CHAPTER 549: REBELLION 17

TL: Rui88

At this moment, Paul’s forehead was constantly beaded with cold sweat. He didn’t dare to breathe a word, his gaze shifting back and forth between the great fire outside and the witch beside him.

From his feeling, Ladi’s current situation was probably not good.

The witch’s brow was tightly furrowed, the veins on her temples were even bulging, and her whole body was trembling, as if she were enduring great pain.

And outside the transparent shield Ladi had cast, the fire was still raging.

Paul felt both heartache for Ladi and fear for himself, but he could do nothing to help. He could only pretend to be calm beside her to stabilize morale.

Fortunately, Ladi’s state only lasted for half an hour. After half an hour, the green-haired witch returned to her previous state, and the look of high tension was gone.

‘What just happened?’ Paul was very strange, but he didn’t dare to speak up and disturb her.

The entire camp passed second by second in anxiety.

After an unknown amount of time, a pattering sound suddenly reached everyone’s ears.

Paul looked up and saw that raindrops were falling from the sky. The raindrops hit Ladi’s transparent shield, just like hitting glass, flowing down from top to bottom, forming streams that fell to the ground.

“My goodness! It’s raining! And it’s not light.”

Paul shouted excitedly. To be honest, he had been constantly drumming in his heart, having little confidence that Ladi could hold out until the fire extinguished itself. But the long-held knowledge that water conquers fire, and now heaven had sent him such a rain in his desperate situation.

The guards in the camp also saw the falling raindrops. Everyone suddenly felt a sense of relief, and the tense atmosphere that had hung over everyone’s heads instantly vanished.

“Hooray!” “We’re saved!” “Merciful Heavenly Father!”

Cheers were endless. People jumped and danced, embracing each other, using every exaggerated gesture they could make to express their joy of surviving a catastrophe. Many even knelt on the ground, holding their hands to their chests in thanks to the gods.

The rain falling from the sky and the great fire that enveloped the forest produced a wonderful reaction as soon as they met. At first, the powerful flames quickly evaporated these overconfident raindrops, turning into a large amount of white mist that filled the woods, making people feel as if they had fallen into a mystical realm. But as the raindrops continued to fall, the original pattering sound began to become more and more dense. The sparse raindrops turned into a dense curtain of rain. The witch’s protective shield began to have water flowing down it in sheets. The heavy rain soon suppressed the flames that tried to resist it. From the moment Paul felt the raindrops fall, it only took a little more than half an hour for the originally raging fire to be completely extinguished.

After confirming that the rain could extinguish the surrounding flames, Ladi no longer maintained her previous motionless casting posture.

“My lord!” she said to Paul. “I just used the fire to strike at those traitors. I just don’t know how effective it was. The distance was too great…”

“What? You attacked them?” Paul was stunned. In such a desperate situation, was this to be expected of a mage?

The transparent film that had enveloped the entire camp had disappeared without a trace. Everyone rushed into the tents that were still standing on the ground to shelter from the rain.

In the tent in the center of the camp, Ladi sat cross-legged, her chest rising and falling slightly as she regulated her breathing.

Paul and Captain of the Guard Victor discussed their next move.

“If the message was successfully delivered, the 8th Infantry Battalion should be nearby. We should rendezvous with them immediately.”

“My lord, I just don’t know how they see us. Do they think we’re finished, or do they think we’re still alive? I’m afraid that after seeing this great fire, they’ll think we’re finished, and then…”

Victor hesitated, “It would be bad if they chose to retreat. So I suggest we first send someone to investigate the situation in the direction of Babor Village.”

Paul nodded, “Alright, we’ll do as you say…”

…

“Bang!” Accompanied by a flash of fire, a crisp sound echoed through the dense forest.

Fergus, who had participated in the campaign against the pirates, immediately recalled that it was the sound of a firearm firing.

For a moment, he was greatly alarmed. What? Were Count Grayman’s men ambushed here? Weren’t… weren’t they supposed to have perished in the great fire? Even if they could escape with their lives, how could they have possibly gotten ahead of them to set up an ambush in advance?

Things began to develop in the direction he least wanted to see. The gunshot just now seemed to be a signal. On the road they were passing, gunshots began to sound from the front, middle, and rear, all coming from the dense forest to the left of their direction of travel. Flashes of fire appeared from the forest, one after another.

The team, suddenly hit by fire from the side, was thrown into chaos. They were originally a team hastily assembled from various families, and their coordination was a big problem. After being attacked by the fire, they were even more chaotic. And most of these people had never seen firearms before. After being shot by muskets, they couldn’t even figure out what was attacking them.

One after another, people in the team were hit by bullets. Some were killed instantly. Those who were not hit in vital parts fell to the ground, either writhing in pain or unable to move, only their mouths shouting for help. The panic created by the tragic state of the wounded quickly spread to the entire team. Everyone desperately fled the forest that was constantly shooting out deadly objects, running towards the river.

In just a few minutes, the team that Fergus had painstakingly gathered collapsed.

From the density of the gunshots, Fergus concluded that this was definitely not the kind of sound that fifty guns could make. At least… at least there had to be more than two hundred guns.

There was no doubt that only the regular army of Alda could use so many firearms. But Paul Grayman had only brought fifty guards this time. Where did these two hundred-plus people come from? Until they made their move, Fergus had not received any reports of an army suddenly appearing nearby. In other words, this team should have just arrived tonight.

This was bizarre. How did they know that the lord was going to be assassinated? Could it be that there was a mole among his own people or the people left at home by the other families, who, after they entered the forest to hunt, found an opportunity to report them?

It was highly likely, but… but they had already taken control of the nearby signal towers as Burgan had requested. How was the news transmitted to the nearby garrison so quickly? Judging by the distance, it would have been impossible even on horseback.

Fergus had ruled out methods like carrier pigeons from the beginning. They had planned this for a long time and had also considered various possibilities of leaks. In addition to strictly guarding against moles in their respective manors, they also strictly prohibited animals that could possibly deliver messages, such as pigeons.

But no matter how the secret was leaked, Fergus knew one thing: with the armed forces he had now, they were a bunch of disorganized rabble against the regular army of Alda, not to mention that the enemy’s numbers were not inferior to his own.

At that moment, he no longer hesitated. He raised his whip and whipped the horse’s rump hard, trying to escape the battlefield under the cover of the chaos.