Aztec Civilization: Destiny to Conquer America!

This was the first Samurai to die for Xiulote.

The battlefield did not halt for anyone’s death, it demanded more blood. Bertade urgently turned and looked down, patting Xiulote’s face. The young man quickly looked back, his expression void of the pain of being shot by an arrow, devoid of fear between life and death, simply a little lost for losing a friend. The world-weary warrior let out a sigh of relief, then checked Kusola’s breath and sighed again.

"Guardian Priest!" Bertade called out to the surrounding warriors with a heavy expression. He then placed his shield on Xiulote’s body, turned, and ran toward the nearest archer.

More than a dozen followers quickly surrounded Xiulote, using their shields and bodies to protect him tightly. The rest spread out with shields in hand and pounced on the ambushing warriors.

Bertade ran like a charging jaguar, emitting the wild roar of a jaguar. His steps followed a slight zigzag pattern, his body half-crouched. The opposing archer shot two arrows, both missing and burying into the soil.

As Bertade closed within twenty steps of the archer, he raised his Javelin Thrower above his head with his right hand, his arm steady and strong, suddenly thrusting it forward; a Javelin flew out rapidly, tracing a shallow arc and piercing into the archer’s chest with a thud, the sharp spear tip exiting through his back.

The warrior instantly lost all strength, his hands loosened, and his bow and arrow fell powerlessly. His body was knocked backward by the momentum of the Javelin, slumping against the slope of the hill. His last action was to try covering his bleeding chest with his palms, clearly in vain. Soon, he was motionless.

Bertade did not bother with the warrior he had hit but turned towards another archer thirty steps away. He accelerated his run while drawing his War Club from his back, gripping it with both hands, the club’s tip pointing downward. The archer, in his frenzied state, shot two arrows, which missed. Seeing that only ten steps separated them, he panicked, discarding his bow and arrow to reach for the shield and Short Spear at his feet.

When the two engaged, Bertade agilely sidestepped, dodging the thrust of the archer’s Short Spear. Then, power rising from his legs, rotating with the force of his waist, and accelerating with his arms, the Obsidian Club grazed past the shield, striking the archer’s head with precise force. The archer’s head instantly twisted unnaturally, his neck snapped harshly, and then his body stiffened before toppling to the side.

The fierce melee lasted but a moment; brutal warriors without armor and Mexica Leather Armor-clad warriors with War Clubs were rapidly entangled, and they fell at a visible pace.

Unarmored warriors tumbled like paper before the slashes of the Obsidian Clubs. The warriors’ skilled Martial Arts deftly maneuvered around shields, slashing at enemy shoulders and backs, opening up deep wounds. Then, in mere moments, opponents collapsed from blood loss. The Short Spears of the enemy were formidable, too, with their metal tips able to pierce through the warriors’ Leather Armor, inflicting casualties among the Mexica.

Seeing the tide turning against them, the enemy Head Warrior turned and fled into the forest, with part of the Mexica in pursuit. The unarmored warriors seemed determined to fight to the death, but once Mexica warriors from the rear caught up and formed battle formations, the situation turned into a one-sided massacre.

Bertade and his elite warriors caught up with the remaining archers and struck them down one by one, allowing no one to escape the Head Warrior’s pursuit.

The situation at the front also drew to a close, with the enemy leaders either fleeing or dead. The last of the unarmored warriors, surrounded, screamed in fury, cursing the Mexica’s Sun God intensely, before being cut into pieces by the enraged warriors.

By then, Xiulote had returned to normal. He knelt silently in front of the body, wordless for a long while before reaching out to gently close Kusola’s eyes. Then, he picked up the water bag that had fallen to the ground, placed it in the young warrior’s hands, bringing him a step closer to home.

Only after standing up did Xiulote inquire calmly about the casualties among the warriors, his eyes carrying sadness.

The ambush in the mountains was brief, swift, and intense. More than twenty warriors died, and fifty to sixty were injured. Most warriors perished under the Metal Spears of the unarmored fighters, with a few others killed by the second and third volleys of the archers. The ground was littered with the corpses of over a hundred unarmored fighters, and the enemy also suffered eleven or twelve dead.

Due to the unarmored fighters’ insults toward the Mexica’s Sun God, the warriors did not spare anyone.

Bertade checked the unarmored bodies carefully, examining the tattoos on their chests and backs. These wild-haired fighters, resembling barbarians, had bodies covered with shallow scars from long treks through forests. Most prominent on them were the abstract Feathered Serpents tattooed in Maya blue indigo.

"These are the renegades from Toltec-Tepanec," Bertade said with certainty after examining the Feathered Serpent tattoos.

"Renegades from Toltec-Tepanec?" Xiulote asked curiously, as this part of history seemed rarely mentioned by the City-States.

"The Toltec had once established a vast Alliance in the northern Mexican Valley. Tula City, which isn’t far north of Tenochtitlan, became their last Capital. And Teotihuacan, the Holy City where you were born, also once served as their Capital. They worshipped the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl as the Chief Divine ruling the world. Later, the Tepanec from the western shores of Lake Texcoco, who came from the north and merged with the Toltec, took over the Toltec’s dominance and established the Tepanec Kingdom," explained Bertade.

"But then, the Feathered Serpent was exiled, and the War God Huitzilopochtli ruled the world, taking also the esteemed position of Sun God. He then became the Guardian God of the Mexica, leading the ancestors of the Mexica to build a great Capital City on Lake Texcoco, and promised the ancestors that the Mexica were destined by divine mandate to be the masters of all of Mexico! That was the will of the divine," Bertade concluded.