Hello companions and welcome to Chapter three of SEoE. is there something wrong with this chapter? The words look… wrong, like some letters are too close or far away in a word.

You know the worst thing i have encountered while writing this? The lack of information. The fucking 'wikis' if you could call them that. Kuroinu has ZERO wiki's to help people like me write fanfiction about it, the best i can do is a Trope page and some fucking site called game idea wiki, which for some fucking reason is more of a wiki than the trope page! Its stupid of me to be complaining but trying to find information for this series thats not repeated or 15 WORDS max is like cutting the nail off a dog. Other words a bitch. And I still don't have all the info I want/need.

I don't own Koruinu, terraria, or anything else that may be mentioned. But if you like it please leave a review.

(Snow elf)

Arc 1, chapter 3.

Lieutenant Herald resisted the very tempting urge to sigh and go to bed as she read the reports her guards had given her, more specifically the detachments designated healer Abbott gave her. The girls that 'elf' had brought in were about as healthy as one cold be after having a very unpleasant stay in a Yeti camp, which was to say not very well at all, but according to Abott once they got those young ladies to a proper church-haven the nuns and priests would be able to handle the situation much better than some guards. The detachment's cook had also brought some… it wasn't bad news so to speak, but according to Kenzie the book that the elf left had some recipes that if they were true could completely revolutionize the food industry, and in turn the army's ration as a whole.

Kenzie was going to run a few spells on it to fact check it first but she trusts her cook.

The spells weren't that impressive, two spells really, one checks to see if the food was still edible or if it was bad and the other checks how long it has until it does go bad. The first spell is drilled in every Guard of Ansur while they were in basic training over the course of three days with cooks getting the advanced version taught to them. Some guards whined about it until the higher ranking officers put their foot down on the matter.

Just as Herald was debating whether or not to make a cup of coffee the door was thrown open by a frazzled looking Kenzie. The normally very composed blonde had a mad gleam in her hazel eyes that just screamed danger to Herald, not that it would stop her from doing her duty of course.

"Hello Kenzie, I presume that since you're here that your spell has just finished." Herald said in a dry tone, already mentaly crying about her missed coffee. "How bad was it?"

"That's the thing lieutenant, that food that elf brought? The brown kinda flakey tubes? Unless the spell has decided to somehow miraculously fail for the first time in nearly 200 years." Kenzie walked up to the plain desk Herald was sitting behind and slammed her hands on it, her mad smile growing a little bit bigger. "Won't go bad for the next 10 years minimal as long as it's in a cool environment. Heck the ones we got right now supposedly won't expire for the next 25 years! Do you know how good this could be for the food industry of Ansur!"

Herald stilled in her seat when she said how long it would take for the… what did the elf label it? Pemmican she believes, meat has a bad tendency to rot after a few days so most SSA guards were issued either cheap cuts of meat or salted meat for their marches with very little else for their daily ration. Normally a ration kit was some beef or pork, a bag of hardtack, some beans or rice, and some cracked wheat. A guard of Ansur would be issued 3 of those bags per day and if they were doing a long march they would be given a mess bag which was just a large version of the ration kit only with actual vegetables and spices in it.

What she just got was a lifelong wish in her mind, if it was good to eat, what did it taste like.

"Kenzie, grab the rest of the detachment for lunch and bring some of the meals the Elf brought." Herald ordered as she stood up, walking over to the fireplace she poured some water into a pot and set it over the fire that was keeping her warm.

"At once lieutenant." Kenzie nodded her head before rushing off to grab the rest of their detachment.

It was maybe 7 minutes before Kenzie returned with the other 3 members of their detachment. Eli Ferna, Beatrice Jicker, and Rose Abbott all saluted their lieutenant upon entering the building. Each of them removed their hoods showing their faces.

Eli was the youngest of the group as evident by the slight traces of baby fat on her cheeks, something that was partially covered by her brown hair. Her blue eyes showed curiosity as to why she was brought into a group meeting with the rest of the detachment. She was also the squad's Shielder.

Beatrice was the second youngest and had black hair and sharp hazel eyes. Eli and Rose always remarked that those eyes say more than she let on, as she should as the Archer of the detachment. She doubled as their navigator as well.

Rose was the squad's second Shielder as well as the healer, something most wouldn't have guessed by her scowling face. With her short temper and Red hair she lived up to her namesake with her short temper and thorny retorts.

Kenzie entered a minute later with two bags, one full of the food the elf dropped off and the other containing a mess bag worth of food like vegetables and bread. Plopping the bags on the table she nodded to the lieutenant

"You asked for us Lieutenant?" Eli stated pleasantly.

Herald nodded and gestured for them to sit down on the chairs near the room's table. Once they were seated she started.

"As you may remember, 3 days ago an Elf came into town and dropped off 11 of our missing people back from a Yeti camp. Along with them she dropped off a few bags of unknown foodstuff." She said as she added a few more pieces of wood to keep the fire going. "Our resident Cook here has just given me her conclusion on them. So far the report is good, extremely so. Kenzie if you would."

"According to the Expiration insight spell all cooks are taught," Kenzie paused to pull a brown tube out of the bag and laid it on the counter. "The food she left behind for the Yeti's victims is able to last for years before they go bad."

"That's good right?" Eli asked.

Kenzie nodded and pulled out a knife. With a quick few chops the log of Pemmican was chopped up into half inch slices. Then those slices were quartered and thrown into the pot. Following it were a bunch of chopped carrots, onions and potatoes, plus the spice cube that would add flavor to the stew.

"Yes it's good, unfortunately thanks to the efforts of the latest subgeneral of our army group has decided that when it comes to the latest food developments that are discovered the 5th army group is to be the first ones to try it." Kenzie told them as she started making the stew, barely able to keep the irritation from covering her entire face. Granted a small snarl still found purchase but that's neither here nor there. "Since the closest caravan group is almost 9 days from here it's up to us to test, verify, and record our findings regarding this 'pemmican' meat preservative. Then we either send a courier from the village to the nearest guard outpost, who will in turn send a military courier to Ansur."

"Wait, is that why the 5th army group is nicknamed the iron stomachs?" Beatrice exclaimed in confusion.

"Yes it is."

"That's a horrible nickname."

"Better than it could have been." Herald shrugged. "Once I heard there was an army group called the stinging pixies."

"What happened to them?"

"According to what I heard they blew up their main keep, this was like 70 years ago back when Army groups had to maintain the warkeeps on the front lines before we had massive supply lines to help with the war effort, after filling up the basement with a few caravans of oil and some other stuff." Herald tapped her chin as she remembered the rest of the rumor. "From what was recovered from the keep it is believed a massive monster horde attacked it and the only solution was to burn it all."

"That kind of sounds… not mentally well."

"They weren't, the stinging pixies' other nickname was the hellfire pixies because they carried a ton of incendiary supplies with them and it wasn't uncommon to see an entire monster fort burn to the foundation when they were in the area." Herald shrugged at the dumbstruck expressions the other girls were making, it was a well known thing outside of those who looked into their history. Well those who can read at least. In Fact the story was more of an open secret than anything. Plus from what she heard from the grapevine, aka gossip from other guards, there is talks of remaking the stinging pixies as a dedicated Fire-assault unit like the War-bird units our allies in the far east have."

"Huh you learn something new every day." Kenzie cocked her head as she checked the nearby clock. The stew should be ready by now. Standing up she checked it visually first, so far it looked great, not too thin looking but not looking like jumbo. Grabbing the wooden spoon from nearby she dipped it inside and made sure to get a nice big spoonful of broth. Blowing on the steaming mixture to cool it down she sipped the liquid. "Well it's not… bad per say, but it's ready. Could one of you get me a few bowls?"

Eli went and grabbed the bowl from a cupboard along with the appropriate utensils while wose grabbed some bread rolls to eat with dinner. The blonde quickly scooped up the impromptu stew into the bolls and started handing them out to the rest of the 13th iron stomach Asure detachment. It was late enough that the group wasn't worried about missing supper and to be honest, some nice warm stew sounded amazing to them.

Before eating they clasped hands and thanked the reborn goddess for granting them another meal before digging into the stew. Each took a few spoonfuls before dipping a piece of bread into it.

"Well… it's not the worst thing I've ever eaten. That probably belongs to the salted pork I ate last month." Herald said hesitantly

"It was better than most of the meat given to us." Kenzie sighed before taking another bite of the actually good tasting Stew. "Granted this means we'll have to now send a report to high command."

"What does that mean?"

"A lot of bullshit I really wish I didn't have to deal with. There will be a very good chance that when high command gets word of this, we'll probably be redeployed to a Warfort so we can give them our personal experiences in person. They'll want to run a few tests on it first so I wouldn't be surprised if the next mess kit we get still has salted meat in it." Kenzie moved her bowl of stew before resting her head on the wooden table mentally crying at the thought of the small mountain of paperwork she was going to have to do later. "Which is a shame because I could see this being a big hit with the other troops while being deployed."

That elf probably didn't have to deal with this.

Elsewhere.

"Achoo!" Syko sneezed in the cold night, nearly stabbing herself with the knife in her hands. "Ugh, I'm going to have to get home soon."

Ignoring the fact she may be having allergies she turned her attention back to the task at hand. mainly cutting off a Yetis head without her sword. She snarled the tiniest bit as she continued to slowly saw through the monster's neck muscles wishing she could use her sword but the last time she did she missed and sliced its skull in half, which was the opposite of what she wanted to do. So, sawing it was.

Blood splattered across her face as she cut the neck vein making her curl her lips up in disgust. Rather than the coppery smell she was expecting of their red blood she was smelling something more like foul meat, not rotting but more like you left a raw steak out on the counter overnight and the smell was getting to you while you were asleep.

It made clean up duty that much worse when they were burning the bodies, having to smell such a horrid body burning was torture on her senses. Finishing up with cutting the neck she grabbed the fur and stood up, slowly blood dripped out of the veins that were exposed to the elements. With a short walk Syko was at the now broken gate of the camp she and her Ents had destroyed just days ago, only most of the camp was destroyed now after Tanglewood and Huskbusk had torn down each of the buildings and shattered the walls. There was no sense in leaving a mostly usable fort for any wandering Yeti groups to stumble across, which was exactly what happened while they were gone.

A small group of 6 Yetis had made the ruins a shelter while they were gone, probably hoping to restore it after some time raping and pillaging the locals. When they had returned to clear out any resources that they might have left behind to trade with Lyrewood the Yetis attempted to kill them, hence why there was a fresh Yeti corpse for Syko to use.

With a quiet grunt, Syko slammed the monster's head on a spike Huskbusk had grown, further adorning the 3 other heads.

"What do you think Tanglewood, is this enough to keep the monsters from trying to make another camp here?" she asked her first 'child', staring at the scattered corpses that were now acting as decorations.

"If anything, it will make them more hesitant." Tanglewood responded, poking the dead monster's head to straighten it out. "It might be more productive to simply find and destroy any camp we find, slowly weaken them or I guess it would be death from a hundred cuts."

"The saying is 'death from a thousand papercuts, Tanglewood."

"But we're not using paper to kill them?"

Syko sighed in exasperation. She knew he was right, there was little these monsters kept worth anything. Mainly the little bits of jewelry the monsters kept from their victims and a few human sized weapons, so using these camps as a way of both getting more supplies and materials was a waste of time. The foodstuff, thanks to the cold, was being moved to her boat to be stored in a metal locker if it hadn't spoiled by the time she got to it. The elf was probably going to either sell a good chunk of supplies to Lyrewood or some other town and keep the rest for her to eat. It would be better than burning it to deny the monster it or letting it rot.

The big problem with these monster camps is trying to find them, thanks to the harshness of the Everwinter tundra it made fort building a bitch and a half when you account for the general coldness and the beast that stalks these lands. The frost beasts were amongst the most dangerous in her opinion. The beasts reminded her of the abyssal chickens from DnD only furred and with four legs, super disturbing to look at but tasted great when they were smoked… look don't judge her ok, meat isn't the easiest to get here. Anyway, because of the danger of her home most monster camps are out of the way of each other, the head Yetis of these camps prefer to try and make their camps closer to the Alliance settlements along the border with only a few strongholds to house the larger groups of monsters. This was something she figured out when she was bringing the survivors to the Town.

IF, key word, she wants to start taking out all these camps. She's going to have to have a larger base to house supplies and materials to house whatever people she can save from the monsters. Currently she can't do that, the boat is made to house supplies and maybe 30 people if she pushes it and squeezes them in the cabins. The huge amounts of materials in those special crates means she should be good on metals and jewels for a while. Not that it would be comfortable for anyone. Which means she needs to make it, not that she has the resources to do so. Syko explained this to her Ent, who nodded along, and how she's not even sure how to begin with any of this.

"Why not take it one step at a time, mother?" Tanglewood asked, making Syko blink in confusion. He apparently saw even with the hood and mask covering her face so he continued. "Obviously me and my sibling are far from suited to finding these monster camps, these beasts could probably spot us even if we tried to be stealthy, so you would have to do it yourself. Well you could probably use a summon to help you but that's besides the point. You want to remove these monsters from the Everwinter tundra, our home, that means we need to know where they are, how many there are, the biggest strongholds, everything. That's what you told me from your world, information can turn the tide of battle and having none is the equivalent of chopping off your foot right?"

Syko nodded with a frown, she didn't want to keep secrets from her Ents so she told them basically everything she could remember from earth. It was convenient that she had a book on the art of war hidden in her room to help out with some things when it came to fighting. Kind of.

"Then our first task in this extermination should be to find every Yeti camp in our general area, which should be a 50-100 km area starting with the boat, then gathering the resources to keep track of the victims we save. You said if we had a better way of transporting them it would make it easier to get them to Lyrewood, so let me and my sibling knock our branches together while you're gone to come up with a way of getting a better wagon or something to work." Tanglewood started walking away from the ruined camp, Syko easily keeping up with him silently marveling with how through he was sounding with how he fights. "You can also put markers on a map for any major, medium or minor resource area such as iron, copper and any sort of Abyssal raptor nest/other beasts for future hunts."

"You make a lot of points Tangles, I just… I really don't know what to do." Syko's shoulders sagged, she knew she was the farthest thing from a military strategist, back on earth she was becoming a veterinary assistant for fucks sake. She as so far over her head "The thought of leaving those poor girls in these filths hands fills me with disgust and so much fucking rage… that I want to do all I can, but…"

No more words needed to be said between them. Tanglewood may only be a few weeks old at best but thanks to the magic that birthed him and his mother's willingness to help him learn could be around an adult in mentality. Granted, Syko might have also thrown a book or 3… or a dozen… At him and his sibling to learn from while they were saplings. Magic made for one hell of a cheat if you ask her. The snow was crushed beneath their steps as they started making their way back to their home.

Back at the boat, which I still have to name.

After a three hour ride using Grim, Tanglewood didn't have anything to ride; sadly, Syko made it back to her home. The boat still had large icicles hanging off the side and the mast looked like a jagged rake with all of them hanging from up there, she should really knock them off before they hurt someone, plus the snow was starting to really climb up the sides of the ship.

"Just more things to add to the list." Syko grumbled to herself, it's like more was added everyday. Looking around she quickly spotted her elegant child standing near the bow doing something with a swarm of leaves. Making her way over she called out. "Leafette there you are, did Poisonbark get everything she could from the Yeti?"

It was rather hilarious to watch an Ent jump, Syko had to admit. Leafette glared at her mother who simply smiled before sighing.

"Mother, please do not startle me like that, I was doing something delicate and now I have to start all over again." Leafette glared at her again, she had been doing that for nearly 30 minutes dang it. "But for your information i believe my dear sister finished persuading the cur not that long ago, if you wish to find her Poisonbark should be over by the burning bit disposing of it."

"Thank you, good luck with whatever you're doing." Syko truly meant it, she liked seeing the things they could create.

It didn't take her that long to reach the Burning pit, which was used to dispose of random things like rotting wood, corpses… a few other things she can't remember. She built it a little ways away from the ship as a safety precaution after a pile of broken wood started building up from the exercises she was doing, learning to swing a weapon without hitting herself or testing a spell, and she couldn't use all of the wood for a fire in the ship. It became convenient after a few stray monsters came a little too close to comfort and they needed to get rid of the bodies. Hence why Poisonbark was using it to burn the Yeti's corpse.

Her child was busy throwing a broken log in the roaring fire, prompting Syko to bring her scarf up to keep the smell out. The fire crackled as she got closer, a welcome respite from the cold.

"Poisonbark, your sister tells me you finished getting everything you could from the Yeti." she called out, catching her child's attention. "What can you tell me?"

Her masked child looked at her before bowing her head, shame echoing from her posture as she spoke softly. "Unfortunately mother, the beast was of little use to your efforts. The only knowledge I was able to gather, while worth its weight in salt, was only the location of two camps and a Nest of abyssal raptors the camp hunted for food. Anything else must have been kept in the mind of their chieftain. I am sorry we could not give you more."

"Poisonbark, this is more than we had so don't feel bad about it, Ok." Syko patted her child's arm in an attempt to reassure her. "How about you mark it on the big map and I can go scout it in a few days, after I get my supplies ready. This is a big help in getting these camps out of our home."

The Ent nodded and started making her way to the boat, where Syko had put up a hut to house a map big enough for the 6 of them to use. Thankfully her children didn't need a room to sleep in so she didn't have to make one for each of them. Not that she wouldn't but this meant she had more time in her hands.

Still, Syko sighed. She had a lot of ground to clear and mark in the coming weeks. So much to do and so little time. The Elf might as well have some bags to carry supplies beheld by Grim while she's at it. It will help keep her inventory Sigil stocked up in case she needs it.

END.

Alright chapter three is done! Sorry if the ending was lackluster, I didn't want to leave it on a big cliffhanger like some authors do. This fucking thing took forever to get to the point i liked, i'm going to explain something real quick. My original idea when creating this was to have Syko become a guard of one of the kingdoms, most likely Ansur because that's the closest kingdom, and become a high ranking officer by the time the main events happen. I actually attempted to write out a basic frame script for me to use for this story which was about… 1000ish words or so. Now that it's been weeks since I posted this I came to realise that the sheer amount of world building I would have to do in order for that to work, the army building, the basic training, the politics, and the amount of towns I would have to make to fit was simply too much. Plus trying to find a way of justifying Me/Syko going with a far less equipped army with post-Empress of light tier equipment was… not working. If anyone is interested in how that is going to work I can post the ARC idea at the end of the next chapter.

Instead I'm going to be working on a different way of doing this, one that I want to say works better and is explained while I'm talking with Tanglewood. That being said it's still going to take time for me to do that so chapters are going to be slow for a bit while I get a frame of that made up.