They found the human charred corpses among the goblin ones. Alberta had broken down crying. She had chosen the lives of her platoon, and the women had paid the price for it. Maybe, if they had fought harder, they could have taken out the goblins without the deaths of the civilians.

"There was no other way," Dorian murmured next to her, a hand gently laid on her shoulder. "If you haven't acted, we would be dead now. Thank you for making the hard choice."

"Don't you dare thank me!" Alberta snapped. She stood and stormed off. The women had been alive, not well because they had been in the hands of the goblins, being prepared to be eaten. But they had been alive. And Alberta had doomed them all.

The wind mage found herself before the only woman that they had saved. She was dressed in Lilia's spare clothes, and her skin looked healthy and without any blemish.  But a nasty scar on her forehead, made too deep for Leander to remove.

"I..." Alberta couldn't think, couldn't speak. She could only look at the woman and silently ask for her forgiveness.

"They are dead?" Was the soft question. There was something dead in the woman that send dread in Alberta. Like she had bowed her head and nothing will ever make her rise it.

"It is my fault," Alberta was not going to blame anyone else for what she had done. Dorian would have never given such an order, no matter how surrounded they had been.

"Was it? Did you know we have been here for months?" Alberta gulped, imagining everything that happened during that time. "Months, and you are the first party that comes. What rank are you, even?"

"C...we are a C ranked platoon," the woman let out a guttural laugh.

"C rank? Only C rank? We paid our taxes, listened to the mayor, obeyed the laws. And what we got was months of torture and a C rank party?" The woman was screaming by the end, her eyes blazing.

"We are a platoon," Alberta corrected the mad woman, and she laughed again.

"Oh, sorry. A platoon with a C rank in it. Maybe more than one of those? Let me guess, you wanted to prove yourselves? To get another battle evaluation, so you could move up the ranks? Did you stop to think that a more experienced party, sorry, platoon, would have gotten us all out alive?" Alberta bowed her head. The woman's words had cut deeper than the arrows of the goblins. For they were the truth.

"You are no children," the woman yelled at her, spittle going out of her mouth. "You are soldiers! You signed up for this life and should know your limits. Yet, you are always grasping. Get out of my sight!"

Alberta dragged her feet to the horses. She sat by a tree that had an arrow stuck to it and began to weep. This quest was a failure, but no one will see it that way.

What were the lives of a few women, when the ruins were now unlivable and the goblins were dead? And, hey, brownie points for getting at least one civilian out! Why, that must be a record. Most parties didn't even get a single survivor! Alklair should give them a bloody medal!

The wind mage felt arms wrap around her, and she wondered when had someone snuck up on her. She saw Florifel and Lilia hugging her, their faces buried in her shoulder. The Try Hard Party was awkwardly standing to the side. Looking forlorn.

"We were not ready for a hostage situation," Dorian spoke what was on their minds, his words aligning with the woman's bitter ones. "We lost all signalling once we got in the middle of the fray. Which is my fault."

"If I had put a barrier around each one of you, us archers could have swept the goblins off with back-to-back barrages. But, I simply can't concentrate on so many barriers yet," Leander admitted.

"We can train more," Morris knew that his words were empty. They had failed. There was no sugar coating that. "If you want, we can form an official platoon number 23 and train our asses off. In formation, barriers, support. All those things that the higher ranked platoons could do in their sleep."

"An official platoon?" Florifel murmured. She liked the Try Hard Party. But, if they formed an official platoon with them, they would need to share the battle evaluations with them. And be rank C, for as long as Leander was.

"We are not the highest rank, despite Leander doing his best. More than that, lemon cake does 150% of what he could do, in every fight," Jean commented and Leander turned to look at him, amazed. "We all give more than we think we are capable. So, I know we can improve. We can't let this break us. How about we all go to the adventuring counselor when we get back? I think we all need it."

"The what now?" Morris asked and Jean sighed.

"I didn't know about them until the cougars told me," Morris nearly smiled at the memory that Jean had been molested by a bunch of horny grannies, but then thought better of it. There would be a time for teasing, once the dust settled. "In our contracts it was written that we had the right to a counselor, lawyer, a bunch of insurances and sanatoriums. But the sanatoriums are open to us only after we get permission from the guild master."

"We might need the lawyer, soon," Alberta commented. Because she was sure that a lawsuit after this screw-up was eminent.

"And we need the counselor now," Jean countered. He could feel the same guilt he had felt after Samkiel's tomb ooze out of Alberta. She needed more than to have the truth delivered to her by a screaming, traumatized, woman.

"How is the platoon going to be called? I mean, 23 is impersonal," Lilia chimed in.

"Maybe it is impersonal, but it would remind us of the first two disasters that mark it," Dorian countered. "We will need plenty of wake-up calls in the future. So, we don't take a quest such as this one before we are ready, ever again."