In almost all existing and ever existing human civilizations, there is an expression that uses "heart" to describe someone's most sincere feelings.

In Padrossi's contemporary East Coast Lamanite dictionary, the word "heart" can be used to describe a person who is careful and passionate. In addition to the typical "Does it hurt?", "Does it hurt?", "When you fell from heaven", "When you fell from heaven", there is also "Stop, catch the female thief." "What did she steal?" and "My heart!"

Even the ancient Mobigas civilization, considered a barbarian by the Lamanites, had a primitive polytheistic belief in sacrificial objects that were the hearts of living people.

Admittedly, given that the division of the Lamanite civilization was the spark that many countries on the West Coast had built, it was only natural that there would be cultural commonalities. But this practice of using the "heart" to describe one's emotions is probably older than the Lamanite civilization itself.

Loss, pain, negative emotions are sadness.

Joy, pleasantness, positive emotions are happiness.

The importance of the heart in the human body has long been known, and when the heart is nervous or extremely happy, the heart beats faster like a deer. Even today, when medicine is relatively developed and understands that consciousness actually exists in the brain, there are still many people who believe that their emotions are actually related to the heart.

Captain Vincenzo Bamond is one of them, and if you put yourself in his shoes, it's not hard to understand why he feels the way he feels.

The heart is pounding.

There is darkness ahead.

Darkness as far as the eye can see.

If you tell someone at a different time and place that this 39-year-old man is still afraid of the dark, I am afraid that the Lamanites will respond in the way they are best at mocking.

But here it is different.

The ground was cold and damp, and cold air crept in through a series of crevices in the neckline and cuffs that you thought were fine.

The space can only accommodate a person to bend over and pass slowly, and in some places you even need to crawl forward, all that can be illuminated is the torch in your hand.

Not to mention not being able to move your body freely, you have no choice but to move forward and backward. The left side is damp and cold soil, and the right side is also damp and cold soil, not only the movement but also the vision is severely limited, coupled with the dizziness caused by the lack of oxygen, it is simply as helpless as it is.

There is no way to even turn around and run away, because this passage is so narrow, even if you want to exit little by little, there are still teammates behind you.

The tension of helplessness made his heart pound, and Vincenzo gripped the one-handed sword in his hand hard, while the torch in his other hand stretched out as far forward as he could, just to increase that little bit of humble vision.

If it weren't for his faith and sense of purpose, more than an hour in the pit dug by the ghouls would have been enough to turn the captain of Ben Si into a madman.

These, hell, disgusting, abominable, damn undead who have changed back to hell.

The curse was kept in the belly by the gentleman's temperament, and the battle had been going on for more than six hours, and after the first dozen or so ghouls who had dug the pit and rushed here were stabbed to death, the cunning undead had learned to run around, not to burrow under the human fortified walls, but to burrow further inward.

Their sharp claws and muscles made them more powerful than rats, and the ghouls that had burst out a few hours earlier, though quickly killed by the well-guarded army, had caused a great disturbance to the logisticians supporting the walls.

In addition, these guys digging holes back and forth under the walls will cause the foundation to loosen, and if the walls fall, then they are basically doomed.

As a last resort, not happy, but must be dispatched, and soldiers must be sent into the holes to kill and injure these nasty ghosts as soon as possible.

This is a tiring and extremely dangerous operation.

Ghouls have the face of a human, but they have the habits of a beast.

In the dark and narrow tunnels, they were far more agile than the soldiers and mercenaries in bloated and warm clothes, so much so that when the battle began, the people in front were often dragged away and torn apart, while the people behind were terrified and unable to see anything.

The battle with these monsters reminded Vincenzo of the whack-a-mole farmers in the northern part of the Palohia Plateau – only the gophers here are dozens of times more magnified and prefer to eat human flesh, so the difficulty is even higher.

None of the first troops to come in survived.

And the follow-up troops, under the command of the fellow who was clearly from the north, slowed down and ran in without weapons, but with shovels and hoes and pickaxes. The cave began to be expanded, reinforced with wood, and even connected together to form a hall after the cave was expanded.

It takes a lot of time, but this step does have its necessity. The humans who were able to spread out in the expanded caverns finally began to push back the ghouls, and they won step by step, and these ghouls who knew how to burrow were small and weak, and they were not in the majority. Seeing that the extermination was nearing completion, Captain Vincenzo made an arbitrary decision that he soon began to regret.

Without waiting for the slow expansion of the logistics force, rush straight into the narrow ghoul tunnels and hunt down the last few ghouls.

Whether the motive is military merit or bounty, or simply for the sake of his noble spirit and noble faith, Captain Vincenzo is now stuck in a dilemma.

He could only stubbornly lead the thirty men under his command and continue to advance.

The captain in the rank of Padrosi comes from the classical Lamanite era, and is pronounced "kaputang" in the Lamanite language, which means "centurion" in the ancient language, meaning that the person in this rank is the captain in charge of a hundred soldiers, and it has not changed to this day.

- This is obviously at odds with the number of men he commanded, and when we add to this the fact that Vincenzo was an officer and took the lead himself, it is not difficult to guess what happened.

In the process of deepening, the people in front of them disappeared one by one.

Every time there is a fork in the corner, there is always someone who disappears after a scream.

It's not so much how many enemies there are or how strong they are, it's that they don't even know where they are.

Everywhere is restricted, and the cold weather on the physical level further fuels helplessness and panic, and gradually deserters who sneak back from before and behind them begin to appear.

The number of soldiers dropped from 100 to 80 and then from 80 to 60, and finally from 60 to 50, and then the number of people who stood in front of Vincenzo to clear the way also decreased one by one, and when there was only one soldier left, he was stuck in the passage and looked back at Vincenzo with difficulty, as if he had known his fate, and the eyes were still deeply engraved in the captain's heart.

Tension.

The constant tension made his heart pound all the time.

As the passage became narrower and narrower, the sword in his hand could not give him enough security. He began to have difficulty moving, he began to want to back off, but he was entangled in his own face, and felt that it was very embarrassing to go back with his tail between his legs like this.

Then a voice rang out.

I don't know if it's a little vague due to the effects of hypoxia.

I don't know if it's an auditory hallucination or a real thing, but someone said that.

It was as if it was a voice from within him.

"Let's go back. The voice said.

"Go back, no one will know that you have lost to the undead, you can tell them that you have won and destroyed the last of the undead. ”

"Go back, no one knows you're lying. ”

A soft whisper lingered in his ears, and at first Vincenzo struggled to control himself from listening to it, but in the darkness and helplessness of the loneliness and inaction, the voice reverberated and reverberated louder and louder.

Then.

"Whew—" It's just a torch that struggles to keep burning.

Extinguished.

"Damn!!"

"What's going on!!"

"Captain!!" a panicked scream continued to sound behind him, and even Vincenzo himself became frightened, and he subconsciously felt that something had extinguished the torch and brandished his one-handed sword indiscriminately.

The sound of "ping-pong clacking" echoed through the dark tunnels in the previous section, and large swaths of frozen earth had been chopped down by Vincenzo, and the lack of oxygen made it impossible for him to tell if he was really facing an enemy or just swinging his sword at the air, and in the frenzied swing, he cut himself.

"Ahh

"Captain, are you alright?" the man who crawled forward crawled behind him, and the light of the fire illuminated Vincenzo, who was shocked to himself in a cold sweat.

"No, no, no—"

That voice took over.

Captain Vincenzo turned his face slightly.

"Let's go back. His face was pale and he was in a cold sweat. "Uh-" The adjutant subconsciously wanted to retort something, but considering the situation he had encountered along the way, and the captain's frightened appearance, he had to shout to the people behind him.

Voices came one by one, one behind him.

And when they heard the order to finally retreat, the soldiers let out a long sigh.

"Retreat to a wider area, then turn and crawl that way!" shouted the adjutant, and the people turned and began to move, one torch after another fading away.

"Captain?"

"You retreat one after another, and I follow your firelight. Vincenzo, who had checked it with the adjutant's torch, found that the torch in his hand had only burned out, and he calmed down somewhat, then grabbed his sword and began to retreat.

Fortunately, the relatively wide place where people can squat up and turn around is not very far, and after turning around and advancing a short distance, the pit gradually becomes wider and wider.

"Yes, yes, it's like this. ”

The voice in my heart said this, like the voice of the gods for salvation.

"No one knows you're lying—"

A torch appeared around the corner, followed by a second.

Returning to where the sappers were, everyone's faces looked much better, and Vincenzo let out a long sigh of relief, and in the calm atmosphere only the adjutant noticed the captain's drooping left arm.

"Sir, your wounds. ”

"Oh, it's okay, it's okay, it's not a big deal. I was just a little ashamed that I had accidentally cut myself, but I had just been in a state of lack of oxygen—" Vincenzo rolled up his sleeves to prove to his lieutenant that it was indeed only a small wound, but it was at this moment that his words came to an abrupt end like a duck that had been choked.

"You. The voice rang out again.

Now it's clear, no longer vague.

Vincenzo could hear every byte, every articulation, and voiced consonant.

It was a gentle female voice, but it was clear that the plan had nothing to do with the gods.

"It's stupid. ”

The wounds on the exposed arms had begun to heal, and the veins that rose and fell like life pulsated.

It is a black liquid.