Darkness fell, and night descended.
In a small grove roughly seven or eight kilometers southwest of the Bagnia military camp, perhaps even farther, Street-Sweeper sat on a large rock with his legs spread, letting his armored skirt hang over his crotch to barely separate the cold metal from his mangled wound.
Every tiny movement tugged at the sword wound on his inner thigh, so deep it exposed the bone, and sent the muscles in his leg twitching.
Even with his pain settings turned down to the minimum, the wound still made Street-Sweeper intensely uncomfortable.
A Cross Blade rested across his legs, its blade coated in dark red crusted blood and bits of grass. Filth had long since obscured its cold gleam. His weakened hand held the hilt loosely, his fingertips trembling slightly from blood loss and exhaustion.
Opposite Street-Sweeper, four or five meters away, was a knight from Raitelia.
The knight was not the slightest bit better off than Street-Sweeper.
Rather than sitting on a rock, he leaned against the trunk of a small tree that had been snapped in half, holding himself in an extremely awkward position just to keep from collapsing.
His magnificent plate armor had become a cage and a burden. Some sharp weapon had cleaved a vicious split through the center of his breastplate, curling its edges outward and exposing the bloodstained chain mail and padding beneath.
The armor on the knight's left arm was twisted out of shape, and the arm hung limply. Dirt and dark red blood coated the knuckles of his gauntlet.
His head was in the worst condition. The helmet bearing his family crest sat crookedly on his head, and a blow had hacked a gaping opening through the visor's eye slit. Blood kept seeping through the gaps in the visor, winding