Astartes of the Bear School

Chapter 1691 1663. Escape Support
Willis has a gap in his teeth, so there is a hissing sound when he speaks.

He understood what Leila meant, and threw the sword to the ground, muttering curses.

"Get off your horses!" Willis yelled at the people around him with a broken-toothed voice, "Use everything you can find to block the road! What are you looking at? Your mother only gave birth to you once, and you can only die once!"

"We are soldiers! We are the rear guard! We must stop them and delay time."

As he shouted, he fell silent.

"As long as we hold them back, they may be able to escape into the mountains," Leila said, getting off her horse. "There are women and children among them. Why are they just standing there?"

"We are soldiers! We were soldiers when Aedirn was still there, and we were hired by Vengerberg to defend the city after Aedirn fell. We get paid to do this, don't you remember?!"

The soldiers looked at each other.

For a moment, Leila thought they would run away. They would urge their horses, which were already foaming at the mouth and panting like they were dying, to launch a final desperate gallop, overtaking the group of refugees and rushing towards the distant place where they might survive.

But she was wrong.

The soldiers dragged two broken carts from the roadside and dumped them in the middle of the road, creating a makeshift roadblock. It wasn't very high and was basically useless.

They did not have to wait long before two horses staggered into the ravine, their sweat sloshing out of their manes. But only one of them had a rider.

"Bryce!"

"Get ready," the rider fell off his horse and landed in the arms of a soldier, but he still shouted, "Get ready, get ready, they are right behind us!"

"Leila," Bryce turned around, "Give me, give me a weapon. I lost my sword."

The female soldier looked at the black smoke drifting into the sky and tilted her head to the side. Bryce staggered over and grabbed an axe that was chopping at the makeshift roadblock. Blood was dripping down his left trouser leg.

"Bryce, where are the others?"

"They were all killed." He groaned in pain. "The whole army is gone. Leila, it's not the Nilfgaardians who are chasing us, it's the Scoia'tael! The elves are leading the charge for the Nilfgaardians!"

One of the soldiers let out a piercing wail, another simply collapsed to the ground, sobbing with his hands covering his face. Willis cursed with trembling lips.

"Get ready," Leila shouted, "Get behind cover. I promise you, no one will be captured alive!"

Willis spat, tore off the badge on his shoulder strap that symbolized his service in King Demavi's special forces, and threw it into the bushes by the roadside.

Leila smiled sarcastically and polished the badge on her shoulder strap to make it shine brighter.

"It makes no difference, Willis, I mean it."

Willis didn’t respond to her, but his face remained livid: “You just promised, Leila.”

"Yes, I always keep my word."

They didn't have to wait long.

After repelling the first wave of attacks, only six people were left alive. The battle was short and fierce.

The soldiers, who had been defeated by the armies of Aedirn and later rehired in the occupied Vengerberg, fought like crazy. None of them chose to fall alive into the hands of the Scoia'tael, they chose to die in battle.

Killed by arrows and swords.

Bryce was killed by two elves who tried to drag his body off the barricade after piercing him with daggers, but they failed because Bryce also had two daggers in his hands before he died.

The Scoia'tael didn't give them a chance, and the next wave of attacks came immediately.

Willis was pierced by the spear for the third time and fell to the ground.

"Leila!" He shouted incoherently, blood oozing from his mouth, "You promised!"

The female soldier quickly and efficiently dealt with another elf and turned around.

"Goodbye, Willis." She pointed the tip of her sword just below the sternum and thrust it in hard. "See you in hell!"

After a while, only Leila was left. The elves surrounded her. The female soldier was covered in blood, and her thick black braids were tied tightly, pressing against her scalp to facilitate movement.

“Come on!” She laughed horribly and yelled fiercely, “What are you waiting for? Want to capture me alive? I’m Helela!”

This title successfully discouraged the Scoia'tael from taking prisoners.

Leila waited with a sword in hand, while the elves held spears or bows and arrows, intending to kill the brutal human woman on the spot.

The elven archers were about to draw their bows and load arrows.

Leila bent over and wiped her face, which was covered with soot, blood, and dirt. She still looked at the elves opposite her fiercely.

But an unexpected scream suddenly exploded above their heads!
Even the most elite elven archers only had time to turn their eyes upwards subconsciously, and were half a beat too slow to raise their heads.

A golden rain of arrows distributed in a circular shape appeared from the void without any trace or root, and then covered the sky above the Squirrel Party!

The arrows in the rain of arrows were made entirely of golden light, and the sound they made when they were nailed to the ground and shattered was the sound of flashing light.

But the power of this thing when it strikes an elf is more real than that of a real arrow!

【Rain of Destruction】!
The abilities granted by Isu technology blossomed here, and people simply thought it was some kind of powerful magic.

"There's a wizard!" a mounted officer among the elves shouted, "Find the wizard!" He himself was fine, but the head of the warhorse he was riding was just in the range of the rain of arrows, and now the horse was whimpering and falling to the ground.

As a result, one of his legs was pressed under his side abdomen.

According to the method of dealing with conventional mages, once these mages are found, they can be killed by a hidden arrow or a skilled soldier.

Therefore, there was nothing wrong with the elf sergeant's order.

But today, he was wrong: he thought all this was done by a wizard.

And the person who released the [Rain of Destruction] didn't even think about hiding!
"Annihilate them."

Cassandra said this as she walked out of the forest on the side of the valley.

She carried the longbow on her back, the broken spear shining with golden light in her left hand, and the one-handed sword [prototype] in her right hand.

Before the elves, who were stunned by the sudden attack, could come to their senses, more ordinary arrows were shot out from the bushes beside her.

The attacker was as stealthy and agile as an elf in the forest, and his archery was accurate, fast and fierce.

Soon, the Squirrel Gang, which had just wiped out a group of Wengerburg’s city defense forces, were now wiped out by others.

Leila was like a wounded she-wolf, looking at the woman who saved her with vigilance and caution.

They both have the same braid style, with healthy and thick pigtails draped over their shoulders.

It's just that Cassandra's braids look more relaxed, not as tight as Layla's, which seems to indicate that she feels much more relaxed in battle than Layla.

"I am grateful to you, ma'am." Leila said, holding her sword and trying to calm her breath, "but I still don't know who you are and who you belong to?"

Cassandra looked at Leila with an admiring look: "You look like a good fighter."

"Thanks for the compliment."

"You and your soldiers are very brave. This buys us time to gather the refugees you are escorting. We will accommodate them well." The falconer crossed her arms across her chest. The brutal battlefield was commonplace to her and did not even affect the conversation.

"Don't be nervous. We are the rebels of Aedirn. You know the rebels, right? They are the most famous ones in recent years."

Leila still frowned.

But Iorveth, who came out of the woods, answered for her.

"Of course she knows us. She's Black Leila." The one-eyed elf walked out and said in a rather sarcastic tone, "An expert in hunting elves, Scoia'tael, and non-human races."

Seeing a group of elven archers appearing together, the female soldier's eyes twitched and her breathing became heavy.

"She was a member of Demawi's special forces, and she hunted us down before."

"That's because you, the Scoia'tael, have joined forces with the rebellious peasants." Leila smiled disdainfully, "Otherwise I wouldn't have gotten involved in suppressing the peasant uprising. But I must wipe out you, the Scoia'tael!"

With a "puff", Leila pulled out the sword that was stuck on the ground, changed the angle and stabbed it into the belly of an elf corpse.

"You guys just killed the elves pretty skillfully, didn't you?"

She was provoking Iorveth.

Just as she was provoking the Scoia'tael when she was about to be killed.

The elven archers watched this scene, and some of them had anger in their eyes.

But there was a calmness in Iorveth's one eye.

"Whatever you say, Helela. We are no longer members of the Scoia'tael. Even if Francesca took over the Valley of Flowers, we did not break away from the rebellion. This is the strongest proof. We don't need to explain it to you any more."

"And these elves." Without even turning his head, Iorveth pulled out an arrow from the quiver at his waist and shot it at the chest of a Squirrel Party member who was still alive on the ground.

With a whoosh, the man stopped moving, so fast and so fierce.

"They took the wrong path, and now they want to destroy the right path. They are the enemy. The only difference is how we treat the enemy. I guess we are still very similar to your impression of the Scoia'tael."

Leila stopped talking and just frowned as she watched the elves execute their own kind on the ground.

"Come with us, Helela. Perhaps Sakia will appreciate an experienced warrior like you."

There was no hint of negotiation in Iorveth's tone.

But surprisingly, Leila, an officer who was once famous for her harshness towards non-human races, did not directly fight back.

"Sakia?" Leila asked, "The [Dragon Slayer]?"

"What else?" Cassandra shrugged. "Who else in Aedirn can take in these refugees?"

"But I've never been merciful to the Scoia'tael before."

"Then you'd better not show mercy now." Iorveth simply choked the other party back, and said with disgust, "So now, can you put aside your narrow-minded racial concepts for a while? Just do something convenient for all of us?"

Leila felt very complicated when a former member of the Scoia'tael criticized her racial views.

(End of this chapter)