Paris (7)

Leonel quickly scanned the situation ahead and sighed a breath of relief when he saw that Aina was fine. In fact, she was more than just fine, she had taken out four more of Joan's knights, leaving just four remaining. But it seemed that Joan's control had grown tighter with less to worry about, causing the difficulty to actually become somewhat more difficult.

'Good, I'll take her out now and it'll all be over.'

Leonel suppressed his fatigue and dashed forward under a rain of balls of fire. He could practically see the end of this several month-long affair.

He bore down on Joan, his gaze meeting hers across tens of meters. Reimond's knights once more tried to block his path, but the last of them fell with a sweep of his spear. They hadn't even hit the ground when Leonel had already appeared several meters to their backs.

Joan's gaze was hard to read. Despite having not taken his eyes off of her, Leonel couldn't tell if she was calm or feeling complex. Her blue eyes, hidden beneath her golden mask, seemed to ripple slightly before going still every so often.

In truth, it seemed like she was finished. She couldn't pull her knights back from Aina, or else it would be that bloody ax that took her life. At the same time, she had always been on the back line, having no combat prowess of her own. That moment Leonel took Reimond's life, she knew that she wouldn't have had the ability to resist had his target been her.

20 meters. 10 meters. 5 meters.

Leonel brandished his spear, settling his scorching lungs as he pierced forward with everything he had.

He didn't waste words on her. The time for that had long since left them.

It was at that moment Leonel heard something akin to a sigh. And it came from Joan herself…

"Rise."

A string of gold separated from Joan's polearm and entered Reimond's corpse which lay to her side, causing him to suddenly stand and accept Leonel's blow to the chest.

With a clang, Leonel's spear rebounded off of his chest plate, causing a strong reverb to travel up his arm.

It was only a moment, but Joan had already shot backward and raised her polearm high, a string of corpses that were the product of Leonel and AIna's efforts appearing in along her path.

A low shout left Joan's lips and the few golden threads from her polearm became several hundred. Not only did it shoot into the crowd of scattered Englishmen, but it also tore its way through the gates and dove into the defensive line of Frenchmen as well.

Leonel had just wanted to sigh a breath of relief. Joan wasn't a Necromancer, she didn't really make Reimond rise back from the dead, she only took control of his limbs and used him as a human shield. But, judging but the thickness of the line of gold she needed to do it, he deduced that it took more effort than controlling the living so it was no wonder she hadn't used this ability in the past.

However, his happiness was short lived. He had thought that Joan was limited in her ability to control others, but he never thought that she would suddenly take control of hundreds of knights like this.

'No, I can't let her create space.' Leonel shot a gaze toward Aina, but she was still struggling with the remaining four knights. Having no other choice, he could only press forward with all his might on his own.

'Dammit, I really should have taken her out first.'

It really wasn't Leonel's fault. He had followed Joan for months, but all she ever did was give out stat boosts and she never did so to more than ten knights at once. On top of that, she never took control of them like she was doing now. He failed to consider that while he was hiding his own strength, she was doing so as well.

If one had a choice between a man who could read into the future, and a frail woman who could seemingly only control ten knights… It was clear what most would decide.

Now however, he was paying a price for it.

Leonel felt a bit of agitation in his heart. He was obviously much faster than Joan, but he kept having his path cut off by corpses and Englishmen who had come to give away their lives. At the same time, he knew that the French were most definitely charging toward Aina. It was to the point he didn't dare to look back because he feared he wouldn't be able to control his urge to turn back and help her.

Leonel holstered his spear to his back once more and pulled out his atlatl. Usually it wouldn't be a problem for him to nock a dart with one hand, but he was being swarmed from all sides, making the process awkward. To make matters worse, because he had a useless left arm, he had to act quickly or else he wouldn't be able to defend himself at all.

He barely managed to succeed, but when he looked back up, the shimmering reflective surfaces of several swords, pikes and spears were headed in his direction.

Without a choice, Leonel grit his teeth and dropped his atlatl, pulling his spear back out from his back to swat these weapons aside.

Leonel could feel Joan getting further and further away. To make matters worse, Aina's aura was starting to become erratic, if this continued, she might go berserk again.

If he had known this would happen, he would have let Aina use her breakthrough into the Seventh Node to shatter that Force Art that had them trapped. By then, she could stabilize her Force and not have to worry about it. But now, there simply wasn't a dense enough source of Force here to help her.

The more Leonel thought, the greater the agitation in his heart grew and the more uncontrolled his spear became. It wasn't just his thoughts, it was his fatigue. How could his control remain the same when his legs felt like they had been filled with lead and his arms felt so boneless?

'Calm down Leonel. Breathe. Think. How do you get us out of this?'

Persistence didn't just mean when convenient. It was even more important exactly when everything seemed hopeless.