Herald of Steel

Chapter 1154: Rickety Bridge (Part-2)

"Aghhhhhhhh!"

The horrified and terrified shouts of falling men were loud enough to pierce the ears of all men in the ships, even though they were a great distance apart and despite the huge open surrounding working to dissipate much of the noise, thus laying witness to how big a group had just lost their footing and were hurling to their depths.

They were so large, numbering close to around fifty and so packed together at the moment of their fall that from a distance they initially looked almost like a lump of black, solid stone, before quickly disintegrating into many misshapen pebbles, ones that were wildly frailing around their contours in absolute fear and panic.

And as they hit the water, it created a gigantic splash that rivaled even the peaks reached by falling debris, rising high up into the air and turning frothy with a pink hue.

Then soon afterward, these bodies rose up to the surface in the form of floating corpses, forming a nasty clump where everything was maliciously mangled and twisted, bent in ways that felt painful to even look at, with blood, bone, organs, and even bodily excrement polluting the water around there.

Thus the sea in the vicinity began to turn, first pale and rusty, and then a deep, reddish blood, bloody looking pigment.

The entire thing was very nasty to look at, and as the bodies on that part began to clump together to form a 'rock of flesh', QQ and his men found themselves instinctively turning their heads away at the macabre sight, for the scene proved too gory to look at even for these experienced men.

"Hurry! Hurry! Row faster men! We don't have much time! The entire thing's falling apart!"

So instead they turned to order their rowers to move their arms faster, hoping to reach their destination before any more tragedy could ensue.

As the ships from both sides raced to save their men, the men atop the bridge all of a sudden found themselves frozen still, letting a strange, deathly silence reign the place.

All attacks had stopped, all movements had stopped, and even all the various shouts and orders that were eternally present in a battlefield had stopped.

It was like time itself had ceased to exist, causing everyone to become stuck in place.

Of course, the current 'stalemate' was not induced due to time in the cosmos freezing, but because of the men freezing in fear.

Fear of the same thing happening to them. Fear of them too falling to their deaths and becoming fish food.

Among the three forces, the most shaken were undoubtedly the Heeat soldiers, who got a front row seat to the entire thing.

So it was with absolute horror that they laid witness to how most of their brothers at the rear got swallowed up by the sea in the blink of an eye, save for a small lucky few who were in the very front and managed to make it to the others side, all else vanishing to the frothy depths, as a huge, gaping hole opened up between them and the safety of the mainland.

This collapse of the bridge basically left the rest of the army stranded on this part of the bridge, as the gap behind them was too big to jump across.

Not to mention, the other side looked as if it could crumble away at any second, so there was no one daring enough to even try to jump on it, fearing that may be his last.

In fact, being the closest to the 'epicenter', there were many that did not dare to even breathe too hard, forget jumping or any of the fighting, stabbing, and pushing.

They only stood there, with half shaky legs, looking down at the various cracks spreading through the bridge with every subtle movement they made with the greatest trepidation, and listening to each and every creak and groan of the floor with frightfully pale and panicked hearts.

They wished they could stop breathing or even stop their heart from beating, all to slow down the collapse, even if by only the tiniest, ephemeral amount.

As for the last faction trapped in this deathtrap, the legionaries, well they were all initially very puzzled by the turn of events.

For them, the actions of the Heeat and Margraves forces simply translated to seeing all the offensive pressure suddenly and almost instantly disappear, thus saving them from the brink of disintegration.

And initially, they were unable to figure out the cause behind such a sudden and generous show of mercy.

'The enemy had not shown any such obligations before. So what gives?' The legionnaires found themselves asking and then began to hypothesize various plausible scenarios such as,

'Are they stopping to ask us to surrender?'

'Did our ships scare them?'

'Are they giving up?'

And even the supremely optimistic theory,

'Did we beat them?'

But none of these seemed to fit and thus many began to see it as a small miracle

But things soon became clear, and only within a short while, a cacophony of loud, panicked, and alarmed cries began to ring out from all across the formation, with each claiming various, at the time, outlandish claims.

'The bridge collapsed! The bridge ahead collapsed. The whole thing is breaking apart!"

"He's right! Look at the cracks there... they are spreading! They are coming this way!"

"The enemy fell from the bridge! We are next!"

"Don't move! Stay still! Stay still! Keep calm!"

Hearing all this for the first time, Alexander was a bit flummoxed, wondering what the hell the others were talking about.

But that soon changed, and like the others, he too began to feel as if his feet were on fire.

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