“Damn, this feels good!” Spinoza shouted out in sheer joy as she rampaged across the battlefield.
To her, the word “defense” simply didn’t exist. The other guards had been told to focus on attacking, but that didn’t mean it got the full hundred percent of their attention; there was always that tiny bit of awareness reserved for defending themselves on the off chance that the worst happened. Spinoza, however, didn’t have that. She had forsaken defense entirely.
I would have liked to say that was because of the trust she had in me, but there was definitely more to it than that. It wasn’t possible to throw caution to the wind quite that hard without being a little bit out of one’s mind already. As a result, though, Spinoza possessed an overwhelming offensive power that only manifested in those who cared about nothing else besides demolishing their enemies.
“All right, men! Spinoza crushed their defenses! Now—fire!”
On Commander Bolton’s signal, the archer unit that had been on reserve in the rear released a volley of arrows. The throng of projectiles had varied success in striking their targets, but there was one archer in particular who landed perfect hits with every single shot, as if each arrow had somehow been pulled straight in by its target.
That person was Fam, the Fifth Squadron’s archer.
While other arrows exceeded their range of fire and began falling to the ground, Fam’s arrows left those in the dust, maintaining full velocity and power as they pierced straight through the enemies’ vital points.
The other archers were absolutely amazed by her skills. Fam herself no doubt had supreme confidence in her pinpoint accuracy as well, since she was lining up particularly needle-threading shots: she would fire an arrow right over a fellow guard’s shoulder.
If her aim was even slightly off, the projectile would end up lodged in her own ally’s back. The average archer would be intimidated and unable to take a shot like that without some deliberation; Fam, however, could fire without so much as an ounce of hesitation. That may have been because she was absolutely certain in her ability to land the shot—though part of it may also have been the coldhearted belief that, if her ally happened to get hit, that was just how things went sometimes.
Either way, arrows with no hesitation held immense power within them. This one flew straight and true after she loosed it, passing right over the guard’s shoulder and shooting through the forehead of a demonswarm.
To Fam, it was a job well done, as always. However, the guard whose shoulder space had been violated didn’t have the same opinion. One wrong step and the person would’ve had an arrow embedded in their back.
Once the demonswarm had been completely wiped out, tempers began to flare.
“What the hell, Fam?! You tryin’ ta kill me?”
The victim of Fam’s shoulder shot shenanigans, Spinoza, let out a howl of protest.
“I felt that arrow zip right past my shoulder! It was yours, wasn’t it?! What were you gonna do if it hit me in the back, huh?”
“That wasn’t going to happen,” Fam retorted. “Not when you’re as good as I am.”
“Feh. Like I can trust a single damn word from someone who just sneaks around and fires arrows from way in the rear,” Spinoza shot back. “A fight just ain’t a fight unless you’re up on the front lines.”
“Don’t you think you should cut back on your drinking a bit, Spinoza?”
“Huh? Why’d ya bring that up?”
“The only reason you said that is because your brain has shrunk from all the alcohol you’ve consumed, right? Otherwise, I’m afraid you’re way beyond help.”
“Oh, sounds like you want some o’ this! I’ll knock ya right back over those city walls!”
Spinoza moved in for a punch, but Fam quickly dodged out of the way.
“Hey, could you two cut it out?” I grumbled.
Spinoza growled at Fam. “Why, you slippery little—”
Fam giggled impishly. “Catch me if you can. Which is highly unlikely.”
My request for restraint had fallen on deaf ears; the two of them showed no signs of stopping their little game of cat and mouse. Fam was dancing expertly around her riled-up squad mate.
“Sheesh, you’ve got your work cut out for ya. We just got out of battle, and they still have that much excess energy to burn off...” Commander Bolton muttered in annoyance. “Seems like those two’ve been fighting every day lately, though. I thought they’d finally been getting along too. Are things still that bad?”
“If Seira were here, I’m sure they’d calm down in no time.”
Spinoza and Fam never did get along well, and they were pretty much constantly at each other’s throats. The fact that we had managed to go so long without things blowing up was due in no small part to the role Seira had played.
“That makes sense. Pretty much everything feels a whole lot calmer with Seira around. The only reason our rotten-ass Guard Corps didn’t fall apart before you showed up was because we had her with us.”
Seira had a certain soothing effect on others. When Spinoza and Fam would get into fights and Seira would jump in to calm them down, she tended to make the sparks flying between them vanish as if by magic.
“All the townspeople really adore her too,” he continued. “It’s mostly thanks to her that the Guard Corps hasn’t completely lost its appeal.”
She was the Fifth Squadron’s resident breath of fresh air—the entire Guard Corps’s, really. To the citizens, she was something akin to a goddess. That was what defined the woman we knew as Seira.
“But, well, Seira isn’t around anymore...” Commander Bolton murmured, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.