like his final last words.

"Christ... that damn near scared the piss outta me..."

The blood smeared across his fingers came into view.

It was black.

And cold.

It wasn’t his blood at all. It was the Kingdom soldier’s.

Because at the very last second, just as the sneak attack was about to succeed, another blade had shot in at exactly the right moment, driving straight through the Kingdom soldier’s throat and cleanly severing his spine.

The Kingdom soldier was still "alive," glaring at the enemy in front of him, his teeth clacking together as if he might leap up and bite at any second.

But with his spine cut through, the instant Beck yanked out the blade, he collapsed to the ground. His limbs could no longer move at all.

"Holy shit, kid—your blade... no, wait, that wasn’t just hacking. That was swordsmanship. Since when the hell did your sword get that sharp?"

One-Eye nearly bulged out his last eye all over again.

"Didn’t I tell you?"

Beck was breathing hard. That strike had clearly taken everything he had.

"When I was at church school, I couldn’t steal any Holy Light... but I did steal a little swordsmanship. Otherwise why do you think a coward like me would choose to enlist?"

"The hell? That counts too?"

One-Eye froze for a second, then suddenly realized—

Right. Of course. This was the same guy who had hacked clean through all those bones and driven a blade straight into someone’s heart. There had to be some foundation there.

He just had no experience killing people, so he looked like a rookie.

"You little bastard... I knew there was something about you!"

One-Eye slapped Beck hard on the shoulder, thrilled.

"Let me say this first—I’m still scared. Scared enough I can barely walk straight."

Beck held out a hand, looked at the miserable state One-Eye was in, and gave a strained, bitter little smile.

"But it looks like you weren’t lying either. One-Eye, who’s scared of nothing under heaven... really does get scared."