Chapter 169: Shield
The alarm hadn't even faded before the camp's quiet was torn apart entirely.
Wild boar beastmen poured through a gap in the eastern fence.
Their builds were heavy and ungainly, tusks a dull yellowed-white, and each of them carried a crude oversized club that left a dent in the earth wherever it came down.
Behind them came lion-beastmen, fewer in number but clearly more disciplined fighters.
They came in from the north in a pincer, their coordination tight, systematically cutting the camp into smaller pieces.
The camp collapsed into chaos in an instant.
The cook's pot was knocked over, hot broth spilling across the ground, several soldiers near it sent flying by charging wild boar beastmen. From the direction of the prisoner enclosure came the crashing racket of chains, and the beastman prisoners inside began to stir, some already struggling to their feet and pressing toward the fence.
"Hold the line! Stay together!" The adjutant's voice cut through the chaos, but it was swallowed almost immediately by the noise of the fighting.
Touch Me had reacted the moment the alarm sounded.
He had been sitting in the tent, back against the wooden support, the girl curled up on the blanket beside him. The instant he heard the alarm and the shouting from outside, he was on his feet with his hand on his sword hilt.
The girl had raised her head too. Those large eyes looked at him without any trace of panic — only a calm that looked like someone waking from a beautiful dream and accepting, without protest, that it was over.
Touch Me didn't have time to reassure her.
Heavy footsteps were closing in from outside, mixed with the ragged bellowing of beastmen.
He took one quick look around the tent. No place to hide anyone. The canvas was too thin to stop anything: leaving her here was the same as leaving her to die.
Touch Me grabbed the blanket.
He shook it open in one motion, brought it around behind the girl, and went down on one knee. He pulled her in against his back, wrapped the blanket around her body, threaded it under both his arms, and knotted it tight.
The whole thing took a few seconds.
The girl resisted slightly. Some part of her felt she would only be a burden, that this was the moment to stop fighting her fate and let what was coming come. But the feeling of security at his back, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, was something she couldn't bring herself to let go of.
Touch Me stood up. One hand went to the sword hilt at his hip, the other reached back to check the knot.
"Don't be afraid." He said it quietly, for her as much as for himself. "We're going to make it through this."
He felt the weight on his back shift slightly. Two small hands gripped the shoulder plate of his armor.
The tent flap was ripped open from outside.
A wild boar beastman's enormous frame forced its way through the opening. That ugly boar head was grotesque up close, thick breath blasting from the nostrils with a rank, wet smell.
Touch Me didn't wait for it to find its footing.
He stepped forward. [Flowing Acceleration] activated in the same instant, a cool clarity spreading from the top of his head downward.
His blade cleared the scabbard and drove straight at the wild boar beastman's neck.
The beastman didn't have time to raise its club.
The blade cut through coarse skin, through fur and fat, and found the artery beneath. Blood surged from the wound. A wet, gargling sound came from the beastman's throat, and that massive body swayed twice before crashing to the ground.
The tent collapsed on one side, canvas and dust falling together.
Touch Me burst through the wreckage and into the open.
What he found outside was worse than he'd expected.
Beastmen everywhere: wild boar beastmen and lion-beastmen tangled together across the camp, filling it like something that had crawled out of the pit.
The Aindra cavalry had their swords out and were fighting, but the attack had come too suddenly. Many of them hadn't reached their horses and were fighting on foot.
The adjutant was in the center of the camp, shouting commands. The soldiers around him had managed to form a rough ring and were holding back part of the lion-beastman push from the north.
But the wild boar beastmen on the eastern side were more numerous, a moving wall of bodies grinding toward the heart of the camp.
Toward the prisoner enclosure.
Touch Me felt a cold jolt move through him. If those prisoners got out and hit the camp from the inside, it was over.
But he didn't have time to think past the immediate.
Two wild boar beastmen had spotted him. They charged at the same moment.
Their clubs came down with a rush of displaced air.
Touch Me twisted to the side. The first club grazed his shoulder armor and threw off sparks. He didn't try to absorb it; he used the momentum of the dodge and sent his blade into the wild boar beastman's armpit, where the skin was unprotected and the resistance was light.
The wild boar beastman let out a howl of pain. Its club hit the ground.
Touch Me pulled his sword free and brought it back in a rising cut across the second beastman's knee. The second beastman stumbled forward and went down.
Touch Me didn't stop to finish them. He stepped over the fallen bodies and moved toward the edge of the camp.
He needed ground he could defend. Somewhere he wasn't exposed on all sides.
But the rush of air from behind made him stop.
A lion-beastman came in from the flank, faster than any wild boar beastman, claws driving at the back of his neck, directly where the girl's head was.
Touch Me's pupils contracted sharply.
No time to dodge. If he forced a dodge, he might come out of it fine — but those claws would land on the girl.
He activated [Fortress].
The lion-beastman's claws were deflected by Touch Me's sword with a screech of metal on metal.
Touch Me gritted his teeth and swept his blade horizontally across the lion-beastman's midsection. The beastman fell back in pain. Touch Me used the gap to put distance between them, breathing hard.
A faint tremor from his back. The girl's hands had tightened their grip on his shoulder plate.
He didn't have time to check on her. More beastmen were pressing in from every direction.
The fighting continued.
Touch Me's breathing grew ragged. Each swing of the sword cost him more than the last.
His arm was starting to burn. [Flowing Acceleration]'s effect was thinning: the focus it took to sustain a Martial Art was running out.
A wild boar beastman caught the gap after one of his swings and drove its club into his left leg in a sweeping blow.
Touch Me's body jerked. He went down on one knee.
The pain from his left leg hit like fire spreading outward. He pressed his teeth together and held.
The second blow was already coming.
He got his sword up in time. The impact sent a crack through his ears and shook the blade so hard it nearly left his hand.
But he couldn't go down.
The girl was on his back.
Touch Me put everything he had left into pushing the wild boar beastman's club aside, then drove his blade through the beastman's throat.
By now he had taken several wounds.
The armor plate on his left arm had been knocked loose, exposing a deep purple bruise beneath. Blood was seeping through the gaps in his right arm's armor as well.
His leg was the worst of it. Every step felt like pressing down on a blade's edge.
But the space directly behind him had not taken a single hit.
The girl was untouched.
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