22 A Journey of 1000 Steps (or more)

While proceeding along the cliff towards his next destination with his people, dan proceeded and asked the strongest warrior and previous leader from the beast-folk hunting team.

Now that he could understand their language thanks to the [Multilingual] passive lord skill

"so what happened to you guys?"

huuuu

Akirigera sighed before recounting the last few days

" My lord, it all started a few days ago,

it was a day like any other day, the kids and the other folk where going about the usual business in the village, all happy an go lucky,

but it all changed because the guardian of that territory was rampaging while he was attacked by other powerful demonic magical beasts, something that we are already pretty used to.

I was patrolling around the village walls at that moment, something witch i normally don't do and let it in the hands of my subordinates , but since it was a beautiful and shiny day, i decided to take a break from training and came to enjoy the scenery.

about ten minutes into my personal enjoyment , my attention was grabbed by the rushing scout that i spotted coming out of the forest

that particular scout had his post near the guardian so that he could come and report if anything strange had happened.

seeing the rushing scout sprinting with all his might and a panicked look on his face gave me a bad feeling only to have that feeling rise in intensity the closer the scout go to me.

what he had to say reciprocated to the worry in my heart.

"the guardian of this territory, the demonic blood willow tree as we call the two hundred and thirty meter tall tree that has a gigantic bark that could support the branches that where extended outward between 90 and 160 meters giving birth to blood red elongated leaves which grew downwards making it look like a lions mane from afar."

"but don't underestimate those vine like elongated blood red leaves , because its one of the demonic blood willow tree's main weapons."

"anyways, i am getting of track here.

"the scout reported that the demonic blood willow tree is being attacked by two other powerful demonic magical beasts,

one that looked like horse with dark crimson scales , and a green giant bird. it was too far for him to pay attention to all the details, but the aura release by those demonic beasts where definitely terrifying.

after they appeared the two demonic beasts instantly released there powerful attacks on the demonic blood willow tree.

feeling the terrifying auras and pressure released by those attacks the scout judged to come inform us instantly instead of sticking around.

"here is the thing about the demonic blood willow tree, and why we hate him so much, what makes him so terrifying and powerful in this territory and why he managed to survive so long isn't only his strong brute force and ability to absorb the blood of his opponents in battle with the vine like leaves that can act as shields, his strongest power comes from his roots, which are spread all around his territory, the roots, not only absorb the spiritual energy in the area passively, but if the demonic blood willow tree wills it, he can control the roots to come above ground , capture any living target with blood that can be found and absorb the life force.

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its a horrible ability and one of the reasons why we never managed to escape its grasp"

said akirigera with a sigh on his face wile reminiscing the past

"than why do you call it a guardian, from the name alone it sounds like an evil entity that wont protect others "

asked dan, with curiosity

"not by choice, my lord,

at first my ancestors where at war with it, but when it was on the verge of dying and have slaughtered more than three quarters of our tribes population and most powerful warriors, our ancestors who didn't want to loose the rest of the people and the demonic blood tree came to an agreement and signed a blood contract,

which led us to live a life under its protection while we hunt beasts outside its territory and drop the carcass in the core area where the leaves of the tree can directly reach and absorb the blood, vitality, spiritual energy from the magical beast that we hunt"

"with this, our population continued to increase, but a life under the demonic blood willow tree is not pleasing because we couldn't increase our bloodline strength, now we only hear stories of how our ancestors used to battle withe their inherited bloodline techniques and abilities, stories to inspire us while growing up.

"anyways"

when it was being attacked and critically injured, it would use the roots to absorb any blood essence in the area, and we had to donate our blood witch resulted into our bloodline weakening "

"that is why, we where long prepared to escape from this territory the moment we got our chance."

and since the blood pact didn't include for us to stay here, there was nothing to worry about if we get out of this territory, we were only obligated to give food to the demonic blood willow tree as an offering only when we are under its protection.

"so , running back into the village, i order the rest of the warriors to start gathering everyone and leave trough the route that was prepared from years ago, everyone was prepared and ready to go, since we were waiting a long time for for such a moment, the rest of my tribes folk all had the required items and rations packed and prepared , just in case a day like this comes again,

we couldn't waste any time if we didn't want to be spotted by the demonic blood willow tree, since it's attention was currently on its attackers, and focused on defending, but if it suffers a critical hit it will start looking for blood in its territory.

"we couldn't accept for our bloodline to degrade any longer , so we took this chance to escape "

running trough the prepared escape route at full speed, everyone made it out of the territory in about fifteen minutes, safe and sound without any accidents happening."

"from earlier patrols and reports from the scouts over the years, we had enough information to determine that southward the magical beasts and other monsters get weaker."

"so for our next plan , we headed south along the river that was separating the forest on our left side"

for the first couple of days everything went fine,

any magical beast or monster in our way was dealt with, giving us food and material, and we didn't came across anything strong to give us a hard time to deal with,

everything seemed to be going well."

but this morning we came across some ants, big enough to ride them, grey shell like armor , six legs all pointy enough to stab anything."

so we hunted them and were going to salvage the materials into armor and spears, while saving the meat for later."

"but too bad for us , before we could even approach the dead carcasses, a screeching scream was heard behind us, followed my more screeches to the left , and more could be heard from further to the left, one by one the screeching continued to increase, until we couldn't tell how mane monsters where screaming."

"not sticking around to find out , we all started running in the opposite direction of the horrifying screeching in the forest"

"some of the kids where a little flustered and scared but everyone managed to respond quickly and got out of there as soon as possible.

the further we ran the lower the screeching sound got, allowing us to think that we where getting away from danger.

but whomever we have angered didn't seem to want to let us go,

after sprinting for two kilometres the screeching sounds dint seem to stop , even tough we could barely hear it, so we kept on running, only planing to stop when we cant hear those nightmarish screeching sounds.

five hundred meters later we enter a plain with less fauna than the forest, we didn't know if it was luck or maybe coincidence but whatever magical beast was in front of us, seemed to have escaped, because we didn't come across any magical beast, but we did come across plenty of fresh tracks."

"and on the fifth kilometre we came across a hill that we had to climb, and once we made it to the top, about three hundred meters from the bottom , we could observe what was behind us, currently still in the progress of getting out of the Forrest."

"the sight of the horde of ants terrified us, everyone forgot to even take a break, and we continued running even faster, for the rest of the day , trying to get as far away from that horde as possible. and thank fully the whole group only suffered some minor injuries"

"until finally, a tree almost crushed me"

clearing the throat , dan said

"hey, that tree landed nowhere near you , and i needed your attention, or else you would have ended up ant food"