The war was over. Oath City still stood, but it had been changed beyond recognition.
The fires throughout the city had been extinguished by the rain. The streets were piled with rubble and broken timber, and collapsed roof beams lay crisscrossed over the ruins, dotted here and there with countless corpses from both sides.
Two soldiers pushed a flatbed cart along the shattered street. The cart was piled high with human bodies.
They stopped beside a corpse.
The corpse lay facedown amid a heap of Demon Race remains. The armor on its body had cracked in several places, and the blood had already dried.
The two of them turned him over, revealing a face still fixed in anger.
"Ah, it's the captain of Squad Seven."
"That foul-mouthed guy?" The other soldier lowered his head and looked at the ring of Demon Race corpses around him. "He probably stayed behind voluntarily when they withdrew into the Inner City—what an incredible guy."
Neither of them sounded particularly moved. Along the way, they had already carried several corpses like this. They had long since gone numb.
They had won the battle for Oath City, and the Elves' forest ranger Guards were still hunting down the routed Demon Race soldiers.
But for the soldiers who had survived, after the brief joy of victory, what they had to face was a city full of the bodies of comrades and civilians.
Among them were not only their comrades, but even their family members. Every corpse they lifted onto the cart was another blow to the spirit.
Just after they carried the captain of Squad Seven onto the flatbed cart as well, a questioning voice suddenly came from not far away. "What are you doing?"
The two raised their heads and saw a man in a gray-white