Yarra's Adventure Notes-Chapter 1402 - 188: Facing Failure

"Nellie stopped attacking and switched to full defense against Danacus’s counterattacks. Mina, who had retreated, rejoined the fight, cooperating with Dillie. They chose to strike precisely when the enemy launched a counterattack, reducing Danacus’s frequency of attacks and trying to divert his attention as much as possible." Pannis was drawing the position map of the battle on the table, gradually restoring the desperate battle of a century ago in front of the girls: "I took over Nellie’s original task, so I also felt the enormous pressure Nellie had endured during the fierce battle. As for Flare, she stayed at the very end of the team with Maya, launching only occasional long-range attacks, and intentionally reducing the strength of each attack to barely meet the standards of an attack, sometimes not even reaching that standard."

"It seems you couldn’t hold back anymore." Catherine nodded and said, "Thinking about it, it was time to reveal your trump card. You’ve been worried for hours about what abilities Danacus might still have unused, so you held back until Danacus started to counterattack. You thought that if he had other means, he wouldn’t wait until he was forced to start counterattacking, so you assumed that was his limit and decided to use your strongest and last weapon, the Hunting Arrow."

"That’s one way to put it, and there’s another reason." Pannis said with a bitter smile, "We’ve done everything we could, made our utmost effort. Although no one said it, even Dillie did not complain anymore, but I know, they were all at their limits. Continuing to wear them down like this could lead to actual losses, so I had to make that decision."

"This... doesn’t sound like you at all." Catherine hesitated for a while and then sighed, "If that’s the reason, then it means you’ve given up."

"Ha, you saw right through me," Pannis said as he supported his chin and looked at the flickering flame of the oil lamp in the room, his voice carrying a trace of confusion, "Indeed, when I made that decision, I knew that I had already failed in this war. I had no more tactical plans, no more cards to play. I knew I had been forced into a corner, relying only on the weakness of the enemy and illusory luck. If Danacus still had other means to use, or if something went wrong with our Hunting Arrow, everything would go in the worst direction. Of course, from this perspective, the war with Danacus hasn’t determined a winner or loser, so there might still be a chance to win, but my war has completely failed."

"Is this the first time you’ve been pushed to such a situation?" Catherine asked, biting her lip, "The first time facing failure?"

"Yes, the first time facing a deadlock." Pannis laughed self-deprecatingly, "Saying it’s the first time facing failure might not be accurate. During my previous adventurous life, there have been several missions that ended in failure, like our time in the Shining Forest, which technically was a failure, but those failures didn’t affect me much because they were failures in another sense. But this time is different; it’s a true defeat. Although I appear calm on the surface and continue to issue orders covertly, I can no longer remain calm inside. I’ve started to blame myself, to doubt whether I have the capability to lead everyone to victory, and even to question whether gathering everyone in this deadly world was a mistake and whether there could have been a better option that I hadn’t realized."

"Self-doubt often starts with self-denial," Freya said. Although she hadn’t seen Pannis at his most despondent, she could imagine his pain over the years from his own admissions. Only a collapse of faith, a complete self-denial, could bring a normal person to that state, but what Freya didn’t understand was how a person like Kyle could fall into such despair. Now, she finally understood that for others, it might just be a trivial matter, but for Pannis, or Kyle from those days, it pushed him to the brink of self-denial.

"I can understand," Catherine nodded, "But facing a deadlock is not scary, and even facing failure isn’t scary. No one has a smooth life forever, there is always a time to face failure, you know, I mean real failure."

"I’m different, I’m perfect, a perfect person is not allowed to fail, a perfect person should maintain everything smoothly throughout his life until a splendid final curtain," Pannis said with a silent laugh, pointing at his nose, "That’s my thought, or rather, that was Kyle’s thought. Funny, isn’t it? The perfect Kyle, the brave Kyle, the Kyle who would never let his friends down, is actually just a coward who couldn’t even face a single failure, a failure that could bring him to the point of collapse."

"No, that’s not right." Just as Catherine reached out her hand to comfort Pannis by holding his hand, Lina suddenly slapped the table and loudly said, "There’s something wrong with your words, you are not out of cards, you still have one last card to play."

"Yes, to reset everything, to turn all efforts into nothing," Pannis replied with a twist of his mouth, "Letting Danacus possess one of us and then having that person maim themselves at the last moment. Indeed, this method has always been there, and no one has forgotten it, but for me, a strategy that requires sacrificing a teammate can hardly be called a trump card, unless..."

"Unless that person is yourself, right?" Catherine knew this mindset all too well. It was a classic knight’s thinking, clearly influenced by her long time spent with Nellie, as their thoughts had partially merged over the years.

"Maybe," Pannis scratched his head and laughed awkwardly, "So, that said..." ƒгeewebnovёl.com

"Still wrong." This time, Vivian, the young Mage girl, interrupted him with a sharp look in her eyes, "There’s something you’re hiding. A perfect person, facing their first failure, might momentarily feel lost, but wouldn’t collapse completely. If it were that easy to collapse, they wouldn’t truly be perfect, so, there must be something else that happened."

"Of course," Pannis nodded, "Because the story isn’t over. At that time, I had just started to doubt myself, but it wasn’t impossible to recalibrate my mindset. In fact, I had already begun to adjust it and had also communicated the tactics to everyone, so almost simultaneously, everyone launched their strongest attack."