Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 169. Stay Where You Are.
“That being said,” Maian continued in an unamused tone. “Grand Yimar Mustafa, I’d like you and your White Guard to stay put right here. Please don’t make it harder than it needs to be,” he stated, then in order to empathize his words a little bit more, roused the Qi in his body. As a result, the mass of water-like shadows around him grew in both power and size, soon spreading hundreds of meters in every direction. The shadows grew so much that to those tens of thousands of people watching, they resembled an ominous lake of darkness rather than something a human could create.
While to Maian both the words he spoke and this entire situation was nothing short of monotonous and annoying, the two sides of the war were stirred by him to a great degree. While Yimar Maar rejoiced and Arakar was relieved, Mustafa, his four Lieutenants and the hundreds of the White Guards were overcome with a sense of terror and helplessness. They, the White Guard, were the most powerful elite organization in the world, but even if their master had been at his peak strength, they wouldn’t have been able to overcome a monster who had reached the peak of cultivation.
“Guild of Shadows…!” Mustafa clenched his fists, just barely resisting the urge to rouse his Qi. He was pressured by the mighty aura of that damned expert, but more than anything, he was furious and frustrated. Time and time again, those detestable assassins were involving themselves in this conflict, killing his people and putting his son in danger! If they listened to the demand of that Shade, then Arslan was sure to be captured by Arakar and Yimar Maar! They had clinched the victory through great effort and with a large aid of good fortune, but now everything was crumbling just like that!
Knowing that he had no power to resist the Guild of Shadows, knowing that he wouldn’t even have a chance to keep cultivating to one day become powerful enough to exact revenge, Mustafa was overcome with a myriad of emotions. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he noticed that his insights into the Secret of Wrath started growing once again after he had long since thought to have comprehended everything there was to them. If his cultivation was still intact, he was sure he would be able to break through to the eighth Realm of Heroes straight away. Yet, with his Qi Origin damaged, he could only see this surge of new insights as nothing but a cruel joke.
“I could order everyone to scatter and try to warn Arslan,” Mustafa thought grimly. “But against him, I don’t think there’s much of a point,” he told himself. As much as he wanted to grab onto any ray of hope, no matter how slim, he was yet to lose his mind. Compared to sentencing four of his Lieutenants and hundreds of the White Guards to death, he would rather count on the chance that one day, those men could be of use to Arslan. After all, given an absolute advantage, it was unlikely for their enemies to kill Arslan; they were far more likely to take him hostage.
Alas, not everyone kept their cool as well as Mustafa did. Not much longer than a second after Maian’s words fell, one of the four Lieutenants sprinted straight at Maian. Her silver hair fluttering in the wind, Alysia crossed hundreds of meters in the blink of an eye. She roused her Qi as she ran, but the aura of a martial master of the sixth rank paled in comparison to the other presence that was stretching across the entire battlefield. However, Alysia herself cared little about such a thing as she accumulated as much of wind-element Qi over her sword, preparing to launch a desperate attack.
“Don’t! Return!” Mustafa yelled once he shook off the surprise, but Alysia ignored the order and kept running at full speed. With the head-start she had, there was no one capable of stopping her forcefully, so be it Mustafa or anyone else on the plains, all they could do was watch what was about to happen in a few more seconds.
Perhaps because he couldn’t be bothered to or because he didn’t care enough, the Shade didn’t do anything and simply waited for Alysia to come to him. He also took no action when Alysia released her martial technique and sent dozens of huge wind blades towards the lake-like mass of shadows. Finally, he stood there without moving when the wind blades pushed through his shadows, blowing a large hole in the darkness akin to a gust of wind clearing a portion of a cloud of fog.
Those average martial masters watched while holding their breaths, but the elites like Mustafa and Arakar understood that Alysia’s attack didn’t actually force those shadows back. Rather, it was this Shade who allowed his Qi to be pushed away for whether reason. The tunnel which had opened couldn’t seem like anything but a death trap to any keen eye, but as it soon proved, Alysia once again disregarded the danger and kept going. Moreover, the western flank of the White Guard all showed signs of movement at the same time, apparently readying themselves to try and scatter.
Yet right then, Maian’s figure disappeared for a split-second. Through the Shadows Steps, Maian moved faster than anyone present could perceive and appeared beside Alysia just as she was taking a leap. He extended his left hand and casually grabbed her face with the palm of his hand, then added a little bit of strength and flipped her whole body backward before slamming her violently into the ground. From the moment he moved to now, Alysia hadn’t noticed anything happen; her senses hadn’t even had time to perceive danger before the shock of the clash rendered her unconscious,
When the sound of the earth caving in reached all the experts present, the scene they were watching had already changed into a different one without them noticing. From Alysia chagrining at the Shade to the Shade crouching beside Alysia, just now removing his hand from her face. The speed of this exchange further terrified those who witnessed it and in particular, it caused the western flank of the White Guard to come to a halt at half a step. Forget buying a few seconds, a supreme martial master of the sixth rank was taken down in virtually an instant! They had no hope at all of fleeing and warning Arslan no matter if they all scattered and ran with all their strength, now they understood it.
“Always so impatient,” Maian said with a sigh. Seeing as he had made enough of a show of strength already, he allowed the shadows around him to disperse, though he didn’t calm his aura quite yet. “Wait until I finish talking before you do something stupid next time, would you?” he added and sighed for the second time. As far as he was concerned, his master had gone way too far this time around, but he had no other choice but to obey his orders. Once the old man had threatened to do it himself if he wasn’t willing he had understood that there was no helping it no matter what he said.
“Anyway,” he said after standing back up. “I’d also like Master Arakar and all of his subordinates to remain here,” he stated in a very much unamused tone and sent a glance towards Arakar. He chuckled a little once he saw that this one action of his caused the man to tremble slightly. As annoying of a task as this was, it felt a little good to be able to ignore the usual rules of their organization and suppress those who thought themselves to be the pinnacle of the world.
“To be precise,” he added in a more leisure tone. “I was ordered to keep Grand Yimar Mustafa, Master Arakar and their respective subordinates here for a yet unspecified amount of time. However, as that was all that I need to do, I’m not planning to do anything more or anything less than that,” he explained almost offhandedly. The obvious part of his orders was to allow Yimar Maar and his experts to leave, while the less obvious one was to leave the communication open.
“Go back to your own, would you?” he mentioned with a laugh once Alysia moved, having regained her consciousness. He had restrained himself on purpose, so she wasn’t hurt much. As he saw it, there was no need for him to kill anyone as he had been ordered merely to keep them here for a bit.
While Alysia was confused about why she was still alive, the three present armies were roused into action at once. Seconds later, numerous flying beasts descended from the skies towards the three groups and not long afterward, all of them flew back up. A portion of them was to deliver the news either to Arslan’s company of to Abdain’s company, while the rest was to try and hunt down the beasts of the opposing sides. Still, everyone understood that without their very-best flying beasts, there was little chance to suppress the other side’s all-out information exchange. Thus, the news was almost certain to arrive at their respective recipients in just about the same amount of time.
As for Yimar Maar, even though he hesitated slightly about trusting the words of that mysterious expert, he ordered his and Abdain’s men to gather and get on their mounts. His nerves only calmed down when he saw that the black-masked man indeed didn’t bother to move as he was mobilizing his troops. Soon, he revealed a pleased smile; he never expected the dire situation to develop in this way and while he had no idea why the Guild of Shadows was constantly lending him a hand, he wasn’t planning on questioning it.
“Most of them will be too slow,” Yimar Maar judged as the core of his troops was getting into formations. After Abdain had taken a portion of his men away the day before and after all the intense fighting with Mustafa’s White Guard, he had only a thousand and a half of the ruby-golden-robed elites at hand. Furthermore, not counting the portion of the regular Realm of Heroes experts that was integrated with Arakar’s forces, he could potentially make use of twelve or thirteen thousands additional men. Those people all had their own mounts and while their quality wasn’t the best, it would still be enough for half a day of a full-speed ride.
Lastly, though, all he could do with the thirty thousand cannon fodder he had left was to tell them to try and follow them on their own while leaving a few people to supervise them. Those men had no mounts and none of them were in the Realm of Heroes, so now that his army needed to move swiftly, they wouldn’t be of any use. It was regrettable considering Abdain’s reports of Julien’s advancement to the sixth Realm of Heroes as the tactic of swarming an expert with useless people would be great to employ in this situation, alas, they had no time nor way to set it up.
“Set out!” Yimar Maar yelled from the head of the column of his riders as soon as most of the formation was completed. He spared one last look in Arakar’s direction, then in Mustafa’s direction. He couldn’t see the expressions on those two’s faces from this distance, but truth to be told, he was glad that he could get away from those monsters. Be it Arakar or Mustafa, he didn’t want to deal with any of them ever again, if at all possible. The feeling of being suppressed by those stronger than him, be it enemies or allies, he simply detested it thoroughly.
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“There they go,” Maian said with a helpless sigh and shook his head. Whatever happened after that wasn’t any of his concern, but he did feel some pity towards those two boys. In all those hundreds of years, only three people had survived this crazy old man’s interest, including the Guild’s Vice Master.
“Lord Mustafa!” Hamid called out urgently as he ran to Mustafa’s side from the right wing of the battlefield. “What are your orders?” he asked in a lower voice once he stopped in front of Mustafa, Kasim, and Kasim’s right-hand-man. “This man may be strong, but if we wage our lives, he won’t be able to stop all of us! We have to warn young master ahead of time no matter what!” he urged as the remaining hundred and thirty out of the two hundred of his men arrived behind him.
“Calm down, young fool.” Yet, before Mustafa could say anything, the other arriving Lieutenant, Bahir arrived from the western part of the battlefield alongside his and Alysia’s subordinates. “Weren’t you watching just now? All we’d be doing is throwing our lives away,” he said sourly, bowing his head slightly toward Mustafa as he was approaching.
“You…!” the deceivingly older-looking Hamid almost couldn’t bear with his anger and grabbed his youthful-looking senior by the collar. However, his grip loosened the moment he noticed the pained look in Bahir’s eyes. Once his emotions subsided somewhat during the next few seconds of silence, he noticed the grim atmosphere around Mustafa and Kasim. He released Bahir and snorted, internally unwilling to accept what his mind was telling him. As a member of the ten Lieutenants, he wasn’t a dull-witted person, so he could read the mood and could tell that none of the others were planning on resisting that darkness-element expert. It was just that, he would rather die trying than suffer this helpless feeling of powerlessness for hours upon hours.
“Hamid,” Mustafa said calmly, very much contrary to the expression on his face. “Trust me I know how you feel and if it could change anything, I wouldn’t hesitate to throw this useless life of mine away to hold that man off, but there’s nothing we can do,” he stated bitterly. Out of everyone present, it was most likely him and Arakar who were the clearest just how terrifying the gap between them and this martial master of the ninth rank was. It wasn’t something as simple as the difference between martial masters of the fifth and seventh ranks. No, the chasm was far greater than that and in fact, it was so great that he couldn’t help but be somewhat terrified.
“Lord Mustafa,” Alysia’s words broke the prolonging silence, albeit only for a moment. Having been knocked out and then spared by that black-masked expert, she hadn’t hurried back but instead returned to Mustafa’s side at a sluggish pace. She had rushed out to fight, but couldn’t remember when she lost consciousness. At one moment she was charging forth, then she woke up on the ground, her head hurting terribly. Though, what terrified her the most was that she was merely slightly wounded and yet, she had been rendered unconscious. The strength it took to knock out a martial master of the sixth rank in one blow was great, but the skill necessary to do so without harming him was unimaginable.
“I’m glad you’re fine,” Mustafa said and revealed a genuine, though still a sad smile. The usual Alysia was like a beast, unwavering and unstoppable, but at this moment, this silver-haired woman looked much like a scared child. Without thinking about it too much, he walked up to the woman and patted her head, thus causing her to stiffen up for a second before opening her eyes wide. Mustafa had always treated his people well, but she knew just as well as everyone that the only one he treated so warmly was his son, Arslan. Not even his wife received this kind of treatment, so it wasn’t only she who was startled, but also the other three Lieutenants and the hundreds of White Guards around them.
“We can only wait,” Mustafa said after removing his hand from Alysia’s head. “It’s already been five hours since the last clash between Abdain and Arslan’s guards. Abdain with his remaining men shouldn’t have been able to obstruct them, so they hopefully let the area and are getting further away from Yimar Maar as we speak,” he encouraged both those around him and himself at the same time. He didn’t want all of them to despair, but still, if it had been him in the lead of Arslan’s guards, he would have ordered a period of rest first before moving to avoid any accidents against Abdain, especially given how exhausted all of them must have been.
“But,” he added on soon afterward, his body emitting a clear and powerful killing intent. “If they fail, if Arslan dies… we shall return to Makarash, muster all of our forces and slaughter our way to the Holy City and skewer both Arakar and the Great Prophet alive before laying waste to the entire southern Eulene,” he said through his teeth, reminding his men why the name of the Ferocious Tiger General brought fear to the heart of all in the west for many centuries. And this time, he made a horrifying promise to himself; if Arslan falls to Yimar Maar and Abdain, then not just Eulene, but the whole of the west shall be bathed in the rivers of blood on the scale never seen before!
The four Lieutenants and over five hundred White Guards all trembled at Mustafa’s words, the powerful aura of their master causing their blood to boil. Especially those older members like youthful-looking Bahir and other regular White Guards who remembered the bloody wars waged by Mustafa in his days of youth were shaken to the core. If Mustafa truly unleashed the current might of Makarash upon the world without caring for the consequences, then by the time the flames of war burned out, most of the west would have turned into nothing but a pile of bloody rubble.
This prospect, however, was equally terrifying as thrilling to them. At the very least, compared to waiting here with that helpless feeling from a moment ago, they felt much better thinking that if everything else failed, they would be able to have their vengeance! With Bahir taking the lead, first the four Lieutenants kneeled and clasped their hands together, then the half a thousand White Guard did the same. No one yelled or said anything, but a good two kilometers away, just this action alone caused an unexplainable cold chill to spread alongside Arakar’s neck and down his spine.
“One thing after another,” Arakar muttered in displeasure, his gaze moving towards Mustafa and the kneeling White Guards. This black-masked man had given him a fright and now, he was having another very bad feeling. “If they fail to capture Mustafa’s son alive… if the boy decides it’s better to die than to be captured…” Suddenly, he had a thought that was unlike him. Should he take the risk and finish Mustafa off here just in case? Makarash without their leader wouldn’t be nearly as threatening, but even crippled, as long as Mustafa was alive, he could exert immense strength through all the experts he had gathered around himself and polished for hundreds of years.
“… No,” he said after a moment of thought. He was loyal to the Great Prophet ever since he had been defeated by the man and had his life spared, but he was only taking the highest chance for a long and good life. At the very least, for now, he judged that he was more likely to survive if the forces of the Great Prophet’s clashed with Mustafa’s than if he were to try and assault Mustafa here. Moreover, he couldn’t be sure if this black-masked man would stand to the side and watch it happen or if he would intervene. The man appeared quite moody, so he wasn’t willing to take the risk.
“Well,” he said in a more relaxed manner once he had made his choice. “No point worrying too much, let’s wait and see what happens,” he stated merrily, instantly causing the tension amongst his direct subordinates to disappear. Be it as it may, they were quite a strong bunch, so all of them trusted that as long as they followed Arakar, they would be rewarded adequately to their efforts and they wouldn’t be tasked with any near-suicide-level missions.
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“Tch,” Julien scoffed once Abdain retreated. It was already the third time the two of them exchanged blows since their group had set out northwards three hours ago and he was starting to realize how annoying it was to have one’s way obstructed by a powerful expert. Although Abdain wasn’t willing to commit his ruby-golden-robed experts to battle and only used them to block the road while he himself was standing at the head and exchanging blows, they were being delayed immensely.
They had sent away most of the nobles and the remaining eight hundred children to move through the easternmost path and thankfully, Abdain didn’t send anyone to chase after them. The fact that they didn’t hide Arslan and kept him in the clear view was surely a part of Abdain’s choice not to do so, but more than that, he seemed to have given up on using underhanded tactics once it became clear there wasn’t much of a point to them. With Julien’s breakthrough to the sixth Realm of Heroes and with so few troops at hand, he had no way to capture Arslan. At this point, all he was doing was hoping for that one in a million chance that Julien would commit a critical mistake as the two of them fought, but even then, he didn’t appear nearly as spirited as at the beginning of this battle.
“Eh,” Julien sighed and turned around, returning to the ranks of their group. Once he mounted his horse, he suppressed another sigh and complained, very clearly annoyed. “We moved only five hundred kilometers or so in the last three hours. There’s still fifteen times that before we arrive in the Holy Union, so at this rate, it will take two days to get there.” Of course, compared those northern riders who came to their rescue they were using broader roads and paths just to avoid giving Abdain any advantage, but even then, they were only increasing the distance by one thousand kilometers. Two days… it wasn’t that bad all things considered, but he honestly had had enough of fighting Abdain.
“What other choice do we have?” Casimir asked with a slight smile from a few horses away. “We could take the greater risk and go into battle to obliterate Abdain’s remaining men, but a chaotic melee won’t be to our advantage. Your men are few and our men are yet too weak,” he said straightforwardly. With Julien occupying Abdain, they would certainly be able to kill the remaining six hundred or so men of Abdain’s experts and the last four thousand sell-swords, but the price to do so wouldn’t be worth it.
“I know,” Julien said and sighed bitterly. At most times he would have welcomed the opportunity to hone his skills against an expert of the same level, but he didn’t have the heart to enjoy the battle. He understood that in war casualties were unavoidable, but he had lost too many comrades and friends to keep going as if nothing happened. The only somewhat gratifying thing was that they were able to collect all the bodies without any being taken away by the mercenaries. Abdain’s men hadn’t taken the initiative to take the corpses either so although they had lost some of the interspatial rings, it wasn’t all that important as long as they could give their dead a proper burial later.
“Look,” Sirius said with his head raised towards the south-western sky, causing everyone to look in the same direction. “So many message beasts, both from our and their side. They are fighting so fiercely too,” he pointed out. The flying beasts were still more or less small dots in the sea of blue, but he could tell that they were all flying erratically and many of them were much slower than they should have been. What kind of news could have caused Mustafa and Yimar Maar to send out so many beasts all at once? When he asked himself this question, he couldn’t help but frown heavily.
Similar anxious thoughts appeared in everyone’s minds, but not one of them wanted to tempt fate and saying anything out loud. The flying beasts were, just as Sirius said, fighting amongst each other as they flew towards them, but they moved relatively fast regardless. Thus, about a minute later, the various kinds of magical beasts descended erratically towards their group and towards Abdain’s group. Sirius, Reian, and Kasha all extended their arms and had one beast each land on them. Those trained messengers wouldn’t rest until their job was done, so if their messages weren’t received, they would most likely tire themselves out to death while attempting to fulfill their duty.
“What does it say?” Laien rode closer to Sirius, equally curious and worried to learn what was it all about. It couldn’t be that something had gone terribly wrong now out of all times, could it? “Hey?” he repeated, seeing as Sirius kept staring at the piece of paper in his hands without saying a word. Reian and Kasha appeared to be similarly shocked and their faces were growing paler by the second.
“Run.” Sirius finally forced the words out of his throat after forcing himself to regain his calm. “We have to flee, now!” he almost yelled, his voice full of disbelief.