Four in the morning.
Even knowing Jesse Dylan's eccentric personality, Adrian was deeply absurd by what they were doing.
Even though he was still far from the expected battlefield, Jesse still woke him up in the middle of the night—not so much waking up, but rather vaguely touching his chest. Just as Dylan's claws were about to move down, the tip of the metal bow pressed against his throat.
"Ouch, you're awake." The blond young man said with a smile, as if he was not surprised by the reaction of the former knight commander. "It's time for us to go, Ed."
Fuller Goat was also a clear victim of Jesse Dillon's outlandish plans. The goat's back was full of large and small bags, apparently overloaded with debris, and was nibbling on the hard grass beside the tent. The soldiers who were supposed to be guarding outside the tent had already fallen into a deep coma, and they didn't need to think about who did it.
"Actually, I'm enough alone. But you see, I promised not to hide any plans from you." Seeing the helplessness on Adrian's face, Jesse's smile grew brighter.
The knight commander didn't ask any further questions, he sighed softly, and put the bow and quiver on his back.
Before leaving, Jesse Dillon asked Marshal Gallagher for a lot of strange things. It wasn't until everything was shipped that Adrian realized why Jesse wanted Fuller Goat to follow.
This bastard must not want to carry this pile of debris by himself.
Even if he didn't see Gallagher's face, Adrian could see the dazed expression of the marshal through this pile of things, and see what Dylan was asking for—
Sturdy wire, hemp rope, small iron beads, straw traps, flares, grease mix to lubricate the axles, simple scrolls for drills and the like are stuffed into the sacks like a country grocer has been robbed.
There was even a bundle of good quality carrots and a bag of honey snacks. The knight commander wasn't quite sure whether they ended up on the battlefield or in Dylan's stomach—especially the bag of snacks.
"It's troublesome to buy these things yourself," Jesse muttered after checking the items on the goat's back. "We're helping our little marshal, and I don't want to spend my own money."
Adrian watched numbly as Jesse shoved a honey snack into his mouth. The overwhelmed Fuller Goat blew suffocatingly, sounding like a curse.
They used a simple teleportation scroll to teleport to the vicinity of the battlefield. The sky was still dark blue, full of stars. Jesse led the sheep to a wood.
"Set up here first, then we'll go to the lawn." Jesse snapped his fingers, and the cloth bag on the goat's back fell.
"What are you going to do?" The knight commander finally said.
"Win this battle." Jesse rubbed the snack bag into Adrian's arms. "You don't need to move yet, Ed, just watch."
After that, he waved his pair, as if conducting an invisible band in the dark.
Wire and twine snakes generally swam out of cloth bags and burrowed into the dark grass. Wrap a few segments around the carrots and drag them up the branch. For a moment, the rustling sound brushed through the bushes, through the branches, and into the soil.
Weird preparations.
Adrian leaned against a tree on the edge of the woods, folded his arms, and stared at Jesse humming.
Hide a bunch of rope in the woods and hang carrots from branches. Jesse clapped and directed the goats to change places - the Fuller goat grabbed the mouth of the bag and dragged the rest of the bag obediently towards the grass. As he passed Adrian, Jesse reached out and took a honey snack from the bag he was carrying.
"Aren't you hungry, Ed? It's good to have something sweet in the middle of the night."
"Not very hungry." The knight commander frowned, "Compared to this, you..."
Before he finished speaking, the sweet and boring dessert was stuffed into his mouth. Jesse moved so fast that Adrian didn't react until he tasted the sweetness on his tongue - and just as he was about to take the snack off his mouth, Jesse's face darted closer and bit off half of it.
"Since you're not hungry, I'll take a break." Jesse said vaguely, with a mischievous smile on her face.
Adrian didn't throw it away, nor put it back in the bag, so he had to frown and finish the half of the snack.
"Why are you doing this?" Carefully brushing the scum from the corner of his mouth, the knight commander looked at Jesse who was digging a hole with magic.
"To win. I guess you don't like blood-splattered battlefields, so I decided to go with a cleaner way." Jesse said rightfully, "Now you see everything I've done—don't worry, wait until tomorrow, you It's clear. Ed, I need your cooperation at that time."
"...But you didn't set up any magic circles, and things of this level won't do much in the face of a heavily armed army."
Jesse's set up are all inconspicuous gadgets, and they are placed in very scattered places. Adrian couldn't figure out what the other party was trying to achieve with these crude traps—they weren't even traps, more like some kind of prank.
"Surprise always comes with suspense." Jesse hummed.
After more than an hour, Jesse used up all the props in the cloth bag.
The blond young man tied the sheep to a thin tree, sat down on the softest part of the lawn, and then patted his thigh affectionately: "It's done, that's all for the preparations. Ed, what do you want? Don't sleep any more?"
He slapped his thighs loudly.
Adrian glanced at him faintly, and somehow felt that Jesse's action was like summoning a pet at home. He ignored Mr. Dylan, who was slapping his legs and looking expectantly. He chose a lawn to lie down on, curled up vigilantly, and began to take a nap.
Jesse sniffed sadly, moved herself over, and forcibly shoved her thigh under the knight commander's head.
Adrian: "… "
"Be softer this way." Jesse's tone was sincere. "Don't run, okay?"
It sounded like coaxing a cat. The knight commander let out a light sigh in amusement. He wanted to get up and leave, but an inexplicable sense of familiarity stopped him.
Jesse Dillon has a very nice smell.
Unlike his flamboyant appearance, the blond youth had never used perfume that choked his nose. When you get close enough, that delicate aroma will appear. Very light aroma, sweet and warm - like freshly ripened berries, honey washed with warm water, or silk with the warmth of skin.
Inexplicably... miss.
Although he also noticed that night at Clementine Cathedral, the faint scent was quickly covered up by the ambiguous smell of sweat. And at this moment, in this quiet early morning, it appeared like a ghost and became extraordinarily real.
Warm fingers penetrated into his hair and gently massaged the scalp, Adrian finally closed his eyes and did not leave.
"It doesn't make sense," he whispered. "You're a fortune teller, and you can see the future, don't you?"
Jesse's movement stopped.
"This is the best thing." The beautiful blond young man lowered his head and muttered to himself. Cool hair brushed across Adrian's face—the Knight Commander's breath gradually became even and long, and he fell asleep, soundly asleep.
And Jesse just stared at each other's sleeping face, her icy blue pupils darkening in the night.
"You had no future long, long ago, Adrian Cross."
The following evening, Gallagher's troops arrived near the battlefield where clashes might break out. Even if the two assigned black chapters disappeared in the middle of the night, the soldiers would not stop their progress.
The target city is not far away, and they can already see the high stone wall. The enemy was approaching, and the dust flew with the flag. The horses ran through the sparsely wooded woods, and the vast meadows ahead were perfect for engagement—
It's just that there are two people on the grass, plus a white goat.
What are those two black chapters doing there
"Ed." Jesse ignored the approaching allies behind him, "it's time, aim for that turnip... I mean, aim for the rope on that turnip, I'll show you a show."
Adrian shook his head helplessly, pulling his bow full - the carrot that Jesse pointed to was almost too far to see, even the former Judge Knight Commander had to use a simple magic circle to see it.
The sharp arrow pierced the air and accurately shot the fragile hemp rope.
Fresh carrots fell from the treetops, and with the help of a simple surveillance circle, the knight commander could see all the details of what happened in the distance—
The enemy knights were driving their horses towards this direction, and a carrot that fell from the sky stopped one of the horses.
From this moment on, the whole battle changed its flavor.
Marshal Gallagher's army was already in formation, ready to wait for the enemy knights to rush out of the woods, and then immediately moved forward - but after half a day, not a single knight rushed out.
"What's the matter?" The general in charge of command frowned.
"You... see for yourself." The scout handed the general a monocle with a surveillance circle attached.
The enemy army is collapsing.
All funny and weird.
A knight on the opposite side was hit by a teammate behind him because of the abnormality of the horse - the position was very coincidental, just between the two trees. The companion behind him was unable to turn, and the horses collided directly.
What followed was a chain reaction.
The two knights appeared to have broken their bones, and the therapist and nurse who accompanied the army hurried to catch up. As a result, the two of them ran too fast, they didn't know what they were tripped over and flew out, their heads just hit the stone, and they fainted completely. The soldier next to him hurriedly went to get the healing scroll, only to find that the scroll had been dropped into a nearby stone pit at some point - and when the poor man tried to climb up with the scroll, the stone by the pit just came loose, and the soldier's scroll was not. Taking it up, he fell unconscious at the bottom of the pit again.
And this is just one place.
The horses were frightened and broke several legs. The cavalry collided and were stabbed by friendly weapons. Healing seems to be involved in some kind of a labyrinth of fate, always having a messy accident before feeling it. When the last therapist barely arrived at the place where the most injured people were, a rotten tree suddenly fell, smashing a bunch of them.
The unexpected incident caused the opposite camp to start chaos. Before encountering the real swords and guns, they first encountered another powerful enemy-inexplicable bad luck lingering.
Two-thirds of the enemy troops rushed out of the woods. As can be seen from their formation, the knights on the opposite side were obviously also surprised by their situation.
But what awaits them is not a normal battlefield.
The horse's leg plunged into the pit, and the knight was thrown away. The shield soldier did not know why he slipped and fell to the ground, and his ribs were broken by the heavy shield. The same hilarious tragedy was repeated, and the few remaining enemy soldiers began to retreat, unwilling to rush to the front of the "Wild Hound" army and rush to death.
"It's a curse... No, it's sorcery." Marshal Gallagher's general couldn't help but shudder.
Before their army moved, the other side took the lead in self-destruction. He had followed Marshal Gallagher for many years and had never seen such a ridiculous battle.
The setting sun just touched the horizon as the last figure of the enemy fled into the woods.
"Is this... is this man-made?" The lieutenant swallowed, "No, is this something that humans can do?"
There is no sign of guiding the eruption of the magic circle, it should be a pure physical trap. But even with calculations and chain reactions to trigger them, it is impossible to do this. There are no steel thorns suddenly pierced, or precise mechanical barriers. Just look at the material of the trap, the interference the other party receives should not be too much to be honest.
Usually, even if you set up a stumbling block of this level first, you can injure at most one or two people on the opposite side. No sane person would take such a chance against the enemy—as if using intricate cause and effect as a weapon and fate as a sharp blade.
The randomness of all factors is terrifying, and this is no longer the scope of human computing.
The two generals looked at the backs of the two black seals in the middle of the lawn.
The cause of this farce is just one arrow, if all this was planned in advance...
The last shield soldier running towards the woods tripped and fell to the ground. He seemed to have triggered something, and a row of signal bombs rose into the sky, blasting a golden sliver of light in the gradually darkening sky. The shavings of light, like the shreds of paper falling at the curtain call of the play, flew all over the sky reddened by the sunset for a while.
Adrian silently looked at the blond youth in front of him.
"Look, I don't want to use force when a few tattered bags can solve a problem. No one dies, you like that, don't you Ed?"
The knight commander stared at each other silently, covering up the stormy waves in his heart with a calm expression - this was the first time he had thoroughly experienced the horror of Jesse Dylan.
That's a completely different kind of horror than Nemo Wright.
But for some reason, he couldn't get up at all. In the fluttering shavings of light, Jesse opened his arms with a malicious but pure smile on his face.
"Comedy for you, my star." The blond youth raised his voice, sounding very pleasant. "Like it?"
"Let's go back." The knight commander took a few deep breaths, and once again glanced at the doom-entangled forest, trying to suppress the rapid heartbeat from shock.
"Do you like it?" Jesse didn't move, he puffed up in dissatisfaction, like a bad boy who didn't get candy.
"...Well, I'm glad this isn't a war I'm familiar with." The knight commander turned and began to advance toward Marshal Gallagher's army.
"What about today? Do you like me a little more today?" Jesse still didn't move.
Adrian stopped and turned around.
Jesse Dylan stood there, his long blond hair slightly blown by the wind. The setting sun was staying behind him, and the flawless face made him look a little unreal. There was a smile on his face - sly and content, and a little bit of anticipation.
Adrian couldn't understand the other's persistence.
He considers himself to be a perfect person, and he doesn't even have much special "character" to speak of. Whether it is appearance or character, there are people in this world who are better than themselves. He used to be able to stand on top of the surface with his strength, but now he has lost even that strength.
Now he is just a ghost wandering for redemption and promise, and Adrian has no complaints about such a fate. But someone insisted on stuffing him into flesh and blood, reminding him that he was still alive as a "human".
He was a very unreasonable, egoistic, stubborn, naive, but terrifyingly powerful person.
The knight commander thought that the other party was approaching him with a curious mind, so after that night, Jesse Dylan, who had achieved his goal, should have started to lose interest - but the other party's interest was obviously getting bigger and bigger.
Whatever the purpose, if Dylan wanted a genuine relationship, Adrian firmly believed that the other party would fail.
He doesn't have a heart that beats enthusiastically because of love and love, so how can he give it away
"No." The knight commander replied as always.
"Oh." Jesse didn't look discouraged.
"Then just smile, otherwise, as a comedy script writer, I will be very hurt." The blond young man said casually.
Jesse grabbed the goat's rein and hooked it around Adrian's neck. They walked across the bloodless grass, and the little iron beads that were left gleamed in the setting sun, like pearls left in the grass.
The other party's body temperature was pasted, unfamiliar and real.
Adrian froze subconsciously, turned his head, and looked at the carefree smile at the corner of the other's mouth. There was a sudden throbbing in his heart, and it wasn't frustration, it was some kind of… a pain closer to emptiness and dazedness. The unfamiliar emotion grabbed him, it wrapped around his tongue and made him want to say something.
"…but I don't hate you, Dylan."
He says.