"No, I don't know her. I was fighting the Bounder when she arrived and saved me."
He had to lie to avoid unnecessary problems.
Erwin stood up and sat close to Sola.
"You did very well. It is amazing that you not only managed to survive the battle against the Bounder but also managed to cut her arm off."
He then stood up and went to the exit.
"You all did great today."
Even though they won, none of them seemed happy. War was a terrible thing, even for those who won it.
Speaking of surviving the Bounder, Sola summoned the system to check what kind of remnant he got.
Name: Sola
Rank: Ashen
Tier: I
Soul: 27/100
Remnants: [Madman's Cleaver] [Sword of the Full Moon]
Curse: [Lilly]
Marks: [Banished] [Solace] [???]
Essence: [Dauntless] [Swift] [Drained]
Sola was surprised to see how many souls he got from this battle. He was making good progress towards one hundred, and he could already feel his body getting stronger.
His eyes lit up when he saw the name of the new remnant.
He really needed a sword that would be a remnant.
Without wasting any time, he started reading the description of the sword.
Description: [This silver blade is forged in the light of the moon; it is unreasonably sharp and tough.]
Then there was its one ability, which could have been passive or active.
Ability: [Abscess of Silver]
Ability description: [This blade can go through objects]
Sola excused himself from the camp and found a spot where he could summon his new weapon.
Seconds later, a silver double-edged blade manifested in his hand. It was a little bit more than one meter in length, and the silver was polished to the point where Sola could see his reflection in it.
The sword was light for its length, and it was well-balanced, but the most interesting thing about it was its ability, which Sola was planning to test on the tree in front of him.
He put the blade next to the tree and activated the ability. The next moment, the blade went through the wood as if there was nothing there. Until it could exit from the other side, Sola disabled the ability, and the sword got stuck inside of it. Then, using the ability again, he unstuck it and left a gap inside the tree.
He understood that this ability was beyond strong. If he used it correctly, he could activate the ability just before someone blocked his attack and disable it once it reached the body.Or if the enemy wore heavy armor, he could activate the ability to go through the armor and materialize the blade inside the body.
In the end, the blade that he got from killing the Bounder didn't disappoint. It was far stronger than he expected.
Sola was very tired from the battle, and the wound he got was not fully healed yet, so he decided to sleep in his tent.
After about an hour, Sola was woken up by the sound of screaming and clashing.
He stood up and manifested the Sword of the Full Moon in his hand. Exiting his tent, he saw his comrades dying one after another.
They got ambushed in the middle of the night, and the enemy was far more in numbers than they were.
He quickly sprinted towards where Freide's and Edric's tents were, killing two enemy warriors on his way, but he could not find anyone.
Then he heard Captain Erwin's shout.
"Everyone retreat, escape in the forest fast!"
Sola was about to turn around when someone appeared behind him in lightning speed and hit him in the back of his head. Then everything went black for a while.
Sola had a strange dream. He was in the dark expanse, walking for a bit, when he heard the voice of the deity he had heard before when fighting with Freide.
"Go to the tomb and the door shall open for you."
Sola was dazed. It took him a couple of seconds to realize what tomb the voice was talking about.
"Sir, I certainly would, it's just... I think I am kind of dead, so... if there is a way to bring me back to life, maybe?"
There was no response for a while.
Sola wanted to say something to check if the voice was still there, but before he did, it spoke.
"You are alive and I won't let you die… again."
Sola wanted to ask questions, but as soon as he heard that, he woke up sitting in a cage. His hand was tied to his back as he didn't have a second arm to put shackles on him.
The cage that he was in was very small, and he could not see anything outside as there was a huge cloth all over it.
He could hear the sound of hurried footsteps and other slaves like him talking to each other.The back of his head was hurting, which meant that he was not dead—he was just unconscious, and he was being held in the enemy's army.
There was nothing he could do now. He tried to summon his sword, but it did not work. Even when trying to summon his cleaver, nothing was happening.
And he did not want to summon Lilly yet.
There was nothing he could do. He could only hope that the Lorian Empire would attack this camp and free him.
He spent the next four hours in this tiny box, thinking about what the deity said.
'What did it mean again? Have I died before?'
The whole interaction was very weird, so Sola was thinking that maybe it was just a dream, and he did not actually talk to the deity.
He was thrown out of his thoughts when he felt that he was picked up and placed somewhere higher. Then the ground started shaking, and it only stopped after an hour.Sola assumed that he was placed on a carriage and was going somewhere with the army, as there was a deafening sound of footsteps everywhere.
After stopping, they removed the cloth from the box. Sola could only see soldiers and horses, all equipped and ready for battle. They were all facing one way.
One soldier had a sword at Sola's neck while another dragged him out of the box and wrapped something around his eyes so he could not see anything.
He was not trying to do anything as he was in the middle of an army of thousands of soldiers. If he tried to summon Lilly and started fighting, he would be dead in less than a second.
He was led somewhere. The screaming of the soldiers was deafening. They were screaming and spitting on him.
Then they made him lie down on a piece of wood.
Was he going to die? Why did they make him lie down on a piece of wood? What was happening, Sola did not know. But he was not scared. He somehow felt that he was not going to die.
But that thought was dismissed by what happened next.