Chapter 104 – Hunter & Prey
It didn’t take too much longer for Anlesa to finish the raid on the bandit hideout. However, Eva wished she could forget about so of the gross sights she saw in the backrooms.
“Argh.” Syrus tied a bandage around her shoulder and tightened it. Red blood had stained their clothes where the injury had occurred. The wound itself looked fine; it wasn’t bleeding, and the cut didn’t look deep.
[Stop, let heal it.] (Luna)
[You did a fine enough job when it happened. The rest can be left to natural recovery. We still have one more place to jump.] (Syrus)
A long blade in a tight space wasn’t easy to use, and not knowing the playing field was a big disadvantage. The injury was caused by a small cave-in done by an Earth attribute user and a sneak attack by soone on the opposite side of a stone wall. Syrus did manage to grab the person by the neck as they ca through but they got the stab in.
Once the wound was properly wrapped up, she re-sleeved her arm and got up off the rock she was sitting on. They were outside and ready to move to their next location.
They had enough energy and a good enough amount of mana, around 40%, which was still more than average persons. They had used a fair bit over the last two days.
The fight where Luna went crazy with anger drained a lot; her attacks were over expensive, huge dumps of mana. She was even close to creating an outburst, but Syrus and Eva’s contrasting wills prevented that. The attacks themselves were sothing Luna was theory crafting, but the version that she made that fight was a lesser version of what she aid for–the incompleteness in the magic spell theory with large quantities of mana. Even though she didn’t exactly rember the fight well, she was happy to know that her magic spell crafting wasn’t completely worthless as there was sothing of a result. Due to Luna’s unwillingness to pilot the body for a long while, she never had the chance to test or innovate on her creations.
Then the bandit clearing, where they used a decent amount, Syrus had no qualms about using mana to ensure they completed the job with minimal injury. She was good at managing it, she knew what muscles to strengthen to get the exact effect she wanted, but cleaning two bases out and running between them did cost sothing.
They did have a higher mana regeneration rate than the average person, but they also had a large tank to fill.
[One more.] (Syrus)
[The last one is further into the mountains…] (Eva)
[Higher up as well, the surprise attack will be a little more tricky.] (Syrus)
From the brief description, the last camp was the furthest away, and it was sowhere on the western side of the mountains. There were a few landmarks ntioned, but they knew this last one was going to take a while longer to find.
[Do we wish to try and capture another person?] (Luna)
[...Likely not.] (Syrus)
During both raids, they had tried to gather information from the bandits, but it was only slightly successful. They were able to learn that bandits were waiting for a signal, which Anlesa guessed was likely the mutated monster moving towards the city, but they didn’t have a date. They were able to learn that the deal was made recently, leading credence to the idea the attack was going to be soon. It ant if bandits did decide to snitch–which they didn’t know who their employer was–there wasn’t much ti for that to happen.
Syrus scaled the mountainside, going higher and higher until she found a vantage point to look from, and once she did, she looked to find the camp. Now if the camp wasn’t in view, it was ti to keep climbing.
Night did fall during their travel, so Anlesa went to have a quick sleep on a small rock on a cliffside.
During this silence, Eva asked a question she hadn’t understood the answer to.
[Why..?] (Eva)
[Why has the church chosen to plan this attack?] Luna had a feeling Eva had been wondering about this since the first reveal. Luna was now quite cynical about the church. For a long while in this life she believed there were depths they wouldn’t sink to, but having that remaining belief shattered ever since that day, her mind completely flipped to the complete opposite thoughts and didn’t even question the church planning an attack on Arisea Station.
[Yeah…] Eva found the whole plan awful. Why would anyone plan such a thing?
[People can do anything, Eva.] (Syrus)
[That’s not a reason…] Eva bit her lip. [Just because people can doesn’t an they will just do anything.]
[You're speaking too broadly. ] (Syrus)
[But…] (Eva)
[There are no justifiable answers in bringing innocents into war, Eva.] (Syrus)
They got up early in the morning while it was still dark and continued to look.
Eventually, they found it.
The base was as expected, far into the mountains on a flat-ish plane of land between large cliffsides. It appeared slightly hazardous if a rocky avalanche occurred, but considering it didn’t seem that damaged even though the earthquake was recent, maybe it was safer than what Anlesa thought.
[Raid from the back?] (Luna)
[No, above.] (Syrus)
[Pardon?] (Luna)
[The cliffside to the back of the base, if we can get on top of that, we can drop so of those large rocks, which I can see on it. Plus, it ans if they do have so small camp station up there, we can deal with them first.] (Syrus)
[Would they have so station behind?] (Eva)
[It’s more of a bonus for us, but maybe it is a good vantage point.] (Syrus)
Syrus instantly got to moving as she planned her attack.
[Ah, yes, perfect.] Syrus looked around, and there were multiple large rocks that were in the ground, but with a little bit of effort, they could be removed and used as weapons.
It took around an hour to get into a position where Syrus wanted to be. Mostly due to the fact it required a long detour and avoiding a small group of bandits who seed to be returning to camp. Syrus debated attacking them but didn’t know if the bandits had a strict schedule; if they did, then this strike would’ve made the bandits alert to sothing sooner than she would’ve liked.
They began by moving so of the large boulders into place, which took around thirty minutes. Once everything was ready, she started the tir. She burned a few of the remaining Kumbler nuts and let them start to smoke. It would take a few minutes before a full fog of smoke would appear from them.
The sun was still rising, but the camp was still dark thanks to the mountains that would keep blocking the light for a while longer.
User Comments
0 comments from readers