“How easy is it for a worshiper of the new god to notice our allegiance to the Deities of Yore?” asked Dai’vasy after a moment of thought. Despite her young age – the youngest out of all the progenies, at a couple months younger than Ilavakide – she was always a thoughtful child. Perhaps it was because she was primarily a mage, but she always thought things over more than the others.
“From our past knowledge, for a typical worshiper they would need to be within a couple of feet from you to notice,” replied the old priest, to which Ani nodded. There were some worshipers of the new gods amongst the sea dwellers, and one time Ani had met some in her travels only for them to turn hostile once they got too close to her. “If they had priestly classes, however, they might be able to notice you from up to ten times that distance.”
“And whatever allowed them to sniff out humans? Does it have the same effective range?” continued Dai’vasy’s questioning. The girl clearly had something in mind, and the older progenies looked towards her in thought. Some of them clearly already pieced together what she had in mind from her questions, while others were still left in the dark.
“Within touching distance for most, from what we had heard, though apparently some classes could detect such things over an entire city. Like most skills, we assume that such things would depend on the skills themselves. The stronger skill between the concealment and the detection would win out in the end,” replied the old priest after some thought. “Why do you ask, Child of Yore?
“I’m just thinking… We have Resitia and Iryl with us, and the Exalted One could also assume a guise that would be indistinguishable to a human from a distance,” noted Dai’Vasy. “At the same time, Val, Ila, Nali, and Legi are all of pure demon heritage, and since the Exalted one is a shapeshifter, it should not be difficult for her to assume a similar form, no?”
“I actually haven’t tried that, so let me give it a shot. En seguida,” said Esperanza as she tried Dai’vasy’s suggestion out. It was a bit difficult and the results were rather… deformed at first as Esperanza wasn’t used to assuming a form outside of her free-flowing amorphous form and the human form that was her former appearance.
After a couple minutes though, she managed to replicate a Nevilosk’s tall, gaunt features on her form, though her facial features hadn’t changed much. “I think this might be the most doable for me. I can’t alter my mass or volume, so turning into a Ma’Varok or Ragah-fiq would necessitate a hollow form, which is rather hard to maintain.”
“That should be more than enough, I think,” Noted Dai’vasy with a nod. She then turned around and looked towards her fellow progenies, many of whom were nodding along in understanding. A couple still looked like they had no idea what was going on, but they were in the minority. “I think you all got the gist of what I had in mind, no?”
“You’re planning to hit both the demons and the humans under false flags,” stated Ani with an interested tone of voice. “Get rid of any who could identify you as adherents to the Deities of Yore, leave a couple ‘lucky’ people alive, and let them bear witness that it was the other side that attacked them, am I right?” asked the older warrior woman.
“That’s the general idea of what I had in mind, yeah,” admitted Dai’vasy openly. “We’d need to head towards the frontlines of the battle to do this best, since it’s only there that the demons and humans had facilities in close proximity to each other,” added the young progeny. “Also, I don’t know if Legi could sneak into camps without being detected or not. If he could, it would make pulling this off a lot safer.”
“I’m not sure about that, actually,” admitted Legisvula shyly. “My stealth skill is pretty powerful, but I have no way to hide myself to these… priests you mentioned. I think we can expect them to have several priests in any base, if only for religious purposes,” added the boy. “While I’m confident I can sneak around people in the wilderness, I can’t say the same about military bases.”
“I might be able to do this, actually,” said Esperanza after some thought. “One of my skills had an effect that made it impossible to use any sort of [Analyze] or [Identify] on me, and it’s a very high rarity skill. I suspect that it’d treat whatever skill these priests use to detect people attuned to Oldies- err, I mean the Deities of Yore the same way. In fact I recall killing a couple priests back in Navef and they weren’t alerted until I slit their throats.”
“How do you plan to sneak into the bases though, Exalted One?” asked Ilavakide from across the table. “I do not think they would allow a person they do not recognize into such important places.”
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“I have an idea I want to try out. If it works out, then I should be able to infiltrate such bases, at least for a short time,” said Esperanza as she took Ilavakide’s worry in stride. The idea she had in mind was rather gruesome, something she thought about after remembering a game that went viral for a while in her previous world, but it was worth a shot. “We won’t know for certain until we try it out, though.”
“The Exalted One is even better at stealth than I am, so she should be able to do this much better than I could,” said Legisvula from the side. “I am in approval of this path.”
“As am I,” stated Dai’Vasy. With the two of them presenting their opinions, the rest of the [Progenies of Yore] were soon in agreement. They would head towards the frontlines of the war between the humans and the demons, with the hope of playing both sides against each other until they exhausted themselves. It was perhaps wishful thinking in some ways, but it was better than having no direction.
The hardest part would be to traverse through enemy territory – both humans and demons were hostile to them after all – without getting noticed. That pretty much demanded that the group would either not be seen at all, or if they were noticed and identified, left no survivors which could report their presence. After all, dead men tell no tales.
Fortunately the difficulty of sneaking a party of twenty through hostile territory is much easier than trying to do the same with larger groups of people. Doubly so since almost everyone in the party were either in their fourth tier or had power equivalent to one. That power alone would smooth down many difficulties they could expect to encounter in their journey.
They would naturally have to stay out of sight, which meant avoiding cities, towns, and villages. The main roads were likely untenable as well, so they would have to travel through the wilderness instead. From Agur-Bas towards the area where the frontline of the war was approximated to be was a long distance, at least one and a half to two thousand miles or so.
With the group’s current capabilities though, Esperanza thought that they could likely travel that distance within a month. When they took two months to travel from Navef to Agur-Bas, the group had to carry children with them, which greatly limited their speed. Now that there were nothing but fourth tiers or their equivalent in the group, they would be able to traverse a longer distance much faster than before.
The next day, several messengers delivered the equipment that had been crafted for the progenies using material from their hunt in the arachnoid dungeon. The most valuable of which were items crafted directly with material from the [Immature Arachnoid Sovereign]. Since there wasn’t enough material to make something for everyone, the progenies had decided to focus on their stronger combatants where applicable.
Val-Kas’j received a new polearm with the blade crafted out of the [Immature Arachnoid Sovereign]’s severed scythe-arm, while Tiesya received a pair of new blades made from the same material. The largest piece of intact carapace from the creature was turned into a large shield for Nalihimatu’s use, while Resitia received a new spear with its spearhead crafted from the entwined proboscis of the creature’s final form.
Ilavakide’s bow had been reworked to make use of the monster’s tendons as its bowstring, which made it far more powerful, while Legisvula received a dagger made from the monster’s claw. The broken pieces of the carapace – the group wasn’t exactly gentle when they struck the [Immature Arachnoid Sovereign] – were used to make a sort of scale armor that was both light and highly durable for Mel-Ivas and Dai’vasy’s use.
The rest of their equipment were similarly upgraded using materials from the highest leveled arachnoids they slaughtered in the dungeon, which made them better suited for the long term, as the group would most likely grow stronger as they continued their journey. Their preparation finished, the group indulged in a farewell meal prepared by the priests of the temple and slept peacefully in their last night staying at Agur-Bas.
They departed the next morning, their farewells said and done with no regrets left behind. The other children from Navef, as well as Eda-Zil who had regained some use of her legs, bid them farewell with tears in their eyes. During the last couple of weeks Esperanza had used her [Soul Manifestation] to allow all of them to meet with and exchange some words with their departed family, which helped bring some closure for the children who now had new lives ahead of them.
As they departed from Agur-Bas, the group took the exit that led to the north-west, as they mostly traced the shoreline on their way further north. The shorelines were mostly uninhabited, as the aquatic Gour-ug’rech favored deeper waters and disliked stepping on land unless they had to. There were quite a few monsters that the group met along the way, but they posed no threat given the group’s power.
In fact, one of the monsters they ran into on their first day’s journey – a massive crustacean that looked like a crab with four claws, each of which large enough to shear an adult in half – ended up becoming their dinner instead. Esperanza thought that the massive crab-like creature did indeed taste a lot like crab as she fished out chunks of its sweet meat from one of its massive claws.
Her ability to shift her shape freely made it far easier for her to extract every bit of meat from the creature’s carapace. While she munched on the sweet, rich meat, Esperanza found herself wishing that she had some molten butter to dunk the crab meat into. As it was, the group had just cooked the crab simply, by burying it in sand and building a bonfire on top of it, which cooked the creature in its own juices.
Ani offered some dried herb to sprinkle on the meat, which added some nice nuances to the delicate flavor of the flesh. They had also been lucky as the creature was female and its torso was filled with millions of tiny little eggs. The veteran warriors who volunteered to follow Ani showed the younger progenies how to use the eggs as a dipping sauce for the meat, which added a complex and rich savoriness to the flesh.
All in all, for a meal cooked in the wilderness using only whatever was available at hand, it was definitely a delicious one, a meal for them to remember for quite some time. The whole group knew that they were headed into adversity, that the whole world would become their enemies, but they all bore the pressure stoically and enjoyed themselves. They knew that such chances for enjoyment would be hard to come by in the days to come.