Chapter 248: Act 15 – Battle for the Logging Site (Part 2)
It had been nearly an hour since they entered the forest.
The sound of bowstrings echoed through the woods, and soon the mercenaries cheered as they surged forward to drag several bodies from the underbrush—those massive, pale-yellow creatures covered in tumors, their heads resembling huge malignant tumors, lacking visible nostrils and eyes, as if devoid of features. Yet beneath their wrinkled skin lay thousands of olfactory and auditory organs, making them hundreds of times more sensitive in the dim, even pitch-black underground environment than humans could ever be. The mercenaries quickly realized these creatures were dead; the arrows had only inflicted surface wounds, but each of these burrowers had a fatal wound across their chests.
Some injuries were entry wounds from behind, while others were exit wounds. The gaping wounds were charred, as if someone had pierced them in the chest with a bolt of lightning. A few mercenaries recognized this special kind of wound made by the “Dragoon”; they flipped the grotesque creatures over and looked back in awe at the young man riding slowly toward them.
Brendel looked down, inspecting the burrowers with their shark-like mouths wide open, filled with densely packed sharp teeth. Their blood oozing from the corners of their mouths was light green, in stark contrast to the warm-blooded creatures on the surface—these creatures inhabiting the lowest levels of Jorgandiggen were actually a type of lizard. If possible, Brendel would prefer to hunt down these underground thieves in winter, as per tradition, they would retreat their active range during the cold season. However, the pressing time did not allow for such tactics, and besides, the weather was gradually turning cooler, not the best but certainly not the worst situation. At his gesture, the mercenaries poked at the long-dead burrowers, showing him how tightly they had gripped their spears with their already stiffened claws.
“They’re a lower tier in burrower society,” Husher answered while observing the bodies. “It seems they left the elite behind in the inner defensive line. The further we go in, the greater the resistance we’ll face.”
Brendel nodded, though he held back the fact that this was actually good news. The increasing hierarchy of creatures from outside to inside indicated a natural distribution of monsters, similar to most traditional games—the burrowers had not yet formed a complete military organization, simply put, they were not an army but rather a tribe or some other form of burrower settlement.
One of the scenarios he had feared before attacking was that these burrowers, entrenched in the Bearman Forest, were part of a military organization that had come from the underground world to the surface, possibly a large tribe, or even a part of a plan to invade the surface from an underground city. This was not uncommon in Vaunte. Sometimes the inhabitants of the underground would covet the resources of the upper world; although plentiful beneath, the competition was also more brutal. The other possibility was that this burrower army had suffered defeat underground and fled to the surface to survive, but either option was far easier to deal with than a loose tribe.
An ordinary monster zone.
Brendel mentally categorized the burrowers in this forest. The corpses they found were mostly lower-tier burrowers serving as scouts on the outer edges, and there might still be burrower warriors and “Kamuru,” which means “warrior” in their underground language. Players referred to them as elite burrowers, akin to non-commissioned officers, boasting the strength of black iron peak. It could be said, aside from the shamans, they represented the burrowers’ strongest combat power.
However, they posed no real threat to him.
The mercenaries quickly sifted through the area like a net, uncovering more than twenty bodies, which aligned with Brendel’s experience. These bodies showed that the burrowers had largely not reacted in time; under the attack of silver-tier powers, their lives had been extinguished in a mere instant. Wind Elemental Spiders came from the Elemental Plane of Wind—Storm’s End; although not as powerful as black iron, their ability to control airflow was unparalleled, making them natural counters to burrowers who relied on smell and hearing to detect danger.
Following, the eyes distributed along the forest’s perimeter were systematically taken out, and Brendel, along with his leaders Juliette, Vurn, and Crenshia, led hundreds of mercenaries through this jungle with astonishing ease—hundreds of warriors cautiously advanced through the quiet afternoon woods, treading on the bright green ferns that rustled beneath their feet; some even carelessly snapped twigs with cracks that startled the surrounding tension. Fortunately, when the warriors nervously looked up, they only saw some nameless birds flapping their wings and taking flight.
However, compared to the warriors and swordsmen, the mages protected within the crowd were even more surprising. According to usual practices, they were the preferred targets for ranged attacks—anyone understood the importance of a mage on the battlefield. Yet for these mages, most of whom were merely apprentices and at best had the status of formal wizards, their self-defense abilities stood in stark contrast to their value on the battlefield, as if they themselves understood that they were among the favorites of scouts.
Another target was the commander of the army, but capturing them was often not as easy as bringing down lower-tier spellcasters.
Thus, these mercenary mages had become accustomed to being attacked; ambushes, surprise attacks, and stealthy shots, especially in jungle combat, were part of daily life. Everyone had nearly experienced injuries, and had witnessed many of their companions die before their eyes due to such attacks, some even having had their own brushes with death. Yet all of this paled compared to the eerie happenings they encountered today. Those scouts of the burrowers seemed to have disappeared, and watching the midday sun filtering through the gaps in the leaves and casting light across the silent woods, these mages even wondered if this was some sort of public-funded vacation or another activity.
But it certainly wasn’t; they had all seen those burrowers’ corpses.
All of this could only be attributed to the young lord’s magic, with rumors suggesting he was a high-tier summoner, perhaps even surpassing the boundaries between gold and silver. However, for wizards, since this mysterious craft had been passed to mortals by the People of Silver, respecting strength had become a deeply rooted habit—especially with Charles among his subordinates. The two golden-tier wizards were privately referred to as the Twin Council by the mages within the mercenary rank. This was because, in the habits of the craftsman wizard Bud, the wizard council symbolized authority and the power of leadership—thereby Brendel’s prestige unwittingly built up among these spellcasters.
Yet, as Brendel watched the mercenaries, swordsmen, or those carrying long swords, battle staves, or longbows, shields, and staffs, instinctively merge into small groups as they traversed the grassy clearings, he felt no sense of achievement at all. While the outcomes of the Wind Elemental Spiders were astonishing, none of it came without a cost. He silently calculated the consumption of spells: it had been nearly an hour since they had entered the forest, and merely maintaining the Holy Sword card and one attack charge had consumed 13 points of earth elements. He checked his elemental reserves, finding that the 32-space earth elemental pool had already been depleted, leaving only 7 spaces remaining.
Brendel frowned and quickly sent for the guide.
The ragged man approached him, raising his head to see the young man’s expression was not good, thinking he might have upset him somehow, anxiously asking, “Sir, is there something wrong?”
“How much longer?” Brendel asked, somewhat impatiently. In five minutes, he would have to forgo paying the next maintenance fee for the Holy Sword card to return to his deck, as he needed to reserve funds for displaying this card again; the real battle would have to wait until nightfall or even the early morning.
Upon hearing this, the guide breathed a sigh of relief, “We’ll be there shortly, sir; just around that grove. The lumber mill is located in the valley—”
Before he could finish, a gurgling call echoed from ahead; this was the predetermined signal. Brendel raised his head to see the mercenaries ahead stop and squat down. Then he noticed the soldiers patrolling the edge of the forest look back in this direction and made a hand signal.
Brendel recognized the signal—enemy spotted.
However, the Wind Elemental Spiders had not reacted, nor had any experience prompts appeared, indicating there were likely many enemies, and the dragoons would not be able to finish them off with a single strike—thus, following his secondary orders, they lay low. Brendel was slightly taken aback, then dismounted and walked toward that direction. Seeing their lord dismounting, Juliette, Vurn, and Crenshia exchanged glances, then climbed down from their mounts to follow. Then came Husher, Xi, and Romaine, with the last business lady showing nothing but cautious curiosity in her eyes.
The forest became sparser, and Brendel soon reached the edge of the clearing.
“Sir!” One of the mercenaries noticed Brendel approaching and immediately respectfully called out. He looked back just in time to see his former commander Crenshia nodding at him.
Without saying a word, Brendel scanned the area ahead, where the forest formed a slope leading down to the valley the guide had mentioned—the logging site in Firburh was situated by the riverbank. Originally, it was just an open space with a few wooden huts and a larger sawmill, but it had clearly transformed drastically. The burrowers had turned it into a fortress. They built walls of stone and wood along the riverbank, raised watchtowers, and the earthen structures piled behind the walls were faintly visible, and Brendel counted, estimating there were probably over two hundred burrowers residing here.
“So many, this is troublesome,” the red-haired female mercenary leader observed from behind, frowning. She glanced at Brendel, fearing he would order them to attack recklessly.
However, Brendel observed several groups of burrowers patrolling along the riverbank, each led by a deep red-skinned burrower. Those were the Muruk, and if they recklessly attacked, the enemy would likely retreat into the fortress, wasting the advantage of surprise. He turned back to Antinna and Husher, responding, “What do you think?”
“Let’s use our old mercenary method,” Husher replied.
“Old method?”
Brendel raised his head. (To be continued; for more details, please log in for additional chapters and support the author for legitimate reading!)
