"Young miss, Lady Kayda, how may I help you today?" A man knelt before us, looking at us like a puppy waiting to play with its owner.
"As you can see, we found two towns working together and want to investigate it ourselves," I said, gesturing to the cloth Kayda held.
"Blood Bear and Blood Wolf towns, yes, I see. Hmm, but how are they working together?" The man said, looking at the clothing and thinking.
"Why are you saying it like that?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.
"You see, young miss, the bear and wolf towns aren't very close to each other; in fact, there are 4 towns between them." He explains, making both Kayda and me look back at all the dead corpses looking for more symbols.
"What?"
"Ah, it seems that the situation is on a bigger scale than we thought," Kayda said, chuckling in annoyance.
"Yes, it seems we don't only have two towns working together but a minimum of 6. How many monsters live in one town?" I asked while pulling more symbols of other corpses.
"That might be so. Each town averages about 50,000 monsters, young miss. Must I call for reinforcements?" The guy asked respectfully, looking at Kayda for an answer.
"Nah, we will take care of the main problem. You guys can do the cleanup afterwards," I said, grinning at Kayda.
"You mean you are taking care of it," Kayda said, pointing at me.
"Ah, if you say so," I said, shrugging.
"I see. I will let my commander know." The man said, running back to the base.
"So, were you serious when you said I need to take care of this alone?" I asked, a bit worried.
"Yes, I will help with a spell occasionally," Kayda said, which made me sigh.
"Okay, hmm, now that I think about it, we didn't actually get any info about where they are," I said, hitting my hands together.
"Well, shit. Hmm, let's go towards the mountain for now." Kayda cursed, pointing at the mountain in the distance, annoyed.
"Okay!" I said happily, skipping towards the mountain over the monsters' corpses.
"Did you get a level even for this?"
"Of course not. You know how hard it is for me to level up."
"Right, that is true."
"Ah, here they come, and way more than before," I said, hearing a horde of footsteps running towards us.
"Hmm, well, enjoy," Kayda said, making the distance between us.
"Sigh, yeah, will do," I said, glancing at her before looking at the direction the monsters were coming from.
Creating a claymore In my right hand, I flick my left hand, making wires shoot out towards the trees in front of me.
'Let's take the initiative in the attack.' I thought about pulling the wire back as hard as I could, ripping 8 trees out of the ground, and getting tied up by the wires.
Pulling it again, I dragged it closer to me.
"Hup." Jumping up in the air, I brought the bouquet of trees with me, starting to spin it. Looking down, I saw the horde of monsters with 2 ogres on the front line.
'Well, this helps.' I thought, bringing down the trees onto the unsuspecting ogres, crushing them instantly.
Arg!!
Ugh!!
Grrrr!!
With the monster sound going around, I jumped onto the ground from the trees, beheading the closest orc.
"Man, that took way too much stamina," I said as I dodged two blades and then stepped forward to kill both of their owners.
Moving to the left, I dodged another blade, but the owner died with another swing of the claymore.
"It's boring," I said, dancing between the monsters, beheading them as I moved forward.
Although it was boring somehow, it was also quite the experience of holding up a horde on my own.
Especially if you thought about how little I knew about the claymore. Mom did teach me every weapon, and my class does help with that. It was still a sword I used the least.
The other thing is that while fighting them, I noticed how their strength changed. The more I go deeper into the horde, the stronger the monsters get. Although the change was minimal, it was only their gear that improved.
'I can't believe that monsters are capable of creating armor,' I thought, looking at the nicely designed gear on the corpses. I thought, looking at the nicely designed gear on the corpses.
After a while of genociding, the monsters started moving away from me instead of running into my reach. This strategy did not benefit them, as a sage specializes in ranged combat.
Creating a bunch of ice arrows around me infused with lightning magic, I ran hellfire on them, starting with the monsters the farthest away from me.
With the arrows hitting their backline, they had no choice but to start engaging in close range again against me.
"Gha grr." The monster grunted, looking at me.
Hooorrrrrrrroooooo
Upon hearing a war horn in the distance, every monster stopped moving to look in the direction from which the horn came.
'A retreat horn?' I thought heavily, doubting my assumptions. Though I still stopped my magic.
"Gah!" The monster said, turning around and running away.
"Hmm, what was that?" I said, still swinging at the monsters that were in reach, not intending to run after them.
"Kitsu, let's go. Something exciting is happening." Kayda said, appearing next to me, flying in the air.
"What was that?" I asked, looking up at her.
"It's a war horn," Kayda said curtly, not taking her eyes off the monsters in the distance running away.
"I thought so, but what does it mean?" I asked again, throwing the claymore on the ground.
"War," Kayda said, narrowing her eyes at me, annoyed.
"I guess that's true," I said, embarrassed.
"Hmm."
"So this hoard is normal?" I asked to have some clarification.
"Hordes of monsters do occur, but not at this magnitude." However, even if their numbers were more, they are weaker than normal hordes. The situation is becoming increasingly problematic. Kayda explained, grumbling at the end of her explanation.
"Do you still think we are dealing with a stronger monster?" I asked hesitantly.
"Yes and no. I think there is still a new monster in this forest, but someone decided to use this opportunity to make a mess of the forest and Draig territory." Kayda explained, starting to walk in the direction the monsters ran into.
"Hmm, I see. Do you have any suspects?" I asked, following her.
"Well, I do have a suspect that might be working with the main culprit," Kayda said, coming to a stop and holding up a piece of armor with a stamp on it.
"Hmm."
"Look here, here is another one," Kayda said, pulling a chest armor off one of the goblins.
"Hmm, stamps are like crafting seals or something, right?" I said, a bit surprised at seeing the same stamp on the cheats' armor.
"It's also from the draig territory," Kayda said, sounding disappointed.
"Hmm, is that so?" I said, looking at the seal, not knowing how she knew that the blacksmith came from our territory.
"Well, take a few bodies with armor on so we can see what their seals say," Kayda instructed, pointing at a bunch of corpses for me to put in my storage.
"Okay," I said, running around and throwing at least a hundred corpses into my storage for later use.
"You're done."
"Yes, we can move on again," I said, nodding at her.
"We go and watch the war, of course," Kayda said, grinning.
"Hmm, okay, where is it, though?"
"Should be this way," Kayda said, unsure of herself.
"Okay, then let us go and see bloodshed," I said, grinning.
"Hmm." Humming, Kayda nodded and ran in the direction we heard the warhorn, with me following behind her.
[7 min later]
"Right, this seems bad," I said, looking down from a small hill at the thousands upon thousands of monsters in a giant clearing obviously made for this occasion.
"That's an understatement," Kayda said, sighing heavily.
"I thought the few thousand I killed a while ago was a lot."
"That was a lot if it was one town."
"Ah, shit, how long has this been going on?" I said, grumbling.
"Looking at this, way longer than the reports say?" Kayda said, sighing again.
"Haha, now what?" I said, laughing awkwardly.
"We see what happens. This is obviously a war between two intelligence entities. We need to know who and what they are."
"Alright, then, we will have our picnic now."
"What?"
"Yeah, when we got halfway through our tour, I would have let us rest and have a picnic," I said, smiling happily at Kaydas' surprise.
"Huh, that might have actually been quite romantic."
"Thank you. I actually thought of the idea. Didn't make the food, though. You know I am bad at that." I said, a bit embarrassed.
"Yes, I know. Don't worry about it."
"I am not," I said, finishing the picnic setup.