Even with the incredible healing skill of Gremory after absorbing the dead, it was not enough to completely heal him from the damage of pushing his body to the extreme during the battle.
He was now with bruises all over his body and passed out when the flow of dark energy stopped.
The people around him started to look as if this was the perfect chance to kill him and say that was a casualty of the battle. Danton and the Hjmar party started to feel uncomfortable with that, and soon they imposed themselves in front of him on guard.
But they were not enough to stop the adventurers from killing Gremory, it was Redwig who also imposed himself in front of Gremory that stopped everyone around.
"Redwig get out of the way."
"What are you doing?"
"You saw him killing our friends along with the orcs, move away."
"I thought you would be the first one to move against him."
"He is a monster! Let's kill him while he is unconscious."
The adventurers were confused with Redwig protecting him. But there he was, a mountain with his massive shield ready to defend the monster behind him.
"Yeah, he is a monster, but he is our monster and there are many more orcs than what we just killed today. That monster is perfect in killing even without fighting, his tactic was what granted our victory today and we will not kill him as a reward." Redwig spoke and the killing intent of everyone disappeared.
It was obvious that Redwig didn't like Gremory as many of them, but they needed the tactics of him to at least have a chance. The G-17 squad started with 217 adventurers, 137 of rank C, 68 of rank B, and 12 of rank A. And they lost 61 adventurers of rank C and 15 of rank B, the weakest ones are always the first to die in situations like this. So now the G-17 squad has only 76 adventures of rank C, 53 of rank B, and 12 of rank A after killing an entire segment of the orcs army.
With Gremory unconscious and the objective completed, Redwig as second in command decided that was time to report back to the main squad acting as support. So they did a quick funeral to the fallen warriors and carried Gremory while going to the encounter point.
Even with the encounter point being not too far away from their positions, Gremory was not the only injured, so the trip took a full day of walk. In the meantime Gremory didn't wake up and was showing signals of fever and constant pain, the trip didn't help at all on his recovery.
Until they arrive.
------
They were behind a cliff, where Geoffrey and the support squad had made a camp. Geoffrey was a rank S adventurer but he was the rogue type, his squad could reach every squad needing help with just a few hours but was not of much help in fighting larger battles. To communicate they were using trained birds because it was easy to carry.
There were too many wounded warriors on the camp, medicals were everywhere but no mages. Lathrium was just a city near the newly conquered border, so there was no much influence for them to use. That just highlighted the importance of Gremory presence there.
Furthermore, there was a board on the camp with the squads writing from G-1 to G-20. As marked, most of them succeded in the mission, four squads were completely annihilated and there were a few that had not reported yet.
Geoffrey quickly received the good news from Redwig and marked the G-17 squad as mission succeeded. His squad was the one who succeeded and lost few adventurers when compared to the other ones even without the settlement help during the fight and Redwig knew that it was thanks to Gremory suicide tactic.
"Our losses are already too high, but we probably managed to delay their advance a bit. Let's wait for the report from the rest of the squads then we will attack the main army to reach their food stock and maybe kill their leader." Geoffrey spoke to Redwig.
"Are you crazy?" Redwig replied angrily.
"We don't have other choice, we need to gather more time until the reinforcements arrive in the city. If we broke the chain of command then we might have a chance of pulling this off."
"You know... you speak just like that monster."
"hun, Monster? Why did you call him that?"
"Everyone calls him monster, after all, he is the one who destroyed that small village and brings people from the dead. I saw him fighting and he killed even allies during the battle, almost killed himself in the process too."
"He is not responsible for what happened in Tuska. That was some noble scum angry with the position given to a commoner, but we should not talk about this... Better not to talk about this to anyone, understood?"
"Yes, is just that he is crazy, just like you. But thanks to him we manage to kill the entire segment so I think it is worth it."
"Hahaha I didn't expect you liking to be put aside, but it is good to know. I will designate him as leader once again after the merging of the squads."
"Understood."
-----------------
It took two days for Gremory to wake up, but he barely could move a muscle.
'I need to reinforce my body somehow, train harder every day will not be enough.'
"So you are finally awake?" Redwig spoke while getting close to Gremory.
"I think so. But the stress of the fight was too much and now I am paying the price."
"Yeah I can see it, you look like shit. I don't know how you were able to fight like that, but if you want to keep fighting this way then you should probably consider the way of cultivation even with you being a mage."
"What is cultivation?"