"Let me guess, what exactly are you people up to? Hmm, you're here to kill me, right?"
"Although your capabilities and what you're supposed to do don't quite match up, your previous actions do prove that you indeed intended to kill me."
"But why do you want to kill me? It's definitely not some righteous cause. I suppose the most likely reason is that someone hired you."
"Interestingly enough, just yesterday, in this exact same place, another hired assassin tried to kill me. So, if I dare to speculate, could it be that you're actually all part of the same group?"
"It's just that the previous female assassin was smarter; she decided it was better to act alone rather than with you all. That's why she tried to assassinate me earlier, and she almost succeeded."
"And here you are today, realizing just before the ambush that the female assassin wasn't around, getting a bit flustered but continuing with your original plan."
"When you all rushed out in a panic, unsurprisingly, you were dealt with. And now we have this situation. So tell me, am I right in my guess?"
Richard smiled as he looked down at the person lying on the ground.
He noticed the sudden fear in their eyes, and they tried to say something, "This—"
Before they could finish, Richard swiftly wielded a small knife, severing their carotid artery and jugular vein in one precise motion.
Bright red and dark red blood gushed out, instantly staining their linen clothes and the ground beneath them.
He grasped at his neck, convulsing frantically, but soon went still.
Richard slowly stood up, wiped the blood from the knife, and put it away.
As he raised his head, his expression turned somewhat dangerous.
Glancing at the body at his feet, then around at the other corpses nearby, he spoke slowly, "This is the last time."
Taking a deep breath, Richard looked towards the empty distance and muttered to himself.
"Truly, the last time. Don't provoke me anymore. I'm tired of wasting time on these childish games of 'you kill me, I kill you'. I have more important things to do. So, don't provoke me, don't test my patience. Because the outcome won't be what you expect."
After finishing quietly, Richard took another deep breath and then mounted his horse, preparing to return to the castle.
At that moment, several guards nearby exclaimed in shock.
Richard turned to see a member of the guard falling off his horse.
In that instant, he recognized it was Hughes.
"Hughes, Hughes! What happened, what's wrong?"
Several members of the First Guard rushed over quickly.
Richard frowned, jumped off his horse, and walked towards where Hughes had fallen.
He saw Tuku standing there with bloodshot eyes, fists clenched tightly, glaring viciously at the surrounding corpses, as if preparing to use some 'resurrection technique' to revive them and kill them all over again.
"What's going on?" Richard asked.
"Master, Hughes, he's injured." Tuku said angrily, then added, "He's badly injured, probably won't make it."
"Hmm?"
Richard frowned deeper, "What happened exactly? There shouldn't have been anyone difficult to handle in the recent battle, how could?"
"There indeed wasn't anyone difficult to handle in the recent battle. All the enemies were as weak as cartilage, dying with a single sword. At that time, I led the men on the left to kill, and Hughes led the men on the right. It was all very satisfying, and nothing seemed wrong. It wasn't until just now that Hughes riding on his horse noticed that his abdomen had been slashed open viciously with a dagger, cutting his entire belly open."
Tuku was furious, shaking all over, trying hard not to lose control.
"Slashed open his belly? How is that possible?" Richard's eyes flickered as he asked, "Aren't you all wearing iron armor?"
"That's correct. The problem is, the attacker seemed to have found an opportunity to stab through the gap in Hughes' iron armor from below. During the battle earlier, it was pressed by the iron armor and didn't feel anything wrong. But when the battle was over and relaxed, Hughes felt something was wrong. Before he could react, he fell off his horse. Damn it!" Tuku cursed several times in a row.
Richard listened, raised his eyebrows, walked towards the crowd surrounding Hughes.
"Excuse me, let me have a look and then we'll talk." Richard said, pushing aside the members of the First Guard who were blocking around Hughes.
By now, Hughes had already taken off his iron armor, and his upper body clothes were torn open to reveal a deep wound on his belly, blood constantly oozing out.
Because of the large amount of blood loss, Hughes looked extremely pale, mentally extremely depressed.
If it weren't for his occasionally-opened eyes, he looked like he really had nothing to do with the dead.
After Richard squatted down to monitor Hughes's stomach injuries specifically, Hughes stood up slowly, and he opened his lips and spoke with difficulty and request, "Master... I'm sure I'm going to die, so I want ...I want to ask you one thing, please you must promise me. That is ... after I die, please help me take good care of Alice. I ... I know, Alice is humble, and no ... qualification to let you marry her, but as long as she can be your servant ... that's all right. Please Master Richard... Please you must promise me. "
Richard, after monitoring the injury, stood up, Hughes looked expectantly, waiting for the answer.
Tuku also squeezed through at this moment, looking at Hughes with some reluctance, saying, "Don't worry, Hughes, I believe Master Richard will take good care of your sister, you just... you just rest assured."
Tuku knew that although Richard was usually cold, he was actually quite decent to his own people, hence his assurance.
But what no one expected was Richard suddenly saying, "No."
"Hmm?" Not just Tuku, but all the other members of the First Guard were surprised, looking at Richard in astonishment.
On the ground, Hughes widened his eyes, a pitiful look on his face as he pleaded, "Master Richard, please don't do this, I beg you."
"No need to beg, I won't agree," Richard said expressionlessly, "You can take care of her by yourselves, I have neither the interest nor the time for this."
As this statement sunk in, everyone was stunned again, wearing expressions of confusion.
How is he supposed to do that?
Can a dead person take care of someone?
Richard glanced coldly at Hughes on the ground, then said impatiently, "It's just a slit in the belly, nothing serious. It's not that easy to die from that! We'll sew it up later, replenish some plasma, let the wound heal, and there won't be any problems."
"What!" Tuku and the others exclaimed, as if hearing an unbelievable story, staring at Richard in disbelief.
"Slit open belly, not fatal, can be sewn up? Master, how is that possible?"
"Turning the impossible into possible, that's what science is about," Richard said.
"Science? Science?!"
Ignoring the stares of the others, Richard turned and walked away, fetching some things he needed from the horse he had been riding.
First, he opened a ceramic jar containing alcohol and poured it directly onto the wound on Hughes' belly, disinfecting it.
The alcohol strongly stimulated the nerves at the wound, causing Hughes to cry out in pain.
Richard, without any sympathy, completed the task without comforting him, stood up after doing this, and said to Hughes, "Later, you must ride back on a horse with someone else."
"Hmm?" The crowd was confused by what Richard meant, and Richard already had a few Western long sword a of scale here.
In the midst of confusion over Richard's words, he swiftly took a western-style thrusting sword and approached the horse Hughes had been riding.
The sword was about a meter long with a cylindrical blade, narrow at the base and tapering to a point.
Clearly designed solely for piercing attacks, it was both simple and devastating.
As Richard neared, the horse began to nervously whinny, but under Richard's gaze, it dared not move.
He reached the horse and withdrew the sword from its sheath, lightly placing it against a part of the horse's body.
Feeling the cold touch, the horse grew more restless, while Richard remained expressionless, lost in thought.
Suturing the wound wasn't particularly difficult; the challenge lay in the lack of materials.
Needles were easier to find, but surgical sutures like sheep gut were another matter.
On modern Earth, these were made from sheep or bovine intestine submucosa after extensive processing.
Here and now, neither the conditions nor the time allowed for that, so alternative materials had to suffice.
Historically, before sheep gut, many materials served as substitutes for suturing, including plant materials like flax, hemp, and cotton.
These were less friendly to the body and prone to immune rejection.
Animal materials were preferable, such as arteries, nerves, muscle strips, and tendons.
Among these, tendons, dense connective tissue forming tendons at the ends of muscles, were particularly compatible with the human body.
With a swift motion, Richard thrust the sword into the horse's heart, blood flowing profusely along its grooves.
The horse convulsed violently, foaming at the mouth, before collapsing heavily to the ground, shocking the onlookers.
Only then did they understand Richard's earlier remark about Hughes sharing a horse—Hughes couldn't ride alone simply because there weren't enough horses left.
Richard proceeded to skin the horse skillfully, revealing a silvery-white tendon along its spine.
Without hesitation, he carefully cut and divided it into fine threads, dampening them with alcohol for disinfection.
He threaded these onto a special bone needle and began stitching Hughes's wound, oblivious to his pain.
Twenty-one stitches later, Richard tied off the thread.
After disinfecting the wound again, Hughes, grimacing in pain, asked if he would survive.
Richard's response was grim but realistic—without antibiotics or more than alcohol for disinfection, infection remained a significant risk.
Hughes, relieved to be alive, questioned Richard's decision to kill the horse for sutures, given its cost and other possibilities.
Richard admitted he had considered using human spine tendons from nearby corpses but opted against it, fearing Hughes's reaction.
He reassured Hughes that if he preferred, he could redo the sutures using those materials instead.
After some hesitation, Hughes declined, preferring to leave things as they were.
They returned to the Baron's castle with Richard promising to arrange a blood type match and supplement Hughes with donated blood to aid his recovery, hoping Hughes didn't have a rare blood type.
Hughes did not fully understand Richard's words, but he instinctively felt that it would be beneficial to him, so he nodded vigorously.
With the help of his companions, Hughes mounted his horse and followed behind Richard as they returned to the baron's castle.