The last two weeks had been an exercise in frustration for both the conscripts and the guard units. Ever since they lost the bugs the two future barons had formed a firm front to take every precaution before accepting a battle. This had lost them almost all of the ground they had gained with the initial two victories.
According to Tom the archduke’s daughter was starting to get fed up with their indecisiveness but there was nothing she could do about it. Her friend had joined her as part of her retinue and not an outright leader, that added to the fact that the only other person she brought with her was a single bodyguard meant that she didn’t have the manpower or the votes to influence the other nobles.
The other two nobles were now more afraid of a trap than anything else. Unlike in the beginning when they were outnumbered and a defeat was not just suspected, but in fact likely, they were now timid with any engagements. A defeat now after the loss of the bug would signify their lack of leadership to the higher ranked noble with them, something they wanted to avoid at all costs.
What this meant for Ajax and a lot of other soldiers was a lot of forming up, marching followed by staring down the enemy army before slowly retreating and ceding a little ground every time.
With his higher perception stat Ajax knew that despite the annoying repetitive movement for his side, the enemy was actually more affected by this lack of engagements than they were. Clearly the enemy knew that should they suffer a defeat similar to either of the first two it would mean an end to the skirmish with their loss. This led them to creating all sorts of static defenses to give them a leg up before every potential engagement.
Building spike walls,digging pits and trenches day after day was really starting to wear down the enemy. Despite their somewhat loose formation most of them were leaning on their tower shields and spears to keep standing.
What did this mean for the hunters? Basically they all went out to hunt as a group every three or four days in order to keep up with consumption and not tax their supplies too much. This also meant that Ajax had no free time in which he could take off into the woods to try and spot the bear.
Their first real break came once the enemy made it a good way out of the forest and started to build a small fort in the open plains. They knew there was no way to attack into it or anywhere near it as the defensive advantage would be too big. The advantage they did get was in their manpower.
With that many people working on building the fort right after weeks of trudging through digging ditches and forming up for any charges meant that the enemy was tired. Ajax’s side took advantage of this by giving a lot of their people two days off. They also sent a few spies to try and damage the enemy supplies.
Ajax’s physical stats were still on the low side for the army so he was also starting to feel the fatigue from the strenuous marching, training and hunting. He took advantage of the announced days off by crashing without eating dinner the night before. Even with all that he barely woke up at dawn to go grab breakfast.
Since he wasn’t going exploring this time he only took the bare necessities. Starting with leaving his large pack in the tent, all he grabbed were a bow, arrows, and a short mace for anything else he encountered out there. The non-combat equipment was also very bare bones. A few water skins he intended to fill up from the river as Fluffy had been drinking his fill as well as a recording device in order to gather the evidence that would prevent another skirmish challenge from going down.
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Having eaten a hearty breakfast he headed out carefully fully utilizing his stealth skills. The last thing he wanted was to be followed. He also took the direct route that went through their traps as he knew their positions. Once he was a fair distance from the camp and hidden by the trees he took off at a faster pace with the help of his mana.
Having plotted out the locations on the map since his last trip it only took him two hours of running to make it back near the pond. Once he got there he slowed down and started looking for tracks in order to find the bear.
For the first time since he started his training as a hunter he ran into an unexpected problem. There were too many tracks. Usually two different tracks could overlap but here there were as many as five. This meant that he had to take his time to find the freshest ones, all the while being on full alert.
Despite this finding the bear didn’t prove as difficult as he expected when he started looking at the track. The reason was quite simple: he wasn’t hiding. When you want to preserve a precious resource you base your home around and are the strongest thing around by an order of magnitude you announce your presence to the surroundings.
The bear's intelligence could be seen on full display as it used a piece of dented bark he stripped off a tree to carry water from the pond to a berry bush. Clearly he didn’t trust the fish enough to swim all the way to the tree so he was spreading mana to his food sources.
Quickly climbing up into a tree the first thing Ajax did was plan his escape route. At best he would be able to fire five or six arrows before the bear locked on to him and he would have to start running.
With that out of the way he drew the first arrow back. He started with Shadow mana as that would keep his location hidden for the first shot. The arrow flew straight taking out one the bear’s eyes but not being able to punch any deeper than that. From there he switched to a combination of metal and magma. With his next two arrows he tried taking out the other eye to little success. His shots were close but all he managed were two cuts on his snout.
As he fired the fourth arrow aiming for the neck the bear finally found him. He rose on two legs as he released a challenging roar. This took the arrow off aim and ended up with it hitting its stomach.
As he started his own escape Ajax felt a shift in the bear’s mana. Instead of the even spread it had before it was now concentrated around its remaining eye. it didn’t compromise on its chest or neck either but this left its limbs a lot more exposed. With a vested interest in slowing it down Ajax started focusing on the joints with lightning and ice mana.
Of the six arrows he shot, five hit the bear's front paws sending it face first into the ground. Using this change Ajax took the opportunity to fire a final metal infused arrow into the bear’s neck before finally retreating.
It wasn’t that he didn’t have the opportunity to shoot any more arrows, but the fact that his mana was already running low. Considering the amount he would need for a quick run back he would be dropping below the level he would have liked, reaching into his final 20%. Constantly using his mana for [Syphon Mana] as well as [Mana Augmentation] was a big drain.
Getting the five water skins filled up was fairly uneventful, though nerve racking. He kept his eyes on every movement of the water just in case the fish decided to take a swim down river. They had gone through nine similar ones in the past fifteen days so these would be enough to tide them over for another week and a half at best.
The results were also clear and very much worth it. Fluffy’s mana had grown a lot denser, and she had started shadow jumping slightly bigger distances. The biggest change however came after she had been given her father’s core. With that jump in mana as well as the constant intake of water she had started smoking. Not the drag from a pipe kind but releasing a constant sheen of dark mist from her fur. It was very thin and disappeared completely half an inch away from her fur but left a deep impression on both the commander and the nobles.
The final part of his expedition also went smoothly. It took very little effort to gather the recording of the spring. He also noticed that there were at best half the guards stationed around here as there were last time. The war taking a turn for the worse seemed to have resulted in a few men being pulled away from guard duty to try to secure victory. After all, what was the point of keeping this place secret if they were forced to reveal it to get a second chance at a challenge.