He looked around and so did all the fortifiers with him, but then Axel shook his head and revealed, "Oh, there is no one else apart from me on this side, I assure you. And you are mistaken, again, I am not here for the flag pole."
He grinned and announced menacingly, "I, simply am here to take out the enemy commander and everyone else on this side."
Jaden let out a laugh after hearing that, amused by his statement, even all the fortifiers under him let out the same laughter, a mere runecaster would take out all of them alone? What a joke. Their mocking laughter resounded all around the place, but Axel’s pleasant smile remained; he was unbothered, he couldn’t care less about the laughter of these clowns. Only Jaden Redmar was someone who needed to be looked out for.
After a moment, Jaden signaled all the fortifiers to suddenly stop laughing, then asked in genuine interest, "I wonder if you can answer one question of mine, though? I’m curious as to how exactly you reached this side? Without anyone noticing?"
There was one thing that felt a bit off about Jaden that, despite the situation being so grim for the guy, they had already lost, considering the current situation. Yet, the guy was too calm about it; he was definitely up to something. But that thought only brought a smile to his lips.
Axel sneered in response to Jaden’s statement, "I know you’re buying time, but that unfortunately won’t save your section. But I suppose, I don’t mind quelling your curiosity a bit."
Right at the start of the battle, Axel was right beside Heinz, fighting side by side for a while, until the third division of the enemy started firing long-range attacks on them. Then he moved on and was in charge of defending the first division against those attacks, until the fire arrows started raining on the enemy long-range attackers’ third division.
After that, he slowly started to take a backseat in the fight and moved away. He had activated an artifact of his that would obscure the perception of others towards him, hide him, and make him less noticeable. Axel smiled as he looked around. He had already taken out quite a few of them at the very start of the battle.
He turned his attention to the telepathic communication band on his wrist. He went towards one of the wall gaps of the fortress, as the shadow covered his figure, and he covered his head with the hood attached to his attire. For just one second, he activated the runic eyes with his mana, the golden patterns appeared on his blue eyes, as everything about the functionality of the wrist band became clear to him, and how much or what he needed to modify.
So, now that he had a clear idea of what he had to do, he shaped his mana and started to tinker with a small rune among the many rune symbols engraved on it. It was a very few and subtle changes, something he had to do very carefully. The change needs to be seen as insignificant; otherwise, tampering with the artifact will alert Professor Alfred, as these were his creation.
Finally, he was done after a few minutes; he didn’t need much change. His wristband, which could initially only send relaying messages to his division leader, it could now send messages to another member of his same division. And it was the one and only Ken Dusker, obviously.
Axel had gathered extensive information on the Dusker dukedom’s main family. Ken Dusker, Dusker Duchess, and the Dusker Duke through the Arclight organization. The type of information he got from them was on Ken’s childhood, his traumas, his weaknesses, and how his mother was never treated well by his father. His mother, who was a princess and in love with Duke Dusker, never got the same love from him.
Even their marriage was something which was forced by the king, at the pleading of the princess. Dusker Duchess, or the former princes, thought that she could eventually make the man love her after the marriage. But alas! in the duke’s heart, only one woman remained.
She often pleaded to the king, who was her brother, to do something about her, to kill her, to assassinate Axel’s mother. But Damien Nomrad was too valuable and too important for the kingdom, even if they tried, it was doubtful even the royal family could actually pull of such an assassination, with the runic expertise of Damien Nomrad, it was something that was bound to fail, and to offend the expert just for one useless princess was nothing but foolish from the kings point of view. So, the former princess did not get any help from the royal family.
She turned towards the empress, who was her distant cousin, but they were as close as sisters since they were young, and considering both of their husbands did not hold any love for them, made their bond of friendship through the years only greater. But the empress was powerless to help her as well, despite wanting to. It was then that the dusker duchess likely reached out to the Vex family for help or cooperation, much later on, when Damien Nomrad had disappeared.
So, the main fact here was that Ken Dusker hated the king, hated his father, and obviously hated the Nomrad family the most. So Axel set the communication band to send his telepathic messages to Ken. Then the messages followed, the worst type of words one could say to Ken Dusker, to absolutely make him lose his mind.
[Useless piece of shit, your mother cried for so many nights, how many night was she left alone, while you’re father fucked the bitches outside.]
[How many times he beat her up, how many times was she humiliated, how many times was she treated like a shit in the entire Dusker family.]
[Even your vassal households treats your mother like a fucking joke, with no real power within the household.]
Ken, who was fighting with all, holding down the defending line, suddenly froze. For a moment, his mind went black as the mechanical voice from the band delivered the words that hit the weakest and most sensitive part of his entire existence. He almost couldn’t believe it.
And using that very opportunity, the enemy he was fighting delivered a large cut on his body, which would have been lethal, but he barely dodged it. He raged in his mind like a wounded beast, ’Who fucking.... dares?’