The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

He didn’t turn around to complain or yell at him.

The guy just panicked. He violently pushed the people around him and just tried to run backward through the tight formation.

Brandon stood there confused. He turned around, looking left, right, straight ahead, and back, but he couldn’t exactly see anything going wrong yet.

That was until he looked up and saw a massive black cloud rising into the sky.

It was rapidly getting closer and closer.

As it arced at the top of its trajectory, the black cloud spread out. It looked almost like an impossibly huge, unfinished fishing net blocking out the morning sun.

Brandon just stared up at it.

As he was looking at it, he heard his neighbor’s voice scream from beside him.

”Lift your shield up! Those are arrows!”

Brandon’s heart instantly dropped into his stomach. He immediately followed the veteran’s words and yanked his wooden shield up over his head.

But as he did that, he saw the thousands of men in the front ranks completely drop down to the ground. As his line of sight cleared from the men in front of him crouching, he could finally see exactly what was going on in the vanguard.

The heavy infantry in the very front; which Brandon vaguely recognized as the veteran soldiers belonging to Marquis Draven, had all instantly crouched down and angled their brand new shields high up. It created a perfect, overlapping roof of thick wood and leather that covered their entire bodies.

Brandon was standing too far back in the formation to properly crouch in the tight crowd, so he just stood there with his shield awkwardly raised.

The massive volley of iron-tipped arrows rained down from the sky.

The whistling sound was deafening but the arrows never touched Draven’s men. They just bounced harmlessly off the shields.

But when the volley reached Brandon’s area, the outcome was different.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The arrows slammed down all around him, but miraculously, none of them hit him directly.

He just stood there completely stunned as the rain of arrows finally stopped. The entire vanguard basically just looked like a massive horizontal wall of shields with hundreds of arrows stuck into the wooden shields.

Then he slowly turned his head to the right.

An army block was completely breaking formation and rapidly flanking out to the side of the battlefield.

It was their own people, and it was the heavily armored vanguard of the Oresfall territory.

These men belonged to the Lord who had made Brandon’s life a little bit more bearable over the past few days. Of course, the man’s soldiers had also made his life a living hell by forcing him to do burpees until he threw up, but the food he served was just heavenly.

Just thinking about Adrian, his shiny army, and those incrediblely tasty meals made Brandon’s mouth water despite the terrifying situation.

He shook his head, trying to snap himself out of it, and watched the Oresfall men rush forward in perfect synchronization.

But before he even fully processed what they were doing, a second massive volley of arrows flew over the fortress walls.

This time, the whistling was directly overhead.

Thwack!

An arrow slammed into the guy standing right in front of Brandon. He was a young newbie too.

Brandon watched in horror as the heavy arrow just effortlessly pierced straight through the kid’s rotten wooden shield like it was made of wet paper. The iron tip punched through the wood and embedded itself deep into the boy’s exposed neck.

Blood sprayed out and Brandon just watched as the guy dropped his shield, fell hard to the side, struggled for two seconds, and then completely stopped moving. His eyes were wide open, staring blankly up at the sky.

Brandon’s arms started shaking uncontrollably as he stared down at the dead guy who was around his own age.

His brain couldn’t even comprehend what was going on around him anymore. The sheer violence of it completely overloaded his senses. It didn’t even fully register in his mind that the arrows were still actively raining down on their block.

And just like that, even though he still had his shield up, he wasn’t holding it tight anymore. His grip had gone completely loose.

Thunk!

An arrow slammed heavily into the top edge of his shield.

Luckily for him, his shield wasn’t rotten. The iron arrowhead pierced the hardened leather a little bit, but the thick wood stopped it from punching through. The sheer impact pushed the shield down.

And then, whether he was just incredibly unlucky or the universe just hated him, three more arrows dropped straight toward him.

Even then, Brandon was in so much shock that he didn’t even notice a single thing. His shield was already halfway down to his waist from the impact of the first arrow, and he just didn’t have the mental will or the physical intent to bring it back up. His body was completely frozen. He didn’t know if it was from pure fear, shock, or something else entirely.

Shck! Shck!

Two of the arrows violently pierced him in the legs.

One arrow punched straight into his right thigh, tearing through the cheap cloth pants and went deep into the muscle. The other arrow went straight through the side of his left calf as he instinctively tried to step back.

As for the third arrow that was aimed directly at his chest...

Thunk!

Luckily, it slammed into the bottom half of his lowered shield, burying itself harmlessly into the wood instead of his heart.

By the time the second arrow slammed into his shield, the force made his left hand immediately drop to his side.

Both of his arms just hung there limply. He slowly looked down at the men struggling on the ground around him, and then at the ones who were already dead.

It was a bit too much for his mind to handle and bile rose up from the back of his throat.