The hordes were aligned horizontally, little by little the monsters were forming a kind of stripe. I kept watching without understanding.
I was strong, besides me Jasmine and Jasly had great strength. Dain had great skill with swords, Tobias could handle himself with the dagger, Elys had excellent aim, Nima could help the group with defensive magic and enhance strength and speed status. But I still felt we were at a great disadvantage.
The strongest horde was without a doubt the basilisks, the orc horde was not far behind, since it had at least twenty orcs.
What I felt was a mix of fear and a bit of nostalgia. I definitely didn't want to die, since there was no one here who could use resurrection magic. But at the same time I didn't want to run away.
They were standing still, as if waiting for the first attack.
"This is really strange, they're acting differently than they should," Elys said.
"Acting differently how?" Malta asked.
"Monsters don't just stand there watching without doing anything, normally they attack without even waiting. Besides, there are basilisks there, and on the other side goblins. Basilisks eat smaller monsters, it's strange they're working together. And there are so many, they wouldn't stay gathered like that staring at us, they would definitely kill each other just to see who'd get our bodies."
"Should we run?"
"There's no way, even if they don't attack right now, if we run they might chase us, some are faster than humans. So the only choice is to fight."
A horn sounded, the noise seemed to have no fixed origin, it shifted direction. I couldn't tell if it was moving around or if there was more than one source.
"The sound is fading," Dain said, he was on full alert, his attention fixed on the monsters.
Malta was trembling with fear, Jasly was trying to give some comfort, she could ease the sense of danger, but it wasn't helping.
The monsters began to move, not toward us, they were walking toward the Capital, a horde of flying monsters passed right above us, but we were completely ignored by them.
"What just happened?" Dain asked, he looked more relieved, but still on guard.
"I have no idea, does the horn have something to do with this?"
"Did anyone manage to figure out where the sound came from?" Elys asked.
"No, it felt like it was in my head, for a moment I thought I was imagining the sound, but I was wrong."
"I thought it was coming from there," I pointed where the monsters had been, "but then I noticed it was coming from my right, then from the left, and the sound kept alternating. It seemed like it had more than one source, at least I think so."
"I noticed something like that too, but I can't explain, the sound felt very close."
"Better stop trying to figure it out, we should just keep moving before the monsters come back."
Jasly was right, the best choice was to abandon the camp and look for another place to spend the night.
"Do you prefer to find a nearby spot or walk three hours and sleep near a village?"
We chose to go to the village, it would be a little safer than sleeping in the middle of the road. We were very tired, so we dropped the plan and decided to sleep right away, we set up camp and took turns on watch, except for Malta, he slept through the night, he was paying for that.
The next day we ate bread and drank milk and went toward the village Malta wanted, it took a while, but we arrived and slept in a rented house. We were still tired and lost a lot of time walking to the other village, if we hadn't given up, it would have been even more time wasted. I don't like to see it that way, but that was the truth.
The next day Malta started negotiating with the villagers, this village had many things for sale, it was prosperous and Malta had a lot of money, so he managed to make a big purchase. He had several item bags, all of them seemed full, which was very interesting, and also curious, since item bags have a large storage space.
I wondered how much he had bought. But I stopped thinking about it when I remembered the direction the monsters had gone. They were heading to the Capital, I noticed that right away, but I didn't think about the implications. The Capital was about to suffer an attack and we could have stopped it.
No, we would definitely have been badly injured and might have lost a member. But we could have done something to warn them, only I wasn't sure if the message would reach before the attack.
"Thinking about the attack on the Capital?"
Jasly could read me.
"Yes, at the time I didn't think about it, I feel like I could have done something, I just don't know what."
"We couldn't have done anything, we're too weak compared to all those monster hordes."
"You're absolutely right, but even so I feel like I should have done something."
"Better stop thinking about being a hero, you'll just end up making everyone sad, especially your new girlfriend."
She was teasing me.
"She's not my girlfriend, we just went out together, nothing more."
"On a date," Jasly added, she was really provoking me.
"We need help."
Dain was calling us to tie the item bags to the wagon, an escort mission with side tasks. Nothing new.
We finished quickly.
The way back was calm, no problems, just some orcs and basilisks along the way, but they were normal hordes, so we managed to defeat them quite easily. With these monsters the mission was worth it, since they can be sold.
We were near the Capital, after a while we started to see the walls, they were destroyed, most of them had collapsed, several monster corpses were on the ground. There were many, maybe ten times more bodies than the number of monsters we had seen on the way.
Several adventurers were removing and sorting the corpses, on the right side were the monsters that weren't food, on the left side were all the monsters that could be sold.
On the wall there was a large bloodstain and on the ground the body of a human, covered with a white sheet.
The butcher would have a lot of work, that's what I thought before realizing how dangerous the attack had been. Luckily the adventurers managed to prevent the worst, but it was still strange.
"Let's report our arrival and what we saw yesterday."
She was right, this had to be reported, even if it sounded like a story out of a fantasy book, I hoped Kalil would believe the report, but it would be difficult.
We entered the city and went straight to the guild, Malta had already signed the mission receipt, so we could go straight to Kalil's office.
The guild was a mess, some adventurers were lying on the floor, they were injured and the healing mages were exhausted. I used area healing magic and managed to ease the adventurers' wounds.
Jasly finished the job, she had an absurd amount of mana, so she could handle it more easily than me. I was only useful at the start.
We went to Kalil's office as soon as Jasly finished. Some adventurers offered silver coins, but Jasly refused. I also refused, though I wanted to accept, I just felt too embarrassed. I don't want to be known as the greedy brother.
We told him everything we had seen.
"This is really strange, but everything has been strange these last few days. I'm not sure about anything anymore…" he paused for a long time. "I finished the work in the lair, managed to take down all the monsters and some of them had crystals, like the orc king you brought me, I'm not sure, but I think these crystals are giving more resistance to the monsters, that's why they were healing. Some monsters that attacked last night also had these crystals. Maybe there are more monsters like this, I don't know."
He was tired, it looked like he hadn't slept at all, actually that was the case.
"You did the right thing continuing the mission, you wouldn't have been able to stop those monsters alone, in fact, if it weren't for Silas, Thalya and Bedelia, I think we'd be in a much worse situation."
I lay down on the bed, I missed my room and my bed, I just wanted to sleep, Jasly used magic and we were clean, I was too tired to bathe and I hated sleeping dirty.
I blacked out, but it wasn't long before someone knocked on the door and woke me up. I hated being woken up, actually I got used to it, but I usually had a decent amount of sleep, being woken before enough rest was the worst thing someone could do to me. Maybe only losing to being killed, in that case I don't even need to say I'd hate it. Even though I had already died more times than anyone, but always against my will and I always cursed Bedelia, at least in my thoughts.
I gathered courage and opened the door.
"Good afternoon, son," Silas said.