A Job Gone Wrong (4)

The mercenaries started rushing forward, but Arulo could easily tell that they were no match for his soldiers and pointed toward just four of his spearmen.

"You men, go stall those pesky flies."

Not daring to disobey, the spearmen detached from the attack formation on Paz and rushed towards the mercenaries. The mercenaries were greatly outmatched and couldn't get past the few spearmen sent their way.

In fact, it seemed like they might've been defeated quite easily by the spearmen since the spearmen seemed to be on par with a high D or low C-tier adventurers. Luckily, the other convoy members drew the swords and joined the fray. Leon looked on in surprise.

'Are they? Are they all soldiers too!?! What the hell is going on!?!'

The moment they joined the fray. The mercenaries dim destiny suddenly did a 180 and surprisingly the soldiers weren't weaker than the spearmen. Leon knew that he was way out of his depth in this fight and could only rely on tricks to have any real impact.

Using one of the most tested tricks, Leon summoned his wind weapon and flung it at the exposed back of one of the spearmen. However, at the last second, the spearmen turned around and deflected the weapon with his shield, and the weapon dissipated, luckily one of the convoy members used their shortsword and ran it through the armor of the spearmen.

When the convoy soldier pulled out his short sword, the wound started to flow blood vehemently, before he fell down into a puddle of his own blood and stopped moving. With one of the four spearmen dead, the rest quickly fell as the four convoy soldiers made quick work of them with their numerical advantage.

With the obstacle out of the way, the group looked to help Paz. At first, they were all glad to see that he hadn't received any major damage since his armor had still retained most of its integrity and he hadn't lost any limbs yet. But that quickly changed, as Paz continued to defend the blows raining down from the spearmen, magic users, and Arulo.

He suddenly went down in a coughing fit and threw up blood. Arulo, who had started breathing heavily from exerting his strength, smirked towards Paz.

"Took long enough, you know I'm impressed with the fact that it took so long for you to fall.

Leon and the group looked on in horror and one of the convoy members roared as he charged alongside the rest of the group.

"Save the boss!"

However Arulo looked at the group with disgust as if he was looking at a bunch of flies trying to touch his food, he gestured towards his remaining soldiers.

"Go deal with them."

His soldiers followed their orders and went to intercept the group. The group fought with a renewed fervor, but even with the convoy soldiers risking injury in an attempt to reach Paz. It was fruitless as the four convoy soldiers had to face over ten enemies on the same level, plus the mercenaries were too weak to really help besides acting as meat shields and taking some of the focus off the convoy soldiers.

However, one by one the mercenaries started to fall in battle and even a convoy soldier had been slain after being taken on by two spearmen and a magic-user at the same time. Knowing all hope was lost, Leon could only peek at what was going on between Arulo and Paz.

Paz had fallen to one knee as his hands rested on his shortsword, which acted as a cane and support. At first, he seemed like he was completely normal, however, he had started to tremble and if anyone looked closely they could see the veins on his face turning blue and some of them even bursting with blood as he continued to vomit and cough up blood.

Looking weakly up at Arulo who was walking over, Paz could only spit out mouthfuls of blood as he spoke weakly.

"What'd you do to me?"

Arulo laughed.

"Haha, it's the same poison used to kill that annoying Archduke. I'd tell you more, but I'm afraid you won't last much longer"

Even though Paz was at death's door, the moment he heard Arulo admit that the previous Archduke had been poisoned to death he felt like the earth had come crashing down.

"Wha-wha-wha-what?"

Almost dead silent the entire time, Leon could hear a little girl scream and sobbing behind him and could hear Aurora shouting.

"Uncle Paz, don't give up! You can't die. You can't die. You promised me…"

Arulo smirked

"Hear that you old fart? Your precious young miss is crying"

In a fit of rage, Paz roared and tried to get up, but the moment he took his shortsword from under him without the support he quickly fell to the ground. Arulo started to click his tongue in disapproval.

"Tch, tch, why even try? Paralysis had already set in, y'know this poison cost the grand duke a lot of effort to acquire. Even the king's personal healer wouldn't be easily able to identify this poison, let alone cure it."

Arulo stood almost face to face with Paz as he squatted down.

"Any last words?"

Paz paused for a second and then spit out a mouthful of blood at Arulo.

"Screw...you"

With blood all over his face, Arulo screamed and kicked Paz so hard he went flying through the air and barreled straight towards the mercenary group who had lost morale.

"YOU OLD SHIT!"

All the mercenaries moved out of the way of the projectile that Paz had become, but Leon stood ready to intercept. However, he had greatly underestimated the force and weight that Paz had since he was wearing full armor and Arulo did not hold back his immense strength.

Instead of catching Paz, Leon got flung around with Paz and the duo ended up on the ground meters from the mercenaries. Leon got up quickly even though his body had started to throb from the force.

"Are you okay?"

Paz coughed up blood onto Leon's clothes, but Leon didn't care and he didn't complain. Struggling with each breath, he whispered to Leon.

"You seem like a talented lad, could you promise me one thing?"

Leon nodded before Paz continued.

"Take care of the young miss, please do whatever it takes to return her back home to the Grand Duke. You will surely be compensated greatly by th-"

Paz coughed up more blood before he could finish his sentence. Suddenly Aurora had popped out of nowhere as she ran to Paz's side with the maid following slightly behind. Aurora held Paz's cold, pale hands.

"Uncle Paz don't go."

She started to sob and tears fell down onto the motionless body of Paz.

"Please..."

Paz opened his mouth, but after a few seconds, he said nothing and Leon could feel that he had finally taken his last breath. However, no matter how sad the moment was, Leon had bigger issues at hand.