We had to wait three days. In that time, we were not idle, of course. There had been one of the holes from the First Wave in the sky pouring out its fell minions onto this area, that was the whole reason the village had fallen. And since in that Wave, the boss had remained until its work was done, the monsters had been fully integrated into the world, and so they'd been setting up dens and things all over.
Souka was left behind for the moment, removed from the party, as Marie was added, to give her some boosts, and boy did she show it. The monster dogs, which Fast and Strong had described as being able to take down a mounted man, were torn apart by the mink's claws, and she ripped one's throat out with her teeth, the blood gushing down her front in a way that looked positively metal.
It also helped her to come to terms with things, I think. This place had been her home as much as anyone's, and she was saying goodbye to it too. Her way was to make it safer for the next person who came here, after we were finished. And if in doing so she could gain power, well, that was fine with her, as she helped us tear down den after den, collapsing tunnels behind us, or even blasting away mounds of wood and dirt assembled into crude dwellings by the beasts.
Finally, just after she'd hit level twenty-one, and her whole body had changed, filling out in all the ways that one would expect, and leaving behind the nearly skeletal thing she had been, we saw them on the horizon. Seventy or so bodies, a few mounted, most marching on foot, all of them armored and looking ready for battle. Even some baring standards, like some procession marching off to war.
I heard Marie growl, her back hunched down, her hackles raised, but I put my hand on her shoulder and she turned to me, her claws extended. She was ready for this, and she stared into my eyes, making sure I was, but I blinked first, and so as the entourage made their way towards the destroyed remains of the barracks, two of the mounted forerunners came up to us, sauntering to a halt, as I took charge and walked up to them.
"And what do we have going on here? Where are my miners?" said a femine voice, and I saw that the smaller of the two riders was a woman, her body looking…not quite as unseemly as I had expected. She was the Evil Queen, I knew that thanks to (Insight) and (Void Gaze) she even showed up as Red/Hostile in the latter. The knight beside her was her captain of the guard, who was yellow, but tinged with red, as were the knights behind them.
Oddly, she was a higher level than him, with the knight captain in the mid fifties, and her at later sixties. Their stats said those levels should be reversed, but then I remembered that most rulers tended to have the monsters brought to them to slay. A few high level kills over the years, courtesy of her troops or the Guild's own efforts, and she'd have a fairly high level of her own.
Thanks to that, and the Status Magic of this world, she looked far younger than her age, actually looking younger than myself, despite being a decade and more older. Still, she had a nasty look on her face that would have earned her a name from people back home. She was also staring at the group of us, going from one face to the next, before finally having her mount come right up towards me, staring down, opening her mouth, only to go red faced as I started talking.
"We are representatives of the Guild. We came upon this location, finding its inhabitants illegally placed under the Slave Seal, and have used our resources to free them, and transported them away. That is all that I require we do personally, and am offering you, in my capacity as the Hero of the Bow, the opportunity to spare the lives of your guards and others, if you surrender yourself to my custody," I said, standing straight up, and almost able to stare her in the eyes, given her mount wasn't that tall.
"Oh really? Ha ha ha, and what, pray tell, gives the Guild the right to tell me what I can do with the animals that live on my land?" she said, even doing the hand to the mouth gesture, showing her contempt for us. Marie, for a moment, looked like she wanted to show her what she thought of the insult, but I held out an arm, stopping her from advancing. Looking her in the eye, I motioned for her to stand back with the others, making sure they were standing in position, before turning back.
"This is not a debate, Your Highness. I will personally ensure, if you are worried, your person on transport to the Guild, and you can make your case to them, but I must insist you surrender. This is your final warning," I tell her, and she looks over her hand, still held against her mouth, before turning her mount with some contempt away from us, and looking at her captain of the guard.
"Captain, dispose of these fools, and find out where they took my property. We cannot allow the crystals to stop flowing from this mine, especially not if the Guild wants to stick their noses into our kingdom's business," she ordered him, and the captain, armor glinting, causing his face to go dark as he lowered his head, turned to her.
"My Lady, this one claims to be the Bow Hero, perhaps we can simply allow them to go on their way? The Waves have returned, and we cannot summon another in his place if he falls," he explained to her, and she scoffed.
"Captain, I don't care if he could personally end them forever. This fool wants to tell me how to run MY country, and that affront comes with a death sentence. Now do your duty, or I'll find one of my men who can," she said, not being subtle at all. Honestly, given Myne's actions, I was wondering if subtlety was an unknown art on this planet, but I didn't say anything, standing before my party.
He looked to his queen as he sauntered towards me, looking down at me from his actual warmount, so he did tower above me, even if I would have done so if he were on the ground. He seemed very upset, but didn't stop himself as he drew his blade, saying nothing, as nothing needed to be said. He might have asked me to back down, to do something else, to in anyway make this not happen, but it was apparent his queen was to be obeyed, and besides, we were a small group, and he probably assumed his seventy-two knights(and one Queen) would be able to do us in.
He was wrong, and the moment he brought the longsword towards me, I flinched, just for a moment, before there was a clang of steel, and a ringing of glass, as Ray somehow appeared between my person and him, stopping the strike from getting to me at all, as she crossed her blades in front of me, and then used them to knock him backwards, his mount even stumbling a little, through trained enough to not fall over.
That sound was the shot that should have started a battle, but even as he was tossed back, I raised my arm, shifting my bow into (Stage 3), using a single bow this time, mixing (Precision) and (Hydra-Line) together, so the seven head swung out around me, forming an almost halo effect for an instant, before I loosed with the bolts I'd told the others to expect, and then the others went to work.
Fast was…well fast, he moved first, and with his improvements to his style, he didn't even have to lean down to punch the ground, he just punched out, seemingly at nothing, as the spots on his arms appeared to flare outwards, consuming them. The ends of his fists would vanish, and then reappear, right behind the heads of one of the guards, and then, with a single blow, he'd end their lives, without them being able to make a sound.
Strong was far less subtle about it, he leapt into the air, his cape flaring out behind him like wings, before he landed with a heavy impact in the middle of the largest formation of the enemy, easily a score or more of them. He stood there, towering over them, as they turned towards him, before he unleashed a single blast of (Proud Roar), ending their lives as they were tossed backwards by the blast, their HP's emptying from it.
Shadow vanishing, reappearing in the air above the knights, and then seemingly hovering there, as he made a single handsign, and his stripes rose from his body, extending out as tendrils that wrapped around themselves, becoming spears that then fell into the midst of the group below him, each one slamming home, tearing through armor to pierce the brain and heart at the same time for an instant kill.
Ray, the moment the knight captain was off balance, charged around him, and his personal squad, the highest level troops in the group, found the catwoman in their midst. And then she started slashing out with her weapons. They seemed to leave not a single mark on the bodies, but their HP bars dropped to empty all the same, and as she landed just beyond them, they fell, almost as one, off their mounts.
Souka dealt with the captain. She was lower level than him, but it didn't matter. Her warhammer, and my boost? She was sporting an attack score several times all his stats combined, and she smashed him, first knocking his blade aside, then striking him in the chest, knocking him down. Before he could rise, or try to defend himself, she crushed his head with a single blow, leaving an impression of her warhammer in the ground.
Finally there was Marie. Like Souka, she had a single target in her eyes, the one she'd requested, and she moved, with a speed and ferocity that almost made you think the Queen was right to call her an animal. She struck with power, not simply killing the woman, instead knocking her from her mount with a powerful kick, sending her sprawling into the dirt with a cry, her armor providing her some protection from the fall.
Marie's claws weren't quite so kind as the earth, however, and she was on the Queen the moment she settled, and began to tear at her. She found little traction at first, her hands clanging against the metal, but soon you could hear it, the rip and tear of flesh, as those black things soon stained themselves red, and the woman's cries of pain began to increase in tenor and frequency.
Finally, she knocked the mink away, despite her bad stat spread, her 'Panicked' status effect giving her just enough strength to swing an arm and get her off. But her sides were bleeding through the armor by this point, and she found herself unable to rise, instead literally squirming across the ground, as Marie, surprised but unhurt, rolled to a stop, shook herself off, and then charged.
The woman, the pathetic, evil, vile hag of a bitch of a woman, came to a stop at my feet, she'd been close to me after all, and I was still standing where I had been when the knight captain had taken a swing at me. She looked up at me, her blue eyes shimmering, a few strands of golden hair hanging down from inside her helmet, and she mouthed the words surrender for just an instant.
I could have stopped Marie. There was enough time, enough for me to order it, and I think she would have obeyed. I stayed my tongue, and the moment passed, as the Mink leapt atop the Queen's back with enough force that I was certain I heard a crack. She suffered for only a moment with her broken bones, as Marie lifted her head up, and with a swipe of her claws, ripped across her throat.
It wasn't the instant death of the knights, perhaps she didn't deserve that mercy, but it was death, and after she finished bleeding out, her status sheet closed, and turned into an item sheet, listing it as her body, rather than as a person. When it was done, I looked around at everything. About two minutes had passed between the knight commander attacking me, and the Queen's death, with her taking around thirty-seconds to die after the rest. Not a bad kill rate, honesty, as I stood there, trying to be still, nodding at the scene.
"Gather their gear, we'll take it all with us. The Guild can probably salvage something from it, given the quality. What are the burial rites in this kingdom?" I asked, looking towards Marie and Ray. They looked at each other, nodded, and Ray stepped forward.
"They burn bodies here. It prevents them from rising again, and gives 'freedom' to the soul inside to move on," she said.
"Good, gather them in a pile. We don't have the time for individuals, but we'll burn them all the same. It's probably more than they deserve," I said, coldly, and then without another word, I walked over to help wrangle the mounts with Ray. The others got on with the grisly task, and soon were pulling the dead from their armored shells, or relieving them of their weapons, all of which was soon sorted out between gear that was still usable, and stuff to be scrapped.
The mounts, mostly filolials but with two dragons for the Queen and her captain, were trained, and thus, came to us easily enough, in the absence of any other command. They held no loyalty to the dead, and instead followed us once we'd grabbed their reins, and I motioned for us to bring them to the cart, where we tied them to the thing, keeping them from bolting as the others continued to clatter and clack away.
For all that the fight had taken minutes, the cleanup took hours, and I stayed away from it, exhausted again. My SP had gone to give my party(and Marie) the full boost. Ten times seemed to be my limit, as I was finding out, but it was…different. I had unlocked more things in the last few days. I could now graft other elements, even ones that they had no affinities with, to my targets as a bonus to whatever attack they made.
Thinking about all the ways I was improving helped keep my mind moving, as well as helping Souka sort through the gear. Most of it was mundane, probably just simple stuff, after all, these knights had been a mix of units, ones that the Queen had selected not for power, but because they wouldn't talk about what they saw. Still, a few hold out daggers had some nice enchantments on them.
And then there was the armor. The Knight Captain's was great, Masterwork level stuff according to Souka, with some good bonuses on each individual piece, and a set bonus for the whole thing, which was new. His sword was mundane, oddly, with only a slight boost to attack in and of itself, but the gemstone on the pommel, which looked grafted on, gave a percentile bonus to attack, one of the first I'd seen like that.
She pocketed that one for herself, thinking she could use it for something later. Meanwhile, the armor of the Queen was…strange. It was fashion over function, looking ornate compared to everyone else's, but offering no bonuses beyond the mundane on any individual piece. All together, though, the thing gave a skill. Like, there were things that could do that, but Souka mentioned it was rare to see it as a set bonus like this.
The skill was, to be blunt, minor, but seeing it was a unique feature, she loaded it right beside the much better Knight Captain's Armor. Better, by the time we were finished with that, the others had finished with her own task, gathering the bodies of the knights at the edge of the city, piled against each other, like stacks of cordwood. It looked almost like they were laying at rest, their backs against each other.
We didn't offer them words, none of them were worth it. They'd known what this was, they'd come here knowing what the Queen was doing, and giving it, at least through inaction, their approval. We took a few minutes to load the remaining armor and weapons on the cart, stacking it carefully, so it would all count as a single object to my (Fast Travel) skill, and then, just before we left, we set the fire.
I had intended on simply having Lucia firebomb them, but Strong insisted we should all take part. So I fired a (Flame Boon Arrow), from my Bow into each of them at once, causing their bodies to have an orange aura. It wouldn't last more than a few minutes, but it was enough, as they went around, and punched, yes even Lucia, the logs and dried grass that were placed between the bodies, causing them to start smoldering. I finished it off myself with a few skyward shots of (Fire Arrows), which arched upwards, before landing in the midst of the bodies.
When it was done, the smell of burning flesh and hair filled the air, making me cover my nose as I motioned for the rest of them to follow, taking only a moment to glance backwards, noting only that the group contained so many types of people, of varied races and genders, before I approached the wagon, and with a thought, I moved it, my party, and myself back to Sanctuary, back to home.
