“Truth be told, I am a nervous talker. I like to start conversations when some thoughts are bothering me. Besides, we aren’t talking loudly. Just keep looking around, and we will be fine. Even though it is dark, they won’t cross those hundreds of meters in a group of ten or so and escape our eyes at the same time.”

“Sucks to be you, but I am not a chatterbox like you. Wait until tomorrow when you start talking with Kaitrine. I bet she will love it.”

“I heard that twenty years ago, this place was a hideout of a bandit group that caused a lot of trouble until the Captain came here and captured all of them.”

Zelos felt like sighing… Irlan doesn’t listen a word to what others say to him, but he sure likes it when people listen to his voice. Still, the topic was quite interesting. Maybe it would give him the answers about the connection with… just when Zelos was thinking about that, he felt like he had something moving in the distance. He blinked once to clear his eyes, but then he didn’t see anything else moving. However, soon, he saw a shadow crossing the same distance.

“Did you see that, Zelos?”

“I am surprised that you did… call the others very slowly and only return with them when I raise my arm a bit.”

Irlan nodded… even though he felt that their positions were reversed, he decided to follow Zelos’s order and slowly moved away from the hill. Five minutes later, he was back with the others, and soon Zelos raised his arm behind his back. They began to crawl on the grass and eventually were able to see what he was seeing. Heirina looked around, but she didn’t see any movements.

“Where is it?”

“Wait… right there.”

Zelos didn’t even have to point. Everyone saw a couple of shadows slowly moving across the elevations of the terrain and disappearing behind them in less than a single second. It seemed that they were being cautious for some reason… although Hei didn’t tell anyone about their mission, it looked like the enemies were being cautious since they also could be ambushed in the hills. Irlan looked really surprised that anyone would consider that.

“Did they hear somehow that we would be here? How?”

After thinking for a while, Kaitrine came up with some explanations as to why that was happening. She didn’t like any of them.

“I heard that there are some traits where people can feel the smell of others from a really far distance… there are also somewhere people can sense vibrations on the ground… either of them would reveal our positions ahead, but not with precision.”

“It would have been great if you had told us that earlier…”

Zelos felt like sighing. That had been a huge misstep, but Kaitrine’s following orders explained it.

“They are rare. Some of them are believed to even have gone extinct… either way, they aren’t perfect.”

No one had heard of those, so the group was surprised that Kaitrine knew about them. Regardless, that was a question for another time. Heirina saw their movements once more and then decided to make her choice.

“There are only three of them, Zelos?

“I only have seen three so far,”

“That seems to be a scouting party… they don’t know where we are, but they are willing to sacrifice three of them.”

“Isn’t that enough, Captain? We need to report this, right?”

“Not quite, Irlan… My dad didn’t say that clearly, but the bandits, all of them, could be only a scout party that will lead a bigger group to attack the town of our clan. All the forces that in theory have been registered have been sent to the borders, but there is a chance that someone has been hiring people behind the scenes, the type of people who you wouldn’t want to see with a weapon.”

Irlan recalled the talk that they had a few weeks ago about some merchants and people without affiliations trying to recruit the members of their clan… that seemed to look accurate. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to find their place. The question was… would another force being commanded by the council of merchants attack their base directly like that? That would put all the other clans in the area against them… that is, if the other clans hear the truth. If they keep everyone in the town under control, and since they don’t know for how long the battle will last, it can take weeks until anyone finds anything weird.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Besides, they didn’t have to declare who they were or what they wanted; they could just come to kill everyone and destroy everything, and that would be enough to create a hole in the defenses of the country… that would give the enemies the best spot to attack and invade. Considering the hole in the south, the foothold that the enemies wanted would be all but guaranteed. When Zelos thought of that for the first time in a while, he felt like killing people brutally.

“... Can we say with one hundred percent that the council is involved, Edea?”

“... No, they probably planned this for a while and made sure to think things through to avoid all kinds of issues and dangers. Considering how tight they have things, even if we capture a bunch of them, they will negate any connections with the council. Anyone working for the council will also deny that, since their livelihood would be at risk.”

Zelos’s bloodlust began to increase. He was seriously starting to hate that country more and more. Perhaps his hatred was misplaced since there were good people there, but the bad people had too much power, and they ended up standing out quite a bit.

The group didn’t have much time to think. Fortunately, Heirina had considered many scenarios, and the current situation was one of them. Her father told her to report things immediately to him, but he was soon going to fight in a war… he couldn't focus on his front and his back.

“We will deal with this ourselves. I hope that you are ready.”

The group decided to move… soon they returned to the horses and then moved away from the area while making as little noise as possible. Two hours later, the three individuals who were scouting the area arrived on the hills and checked the surroundings completely. They found traces of Heirina’s group and that they had left a while ago, so they relaxed a bit.

“They had left a while ago. We should call the others.”

“We need to check the terrain ahead first. All the scouts will make this job easier.”

“Is that fine? They were waiting for us, and they will alert the others… shouldn’t we follow them as soon as possible?”

“We might fall for traps, and it isn’t worth it. Besides, all of their warriors had left. We can siege the town and make sure that none of them will escape. The place will be ours during the whole conflict. Two hundred warriors will be enough to bring the whole place down.”

“Go and bring the others. They might have set some traps to slow us down and decrease our numbers. We need to arrive on the other side before morning.”

One of the bandits nodded and then he left to the area ahead. The other two went to check the camp that Heirina’s group had left and confirmed that they hadn’t been there for long. They didn’t even make a fire, so it looked like they were pretty certain of their arrival… while those two were considering that, a couple of minutes passed, and soon all the scouts arrived in the area… they were fifteen in total, and they moved with intention and experience.

“Use your trait to find how far away they are and if you can sense any traps as we-”

A weird sound echoed in the area, and then the group raised their guard. They grabbed their knives, and soon, they saw their ally falling to the ground. One of them slowly moved toward the fallen ally, but soon, a whoosh sound echoed in the area, followed by the nasty sound of something being pierced. The guy who approached fell to his knees and then to the ground.

“Assume a circular formation… they are nearby.”

The bandits began to assume their formation, and soon, they heard the sound of something hissing in the air. Thanks to the darkness of the night, they didn’t see an arrow falling and then piercing the head of one of them.

“They are there! The enemies!”

The bandits saw three figures standing at the top of a hill and Edea aiming another arrow at them… they didn’t hesitate to charge toward them. The run was only three hundred meters, so they soon reached them… despite that, Heirina and Irlan began to run down the hill toward them.

“They have lost their minds. Kill them all!”

The leader of the group looked over his shoulder and then opened his eyes widely… much to his shock, out of his fifteen allies, only six were with them now… they could see two figures behind them that definitely didn’t belong to the group. They were Zelos and Kaitrine. With his iron balls, Zelos crushed the head of four of the bandits while Kaitrine attacked from behind the other four. The other one was killed by Edea.

Soon, all the bandits realized what was going on, and they lost the will to fight. Still, Zelos and the others surrounded them and didn’t hesitate to kill them all. As bandits, they didn’t know how to fight when the other side knew how to defend themselves. Zelos began to clean his sword on the grass while Kaitrine studied him. For a kid of his age to attack and kill people without hesitation…

“We killed all of their scouts, but what now? They said that they have two hundred soldiers with them, enough to besiege the town.”

“We can’t fight that many… but perhaps we can slow them down. They won’t come here until sunrise since they will be able to tell that something happened to their allies. Kaitrine, can we set some easy traps here to get them? They might want to avoid them by taking a roundabout route around the hills, but it is better to be safer than sorry...”

“I will work on that. I know a few tricks that I can use. It would be better if you all just kept your distance.”

While it was possible that the enemies would want to come anyway to make sure that no one would reveal their presence, the group wanted to think that they would be more cautious than that. However, much to their surprise, they soon heard the sound of horses approaching.

“They aren’t taking any chances… let’s get going!”