22: Exiled Lord — Chapter 22 – Crisis Averted, Discovery of Strange Little Bok Choy 22: Exiled Lord — Chapter 22 – Crisis Averted,
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“Sir, don’t stray too far from me in a moment.” Ashina grabbed Field’s arm and dropped her voice.
“I’m confident I can break us out.” Field understood what she meant.
He nodded.
“I will.
But until the very last moment, I’d still rather not run.” “Leave the cart here.
Get the crossbows out and cock them.” Learning from last time, Field had made a point of bringing crossbows along.
“ROAR, ROAR!” A gnome-like monster hauled itself over a crumbled wall on long, spindly arms and launched itself onto a guard.
Its jaw gaped open and it bit down, tearing and gnashing.
CREAK, CRUNCH, the lamellar armor actually screamed under the pressure.
The guard lurched in fright and thrashed wildly, but couldn’t shake the thing loose.
Ashina was already moving.
Her long blade sang free and split the monster clean in two.
“Is that…
a corrupted monkey?” Long arms, long legs, a tail, no question.
As if something had triggered a signal, the whole of Langmu Village erupted at once.
Gnome-like creatures bounded everywhere, a black surging mass pouring through the ruins like a flooding river.
Field forced himself to breathe.
He swept the mini-map fast, calculating hard.
One wrong step and he’d walk everyone into a death trap.
“Move!
Southeast — there’s a large courtyard that way!” One.
Two.
Ten.
More and more gnome corpse-creatures clambered over the rubble and spilled into view.
“Loose!” The order was barely out of Field’s mouth before the guards fired.
Crossbow bolts punched through the air and the leaping monkey creatures burst open in sprays of red, their bodies slamming down like they’d hit an invisible wall.
Corpses piled the ground.
“Clear a path.” Ashina raised one hand.
The dragon-breed wolf moved forward at a quick trot, breathing great curtains of flame while it advanced, forcing a corridor through the horde.
Ashina herself dropped back to hold the rear.
Five monkey creatures pounced at her together.
The moment they lined up, she was already moving, her cavalry saber raked through in a single arc.
Cold light, then five bodies tumbling apart at the waist, trailing blood.
Something caught the edge of her vision: a monster slithering flat along the ground, fast, angling to spring up from beneath her.
Ashina raised one pale leg and brought her boot down hard on its skull.
POP.
The head burst.
Eyeballs skittered across the dirt.
While Ashina held them off, Field pushed everyone into the large courtyard at a dead run. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Guards were already dragging stones and rotted furniture against the gate to block it.
“This spot isn’t safe.
Push back further — use the buildings.” Field checked the mini-map again.
The red markers stretched on without end.
The one comfort was that the horde wasn’t targeting him.
They were streaming in another direction and had merely clipped Langmu Village along the way.
“Hold the gate.
Rest in rotation.
They’re passing through, they’ll move on soon.” Field kept his voice steady, giving everyone something to hold onto.
With the dragon-breed wolf, Ashina, and the soldiers anchoring the gate, the line held.
Then the corrupted monkeys hit them in force.
It didn’t matter.
Field’s formation was a wall they couldn’t crack.
Fully armored guards with heavy shields braced in the gateway, the creatures threw themselves against it and got nothing.
The wolf was something else entirely, a flamethrower in armor plate.
Corrupted creatures swarmed it like insects and couldn’t pop a single scale.
The only downside was that Ashina had to dismount again and fight on foot.
Field panted hard, his heart hammering.
The Nightfall Fief’s reputation was earned.
The fact that he was still breathing owed no small part to luck.
“I need those perimeter walls up.
Soon.” He pressed two fingers to his temple, grateful, at least, that the horde hadn’t veered toward the grand winery.
They held each other’s backs for half an hour.
Then the tide thinned, slowed, and finally disappeared.
“Hah.” Ashina exhaled.
“That was brutal.” She pulled her blade free and flicked the fouled blood off in a long arc.
Even a Chosen One had limits.
This was the largest corpse tide they’d faced since arriving at the Nightfall Fief.
The last corrupted monkey went down and silence settled over the village at last.
“You worked hard.” Field looked at Ashina, sweat-drenched, still catching her breath, and felt a sharp pang in his chest.
She’d held the line, output damage constantly, and peeled pressure off the guards whenever it built too high.
Not a single guard had died, and that was entirely because of her.
Everyone else had effectively been dead weight on her shoulders, though training the guards was unavoidable.
Ashina winked, a flash of playfulness cutting through the exhaustion.
“Heh.
Every meal I’ve eaten, I just paid for in full.” “Thank you, Lady Ashina.” The guards said it themselves, a little sheepish.
The wariness in their eyes was gone.
What remained was something simpler: pure awe. Find the original chapter at g.com.
The people of this world weren’t like the ones Field had known back on Earth.
Here, humans had long harbored a deep-rooted hostility toward Demi-humans, treating them as unclean half-beasts, monstrous things born between man and animal.
“Rest for half an hour, then we move.” Field crouched and prodded a monster’s corpse with the tip of his longsword, curious about their anatomy and why they were migrating at all.
Ten years of corruption had done its work on Langmu Village.
Most structures had caved in, windows empty and hollow, the whole place more landfill than settlement.
Field wasn’t holding out much hope for salvage.
When the rest ended, he gave the order.
“Five to a group.
Search for anything useful and bring it back.
Everything counts.” The Nightfall Fief was short on everything.
Pots, bowls, ladles, a plank of wood, it all had purpose.
Field set the fog-dispersal lamp at the village center and stood looking out across the ruins, turning over in his mind whether this place could become a proper outpost.
Ashina returned from her circuit of the village and made her report.
“Sir.
I noticed something unusual, in a farmstead courtyard on the west side.
A plant.
It was glowing green and I felt magic coming off it.” Field was on his feet before she finished.
“Let’s go.” Magic.
Even the word had a pull to it.
“Could it be like in the stories?
Some kind of rare treasure?” The farmstead’s main building had caved in, but the courtyard wall was stone-built rather than wicker fencing, so it had held.
The moment they stepped inside, Field saw it.
A small cluster of plants, no taller than seedlings, flickering with tiny scattered points of light.
Something about them, the green, the glow, pulled at him on a level he couldn’t name.
He crouched and leaned in close.
“Looks a bit like bok choy just breaking through the soil.” He poked one with his finger.
A strange smell surged straight up into his nose.
“Achoo!” Field sneezed hard enough to rock forward.
Ashina let out a quiet laugh.
“Sir.
Maybe don’t poke unknown things.” Then her expression changed.
“Wait — are you alright?” Field’s eyes had gone glassy, unfocused.
His expression was slack in a way that made no sense.
Ashina stepped toward him quickly, searching his face.
The veins at Field’s temple pulsed hard and visible.
Sweat broke across his skin in a sudden flood.
Deep in his body, something responded.
He caught her scent.
His hand shot out and closed around Ashina’s wrist.
➤ Next: The Devil’s Plant