NOVEL NEXT Chapter 74: At the doors
Even with everything that I went through so far, this experience was something entirely new. For a briefest of moments, it seemed as if all the laws that bound the universe suddenly loosened up, only to restart their settings back to the usual a fraction of a second later.
Raising my eyes sharply at the men in front, I hoped to see some kind of reaction, signifying that at least they know what was going on… But the soldiers standing in the neat rows just a few steps away from me didn't seem to notice anything at all. Taking a short glance to my back, I quickly confirmed that it was the same case for the crowd that marched with me. Not even the mercenaries of all sorts of powerful families seemed to be as shocked as I was.
"Bring us your leader and you will be spared. Upset the order that we preserved, and you will die."
Finally, the other side made a move. With some kind of negotiator stepping out from between the soldiers with a megaphone, his words quickly spread throughout the entire crowd.
"Bring us your leader…"
This entire play on the government's side had to be made on the spot, otherwise, the spokesman wouldn't dare to use just two sentences looping one after the other. Even though I was unable to use witchcraft for now as I couldn't feel any emotions at all, it didn't take a witch to see how terrified the man with a megaphone was.
"Hey, you. Would you mind coming over here for a moment?"
Instead of lashing out, I allowed the situation to turn into a stalemate. For now, the soldiers in front of me perceived me as nothing more than a threat that killed their colleagues. From the hatred visible on their faces it was clear that either my own or someone else's stream was already trending to the point where they would manage to watch it before the clash with me.
So instead of pushing for the confrontation, I just smiled at the terrified man. What was important right now, was convincing those soldiers that I didn't come here for them. After all, as much as I abhorred this kind of mentality, they were ultimately just following their orders. In more civilised times, I would never take something like this for an excuse.
But I could understand people who were confused by the apocalypse, stitching desperately to what they knew before it happened. Right now, as long as they wouldn't stand against me, as long as they weren't connected with all those events that happened around my home, I didn't really care enough to bother killing them.
"Upset the order that we preserved…"
From the expression of that negotiator's face, I could tell that he was too terrified to listen to me as a normal person would. Even with all my emotions being numb, this alone was enough to make me annoyed. Not because he didn't listen to my kind order. Because I despised those who just accepted the reality around them no matter how rotten it was. This was one of the reasons why this entire fake cult I came up with still managed to resonate with my soul.
After all, I picked the ideology that was fit for my own morals!
Wait, I was annoyed?
As little as this slight emotion could help me achieve, it was still an emotion! With just a single sweep of my remaining magic through my inner self, I managed to recreate the very same witchcraft that I used before. If the negotiator was unwilling to give me the megaphone, then all I needed was to make one of my own!
"Bring me the governor, and I will spare those who didn't dirt their hands with the blood of civilians. Refuse to do so and you will be massacred."
Using my own abilities to turn the volume of my voice by quite a lot, I directed those words towards the military. Obviously, I wasn't naive enough to believe that those disciplined men would defect after just a single threat of mine. What I hoped, was for getting at least some of them to raise the sights of their weapons above the heads of the crowd.
But as it turned out, there wasn't even any point in using threats. Before I or any of the mercenaries could start the onslaught, some of the civilians squeezed to the front of the entire crowd. Then, they started approaching the line of the military.
At first, everyone was confused. My forces by the fact that those unarmed civilians dared to move to the front, to where the most lethal zone of the approaching fight would appear. As for what the soldiers thought when the civilians they were supposed to protect approached them without fear… I could only imagine.
What was important though, was the fact that before a single shot could be fired, those simple civilians already crossed the point of no return. At the same time, I could feel some kind of strange force brewing in my guts.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Are you going to kill me?"
"Come, shoot me! Prove that you are a heartless monster!"
Hearing the various ways in which the civilians attempted to turn the military around, I would be baffled if not for how hard it was for me to feel anything right now. Given how even marching to what seemed to be my death didn't faze me, asking for a surprise to break through my emotional numbness would be a bit too much.
Yet, they achieved something that I didn't dare to even dream about before everything started moving. With the civilians standing directly on the line of the soldier's fire, the mercenaries behind me quickly spread out across the entire area, turning the effectiveness of the enemy's backline firepower to almost nothing. In the end, with only four machine guns located at the town's hall towers, unless my real forces were gathered in one place, those monsters of firepower would be nearly completely useless!
After all, no matter how quickly you can shoot bullets from your gun, you could only aim it at one spot.
"Governor! I know you are hiding in there! Surrender to us…"
This was the moment when everything would be decided. With more and more civilians finding the courage to enter the fray, in just a few moments the soldiers would lose any chance at retaliation. I could already see some of the town's folks grabbing the guns and raising their barrels straight up, rendering nearly the entire first-row of the militia useless.
Right now, the military commander had to somehow pull his troops back and regroup. This was the only way for him to maintain his unit in an operational state. But from how things were quickly developing, the moment when he could act came.
And passed right away.
With the civilians already making their way to the second and occasionally a third row of soldiers, the entire unit was compromised. The question of whether it was indecisiveness or an actual guilt-consciousness that made the commander of the unit hold his orders could be answered at later date. Right now, I had to press my advantage!
"Everyone! Get to the town hall! We are going to take that devil of a governor ourselves!"