In almost all human civilizations that exist and have ever existed, there is an expression of using "heart" to describe someone's most sincere emotions.
In Padrosi's Contemporary East Coast Lamani Dictionary, the word "heartfelt" can be used to describe a person who does things carefully and with a lot of enthusiasm. As for the Sivalliers who would rather die than be romantic, in addition to the typical "Does it hurt?" "Does something hurt?" That female thief." "What did she steal?" "My heart!" Such sentences.
Even the ancient Morbigas civilization, which was regarded as a barbarian by the Lamanites, had a primitive polytheistic belief in which the sacrificial objects were the hearts of living people.
Granted, it's a given that there are cultural commonalities, given that the schism of Lamanite civilization was the spark that led to the founding of many of the nations on the West Coast. But if we look at history, this practice of using "heart" to describe one's emotions is probably older than the Lamani civilization itself.
The negative emotion of loss and pain is sadness.
Joy, pleasure, and positive emotions are happiness.
People have known for a long time that the heart plays an extremely important role in the human body. In addition, when you are nervous or extremely happy, your heart will beat faster like a deer ramming. Even today, when medicine is relatively advanced and we understand 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 Balmond is one of them, and if you put yourself in his shoes, it's not hard to understand why he feels the way he does.
My heart is pounding.
There is darkness ahead.
Endless darkness.
If at another time and place, if this 39-year-old man were still afraid of the dark, I am afraid that the Lamanites would respond in their best way of ridicule.
But it's different here.
The ground is cold and damp, and the cold air penetrates through a series of gaps in the collar and cuffs that you thought were fine.
The space can only accommodate a person bending down to pass slowly. Some places even require you to crawl forward, and the only thing that can illuminate is the torch in your hand.
Not being able to move your body freely, you have no other choice but to move forward and backward. The left side is wet and cold soil, and the right side is also wet and cold soil. Not only the movement but also the vision are severely restricted, coupled with the dizzy feeling caused by lack of oxygen, it is simply as helpless as possible.
There is no way to even turn around and escape, because the passage is so narrow, even if you want to retreat little by little, there are still teammates behind you.
The tension caused by helplessness made his heart beat continuously. Vincenzo tightly grasped the one-handed sword in his hand, and the torch in the other hand was stretched forward as much as possible, just to increase the number of A pitifully humble view of light.
If it weren't for his faith and sense of mission, spending more than an hour in the hole dug by the ghoul would be enough to turn this fast-moving captain into a madman.
These, damn, disgusting, abominable, damned undead that have returned to hell.
The curse words were controlled by the gentleman's character and were not vented out. The battle had lasted for more than six hours, and the first dozen or so ghouls who dug a hole and rushed over were stabbed to death by random shots. After that, these cunning undead learned to scurry around, not burrowing under the walls of human fortifications, but digging holes deeper inside.
Their sharp claws and strong muscles made them dig holes better than mice. Although the ghouls that suddenly rushed out a few hours ago were quickly killed by the troops who were waiting for them, they had no impact on the troops supporting the city wall. The support staff caused a huge disruption.
In addition, these guys digging holes under the city wall will cause the foundation to loosen. If the city wall falls, they will basically be finished.
They had no choice but to go out and send soldiers into the holes to kill these nasty things as soon as possible.
This is an exhausting and extremely dangerous operation.
Ghouls obviously have human faces, but have the habits of beasts.
In the dark and narrow tunnels, they are far more agile than the soldiers and mercenaries wearing bulky warm clothes. So when the battle begins, the people in front often scream and are dragged away and torn to pieces, while the people behind can only worry and fear everything. Can't see clearly.
Fighting with these monsters reminded Vincenzo of the farmers in the northern part of the Palohia Plateau playing hamster-only the hamsters here were enlarged dozens of times and liked to eat human flesh, so it was even more difficult.
None of the first troops that came in survived.
The subsequent troops, under the command of the guy who was obviously 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 quite a while, but this step is definitely necessary. The humans who were able to spread out in the expanded cave finally began to push the ghouls back, and they won step by step. These ghouls who knew how to dig holes were all smaller and weaker in defense. And not in the majority. Seeing that the extermination was almost completed, Captain Vincenzo made an arbitrary decision that he soon began to regret.
Without waiting for the slow expansion of the logistics force, he rushed directly into the narrow ghoul tunnel and hunted down the last few ghouls.
Whether the motive is military merit or bounty, or simply wanting to kill these blasphemous undead for his own noble spirit and lofty beliefs, Captain Vincenzo is now stuck in a dilemma.
He could only bite the bullet and continue to move forward with the thirty people under his command.
The captain in the Padrosi military rank comes from the classical Lamani era. The pronunciation in the Lamani language is "Captang", which means "centurion" in ancient languages - meaning that the person with this rank is the commander. A lieutenant with a hundred soldiers, and it remains the same today.
——This is obviously different from the number of men he led, and if you add in the fact that Vincenzo was an officer but took the lead, it is not difficult for us to guess what exactly happened.
As we go deeper, the people in front disappear one by one.
Every time there was a fork in the road, someone would disappear after a burst of screams.
What's scary is not how many enemies there are or how strong they are, but that they don't even know where the enemies are.
Being restricted everywhere, the cold air on the physical level further contributed to helplessness and panic. Gradually, deserters secretly retreated not only in front of me but also behind me.
The number of soldiers dropped from 100 to 80, then from 80 to 60, and finally from 60 to 50. Then the number of people blocking Vincenzo's path also decreased one by one. When there was only one soldier left, he The one who was stuck in the passage turned around with difficulty and nodded to look at Vincenzo, as if he already knew his fate. The look in his eyes is still deeply engraved in the captain's heart.
Tension.
The constant tension kept his heart pounding.
As the passage became narrower and narrower, the sword in his hand could not give him enough sense of security. He began to find it difficult to move, and he began to want to retreat, but he was obsessed with his own face and felt that it was very embarrassing to go back with his tail between his legs in such a dejected manner.
Then a voice spoke.
I don’t know if it’s a little blurry due to the lack of oxygen.
I don’t know if it’s an auditory hallucination or reality, but who is acting like this?
It seemed like it was a voice coming from his heart.
"Go back." The voice said.
"Go back. No one knows that you lost to those undead. You can tell them that you won and wiped out the last undead."
"Go back, no one will know you lied."
A soft whisper lingered in his ears. At first, Vincenzo tried hard to control himself not to listen to it, but in the darkness and helplessness of being lonely and unable to move, the sound echoed and became louder and louder.
then.
"Huh——" It was just a torch that was struggling to keep burning.
went out.
"Oh my god!!"
"what happens!!"
"Captain!!" Panic screams continued to sound behind him, and even Vincenzo himself became frightened. He subconsciously thought that something had extinguished the torch, so he waved his one-handed sword randomly.
The sound of "Ping Ping Bang Bang" echoed in the dark tunnel at the front. A large piece of frozen soil was chopped off by Vincenzo. The lack of oxygen made it impossible for him to judge whether he was really facing the enemy or just in front of him. He swung his sword into the air, and in his frantic swings, he cut himself.
"Ah!" he screamed.
"Captain, are you okay!" The man crawling behind him crawled over. The firelight illuminated Vincenzo, and he was startled to realize that he was breaking out in a cold sweat.
"No, no, no -"
That voice took over.
Captain Vincenzo turned slightly.
"Let's go back." He said with a pale face and cold sweat. "Uh-" The adjutant subconsciously wanted to retort something, but considering the situations he encountered along the way and the captain's frightened look, he had no choice but to shout to the people behind him.
The voices came one after another towards the back.
When they heard the order to retreat finally, the soldiers let out a long sigh.
"Retreat to a wider place, then turn around and crawl over there!" the adjutant shouted, and people immediately turned around and started to move, and the torch light sources one after another began to move away.
"Captain?"
"You retreat first, I will follow your fire." Vincenzo checked with the adjutant's torch and found that the torch in his hand was only burned out. He calmed down to some extent, then grabbed the sword and began to retreat.
Fortunately, the relatively wide place for people to squat down and turn around is not very far away. After turning around and moving forward for a while, the tunnel gradually becomes wider and wider.
"Right, right, like this."
The voice in my heart sounded like the voice of salvation from God.
"No one knows you lied-"
A torch appeared around the corner, followed by a second.
Back to where the engineers were, everyone looked much better. Vincenzo breathed a long sigh of relief. In this peaceful atmosphere, only the adjutant noticed the captain's drooping left arm.
"Sir, your wound."
"Oh, it's okay, it's not a big deal. I just accidentally cut myself, and I'm a little ashamed, but I was a little guilty just now in a state of hypoxia-" In order to prove to the adjutant that it was really just a wound, Vincenzo held up his arm His sleeves were off, but it was at this moment that his words came to an abrupt end like a duck being pinched by the neck.
"You." The voice rang again.
Now it is crystal clear, no longer vague.
Vincenzo could hear every byte and every articulation of unvoiced and voiced consonants.
It was a gentle female voice, but obviously, determination had nothing to do with gods.
"How stupid."
The wound on the exposed arm has begun to heal, and the blood vessels that are rising and falling are pulsating as if they are alive.
It's a black liquid.
