Book 2 Chapter 15.3 - Dagger Aimed At the Back
Su suddenly felt a huge wave of pain. The bone-piercing pain and chilliness made him suddenly break out in cold sweat. In that instant, a large portion of his strength that was gradually recovering was exhausted once again.
She will come. A faintly discernible voice sounded in Su's consciousness.
"Su forcefully shook his head and threw this thought out from his brain.
"No! She wouldn't come!" Su roared inwardly. He did everything he could to convince himself and ignore the intuition he had always trusted in.
Su hadn't been acquainted with Persephone for that long. The reason they even met in the beginning was still a mystery for him to this day. At least to this day, Su still hadn't really helped out Persephone, and protection was even more out of the question. He was just a burden for her, making her take on an enormous debt of tens of millions. If Persephone was willing to take on a loan to save him, then it meant that she still had the confidence in paying back that debt. At the very least, she had not consigned herself to eternal damnation. However, the situation today was different. Just a trap alone already involved two lieutenant colonels and a lieutenant commander, so judging from the scope of how far they were willing to go, catching a general wasn't an impossible task.
"She's not going to come." Su stood up and thought coldly.
Indeed, no matter which angle you looked at it from, Persephone wasn't going to come, and there was no reason for her to come. As long as she did not enter the trap, or if she safely returned to Dragon City, then Su was safe. The powers within Dragon City were messy and complicated. Dragonriders had their own honor and standards of conduct. Even if there were three great influential families, that did not mean that they dared to publicly declare their opposition against a general.
Right when Su was going to chat a bit more with Ricardo about something, everything in front of him suddenly went dark, and all of his remaining strength seemed to have vanished. The tissues and cells of his body seemed to have entered a momentary standstill, and he almost went unconscious due to a lack of energy. Right when he was about to fall down, Su's fine control over his body came into effect, using the last bit of his energy to support himself and prevent his body from collapsing.
The moment before Su's view went completely black, an incomparably firm voice sounded in his consciousness: she will come.
"Su! Su! Hey, brother, wake up! If you don't wake up now, women are going to come and tear your clothes apart!" Ricardo's voice continuously sounded by Su's ear. It was more noisy than a thousand ducks. Su never noticed that his voice possessed such penetrative force, to the extent where even a few tissues in his body were shaken up and livened up again.
Su opened his eyes with difficult. He then used all of his body's strength to push Ricardo away, and only then did it quiet down a bit. He laid on the chair in a paralyzed state while breathing heavily. The sweat that covered his body had already soaked through his army uniform.
"Su, what happened to you just now? It seems like you activated some new ability again? However, in my opinion, those strange things from the Mysterious Fields cannot be casually used. Only heaven knows what kind of results they bring." Ricardo was a bit wordy, but Su could tell that he was showing real concern.
"I'm fine, just a bit tired." Su laughed in a tired manner. After experiencing that moment of blankness, his strength began to recover bit by bit with a speed that was still considered stable. However, what was unfortunate was that he was hungry again.
As a result, less than an hour after he ate an enormous meal, Su began to gorge himself again. This time, Ricardo sat near the table and ate with him. What was shocking was that Ricardo's food quantity wasn't bad either, and in just ten minutes, he already consumed four portions of food enough for robust men, and he didn't show any signs of being full.
"Turns out you can eat quite a bit too?" Su worked through his food while looking at Ricardo with shock.
With a kacha sound, Ricardo opened another can and started another round. He chewed loudly while saying a bit unclearly, "Have to eat more now. I don't even know if there will be anything to eat in the next few days!"
Su stopped his hands' movements. He looked at Ricardo who was still engrossing himself, and with a frown, he said, "They came for me, so you don't need to be caught up inside. Of course, if you can, please bring my men back to Dragon City as well."
Ricardo's pace of eating wasn't affected by Su at all, and he continued to speak while eating. "This matter is related to both of us. Do you think they'll let me go just because I went back alone? We might as well just deal with them together. That way, at least we have a bit more certainty."
"But…" Su frowned. He liked to hunt on his own. Wandering through the wilderness alone was how he displayed his greatest strength.
Ricardo raised his head, and after giving Su a look, he said, "A pack of wolves will always be stronger than a single wolf. I know that you are definitely used to fighting alone, but believe me, there is no way it can beat a well coordinated troop. I am not the only one that will stay behind. My six subordinates and your two subordinates have to stay behind too. This group of ours will give those vultures quite the surprise."
Su didn't persist much longer. He knew that he couldn't convince Ricardo otherwise, and he also knew that if Ricardo went back alone, the journey back would also be filled with dangers. Ricardo was correct when he said that they had to gather all of their strength in order to have a chance of overturning their enemies. The battlefield was full of countless changes. Numbers, abilities, army, and equipment couldn't decide everything.
After fighting this battle, Ricardo would have already declared war against the power behind the three vultures, as well as standing on the clearly weaker Su and Persephone's side. This was the same as breaking off all relations with Old Fabregas. Why was he doing this?
He looked at Ricardo who was engrossing himself in food, and then he thought of Li, Li Gaolei, and Kane. Su felt as if his shoulders were carrying more and more new things, and he could never be like he was in the past where he roamed the wilderness as he pleased.
In addition, there were still Persephone and Madeline here. These were two individuals who Su would shield with his own body.
Su fetched Ricardo's tactical tablet and silently looked at the images of Kafen, Lynch, and Maria. He suddenly revealed a faint smile and said, "Ricardo, do you know what my favorite method of dispelling the evil intentions of others?"
"What?" Ricardo raised his head in a stunned manner.
"Fear." Su smiled slightly. His smile was so beautiful that it was like that of a fiend's. "Fear greater than they could endure."
When the sky brightened again, a vehicle fleet slowly departed from Pendulum City. The fleet's mobility was clearly affected by the fully loaded goods, and apart from the transport vehicle, there were even some armored tanks that pulled carts behind them. They were filled with all sorts of devices, equipment, and corpses from the Scorpions of Disaster, making the canopy sheet reach high into the air. These were all worth money and resources. There was an armored soldier transporting vehicle at the front and back as escort and to ensure that they would move at a uniform speed. In the dangerous wilderness, this type of of cautiousness was absolutely necessary. Of course, the eye-catching Black Dragonrider symbol in this region was enough to make enemies that saw it stay far away. As for those mobs that lacked knowledge and experiences, they only had the Black Dragonriders' firepower waiting for them.
At both sides of the fleet were rising and falling mountains. These mountains weren't tall and could only be called rocky mounds at most. There wasn't any snow on top of these mountains, nor could any vegetation be seen. There were only a few dried up trees that reached out their snakelike branches into the cold wind.
A sturdy and heavy military boot stepped down on the top of the mound. The light brown exposed rock clearly couldn't endure the weight of the military boots, and as a result, it began to groan and quickly split apart. A stalk of grass that was clearly mutated tenaciously seeped out through the cracks on the ground, and then with a speed that shouldn't belong to a plant type existence, it began to use the sawtooth edges of its leaves to hack at the military boots. When the grass leaves that looked extremely delicate sliced at the crude and rough rubber exterior, it actually created sounds that made one's teeth sore and unexpectedly left behind white marks.
The military boot only crushed down lightly, and this vicious little grass was immediately crushed into several parts. Then, the military boot took a large step forward, reaching the other side of the mountain peak.
The owner of the military boots was a tall male, the fierce-looking scars on his face forming an undisguisable savageness and malevolence. In his right hand were tactical binoculars, and he was currently using them to look at the vehicle fleet that was making its way through the distant southeastern plains. After watching it for a while, he lowered it and said, "They aren't inside that fleet, those two cunning fellows."
A crude and rough female voice sounded beside him. "Those from the wilderness are all extremely cunning and tenacious like roaches. Don't underestimate them, Kafen."
"Maria, you better shut the fuck up!" Lieutenant Colonel Kafen roughly interrupted the woman's words. "I like the insects of the wilderness way more than someone like you who isn't male or female! I like prey that are more cunning, because only then can the hunt be full of excitement. I also like those that are more tenacious, because then, they can last a bit longer under my hands and bring me more joy."