Chapter 95: But Were They To Blame?

With a faint smile playing on his lips, Adam pointed at each of them as he said calmly:

There was no haste in his gesture… nor any hesitation.

His demeanor showed no arrogance, but it left no room for negotiation either.

“I want all of you; this nameless guild wants you.”

The words carried a weight that belied his calm tone.

The silence that followed was heavy. The air itself seemed to tighten, as if any false move could shatter that moment into violence.

Some hands moved slightly, muscles tensed, and more than one gaze turned openly hostile.

And with several murderous intentions directed at him, did he care?

The atmosphere could explode at any second.

Of course not; only Adam knows how to cure the guild leader. In short, he holds all the cards… Besides, we can’t forget Synes, a thousand-year-old demon who is currently weakened but still very powerful.

He wasn’t on enemy territory… he was in a position of advantage that none of them had yet accepted.

They are the ones with more to lose than he is, since he would have to find another, less trustworthy guild—something he didn’t want to do, but if things went wrong, he would have no other choice.

It was an unequal negotiation… even if they didn’t fully realize it yet.

“What do you mean?”

The woman’s voice was devoid of emotion, and her eyes held a dangerous glint.

It wasn’t confusion… it was a warning.

“As I said, I want your guild—all of you—to become part of my force. I can save your leader…”

He didn’t sugarcoat the proposal. He didn’t try to disguise it.

Adam paused deliberately, letting his words carry more weight, and continued:

He knew exactly what he was doing.

“But if you refuse, it’s fine; I’m not forcing you, am I? You can turn a deaf ear and pretend you never heard me, and I never was here—except that your leader was dying.”

“…”

The woman fell silent, and her eyes rested on the man lying prostrate on the bed.

The weight of the decision fell on her, with no one else stepping in.

Adam remained silent, waiting for the woman to speak.

He didn’t need to press her any further.

“Are you sure you can heal him?”

The question wasn’t simple… it was the final hurdle.

Adam looked at the man in the bed. Then he smiled slightly.

“Of course. If I hadn’t had a way to cure him, I would have remained silent… though I’m being very generous, because I would have preferred to stay silent and let him die.”

And with that answer… she made it clear what kind of person she was.

The woman let out a long sigh, completely defeated:

“What do we have to do to save our leader?”

…

After Migzar’s army managed to enter the city of Arkham, the situation was dire; heart-wrenching screams had been echoing through the air for hours; the streets were littered with corpses and blood.

These were not isolated screams, but a constant echo that seemed to go on forever, mingling with the distant sound of clashing metal.

The air was heavy, saturated with the metallic smell of blood and the smoke still rising from various points throughout the city, forming a dirty haze that made it difficult to see clearly.

Blood flowed across the cobblestones, pooling in small crevices and forming dark puddles that reflected a dim, almost sickly light.

It seemed as though it had shown no mercy to any of the innocent citizens, but does that matter in a war?

The answer wasn’t difficult… just uncomfortable.

Of course not: wars were treacherous, unjust, full of surprises, bloody… and extremely cruel, especially to the innocent, but were they to blame? Were they responsible for their own deaths?

Of course not.

Wars don’t distinguish between the guilty and the innocent; they only separate the living from the dead.

…Yet they had no choice; they were unlucky enough to be there.

And in this world… bad luck is also a sentence.

Justice, guilt, innocence… these were concepts created by the living to make the inevitable feel better.

But on the battlefield, the only thing that truly exists… is survival.

And that was exactly what Alisha was beginning to realize: she had been far too naive; at first, she thought things were going well, but she was completely wrong.

She had interpreted resistance as control… and time gained as a real advantage.

Previously, she had compared business to war… but how naive that thought had been.

In business, mistakes cost money. In war… they cost lives.

Now, with painful clarity, she realized the vast difference between the two. However, it was already too late to regret it.

Because while she was coming to terms with it… Others were already dying.

The weight of that truth didn’t crush her.

It hardened her.

Her gaze slowly changed, shedding the last traces of doubt and replacing them with something colder… more pragmatic.

She could no longer afford to think as she had before.

She couldn’t afford to doubt.

She couldn’t afford to feel.

Alisha took a deep breath, steadying her breathing as her mind began to process everything she saw on the battlefield.

The clanging of metal continued to ring out in the air, as did the battle cries of both Mizgar’s army and the Hall family.

The constant clash of steel against steel set the rhythm of the battle, a repetitive echo that no longer distinguished between attack and defense.

The noise of the battle had changed when Mizgar’s soldiers and knights entered and attacked from multiple points in the city.

It was no longer a head-on confrontation… it was fragmented, unpredictable.

Shouts from the north, fighting in the east, gunfire in the south.

Every direction demanded attention; every point seemed critical.

The city was no longer a line.

It was an open field.

“FALL BACK!”

“DON’T LET THEM IN!”

“MEDIC!”

“AAAHHH—!”

And then… the atmosphere changed completely, and from afar, you could hear the air tearing, creating a loud screech.

It wasn’t a natural sound… it was the announcement of something coming at high speed.

Alisha spun around and watched as a huge shadow loomed over her for a few seconds.

Time seemed to slow down just before the impact.

BOOM!

A huge boulder slammed into the wall; the stone exploded, and fragments flew everywhere.

The shockwave hit her full force.

Alisha felt her whole world spinning and her senses going haywire; it was as if she had consumed that strange substance the libertine nobles indulge in.

Her balance vanished completely, dragging her into utter confusion.

Soon, everything turned white.

…

When she opened her eyes… the sky looked warped, and there was a loud, high-pitched ringing in her ears—distorted and distant.

Everything seemed out of place, as if reality didn’t quite fit together, as if the world had been shifted slightly from its proper place and hadn’t yet returned to its correct position.

Alisha tried to move, but a pain shot through her body, right in her side, causing her to grimace.

The pain wasn’t superficial… it was deep, constant.

It didn’t go away, it didn’t let up, it gave her no respite.

Her hand moved to one side; the blue one, toward her eye, which was still turned away, and was stained with her own blood.

The color was too intense.

Too real.

It took her a moment to realize what she was seeing.

Her blood.

“Ma’am…?”

A distant voice reached her ears, growing louder and closer.

As if it were emerging from the depths of the water.

“Ma’am, get up!”

Alisha tried, but her body ached too much, and her mind was in complete chaos.

Her thoughts didn’t flow… they crawled.

Her son’s face appeared in her mind: Adam smiling and carrying all of that; then, her husband’s.

Clear images… too clear.

“How…?”

Her voice was barely a whisper.

How had they endured this? How had she made decisions… in the midst of all this?

The noise, the pain, the fear… all at once.

BOOM!

Another impact shook the wall.

The vibration ran through the ground and her own body.

“MA’AM!”

A soldier shook her.

“IF YOU DON’T GET UP, EVERYTHING WILL COLLAPSE!”

The words pierced her.

Not as sound… but as truth.

“…”

Everything was falling: the city, the citizens, the soldiers, and more.

No.

She couldn’t. Not yet.

With the pain coursing

…through her entire body, forcing herself to respond, to move, to get up even though every fiber screamed the opposite.

…

“Are you sure that, if we manage to do that, we can save our leader’s life?”

The woman asked; she didn’t seem convinced by Adam’s words.

Her tone wasn’t weak… it was cautious.

Although he wasn’t all that surprised that they didn’t believe him, they had only just met today, and under less-than-ideal circumstances. But Adam didn’t care in the least; he just wanted to use this situation to bring them all under his wing.

The mistrust was natural… but also necessary.

“If you don’t believe me, I can go with you; that way you’ll believe me, right?”

He didn’t try to convince them with words; he offered them proof.

“…”

The woman fell silent before nodding.

The weight of the decision was evident.

“Then come with us to find the medicine, and if he survives, we’ll all unite, and those who refuse, we’ll kill. Do you agree?”

Adam nodded, with a small smile:

“Sure, that sounds perfect to me.”

As if that kind of agreement… was exactly what he’d been hoping for.

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