Chapter 224: Chapter: 224 Lets do the same.

“Vice General Eliza, what do you think of Sir Vivian?” Vincen asked as he held out a cup of coffee.

Steam was rising gently from both cups, curling up in the cold morning air.

General Eliza took the cup with a small thankful nod.

She blew softly on the hot drink before taking a slow sip.

“Well… what can I say,” she began, her voice quiet.

“I heard so many stories about him. People called him the greatest genius of the empire.”

She paused, took another warm sip, then looked at Vincen with calm eyes.

“And he really is that good. He lives up to every word they say.”

Vincen let out a soft, tired sigh.

He sat down beside her on the wooden bench, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.

The morning air felt very chilly.

Snowflakes still fell lightly, and soldiers nearby were busy brushing thick white snow off their tents with brooms and gloved hands.

“Good morning, General Eliza. Good morning, General Vincen,” a group of soldiers said politely as they walked past carrying boxes of arrows and freshly sharpened swords.

They bowed their heads with respect before moving on.

Both vice generals gave them a small nod and faint smiles, then turned back to their coffee.

The warmth from the cups felt good against their cold fingers.

“I heard he wanted to join this war a long time ago,” Vincen said.

He brushed some snowflakes off the shoulder of his thick coat. His voice sounded a little heavy.

Eliza looked down into her cup. She let out a long, heavy sigh.

“Yeah… seven years ago. Back then he was the one who exposed former Duke Tramplin’s crimes. Everyone was shocked.”

“Hm,” Vincen hummed quietly. He listened to her words and stared at the gray sky.

Thick clouds moved slowly overhead.

A sad, faraway look appeared in his eyes, full of old regret.

“That guy… he would have been right here with us if we hadn’t been caught off guard that day, wouldn’t he?”

Eliza felt the same pain in her chest. She also looked up at the sky, her face turning gloomy.

Her fingers tightened a little around the warm cup.

“He really wanted to serve his young lord… Vivian,” she said softly.

“But he couldn’t. She shook her head slowly.

“Still…even without fighting for long like us, he made a huge name for himself. Bigger than anything the two of us managed in these past seven years.”

She gave a small, bitter smile and whispered almost to herself, “Seven years ago, when the war first started, the three of us were made vice generals on the same day. And among us three… he was the youngest.”

Vincen stayed quiet for a moment. He looked at the soldiers working in the snow, then back at Eliza.

Both of them sat there in silence, holding their coffee, remembering the friend who should have been sitting between them right now.

Though their faces had grown old and tired over the last seven years, with deep lines from endless battles and sleepless nights, there was still a fire burning in their eyes.

That fire had never gone out.

And it wasn’t just in General Vincen and General Eliza.

The same flame glowed in every soldier in the camp, young recruits, scarred veterans, even the cooks and medics.

No one had given up. And the person who first lit that fire, the one who kept feeding it year after year, was Vice General Raven.

Seven years ago, in the very first big battle against the Tramplin forces, everything changed in one terrible moment.

The Tramplins had brought strange, unknown weapons, huge black cannons that roared like thunder and spat out those cursed green cannon balls.

In less than an hour, the empire suffered a wound it could never fully heal.

Vice General Vincen’s battalion was hit the hardest.

Eighty percent of his soldiers died instantly, twenty thousand good men gone in flashes of light and smoke.

The twenty percent who survived were broken in body and spirit.

Most lost arms, legs, or eyes. They could no longer fight. Almost the entire battalion was wiped out.

General Eliza’s troops were luckier, they escaped the worst of the blast, but the shock hit them just as deep.

Everyone saw the black smoke rising from the field.

Everyone heard the numbers.

Out of one hundred thousand soldiers who marched into that battle, nearly forty thousand were lost in a single instant.

The camp fell silent. Many believed the war was already over.

Then the first rumors started coming in.

They heard that Vice General Raven’s battalion had been completely destroyed.

Everyone thought he was dead too, swallowed by the same fire that took so many others.

But the truth was very different.

It wasn’t the whole battalion that made the Tramplins tremble with fear.

It was just one man.

Vice General Raven had survived the first strike. Wounded, covered in blood and ash, he did not run.

He did not hide. Instead, he turned and charged straight into the heart of the enemy lines, alone.

No one knows exactly what happened in those hours.

The few survivors who saw him from far away spoke in shaky voices.

They said he moved like a shadow between the explosions, sword flashing, never stopping.

They said the Tramplin soldiers screamed his name in terror before they died.

By the time it was over, nearly thirty thousand Tramplin soldiers lay dead, including their commander.

When the empire’s remaining forces finally reached the battlefield to collect their fallen brothers, they saw something they could never forget.

Everything was covered in dead bodies.

Most of the soldiers from the generals’ battalions had been torn apart by those cursed green cannon balls.

They were strange, glowing shots that exploded into poison fire.

They left nothing behind but ash and screams.

Now each sentence lands like a separate impact. No rush. Just aftermath.

But right in front of the giant wall of the Tramplins, in the middle of all that chaos, one man still stood.

Hundreds of arrows stuck out from his body like dark thorns, chest, shoulders, arms, legs.

Blood ran down his cracked armor in thick streams. Yet he did not fall.

His feet stayed planted on the frozen ground.

Behind him, on top of the high stone wall, the corpses of Tramplin soldiers lay piled in heaps.

Some hung halfway over the edge, others had fallen inside their own fortress.

From that day on, he became the symbol of this war.

Even though he was dead, his image never left the minds of the soldiers.

Seven years later, when the nights felt too long and the losses felt too heavy, men and women in the camp would quietly tell the story again.

They would whisper about the lone figure standing under a rain of arrows, refusing to die until the enemy paid in full.

And every time they remembered, their backs straightened a little.

Their hands gripped their weapons tighter. The fire inside them refused to die.

“Haa…” Eliza sighed deeply as the memory came back. Her eyes looked far away.

“He was really something. He could have survived if he had just retreated. Just turned and run.”

She clicked her tongue in regret, the sound sharp in the cold air.

Slowly, she stood up from the log.

She lifted the cup and drank the rest of the coffee in one big gulp.

“Ah… cold.” The drink had turned icy from the falling snow.

A bitter look crossed her face as she tasted only chill and old grounds.

“Hahaha, you think so?” Vice General Vincen chuckled softly.

The sound was warm, even a little teasing.

He raised his own cup and drank the last of his coffee in the same quick way.

He made a small face at the cold taste but said nothing about it.

After he finished, he stood up too.

He gently took the empty cup from Eliza’s hand and placed both cups down on the thick log they had been sitting on.

He looked at her with a small, real smile. The kind that reached his tired eyes.

“Although he died,” Vincen said quietly, “he saved us from complete humiliation that day. He gave us time. He gave us hope.”

He let out another soft chuckle and shook his head. “Let’s see if we can do the same.”

Eliza met his eyes. For a moment neither of them spoke.

The wind blew snowflakes between them.

In the distance, soldiers called to each other as they prepared for the day’s march.

The camp was waking up, alive and stubborn, just like the man they both still carried in their hearts.

Eliza gave one sharp nod. “Yeah,” she said, voice low but steady.

“Let’s do the same.”

Together they turned and walked toward the center of the camp, shoulders almost touching, ready for whatever came next.

The fire inside them, lit seven years ago by one man who refused to fall, still burned bright.

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