CHAPTER: ANOTHER RAINY DAY (To read after the first volume)

AN ETERNAL ARMY'S SOLDIER POV:

"Fuck."

Another rainy day. When I wake up, it is raining like crazy. It's has been like this for a week now. I thought we would get a vacation thanks to that, but the highers-up are not even concerned about it.

Looking by the window, I see a guy swinging his sword under the heavy rain. I can't clearly see who it is but there is no need. There is only one person here who would train with such a big sword no matter the weather. The third commander: WILLIAM. Maybe it's because of him we can't go on vacation. Does this guy have a life at all?

"Hey, hurry up. The commander said we have a mission today."

My roommate hurries me to suit up and go. Ah, shit! Surely another patrol mission. I put my gear on and go to the rally point. There are two squads today, ten men each. The commander comes and greets us like usual, asking if we slept well and if our bodies are in good condition. There are two captains behind him.

He looked severe when I saw him for the first time. And I realized he was even more when I knew him later on. Whenever somebody doesn't feel good, he would send him back. Some of us have tried to take advantage of that, thinking that we could rest easy. But it was stupid. When he sends you back, he also makes you go on more and harder missions later on to compensate.

"There have been sightings of Longinus near the border with Ioll again yesterday. Our scouts said there was a group of twenty or so low-class vanguards and a behemoth going to the east. Our mission is to intercept and destroy them."

He briefs us about today's mission. A behemoth is not a rare sight here on the border. They are beast-like Longinus with six legs and an enormous head. They have shining black fur with grey eyes and teeth as big as my fingers. They also have a huge and hard tail. We consider them the medium class of the low-class Longinus. They indeed look strong but with our coordination, we have taken out dozens of them just this year. I have given the finishing blow to four behemoths and it has only been a year since I joined.

***

We get on our horses and go full throttle under the rain for two hours. When we reach the border, there are indeed sights of Longinus being here: the trees are dead, like life was sucked out of them, the ground is grey, lifeless. And a trail going to the east, like the scouts, said. We continue our pursuit but at a slower rate now, after another one hour, we reach them. The behemoth is sleeping, while the vanguards are patrolling. They are down a hill so we have the advantage. We all get down from our horses and divided into four teams. Everybody already knows what to do so there is no need to talk much. Two teams quietly go down the hill with the commander and the captains while the other two position themselves around the hill.

I am in the support team that stays behind, I ready my crossbow and inject physical attribute into it. The physical attribute of Angas is not really effective against behemoth because they are too sturdy but our role is principally to kill all the vanguards while the others fight the behemoth. Suddenly a vanguard spots me and screams.

"KRIEKKK!!!!"

This scream, imbued in REGAS, the accursed power of the Longinus, pierces your ears and normally makes you unable to move. But we are always ready for it by injecting Angas into our ears. Aside from that scream, low-class vanguards really have nothing much to be feared.

They are not very fast or strong. I immediately kill it with a bolt right in the middle of his chest, where their crystal is located. It disappears, leaving behind the crystal. When a Longinus dies, it always leaves behind a crystal, we don't know why. The crystal size and color will vary depending on the type you kill. Low-class vanguards will drop grey cristal whereas behemoth will drop a yellow one.

As if it was a signal, the other vanguards also scream, awaking the behemoth, but we all slaughter them quickly. The behemoth woke up and jumps on a guy, he evades him but the tail of the behemoth comes smacking his head. He disappears just like that. When you don't use auras to protect yourself, any Longinus can kill you just by touching you.

"Bastard!!"

We shoot the behemoth with our bolts imbued in physical attribute but he doesn't even pay mind to it and continue pursuing our guys, when he was about to kill a second one, the commander appears from the side and strikes his eye, the behemoth backs down while screaming.

"KRIEEKKK!!"

His scream is the same as the vanguards, only more powerful. Most of us can resist it but, there are some guys down there who kneeled because of it.

"You guys handle the rest of them! Ellias, with me!"

After screaming like that, the behemoth attacks the commander, trying to bite, scratch, and strike him with his tail; but to no avail, he evades all of his attacks with ease. The captain who is fighting with him evades the tail as well from time to time.

After a minute or two of evading, William strikes a tree down, the signal to use our artifact. The eternal academy has developed a special artifact that can convert the energy inside the crystal obtained from Longinus into elemental Angas. Placing them onto our weapon imbue them with it and then, even people like us without elemental Angas can use it, not for long though. We all take a crystal from our pockets and places it on the socket of our crossbows.

Our weapons start shining all red: the artifact we received was applying the fire attribute. We, the support team, shoot the behemoth, thinking it is the same bolts as before, he doesn't try to evade them and continue focusing on the commander. But, this time, the bolts penetrate his body with great impact and explodes, ten bolts exploding on impact are no jokes. The behemoth is sent flying and lands loudly on the ground, two soldiers jump on him and manage to sever his tail using their swords imbued in fire attribute of Angas.

"KRIEKKK!"

He screams again but this time, nobody flinches, the scream was much less powerful after all. The captain approaches the beast which tries to stand up, one of his legs got blown away due to our bolts, but he still has five. When he stands up, the commander severs the two front legs before it can do anything, the behemoth falls headfirst to the ground. And finally, his head is severed clean by the captain and rolls over on the ground. Those things have no blood to shed. Only the foggy substance which they seem to be made of spurt a bit and dissipates in the air.

Then his whole body disappears. Leaving a palm-sized yellow crystal. The captain takes it and puts it inside his pocket. Then everyone comes back and we get ready to go back after a small prayer for the soldier who died during the fight.

"May your soul be guided by MEETIA's light. May you watch over us and fortify our resolve."

"UNTIL THE DAY WE EVER MEET AGAIN."

Dying here is too common to have a big ceremony organized by the army and there are never corpses left when fighting the Longinus so we just do a small prayer to MEETIA. Indeed, this is just another fucking rainy day.