What happened next was the first day of the battle. Because yes, the battle of the Iron Brook Valley was going to be longer than that. Mostly because it started in a surprisingly calm and quiet way for a battle.
Then again, Izuku had no knowledge about medieval battles to be able to tell if it was supposed to be surprising. And while he could ask Yaoyorozu, he was certain that the answer that she would give him would be a very guarded one.
After all, it wasn’t a normal medieval battle. It was a magical medieval battle. Everything that she’d say would be pure speculation considering how little she knew about magic. Was there even a point in asking her just to see her being super defensive before giving him an answer that would be nothing but conjecture?
No, probably not.
Instead, Izuku ended up witnessing the battle from the perspective of Elder Anaya. Because Compress (who proved to be extremely adept at pretending that he was a brainless puppet) was tailing her constantly.
They’ve got to see the camp that the beastkin set up at the verge of the valley. It was pretty large and…
Well, to be fully honest, Izuku has no idea how to describe it otherwise. It was just a camp. Some tents, yes, but those seemed to be occupied mostly by the older and better equipped warriors. A lot of people slept on the ground, with only a blanket to make it slightly more palatable.
Turns out that if you put those close to each other, you can then cut some small trees, chop the branches off and drill them into the ground, before putting a large blanket on top of them and stretching it between four separate pillars and voila.
You have a super-low cost field ‘quarters’ for a ~dozen people or so.
You just had to get someone to dig out latrines, because it turns out that a camp for ~half a thousand people produces a lot of… well, excrements. Obviously, with how keen the beastkin senses were, they dug it in quite the distance away from the main camp.
To be honest, Izuku doesn’t really want to dig into this subject. They weren’t smelly and kept their hygiene to a level that was fairly impressive for such a primitive society, that was what mattered.
Back to the battle.
Anaya sent some scout groups into the valley, being roughly told where the entrance to the mines was. The mission was to confirm the presence of the Rapturous Ecstasy forces and establish how many of them were there.
Most of them steered clear of the Ecstasy's own patrols, their enhanced senses allowing them to detect their enemies far before they could do the same. It would be completely different on a more open ground, but with trees restricting eyesight so much, it was all up to smell and hearing. And they excelled in that.
They could run circles around most enemies in such an environment.
The only exception was the group that Anaya tasked with announcing that they’re no longer alone to the Ecstasy forces. That one did ambush a Rose Guard patrol. Did so right by the river.
Izuku only learned of it when the reports reached the elder, but, well. It wasn’t anything big or impressive. Group of beastkin skirmishers attacked the patrol in question by throwing javelins and firing slingshots at them. However, with just how well-armored the Rose Guard was, they didn’t manage to cause any damage. Then again, they weren’t really trying to.
The closest thing to ‘injury’ that the Rose Guard suffered was to their dignity and came in the form of a catgirl skirmisher using [Cat Leap] to jump at one of them and make them fall into the river and get completely wet (and not in the fun way).
Only to quickly retreat just as her comrades were showering the remaining guards in insults and laughing at the one that fell into the water and seemed to have problems getting out of it.
And even then, it was questionable if there was anything to injure, as Izuku didn’t think that Rose Guard had anything resembling dignity to begin with.
In short, the first day battle could be summarized to ‘catgirl injures Rose Guard’s pride and is insufferably smug about it when reporting to the elder’. Not much, but it definitely helps solidify the image of the beastkin’s culture in the eyes of both Izuku and Tomura.
They were brave . Suicidally brave, almost. Their entire culture venerated bravery to the point where being reckless was actually considered a great way to attract fame, and probably some girls/boys to your bed while at it.
That is, of course, if you managed to pull it off, thus proving both your personal strength and smarts. So, the attributes of their two High Gods.
No wonder that Anaya was so salty about so many youngsters of their tribe rushing straight to their death for numerous stupid reasons, even if those that proved that they can do that and survive (repeatedly) had to be ridiculously strong and hard to kill.
It was easy to forget about it, seeing how the elder and her sidekicks retreated immediately from the Cynocephalii swarm, but… it happened after spending about three to four hours fighting almost constantly and without resting, in a completely foreign territory and against completely unexpected enemies (like the blood hornets and lampades), while amassing some lesser injuries and being forced against an enemy that had a numerical superiority of about 10:1.
And Izuku is 100% certain that they could easily fight their way through that (at the cost of really having to rest in some secured Node Room) if they could set up a chokepoint, instead of having to face an attack from four directions at the same time.
With the benefit of hindsight, they probably retreated because they couldn’t be sure if they’d manage to keep their elder safe and losing their commanding officer in a purely optional combat encounter right before a large battle would be the height of stupidity.
In short, the first day of the battle was really boring.
The most interesting thing was Monoma and Yaoyorozu engaging in a lengthy discussion as to how exactly the beastkin society can feed so many purely or almost purely carnivorous people. Only to - after something like an hour of an increasingly heated argument with a lot of sassy remarks on one another - come to a decision that they had no idea how it was possible.
It was such an incredible letdown that it made Izuku of all people groan loudly. In his mind, yes. He wasn’t manifesting as a dungeon lord at such a crucial time, he wanted to keep an eye on Tomura just in case.
It looped back to being hilarious when Tokage - who was munching on a large chunk of roasted rabbit in the background while the debate was occuring - took that moment to raise her hand and ask if it’s possible that there are more extremely filling foods out there, like the blood hornet’s honey. Which could apparently satiate a grown man for days with a single meal.
And if some of that food was meat.
And if that’s why the camp that Izuku described to them all earlier included some massive furry herbivores that seemed to resemble aurochs but were much bulkier and larger. The same creatures that Monoma and Yaoyorozu disregarded as a ‘real’ solution due to how few of them were there.
The duo looked absolutely disappointed with themselves for missing that.
Tokage just shaked her head and returned to eating the rabbit.
Strangely hilarious.
Uraraka spent most of the day doing some really dirty, dirty things with Toga. And Ay’zira. The addition of the amazoness should make it clear that it wasn’t about sex, as while Uraraka and the daemon did hit it off right off the bat, it was in the ‘mutual respect and friendship’ way.
Uraraka was absolutely and completely committed, and so was Toga.
The ‘dirty’ thing in question was butchering. Constantly. Just… butchering and butchering. And not for consumption. They needed fresh meat to create entire piles of it that Izuku and Tomura could then push the souls of the Cynocephalii into, forcing them to manifest physically.
Then they had Kirishima herd their newly created ‘soldiers’ into a separate part of their level, to avoid the whole thing getting messy. They had no problem with the physically manifested spirits to continue with their standard activity of trying to eat each other, as it was clear that the regeneration was working just as well as when they were in their ‘natural’ forms.
Naturally, Ay’zira was getting physically manifested as well, because there was no way that she was missing out on the battle. She would become incredibly insufferable if they even suggested that.
***
Second battle was mostly the same thing as what happened on the first day, except for Anaya clearly deciding to increase the pressure applied to the Ecstasy forces in the valley.
She already made it clear that there were beastkin in the area on the first day, now it was time to make it clear that there were significant beastkin forces in the area. Or at least that’s how Tomura and Izuku identified what they could see through Compress’ eyes.
This time they actually committed more than just the skirmishers into the valley. About fifty warriors - all of them wolfkins of either gender - marched after the skirmishers, commanded by Uzar and supported by two foxkin shamans.
There was also someone else attached to their unit. Someone whose very existence made them realize that for all their combat skills and ferocity on the battlefield, the wolfkin are far from the strongest fighters among the beastkin.
It was a female bearkin . A head taller than Uzar and significantly wider as well, likely at least 30 or 40kg heavier than him and all of that had to be muscles . Her thighs alone looked as thick as a tree trunk and were definitely thicker than his head. And Izuku was fairly certain that it was all muscles too.
Most of that already impressive body covered in metal plates, their back additionally covered by a fur cloak. Unlike many of the poorer beastkin warriors, she was also wearing a helmet, although of a bit of a weird design.
Izuku could understand the front of it being open, but holes for ears, really? At least they weren’t too big. But it made sense, it was a semi-logical compromise between protection and the enhanced senses of the beastkin.
As if to make it even clearer that the Ecstasy warriors were screwed, she was carrying a two-handed axe.
I’ll be honest with you
Please don’t be.
I think that I wouldn’t mind having my head squashed like a watermelon if it meant said head finding itself between those thighs even for a moment
…
I thought that you’d say some variant of ‘I wish that she dies in the battle so we unlock that subspecies’.
Well
That too, I guess
Right.
Do you agree with me on that?
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
No.
On both accounts?
No.
But I refuse to elaborate.
She had skills to back it up. It was clear that Uzar was in charge of the operation, but the moment they encountered the enemy, wow .
Because this time, they did manage to witness the fight. It happened close enough to the Dungeon for Spinner to observe it from the top of the cliff by its entrance. Although, yes, it’s still happening in the distance. They don’t see a lot of details.
They do see the bearkin champion severing two Rose Guard soldiers in half with a horizontal swing of their battleaxe.
The fight was brief and rather intense. The day-one clash has alarmed the Ecstasy forces that they’re not alone in the valley, but also made them severely underestimate just how many enemies they had in the area.
As a result, they scaled up their patrols, likely looking for the origin of the beastkin. Instead, they ran into a few dozen warriors, supported by a few groups of skirmishers. Cue, a really nasty fight.
That also told them a lot about the beastkin tactics.
The bearkin champion led the charge, their sheer size, weight and the resulting momentum (together with a swing of their weapon) almost immediately crushing the very center of the formation that the Rose Guard attempted to form.
It was made immediately clear that they were dealing with more than just the Rose Guard. The unit that the beastkin engaged in combat was composed of twenty of those that formed the main battleline, but there was more than that.
They were also a few sword dancers-type characters, wearing rather scarce clothes as one should probably expect, and dual wielding curved swords. They seemed elven from a distance, probably due to the bodies that they inherited after descending to this plane.
They seemed to be the more irregular part of the Procacitas’ forces. The ‘irregular’ meant not sticking to formation.
Considering the fact that Izuku counted three wolfkin warriors that ended up dying to them (in two cases, due to being swiftly and easily decapitated), and a few more that got various degrees of lesser injuries out of the fight, irregular definitely didn’t equal ‘weak’.
Yes, it was far from being bloodless on both sides this time.
One of them got too close to the beastkin champion and got sliced in half as well. Vertically . The axe almost got lodged in the ground beneath her feet, the blow was so strong.
I think that I’m starting to realize just how weak we are in general.
… mood.
It was a messy clash that lasted for a few minutes, before Ecstasy decided to call it a day and pulled back.
Unleashing two new daemon types at the enemy to cover their retreat. One of them seemed to be of the flagellant type (purely non-eroticone, so definitely nothing related to Procacitas, their bet was on Decidius), while the other one…
There were two interesting things about them.
First one was their physical strength and durability, with looks to match. They resembled Muscular with his quirk on with how large and muscular their bodies were. They lacked weapons but they didn’t need them to begin with.
Izuku got to see one of them grabbing an unlucky wolfman warrior and then ‘hugging them’, with enough strength to clearly break their spine. If Spinner’s extraordinary eyesight was anything to go by, their grip was strong enough to malform metal plates that formed a part of that man’s armor.
The other thing was that each and every one of them seemed to have their face covered with what looked like a jute bag over their head, bound with a rope around their neck. They had no idea why they blinded themselves so much.
Two of those towering brutes actually ended up tackling the bearkin champion to the ground, leading to a brief but rather intense struggle. She emerged victorious in the end, but it was clear from the distance that she paid for that with a broken arm.
The end result of the second day of the battle was as follows:
Beastkin lost seven wolfkin warriors dead and twelve more injured, and one bearkin injured.
The Ecstasy lost six Rose Guard soldiers, five of those giant, blind wrestlers and five flagellants, plus two sword dancers. One Rose Guard and one sword dancer were taken prisoner.
Spinner could see them, disarmed, their arms tied behind their backs, hurried back to the camp alongside the beastkin.
Why?
They’ve been imprisoned because the beastkin want to interrogate them, right?
…
Just to interrogate them, right?
I don’t know.
But considering the fact that this universe missed one or two thousand years of development as civilization and the beastkin clearly have the morals of, well, barbarians, I kind of don’t want to know.
That’s just… great.
Though tbh I think that doing anything like this to a servant of the local version of Slaanesh is just inviting supernatural corruption
But don’t take my word for it
Are you… are you trying to reassure me?
No
I just don’t want to consider that as well
So I’m trying to reassure myself, not you
So if I ask Yaoyorozu-san for confirmation, it might make you suffer?
Are you going to willingly make yourself suffer just to make me suffer?
…
You know what, I just remembered how ready you were to break every single bone in your body just to break Muscular slightly more, don’t answer that.
Words cannot describe how much I fucking hate you, Midoriya
Cope and seethe.
… how do you know those words
Hmm?
Tell Toga that if she keeps sharing things (especially insults) she overheard while me and Spinner were playing videogames with you, I’m going to veto spawning anything that she can use as… aid in your romantic endeavors
… okay
***
When asked about it, Yaoyorozu sighs. Loudly. Painfully. She was reading a book in the [Library] while drinking her herbal tea. It was her free time activity - her actual ‘job’ right now was learning how to create golems from Spinner.
“I preferred to stay unaware of this.” She eventually replies. “I do not wish to speculate, but… you remember the book about the species of this world? The one where I found the world map in?”
Yes.
“One of the species mentioned in it were the half-daemons.” Yaoyorozu replies, temporarily putting her book down. “Humans can have children with at least some daemons. The problem is usually not in biology per se, but in that particular species’ of daemons interest in having sex. Majority of them simply are to a various degree asexual by design.”
I don’t like where this is going
Think of Aeonia.
Good point.
“Humans are apparently basic enough for the result of their couplings with daemons to be daemonic enough to classify as a different subspecies.” Yaoyorozu continues. “In the case of other mortals, even subspecies of humans, children get most of the things from their mortal parents whose species they inherit fully. The daemon only contributes some miniscule elements, like an increased aptitude for magic.”
Uhm, why are you telling us this?
I figured out that it has to be somehow relevant, I just don’t directly see a link.
“The link is that there is an entire half-daemon subspecies when a human and a daemon of Procacitas do the thing.” Yaoyorozu replies. It’s clear that she doesn’t enjoy speaking about it, clearly. “And they are described as being functional , in the meaning that they aren’t born as fanatical servants of Ecstasy. All that they get is almost unnatural beauty and the fact that sometimes their biological gender is a somewhat quirky subject.”
Ugh.
???
Sigh
What she’s trying to say is that there seems to be no intrinsic corruptive threat to doing anything explicit to the captives.
Beastkin are likely going to enslave whatever captives they get out of the fight.
They’ll only give us the dead ones.
…
I hate this as a concept.
Same
At least this isn’t going to happen anywhere close to our Domain
We won’t get to see anything
Yes.
If it has to happen to someone, it should probably happen to the guys who more likely than not are into it
Even if I’d definitely prefer it to not happen at all
How about we just… skim over the subject, accepting that stuff like that’s happening in the world out there but never really mentioning it unless it for some reason becomes in any way or shape relevant?
I think that neither of us want to even think about it.
Yes
Izuku could only wonder how many other things he would be forced to ignore the existence of. He was going to stay in this world for the rest of his life, after all. And it was entirely possible that he’d be around for more than this. Afterlife was apparently a thing, right?
Ugh.
***
In the end, the beastkin end up dropping the corpses by the entrance to the Dungeon, before leaving the area and returning to their camp to patch up their injured. Surprisingly enough, despite the Dungeon never talking about that and never demanding it, they also dropped their own dead inside.
At least most of them. A few of them were clearly omitted, and it was clear that Uzar made that decision. But… why?
Izuku could only speculate that the few that were omitted had families that could have an issue with their corpses being sacrificed to the Dungeon.
They’ve got six additional [Rose Guard] soldiers, bringing their total number to 15. That was… reasonable, really. Izuku still hated those guys being the bulk of the Dungeon’s ‘army’, mostly due to how disturbing they were.
The bulky wrestlers turned out to be the [Rapturous Brutes], and they definitely needed some more understanding of whatever they were. On the other hand, Dungeon identified them as ETL 42 . And they had five of them. Alright.
The bearkin champion crushing two of them with notable injury (yet still crushing two) was actually rather terrifying and opened up a lot of questions as to just how powerful she was. And what sort of skills she was carrying in her body.
Contrary to them, the [Moraverian Sword Dancers] and [Frenzied Bloodletters] had much more available ETLs of 30 and 25 respectively. The former seemed to be a tiny bit better than the Rose Guard, the latter seemed to be their equivalents.
This seemed to confirm their suspicion. The Rose Guard had cool-looking equipment… but their combat skills? They sucked . There was no other explanation to it all. Looking pretty and sticking to a formation was all that they were capable of.
To be fully honest, looking pretty seemed like a valid focus for the forces serving Rapturous Ecstasy, at least for the part of it that was dedicated to Procacitas.
Unlocks from the beastkin in the meantime?
Skills: [Axe Proficiency II], [Axe Proficiency III], [Spear Proficiency III], [Sword Proficiency II], [Sword Proficiency III], [Shield Proficiency III], [Blunt Weapon Proficiency I], [Blunt Weapon Proficiency II], [Blunt Weapon Proficiency III], [Wolf Fang School II], [Wolf Fang School III], [Butchering III], [Mining I], [Mining III], [Woodcutting IV], [Basic Bone Carving I], [Basic Bone Carving III], [Basic Refining I], [Basic Smithing II], [Mana Pathways II], [Mana Pathways III].
Abilities: [Shield Bash II], [Shield Bash III], [Lesser Thrust II], [Lesser Thrust III], [Lesser Slash II], [Lesser Slash III], [Lesser Blow I], [Lesser Blow II], [Lesser Blow III], [Barricade Shield I], [Barricade Shield II], [Barricade Shield III], [Predator’s Advance II], [Predator’s Advance III], [Enraged Charge I], [Multistrike I], [Assault Dash I], [Dash I], [Defensive Stance I], [Offensive Stance I].
Notable equipment pieces? They’ve got the [Tribal Warrior’s Armor] which seemed to be the light chain/metal plate/leather mixture that Uzar was wearing and which seemed to be the standard equipment of the somewhat experienced wolfkin warriors. Plus some better quality swords, axes, spears and shields used by the beastkin.
Some minor material unlocks too.
And that was the result of a relatively brief opening clash. It was enough to upgrade Uraraka and Tokage’s equipment, skills and abilities (and through it, the ETL) by far . What were they going to get from the main thing?
Izuku could only wonder about it.