"We are ...."
The dense darkness of the night enveloped the battered, beaten, and exhausted soldiers, as if their noses had been pinched.
"We're going to have to -- we're going to have to change the way we think. ..."
In the darkness, the heavy footsteps of the sentinel, who was constantly passing by, could be heard. We were firmly told to keep the lights to a minimum and to keep our armor laces tight.
Whenever the armor and the hilts of the swords hanging from the waistbands made contact, the soldiers would jump to their knees and put their hands on the hilts of their swords.
The same is true when a horse whinnies lowly, or when someone begins to talk in private. Their nerves were sharpened to such a degree that they could almost tear themselves apart with the tips of their feathers, and the silence was so tense that it covered the whole area.
Occasionally, they would hear a faint, incomprehensible roar or cry from the distant desert on the wind, which stirred and irritated their tense feelings. It might have been the howl of a phantom desert wolf that dwelt in Nosferus and rode a thousand leagues a day, or it might have been the murmur of some other, stranger, monster in this inhospitable land.
It was a terrible night. --Mongol's army was wounded, flustered and agitated. Then, the evil spirits of Nosferatu, who had no mercy on them, attacked them without pause. How much Mongol army was troubled by those creepy, squishy, phosphorescent monsters such as "Gluttony", giant anteater, sandworm, bloodsucking moss, bloodsucking fly, sandhills, etc. that suddenly appeared out of the sand, attracted by the smell of blood I wonder.
The threat of the giant sandworms and the gluttony was a menace, but it was the bloodsucking mosses and the bloodsucking flies that bothered and annoyed them more. They struggled to tear off from the skin of their friends those little bloodsuckers who clung to bare skin and clung to them as if they would not be dislodged even by a thunderbolt.
As if they lacked all pigment, the sandhills, which were translucent like the id, but were covered with disgusting bumps that looked like sticky skin, and the bloodsucking mosses, which were densely covered with tiny pieces of bloodsucking moss, stuck to the human skin and immediately sucked up the blood and swelled up into a vivid red. When I peeled it off and crushed it, an astonishing amount of blood flowed out and was sucked into the poor gray sand.
Who could have foreseen that this mighty expeditionary force, consisting of 15,000 of Mongol's five great knights, would be so badly beaten by a mere 5,000 of the barbarian Shem?
Rather, they crossed the River Kes, the River of Darkness, which forms the boundary between the frontier and the territory of Mongol, in order to wipe out the Semites from the wilderness of Nosferus and make it the new territory of Mongol.
The commander-in-chief of 15,000 of them is the golden-haired Princess Amneris, a mere 18 years old, daughter of Mongol and general of the Right Sector. She is assisted by the mage Gayus, the white knights Feldric, Lint, and Vron, and she is followed by 2,000 blue knights led by Count Mars, Lord of the Castle of Twolead, 2,000 black knights led by Ilm and Thangard respectively, and the red knights of Little Count Regan and Viscount Astorias.
2,000 crossbow troops and about 5,000 infantrymen attached to each knight order - that must have been an imposing formation indeed.
The situation in Mongol was tight. The United Duchy of Gora, an emerging power in the Middle Plains, consisting of the three great duchies of Eulania, Kumu, and Mongol, is trying to make its way to the Middle Plains, where there are many powerful countries such as Paro, Cheironia, Argos, and Kauros, while balancing the power of the three great duchies.
When the army of Mongol, led by Amneris, suddenly attacked the civilized country of Paro in the Middle Plain, the irony was that by winning Paro, Mongol found himself in a difficult position among the three kingdoms of Gora.
Grand Duke Or-Kan of Yulaniya and Grand Duke Talio of Kumu were wary that Mongol under the rule of Grand Duke Vlad would become such a great power that they would threaten themselves, and they secretly joined hands to show their hostility to Mongol.
On the other hand, inside Paro, which had been occupied by Mongol, there was a constant movement to resist Mongol by retaining Prince Remus and Princess Linda, the orphans of Saint King Aldross, who had escaped from the fire of war and escaped to the other side. The invasion of the conquering army of Nosferus by Amneris was an ambitious move by the Golden Scorpion Palace of Mongol, who knew that Nosferus, which had been regarded as a deadly desert and barren wilderness, was hiding a great secret, and it was an important step for his ambition.
However, after three encounters with the Semites in the wilderness, Mongol's army suffered an unexpected and painful defeat and was forced to retreat greatly, even if only temporarily.
In fact, there was not a fatal majority of people who were actually turned into mangled lumps of flesh by the Id, or who lost their lives in the attacks of the Semites.
The Semites were even less than half of them, and the Id, though it did swallow up Regan as its prey, was not really so numerous that it died for the Id.
After the sun had fully set, the Semites made two more surprise attacks, terrorized them to the uttermost, and quickly withdrew them. Including the dead and wounded in those two skirmishes, the total loss in that day was reported to be about 3,000, and even including the previous day's losses, the Mongol army still had more than 10,000 intact. That is still more than twice the entire army of Shem.
Nevertheless, when the order for the night camp was finally announced by the messenger, the Mongol soldiers looked at each other with disappointment and devastation.
Even if it is not in terms of numbers, there is a feeling of defeat, and the weight of loss in terms of mood is different between 5,000 Semites losing 1,000 of their number and 15,000 Mongol troops losing about 4,000 of their number.
It is only Nosferus that has so beaten them, that has made them feel the misery of losers, that has made them like the frightened and frightened remnants of a defeated army - and if Guin had seen them, he would have said.
They were in enemy territory. The damage caused by the Id was not so great, but the psychological damage it caused to Mongol's army was astonishingly great. They plunged into Nosferus - and Nosferus, that forbidden desert, was itself a great enemy to them, and the many monstrous creatures that lurked there, All of these monstrous creatures, in league with the Semites, were coming to attack them, and such was their obsession.
Even the rumbling of the wind, and the change in the pattern of the dunes, made them awe-struck, and they feared that it might be a sign of another monstrous creature. Their enemy was Nosferus himself, and they were surrounded on all sides, not only on the four winds, but on the earth which they trod upon, and even in the sky above them, by that mighty, unfathomable, malignant enemy.
This thought irritated their nerves and made them uneasy. They secretly lamented the command which had conceived such a difficult and extremely dangerous expedition and their own bad luck in being included in it, and wished only that Lady Amneris had given the order for the whole army to return. I only wish that Lady Amneris would give the order for the entire army to return.
And there is also a huge silhouette that grips their hearts, spreading out in the darkness and looking down on them ominously, such an intimidating feeling that they cannot get away from it.
It was a leopard-headed man, leading a mixed army of the Semitic tribes - the four major tribes of Rak, Tubai, Lhasa, and Guro, as well as weaker tribes - down the dunes on a huge black horse, He was a leopard-headed man, a mysterious mad warrior with yellow-burning eyes and astonishing fighting ability.
If the opponent had been only Semites, even the Mongol army would not have been forced to fight passively like this.
However, there was something about the leopard-headed half-beast, half-human warrior that made those who opposed it uneasy and compelled them to take the sword. Perhaps it was because of their unrealistic and improbable appearance. As if one were bowing to Lure, the god of war, or to the legendary demigod Silenos, the anxiety of blasphemy blocks one's heart and makes it difficult to be sure that justice is on one's side. An army that cannot be convinced of its own righteousness is another fragile thing.
No one could explain the source of the secret anxiety that came over them when they saw the leopard-headed warrior, nor could they ascertain the identity of the monster who suddenly stood before them, storming about with the barbarians of Shem, and then promptly disappearing into the desert. There was no one who could tell who the monster was.
Therefore, the soldiers tried to secretly talk to each other about the identity of the half-beast, half-god in the dark night when they were not even allowed to light a bonfire, but soon,
"Shoo!"
"The enemy will hear you."
And there would come to them a voice of reproach, and they would be silenced. Some of them refused to speak of him for a different reason.
"Don't tell me-- don't tell me!"
Such are the ones who cross their fingers and do the Janus Charm and whisper in hushed tones.
"Don't talk about him-- he's not a flesh-and-blood human like us by any means, he's a demon. Perhaps even a spawn of the demon Dole himself. If that's the case--"
"What if it is?"
"Oh, then, to speak of its existence carelessly may have irreversible consequences. To call on his name is to invite him close to you."
"Nonsense. Even though this is Nosferus, and that leopard head is very human, it is still an incarnation of a doll. ..."
"No, don't say it, don't say it. Please don't say anything about that. Janus, protect him."
"Protect me, Janus, and I will protect you, Dremu."
"What?"
"I wonder if we'll make it back to Castle Talos."
"..."
"Shh!"
"Shut up!"
Once again, a nervous reprimand flashed through the air, and the area fell silent in the darkness.
In any case, the name Guin had now become the most frightening and most mysterious word for all the soldiers of the Mongol Expeditionary Force.