"The moment before this guy wanted to let our classmate die just for his ego, and he still manages to say this kind of thing!?" The young nobles to the side who followed were all surprised.
"Why not, I'd just like to ask you a question," Maxime replied with a cold face.
"Yeah don't worry buddy, ask me anything you want!" exclaimed Winny, laughing happily.
"If we become best friends, won't you just watch when I put my life on the line?" asked Maxime, squinting.
The saber-toothed tigers had at some point begun to surround the young nobles.
"We stayed on stand-by so as not to steal your prey, after all a lone alien is a very valuable opportunity to get merit points!" reacted Winny without showing the slightest hint of panic.
And these were his true thoughts. He had a hunch that Maxime might pull through, and if things got really bad he would have stepped in.
He knew he was arrogant, but he also knew the limits he had to set for himself.
What's more, in this world it was frowned upon to intervene in someone else's fight, because then merit points would be distributed according to the contribution to the kill.
Maxime frowned, but didn't comment further.
However, he did not tell his mercenaries to stop surrounding the young nobles, including Winny. This put a certain amount of pressure on them, and some even began to touch their weapons.
After all, they were all students with a history of bloodshed and military training.
The atmosphere was becoming increasingly tense.
But suddenly, shouts came from behind them.
"Glixorb, trazmoflurp! Blip-blork Znorglezop, fribble-blaz!"
Maxime turned and saw some fifty Piran soldiers arriving at the end of the street. At the very front was a Piran at least 2m50 tall, commanding them.
They must have been at least 2 kilometers away.
From a distance, Maxime could detect an evil smile on his face as he shouted something while raising his axe:
"Zlorp-zap Quibbertron!"
All at once, the marching Piran soldiers began to roar as they ran in their direction.
"Shit!" murmured Maxime in mild panic.
If there had been 10 soldiers, they could have escaped with light losses; if there had been 20, that was fine too, but the losses would have been heavy.
But without counting the mysterious 2m50 Piran, taking on 50 of them with its current power is clearly impossible. It's not just Maxime; there aren't many high-school students in the country capable of taking on so many Piran soldiers.
He just couldn't run away, since, quite apart from the many human lives at stake, there was his precious family behind him.
Maxime took a deep breath to calm himself.
"Mom, Joana, neighbors, paramedic friends, run! I'm staying here to hold back the invaders!" he shouted in a powerful voice.
The saber-toothed tigers understood the situation intensely and positioned themselves at Maxime's side.
"Out of the question!" cried Andréa.
"Maxime you're not a soldier, so you're running with us!"
Maxime was moved by his mother's red, slightly moist eyes.
He'd only seen her eyes once before. It was when his mother received the official letter from the government reporting his father's death at the front, when he was 12.
He smiled slightly with renewed energy.
"Like Dad, I'll become a protector of humanity, Mom. If I run away today I won't have the courage to go and talk to Dad at his tombstone."
Willy, who was watching from the side, observed this scene silently, as did the young nobles accompanying him.
"Your father is nothing but a coward who abandoned his family and marital responsibilities to defend his idiotic ideology!" cried Andréa, red with rage and emotion.
Maxime lowered his head slightly; he too was angry at his father for sacrificing himself for people he didn't even know.
He didn't even know how his father had died, and the subsidies were laughable. If his mother hadn't been working two jobs at once, they should have abandoned the family home a long time ago.
But no matter, these words irritated her to no end.
"Since when is dying on the battlefield to defend humanity synonymous with idiocy?" thought Maxime as rage took hold of his mind.
Maxime raised his head, his eyes red as he shouted:
"I won't allow you to say he was a coward, he was a hero!"
"Without heroes like Daddy, who would go and fight those damned invaders!"
"Without them, how would humanity even still exist!"
A wide silence fell as neighbors, paramedics, young nobles and mercenaries observed the situation.
"Shit what." murmured Maxime, rubbing his eyes lightly while Andrea bit her lips, seeming to contain her emotions as best she could.
"Never mind, Piedro, Izo take my mother and brother and leave immediately. We don't have time to talk," Maxime ordered sharply, turning his back on his mother and facing the oncoming Piran soldiers.
As the two were the least likely to be influenced by emotions during their missions, they were perfectly suited to this task.
The two concerned nodded solemnly and moved towards Andréa and Joana.
Biting her lips for a few seconds, Andréa declared in a husky voice:
"It's okay, it won't be necessary."
"Just stay alive, son," she continued.
"I'll kill you if you die, bro," Joana added, his eyes also red.
Maxime simply held his fist up to the sky, his back still to them.
A minute later, just as silence had settled in and the pressure was building, Winny broke it:
"It's nothing against you, Maxime, but we're all going to die here. You've only got 30 mercenaries, and I've only got 5 young noblemen with me, and nobody has mercenaries like you," he declared in a light voice.
Maxime looked slightly at Winny and replied:
"Eternity is not a game. Since watches are in limited supply, all its users are soldiers."
"And soldiers are tasked with protecting civilians."
"Why else do you think society grants you so many privileges?"
Winny sighed slightly but smiled afterwards.
"That's true, but I didn't think a situation like this would happen so quickly. And here I thought I'd be a commander of at least 100 men in the future surrounded by a halo of glory!" he laughed lightly.
"You're pretty brave for an arrogant guy," Maxime replied with a smile.
"In my family, they say the more arrogant you are, the braver you are!" declared Winny, puffing out his chest.
The young nobles next to him shook their heads ironically.
"That's another reason why this idiot is our leader: in spite of himself, he's quite famous in the community of young nobles," one of them laughed.
The saber-toothed tigers also smiled at the conversation. Andrew, who was standing not far from them, looked with amusement at the young nobles and said:
"Well it will have been an honor to die with guys like you!"
"Haha it's not safe yet, I've developed a great technique for cleaving the dead!" replied one of the young nobles with blue eyes and green hair. He was small, but everyone could see from his eyes that he was a rather fierce person.
"Remember who was the first of us to lose at hide-and-seek when we were little Rolls?" interjected Winny.
"Shit, fuck you guys, maybe I'll win that one! Who knows, there's a first time for everything!" replied Rolls, aggressively but with a smile.
This was the last sentence spoken before the silence returned.
Indeed, the Pirans were already less than 500 meters away. So the confrontation was just around the corner.
Everyone took up their positions with Maxime and the young nobles at the front of the formation.
Just behind them followed Andrew, Romuald, Terry , James, Rodrigo, Ernest etc...
With 400 meters to go, everyone's bodies were extremely tense.
300 meters to go, Ernest took an arrow from his quiver as the tension mounted.
Their red heads and fierce expressions were clearly visible. It was as if they were going up against orcs, only their skin was red and they belonged to the real world and not to a world constructed from scratch via the imagination of some human being.
250 meters to go, the imposing size of the Pyran soldiers intimidated most of Maxime's allies, but everyone held their ground.
200 meters to go, Ernest stretched his bowstring.
150 meters to go, Ernest released his arrow. In the space of a second, the arrow appeared in the body of one of the Piran soldiers at the front, causing him to fall, dragging a few soldiers with him.
"Well shot, Ernest," said Maxime in a light tone.
"Thank you, Chief.
The arrow and these two sentences gave the human squad a slight morale boost.
100 meters to go.
"Saber-toothed tigers, noble friends" announced Maxime as he drew his sword.
50 meters to go.
"Charge!"