Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!-Chapter 286: Breaking point (6!!!)

'That's how war should look like!' Willy thought, pulling the trigger to the rhythm of extreme self-satisfaction flowing through his veins.

Yet, for the first time since he and his colleagues joined the battle, squeezing the trigger didn't bring the expected result.

"Ha!"

A soldier that Willy aimed at uttered a small shout… Only for the bullet to stop in its track, rapidly losing its momentum at the very last few steps it had to cover only to turn to a complete spot, hanging up in the air a mere meter away from Willy's target's face.

'What?'

Staring wide-eyed at the levitating bullet, Willy swallowed a gulp of saliva… Before lifting the muzzle of the gun a tiny bit and squeezing the trigger again.

With the safety lock on the single-fire mode, only a single bullet would leave Willy's gun with the squeeze of his finger. As a result, right when Willy started to consider switching over to the full-auto mode and feeding more bullets into the enemy soldier's magical barrier than it could handle, he fired his fifth shoot…

And a shoot that finally found its target, breaking through whatever kind of field was slowing all its predecessors down and digging deep into the target's flesh. And as soon as a red flower of a wound blossomed on the soldier's tunic, Willy added one more bullet to the list, lodging it deep inside the man's skull, finally bringing the struggle to an end.

"What the hell was that?" Willy muttered to himself, turning his gun over as he scanned the surrounding area. Yet, with the situation calming down in his direct proximity, he quickly confirmed there simply were no more targets left for him or his closest brothers-in-arms to target.

"Leave it for later. We need to push forward right now!" Willy's squad leader called out through the comms before leading by example and making his way forward.

The leader of the squad ignored the uncertain looks given by all sorts of weird, shiny, and misshaped humans. His attention was on the men hidden behind the lines of their supposed allies to whom he paid absolutely no mind.

"Sir, shouldn't we…" Willy's colleague bearing the nick of Lambda, attempted to say something.

"We can't cooperate with them, not yet," their leader refused Lambda's suggestion even before the man had the chance to fully voice it out. "Trying to integrate with them would introduce too much chaos. For now, we need to move!"

The calm step of their leader quickly gained some hurried traits, all the way to the moment when he pushed past the line of their supposed lines and lowered his gun, readying himself to fight off a whole crowd of soldiers rushing to reopen the gap in their allies' formation.

"Push them away!"

With the leader's simple order ringing in his ears, Willy ignored Lambda's grimace and rushed forth instead, changing the magazine to his gun as he moved, only to arrive at the new position right as he reloaded the gun with a quick pull on its leaver.

"Kill'em all!"

***

'This isn't how war should look like!'

Life was never easy for Willy.

He didn't have the blessing of being born into a noble family. He wasn't even lucky enough to come from the line of some rich merchants.

No.

He was of a birth as common as it could get. Yet, despite being born into a relatively normal family with both of his parents always working hard to provide for him and his two brothers and sister…

Even with all the sacrifices of his parents and later on his older siblings, Willy's life was average at best and pretty damn tragic during some of its worst moments.

Like when the son of a rich merchant stole away the girl that he loved. Like when a noble bastard stole his chances of promotion, abusing his blood to cut all of the competitors for the rank out.

Willy was more used to losing in life than he would be willing to admit. Still, the rare moments where life was good were more than enough to keep him going, constantly pushing the man to struggle to be better.

Especially now, just a single step away from a rank that would allow him to lift not only himself but also his entire family out of poverty, Willy was as motivated to see this battle through as he could get.

Yet, when the strange, invisible projectiles started to fly right by his face, all of Willy's motivation vanished, replaced with the other sects of skills and instincts he developed long before finding employment within the unit of the duke's warriors.

'Run!'

Willy's entire soul compressed and turned into this single, simplistic desire.

His animal instincts continued to scream as loudly as they could in his mind, constantly pushing him to drop the act and do the smart thing before it was too late.

'There's no use dying a dog's death here.'

Soon, even Willy's rational side joined in on the effort of his instincts, working to erase Willy's sense of honor or morals.

"Barriers!" Someone shouted from far deeper into their formation, from within the relative safety of the troops that, due to the overcrowding issue, couldn't approach the front line of the ongoing battle. "Raise your barriers, you damn idiots!"

Following the expressed order, Willy followed the command, focusing for merely a moment before weaving the flow of his own mana into the air around him, turning it so thick and dense, that no rapidly moving projectile could hope to penetrate it.

'If this won't work…'

Willy didn't even need to close his eyes to imagine the bloody scenes that he saw happening before his own eyes just a moment earlier. In fact, were it not for his quick instincts and the great trust he placed in them, he would likely be now nothing more but a reminder to all his companions of what would happen if they stayed anywhere near where the fighting was happening.

The sights of bodies shattering under the onslaught of invisible projectiles, often several of them in a row, cut down by a single series of shots.

The air around Willy condensed, quickly forming the basic imperial barrier, a spell that all the ascended within the imperial forces were obliged to learn.

And now, with more ascenders gathered in a single spot than Willy would ever thought possible, their barriers, rather than interfering with each other, seemingly merged.

Willy's barrier reinforced the barriers of the three ascenders directly by his side. His own barrier was reinforced by the same amount of other barriers, turning it into a protection Willy could never have hoped for before.

As soon as the appearance of the barriers brought a single moment of a breather for Willy and his companions, as soon as the morale started to grow back up and the commanders deeper into the forest started to shout at their soldiers to advance with renewed fervor…

"Agh…"

One of the ascenders by Willy's side released a dull, pained groan. They looked down and stared with surprise all over their face at the red blossom of blood appearing right in the middle of their chest… Only for the back of their head to explode, scattering the poor ascender's brain matter at all the soldiers behind him.

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'Wha…?!'

Turning his eyes back towards the enemy… Willy saw it.

A small group of strangely dressed men, all carrying strange, black sticks in their hands.

'Those gotta be heavy,' Willy quickly judged, watching just how slow those men were to raise their weapons.

The black sticks exploded….

No.

For the tiniest of moments, they flashed up, spitting extremely tiny fires out of their front…

Then, an entire row of men fell tumbling down, their bodies shredded by the onslaught of the same, tiny projectiles that Willy already noticed before.

But with the shattering of the barrier of a fellow ascended just to his side, Willy's will to fight vanished completely.

'Nothing will matter if you die,' he thought, finally arriving at the conclusion others would find to be quite obvious.

Still.

To leave the battlefield while the fight was only ramping up would put a definitive end to Willy's career in the duke's forces. Once again, he would have to start from the very scratch, putting his dream of lifting his family out of poverty off for a few more years.

But…

'I won't help them if I'm dead!'

Finally coming to terms with the decision he was so hesitant to make, Willy gritted his teeth…

'If this is what happens here, then it's likely to be happening all over the place,' he thought, taking a quick look above the heads of the enemies he noticed… Only for the smoke to block his view.

It has started to disperse by now but still continues to linger low in the air to stop anyone's attempts at peering deeper into the battlefield. Still, the smoke has now grown thin enough for Willy to make out some pretty dangerous-looking shapes lingering at the back of the circle they were supposed to conquer…

"RUN!" Willy shouted from the bottom of his lungs while dropping down on one knee as he focused all of his attention on nothing else but circulating his mana through the air. "SAVE YOURSELVES AND RUN!"

By now, the morale of the imperial troops has struck rock bottom. Only the momentum of the ranks to the back managed to keep those at the front still within the engagement distance of their overwhelmingly powerful opponents.

And now, with just a single yet powerful shout from an ascender, a simple call for a retreat… All the semblance of order has finally broken. The authority of the officers faded away as panic settled in the minds of their subordinates.

And before long, the entire crowd of imperials stopped… Only to turn its direction around, overpower those at the back who still hoped to reach the front of the battle, and start the gradual retreat of the imperial armies.

It was a long, chaotic, and extremely dangerous process, especially with those strange, genocidal enemies pressing their advantage and quickly developing their counter-attack to make the most out of the opportunity Willy presented them with.

As for Willy himself… He dared not to move a muscle. He was already down on one knee, only to fall down on all fours when someone crashed into him from the back. As the overwhelmingly thick crowd around started to thin out as more and more soldiers either escaped or fell dead or heavily wounded to the ground, Willy only had one left card to play in his bid to survive.

"I surrender!" he screamed out as loud as he could, daring not to turn around and face whatever could be coming for him. "Mercy! I surrender!"