Chapter 44

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“Shiro! Fire dragon?” Lily asked me, but I refused to use wide ranged attack yet. If I were left without mana without making sure we were in the clear, we would be dead for sure.

I need to be sure that spell would get us out of here. This sort of spawning was unnatural. It was like they were waiting and ambushing us. I continued to spam my appraisal, but nothing noteworthy came out of the blue box. It was just ordinary zombies.

We rode out, but skeletons and knights were impeding us. Then multiple arrows flew off to the skies.

“Lily!” Jona brought out her giant shield and covered both of us.

“Argh!” An elven knight dropped to the ground as one of the arrows hit his horse in the eye and thus killing it.

“Shiro?” Lily trembled.

“Lily!” Lhorne shouted. I poured my mana, and a flame dragon rose and burned all the skeletons.

“Rhegar! Climbed up here!” Some soldiers shouted.

“Joseph, raise the banner! If we scatter, the flame will kill them.” Lhorne shouted as he woke up the dazed Joseph

“Okay!”

We then run toward the plains, away from danger, and back to base. We were fortunate that nothing was standing on our way toward the fort after it was burned to nothingness by our flame dragon.

“Damn! We failed our mission objective.” Joseph mumbled. As we rested on a free plain away from the wasteland. Our fort was already in sight, but the horse refused to move as they lay down in exhaustion.

“We keep our life. And that’s what’s important!” Jona shrugged. “Thank god we have Lily. I was sure we would die there.”

“Hey, Rhegar! You okay?” Joseph shouted.

“Just a sprain. Nothing much, sir!”

“Is this a cue of another assault?” Jona asked Rhegar. “I heard from a fellow mercenary about that.”

“Yes! I think so. According to the manual.”

“Elven undead….” Lhorne whispered.

“What?” Joseph asked

“The one who shot us with arrows. It was undead elves. I see a glimpse of them during the escape.”

“But that’s impossible,” Stroine replied. He was another soldier in the squad.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“New type then. I got it. Good job identifying them, Lhorne! Let us return in three hours.” Joseph said.

“Lord Edelweiss?” Lily muttered. Several white horses were coming to us. It was Edelweiss and her personal guards. Nora was there too. I thought she was guarding the supply lines with Lala or other tailfolk. Why is she here?

“Thank goodness you are all alive!” She stepped down from her horse and cured the injured.

“Lord Edelweiss, this is but a mere scratch. We can do it in a more secure location.” Rhegar said.

“It is better to do it now. You risk an infection if we do it later.” Edelweiss sighed. “Lily. Good job bringing them all back alive.”

“You are welcome, Lord Edelweiss. I care for all of them. I will not leave anyone behind!”

“Lily! Thank god you are okay!” Nora hugged us as she sobbed, “What a reckless commander He is! Sending you guys to scout for the curse source!”

“I am fine!” Lily puffed her chest proudly.

“Let us return to the fort. I have some word to speak to the commander.” Edelweiss spoke.

Edelweiss was quietly fuming as we walked back into the fort. They celebrated when we returned since they were expecting many more casualties for the scouting mission.

“Allright. May I know why you are asking them to do such a perilous recon mission?”

“Yes, Lord Edelweiss. Our latest report shows a new type of monster belonging to the undeath. These new monsters are capable of ranged attack. This is very concerning. We have undeath knights, then vargmuth, and now archers. They are indeed evolving. If we let them be, we would be overrun before long.” The commander replied.

“Lily has a fire magic blessing. The kingdom will be in a difficult position if we lose her.”

“Losing a talented individual such as Lily would certainly be a major loss for us. But Lily has proven to be more than capable of traversing the undeath zone without a single casualty despite being ambushed just like now and before. We have full confidence in her abilities.”

“Lily may not die under any circumstances.” Edelweiss went silent after speaking her mind.

“... I have certainly received the directive from the high council. I apologize for my rash decision, but the situations are quite concerning, don’t you think?”

“Yes. You are right. So, are you planning an assault against former northlangard?”

“The undeath forced our hands. I have notified the high council about this. We need to act fast.” the commander replied.

“But Jona said that it was useless to attack the undeath zone as new curse seeds are replacing the previously destroyed one in just a year,” Lily said.

“We need to conquer the entire northlangard all at once under one year.” The commander replied. “Once we have conquered the northlangard all at once, the corrupting leylines could be fixed to prevent further undeath corruption.”

“There were more than 500 elven death and over three thousand others just to conquer the previous site!” Joseph shouted.

“Yes. We need to go all in if we are to do it. Time is pressing against us. We need to act fast. They are evolving with their vargmuth and archers. Soon they might have canons or siege weapons, and we would not stand a chance against them when that happened,”

“I understand. I will send a letter to the high council about this.”

“I thank you, lord Edelweiss. Now, Lord Lily, Joseph, Rhegar. How’s the recon going? Did you find the curse source?”

“No, sir! But we have found about a platoon-sized archer attacking us. They were protected by skeleton knights and zombie spearmen. Attacking them from close range would prove to be difficult. Here is our report!”

“I see. If they were to attack us, we could only rely on canons and our own archers. How good are those archers?”

“They rival standard elven archers. However, their bow was of lower quality and thus placed them a little above human archers.” Edelweiss widened her eyes at the report.

“Some of the archers… showed the characteristic of an elf. Lhorne dubbed them elven undead.” Rhegar continued.

“Thank you for your report. Lord Edelweiss. Please put that into your report to the high council.”

“I will.”

The meeting was then dismissed.