Draga Of The Vanguard - Chapter 13 The Battle Of Asfaleia

Men were crawling and screaming all sorts of unintelligible things. The elites that were scaling the robot had dropped off. They landed and the flames in their helmets went out. They were screaming for forgiveness…which when people carefully listened, was what everyone else was doing. The floating convex disc had spread the blue light across the battlefield. And any that were hit by it ended up in this sorry state. The light had even reached the wall, and me was sprawled on the ground, stratching his haor out and begging for forgiveness. The Vanguards-in-training were also hit by this light. Squad 209 was affected as well.

Gars had taken a foetal position and was asking his dad to forgive him for escaping alone. Morte had taken off his ring and asked his father to forgive him for killing him. Pierre was rolling on the ground, begging his little sister to forgive him for not protecting her enough. May was asking her parents for forgiveness for not being able to do anything while they were being eaten. And Rei was on the ground..completely broken. The mental effect being used by this demon…while it was similar to an imp’s, it had ten times the normal strength and a wide area effect. The army was in pieces.

The demon stayed stationary looking upwards. Then some small metal cylinders, about the size of a normal man, were ejected from it’s surface. They landed…and opened. An imp came out of one. But this wasn’t an ordinary imp. It had metal arms and blade claws, with a metal abdomen and metal legs. Its torso upwards was skin, but one thing was missing. Its eye. This was an eyeless half metal imp, which walked foward slowly. It reached a crying soldier, and proceeded to bash his head in. It repeated this several times. There were about 30 of these metal imps. And they had killed a hundred men in 2 minutes.

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Rei was carrying Cristina’s burnt corpse, and had Kevin’s on his shoulder. He dropped them next to his parents and waited. The corpses got up and spoke. “You’re a disgrace. In the face of danger instead of dying bravely you ran for your mummy.” said his father. “If I was alive I would have locked the door and hoped you died.” said his mother. “I should have expected this. All he has is dirt in his fucked up brain after all.” said Kevin. “You disappointed me Rei. I looked up to you and you left me for dead.” said Cristina.

“You failure. How dare you survive and leave us to die.” said an old man’s corpse who had materialised out of thin air. “You were never a blessing. A demon like you should have been burned along with us.” said a young woman’s corpse. “The brat couldn’t warn us properly. And yet he had the guts to live.” said an old woman. “Disgusting.” said a middle aged man. “Forgive me…” Rei said crying. “Oh we’ll forgive you, my dear son. If you take your life for us.” said his mother’s corpse.

The other corpses grew in number and begun to chant. ‘Take your life’ they said with vigor, growing in number with each chat. “Tiny bastard. Thinks he’s a bigshot because he became a bloody Vanguard.” said a villager. “One month. One bloody month and he forgets us.” said another villager. As of now the number of corpse was 500. In this dark space that was Rei’s mind, the only thing thay could be audibly heard was ‘Take your life’. Then a strange thing happened. An old man wearing a strange red flowing attire appeared. He looked at Rei with anger visibly on his face. “This is noisy as hell you know. I would prefer if you turned it off.”

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On the side of the wall were squad 209 stayed screaming, Rei had gotten up. His hair glowed bright red and his eyes shined with a red ruby light. He walked to the armor equipping station and wore an elite armor. It shrunk to it size whenever a piece touched him. Then he walked to a launcher tower. He climbed to the topmost point, and activated it. Wind magic sent him flying high into the sky.

With a scream he brought out his sword and shattered the disc that floated in the air. Then he sent it flying towards the demon. It crashed into it, making it fall backwards and disrupting its mental effect. The army had regained its senses. They looked on the battle field and saw a child with bright red hair wearing Vanguard elite armor. “…He is a Drag…” me said quietly as he attempted to recover from the mental effect.

The child stood on top of the disc, and shouted. This shout was more like the roar of a powerful beast, and it caused a gust of wind to rise up. His pupils had disappeared and his veins glowed bright red. He ran up to the creature’s face, as it was slow to get up, and punched it. Its head shifted upwards, and it complimented this by punching Rei with a steam propelled arm. It sent the boy a good distance, then it got up to fight this creature. On the battlefield shoulders were fighting the metal imps. They had suddenly gotten faster and more violent, and were now more dangerous than ogres. But against experienced Vanguards, these were small fry. Their extermination was quick. Squad 209 had recovered and joined in the battle to make up for the lost men. The demon fire more canister, this time they were larger. They opened, and metal black ogres came out. The fight continued.

Rei was now fighting barehanded against this monster, trading blows as if they were equal. He grabbed the monster’s left arm, and proceeded to run on it. The demon tried to crush Rei like an insect, but he was too fast. Running with all four limbs, he reached the joint and tore it apart. The demon pointed his right arm at Rei, who wasn’t wearing a helmet. It released a small amount of steam, but Rei ran through it like it was nothing. He reached its shoulder and disconnected that as well. At this point the monster seemed to be panicking.

It looked at the boy with its eye, and created its blue light. Rei stopped for a second. The monster seemed to smile. It then brought its hand to crush Rei. But Rei soon began to move again. He reached the eye and punched it, breaking the glass and disabling its mental effect light. Then he ripped off the head and threw it off the demon’s shoulders. He jumped down and landed on it.

The Vanguards, who had slain the metal black ogres shouted in victory. Then Rei looked at them. And his blood boiled.