“So you’re willing to betray those bastards for the sake of being under my wing?” Orland asked.

“Anything to be of your service, my lord,” Duran smirked, lightly nodding. He was like a rat gloating to a cat. The bearded man waited for the sure approval from the Shieldford, and then he heard Orland.

“Get out,” Orland said.

The answer was not what Duran expected. “But my lord, the time is ripe, that darn Zachary is not in sight even after dawn had broken. It’s either now or we—“

“There’s no we in this conversation,” Orland replied. “So turn back, and sod off to where you came from.”

Duran frowned. His plan did not go as he had expected. He thought it was a surefire in allying with the Shieldford who hated the Gardwin more than him, and yet he was rejected.

“But why?” Duran roared. Annoyance turned to anger as his steps slowly brought him closer to Orland. “You hated them, don’t you? Yet you deny this precious chan—“

“Step any closer, and your head will roll,” Orland said.

Duran held back his anger as he knew not to underestimate the likes of a famed war hero. His face twitched, raging on the inside. In the end, he turned and left, kicking the door, and broke it out of spite.

“Humph, only a fool would let a snake inside their house,” Orland said. He reminded himself to be warier of this Duran as nothing was much worse than a betrayer within their midst.

* * *

Under the moonlight, a limbless scarecrow was being dragged through the ground. The duo, Zach and Savreen reached the edge of a forest with trees unlike he had ever seen. They were taller, bigger, and much weirder in shape compared to the ones he was used to. He looked around, searching for a path.

“Over here,” Savreen said. Standing before a path where the moonlight sieved through the canopy of the forest. Vision wise was still terrible. But it was enough for him to see through the darkness.

They trod under the massive leaves, and the smell of flowers was still strong despite being far from the flower fields. He reckoned the wind carried their scents, easing his mind even though he was in a dungeon where all sorts of danger roamed around.

For a while their aimless trek was uneventful. Zach was pretty surprised no monsters were lurking around this forest as he assumed the forest would be teeming with them. But he guessed luck was by his side.

They reached a clearing. No trees sprouted from the ground and even grass could not be seen. For a patch of land to be this barren among such fertile ground was an oddity. He strolled around the barren land, finding the earth a bit drier than the ground where the huge trees were grown.

It piqued his interest a bit as he then saw something spiked on the barren ground which was a bit far from where he was. He triggered his Identify skill and a simple description waned off his cautiousness.

[Notification Board.]

“You sense anything?” Zach asked, alarming the lass beside him. Her head whipped around in haste, nervous about what might come out from within the dark.

“Relax,” Zach said. “There’s nothing out there, and I’m just asking whether you can sense anything.”

She frowned, glaring at Zach. “Why bother asking me then?”

“Well, you’re a rogue,” Zach simply said. “Your class itself rely on taking notice of the surrounding, anticipating the unexpected. So rather than me detecting the enemy first, you’re the one who should do that role.”

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

“And how do you know that?” Savreen asked.

“I have my ways,” Zach vaguely answered.

They reached in front of the board, and Zach read it through. “New task not available to proceed. Participants are advised to finish he or she current task at hand.” Looking back at the wriggling limbless scarecrow, he sort of knew what the board meant.

“So what now?” Savreen’s eyes rested on the scarecrow. She feared what would happen if this thing was dead, and from what Zach told her about the last wave, she imagined facing an army of murderous walking scarecrows, and thinking about it sent chills down her spine. Deep down, she prayed Zach wouldn’t kill it.

“We rest,” Zach said. He eyed the tree top and found the safest place at the moment to have some shut-eye.

He climbed up the huge tree comparable to the size of a giant sequoia, arriving first on the wide branch just below the tree top. He looked down and saw Savreen trying her best to climb on her own. Zach did offer her help, but since she rejected him, he let it be.

By the time she reached there, her breath was haggard and her hands were on his knees. “I’ll take the first night watch,” Zach said. “So get some rest as tomorrow will be the end of that guy.” The limbless scarecrow stayed close to his feet. He wouldn’t let it out of his sight as he knew better to keep this particular enemy close.

Savreen complied and rested her eyes. She still did not trust Zach, but she slept like a log as she didn’t even wake up to guard the rest of the night. If it was other people, they would have kicked her by the bum and scolded her to take the night’s watch. But not Zach.

He just leaned on the tree bark while his hand kept stabbing the scarecrow’s torso. Sleep was a commodity he could not have, not after the nightmare that still plagued him. A nightmare he did not think existed until Teena advised him to sleep.

His vitality did keep him fresh though. But he was still human, and humans needed sleep. Yet he persisted as he barely let his eyelid close halfway, taking glances at the penalty counter as it went down second by second. Proving his method of using the scarecrow’s torso as a practice dummy worked like a charm to end the penalty for Mana Sword. After making a simple calculation, he counted that he needed to do this for a whole week before he could finally earn the original Mana Sword skill. A bit too harsh for a penalty though.

Rather than complaining, he just did it. The night went on as time went by. But he slipped. Zach accidentally closed his eyes, and he was quick to fall asleep. A second later, he abruptly awakened, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Savreen instantly got up as she was alarmed by the sudden scream. Her eyes were half-closed a second ago, and now they were opened wide. “What happened? What’s going on?” she questioned. Landing her gaze at Zach as the man gazed at the hand holding the knife.

The limbless scarecrow was motionless and it could only mean one thing. He accidentally broke the life source, and their sight was greeted with the new announcement for the beginning of the last wave.

They stared in silence at one another as the countdown went down. “Get ready,” Zach said.

He eyed the far ground and waited until the count reached zero. Then the time was up. The notification board was gone, and Zach waited there staring from the top. Minutes went by, and the duo grew more anxious.

“Perhaps they could not find us,” Savreen reasoned.

“I doubt it,” Zach replied.

It might be his imagination, but he swore something felt out of place. As if the tree he was perching on was vibrating faintly.

“Um, can you feel that?” Savreen poked a question. As Zach wasn’t the only one who felt it. The vibration turned to quakes, stronger than the subtle shaking. An ominous hunch crept at the back of his mind as perhaps he did underestimate the strength of half a thousand scarecrows.

“Stay there,” Zach commanded. Savreen wouldn't like any better to stay here far from where the danger was.

He leaped down from one branch to another, narrowing his eyes, trying to get a clearer picture of the source of the quakes. Then a blackish sea rolled over the ground where the moonlight touched, and Zach saw his enemies. They after him like he had a beacon planted inside his body as if there was no place he could hide, not unless he escaped this dungeon first.

The scarecrows encircled the tree as their numbers started climbing over the trunk. There was no need for them to latch onto a hanging branch as their straw hands blended with the bark of the tree acting like a suction cup. Zach jumped down and assaulted the early climbers. He cut them off by the wrists and kicked them back to the far ground.

It was a lone battle, and Zach made use of his reddish hue blade as the Mana Sword wreaked havoc. The wide tree branch at least emulated the same situation when he fought in the cavern mouth, narrow and fewer numbers at a time. The young man was strong, but not strong enough to go against half a thousand at the same time. Time went on, and he piled up the straw corpses down below.

The fight on the huge tree was simple but tedious. He had to jump up at certain times, to kill off some scarecrows that climbed from the other side, keeping them off from the vulnerable Savreen. For now, he could manage these numbers.

But again, something felt off. His sight began to lean to one side, and the snapping sinew bark roared underneath. Then it dawned on him.

‘They’re using tactics.’

They were chopping the tree.