Second Life as a Soldier

Next 2 days of the journey passed without any issues.

On the second night, I approached Colin, who was sitting with Owen near the campfire. The rest of his squad, just like mine, were either on night duty or resting beside the carts.

I wanted to understand why Colin had been cold toward me.

We had a good relationship when we were part of Sergeant Fenward’s squad.

We had fought together for over a year under Sergeant Fenward and lost friends during the beast tide, which made Colin’s cold attitude hard to ignore. What bothered me even more was that he never once tried to talk things out with me.

Approaching them, I nodded to Owen, who nodded back with a smile. Then I sat down on the ground in front of Colin, who frowned at my arrival.

“Hi Colin, I was hoping to discuss something with you,” I said.

“Is it about the mission?” Colin asked.

“No, it is about you. Is something bothering you? Something I can help you with? I am asking because you or Owen never came to visit me, and now—”

“Fuck off!” Colin said, cutting me off mid-sentence, catching both me and Owen by surprise. “Don’t come here acting like we are friends. If this is not a mission-related discussion, you can fuck off from here. People act like you earned everything through talent, but I know the truth. You are someone who climbed the ranks by licking nobles’ boots. I don’t have anything to talk to you!”

By the time Colin finished speaking, he was almost shouting, looking at me with eyes filled with anger. I stared at him silently.

I thought I should say something, but looking at his expression, I changed my mind. I slowly stood up and, turning my back to them, walked back to my camp.

My initial plan was to sleep after returning to my location, but after the conversation I had with Colin, I was angry and in no shape to sleep. Colin had the nerve to accuse me of reaching my position because I had bowed down to nobles, when he was the one who had sworn an oath to House Fenward.

The more I thought about his words, the angrier I became, so in hopes of clearing my mind and letting my anger subside, I lit a small campfire and started chewing the dry meat I had in my pocket.

“That’s not going to help,” I heard Owen’s voice from behind.

Without turning back, I said, “What are you doing here?” in a pissed tone.

He did not reply to my question, just made his way to the front and tossed a pouch to me. “Jerky will not help you, try something stronger.”

I opened the pouch, which had 20–25 cigarettes inside it. These were not like modern cigarettes, just dried tobacco wrapped in a dried leaf of some type.

“You know these are harmful, right?” I said to Owen, but still took out one cigarette from it.

By this time, Owen had already lit his own cigarette. Letting the smoke out, he said, “Really? I always thought these were good for relieving tension.”

Shaking my head, I lit a cigarette of my own and took a long drag, immediately regretting it. The smoke burned through my throat, and I started coughing as small bursts of smoke escaped my lips.

Owen chuckled. “You will get used to it.”

Taking deep breaths and controlling my breathing, I took one more drag, this time a smaller one.

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“How have I never seen you smoke before?” I asked.

“I used to, but not this much. Sergeant Fenward did not like people smoking near him, so I never smoked around the squad. Recently, I have become more reliant on them,” he replied.

Looks like the stress of being the right-hand man of a sergeant like Colin is taking a toll on him.

“Why are you here?” I repeated my question. “I thought Colin made his opinion of me pretty clear.”

Owen sighed. “I do not share Colin’s opinion. Up until now, I was under the impression that the reason we were not visiting you was because both you and Colin were busy handling new responsibilities. Another reason for me was that I had been blaming myself for Jack’s death. He was like a younger brother to me. By the time I made peace with his death, a lot of time had already passed.”

I nodded, listening to Owen’s reasons. While Jake and I were not that close, Jack, Colin, and Owen had a very close bond, and I was not even sure how long they had known each other.

Taking a deep breath, Owen continued, “I thought this was the same reason Colin had been avoiding our squad members.”

“He is distant with the squad as well?” I asked.

Owen nodded.

“And the reason behind the nonsense he was talking about? Licking nobles’ boots and all that. I can understand not meeting with me or even siding with Rowan, but this attitude was not something I could understand.”

Owen took a drag of his cigarette and looked at the horizon. “If I had to guess, that was jealousy.”

“Jealousy? With me?”

Owen turned to me, looking me in the eyes, and said, “When I think about it, there have been multiple things that led to this. First, when you became a sergeant, everyone was surprised, but at the same time, the whole fort believed that within six months your squad would lose enough members that you would be assigned to some other squad. A 17-year-old sergeant is almost unheard of, much less leading a death squad. That was how a lot of sergeants comforted themselves, telling themselves your leadership was temporary.”

Owen’s words caught me off guard. I didn’t know that people had so little trust in my leadership capabilities, but that explained something. At the fort, sergeants had their own groups where they hung out together in their free time, and I was never welcomed into one. Up until now, I had blamed it on the nature of my squad, but now I knew the real reason behind it.

“Then you proved everyone wrong. You not only led a death squad for more than one year, you made that squad one of the top-performing squads in the whole fort. I heard Lieutenant Fenward praise you more than a couple of times. To make matters worse, the next mission we took after listening to your praise, our squad lost two privates. This has affected Colin far more than you can think.”

We both sat in silence, smoking our own cigarettes while staring at the flames of the campfire. If my success hurt Colin this much, serving under me would have destroyed his pride. But if he was the type of person who could not be happy with the success of his friends, then I wanted nothing to do with him.

After a couple of seconds, Owen spoke up again.

“Edward, I would suggest you stop looking at Colin as a friend and start treating him for what he really is, your subordinate.”

Saying that, Owen stood up and made his way toward his squad, leaving me with the pouch full of cigarettes.

Next day’s march began as usual. The only thing different was that today I was distracted and irritated. Even the chat with Owen did not help me sleep. To make matters worse, the axle of one of the carts broke in the morning, delaying us by two hours.

Around afternoon, I heard a loud shout from one of the privates on the outer ring. “Wolves!”

Listening to this, all the sergeants started shouting orders and arranging their squads. Meanwhile, I expanded the sensing range of [Perceptive Instinct (UC)], trying to assess the threat level of the pack, only to realize how grave a mistake I had made. In my distraction, I had missed a huge pack of wolves that had probably been following us for a long time. Half of the outer ring at the rear of the caravan was already surrounded by wolves. Moreover, it was a super pack of more than 35 wolves, led by a Tier-3 alpha and at least 5 Tier-2 wolves.

“OUTER RING, RETREAT! RETREAT! EVERYONE TO THE BACK! COMPACT BATTLE FORMATION!” I shouted with [Battlefield Command (UC)], catching every sergeant by surprise. “IT IS A SUPER PACK!”

All the privates from the outer ring started retreating in a hurry, while all the other soldiers ran from the front to the rear of the caravan.

“Varric, Garran, Barry, Kael, Victor, Owen, Oren, Brakk….” I rattled off the names of the 15 toughest Tier-2 fighters I knew. ”Form the front wall!” I said to them.

As I took my position, I sensed three wolves targeting three privates who were retreating. Just as the wolves jumped to attack the privates, I created palm-sized mana shields in front of the wolves’ jaws, stopping them in their tracks.

For a second, both humans and beasts looked at me in surprise. Even I was proud of my achievement. This was my first time creating three mana shields simultaneously, but my achievement brought something worse.

Attention of the Alpha.