Sylas leapt from tree to tree, using his kunai as footholds.
It was seamless, the three silver kunai rushing through the air in weaving patterns. By the time Sylas had jumped from one tree, there were already two more footholds waiting for him ahead.
He skipped over all the beasts swiftly, and because of that, he traveled even faster than usual, closing in on the village in the distance in less than a minute and with hardly a sound other than the THWACKs of his kunai piercing into the trees. But beneath the howling and chilling winds of the night, this hardly left an imprint on the world.
Soon, he came to a stop, looming high in a tree that was just about 50 or so meters from the village. He wrapped an arm around the thinning bark of the tree, balancing on a single foot as two kunai hovered behind him. Both he and the tree swayed in the cool wind, stoic and unabashed.
The village was much more substantial than what Sylas had seen from the gnoll village, so much so that he thought that he was looking at a human-led village at first.
This wouldn’t be quite what he was looking for, and would be quite disappointing. Even if there were benefits, he’d have no intention of massacring a village of humans; that was beyond his bottom line.
The walls were formed of a thick, triple layer of logs that left their surfaces thick enough to walk around. There were four outposts facing four different directions, protected by what looked like large crossbows: ballista. The village’s depths were quite large; it must have been at least 100 meters from end to end.
It was by no means small, and unless he was wrong and the system had begun to spawn monstrous villages as soon as the Trial ended, then it was unlikely that this village was anywhere near new.
Sylas pulled out his map and double-checked something.
In order to scour the region, he had chosen a weave method that would take him about three or four trips to complete. He thought he’d be able to finish in a day, but the sudden hard-fought battle had delayed him.
This village was outside the range of his first weave zone, so that explained why he hadn’t run into them. But what wasn’t understandable was this village’s reaction to such things.
This village was still relatively close to the Africor Continent portal. They should have noticed a change in the behavior of the animals they caught for food and sustenance.
So why did this village look completely normal without any changes to its behavioral patterns?
That was when Sylas remembered something.
‘Cassarae was sent home like the rest of us after the Trial ended. She said that her village would go into a bit of a dormant state until she returned, though this dormancy would only last for a short while. If she left it without a care for the timer, then there would be consequences.
‘Is this what they call a dormant state? Where everything just functions as though nothing at all has happened? In that case, doesn’t that mean that I have no ability to conquer it?’
Sylas was having these thoughts when one of the patrolling guards crossed by one of the lit torches. When Sylas got a good look at the humanoid figure, his gaze couldn’t help but narrow.
It was hard to see in the darkness, and even if there was a full moon, there was no way to tell. It seemed to perpetually snow in this region, so the skies were always cloudy, obscuring much of the light.
However, Sylas was still able to tell thanks to the torch that this was no human.
It was a large, burly, pig-like thing, with pale leather-like skin and a snout that seemed coughed in snot and dried blood.
There was what Sylas could only describe as a serrated meat cleaver on its back, and as it marched across the thick log walls, it carried around a crossbow that was ready to fire three arrows at any time.
—
[Grunthor (FF-)]
[Level: 7]
[Physical: 84]
[Mental: 72]
[Will: 87]
—
‘A Level 7 acting as a patrol? How deep do these waters run?’
Sylas decided to take the slow approach. He circled around the pig demon village from 50 meters out, staying out of range of their lines of sight and traveling high in the trees even above their wall lines.
In the end, he could only conclude that this village was nothing to be trifled with.
Just patrolling the walls alone, there were four Level 7’s. After checking the crossbows that hung from their outposts, the ones much larger than the ones they carried around in their hands, he realized that they were devastating treasures.
They took a while to load and took the hands of two at that, but when they fired, they could easily blast a 1000 Damage-resistant shield to ash, let alone the fact Sylas’
On that note, there were even more guards in those outposts. He couldn’t see clearly at first, but after using his night vision goggles, he realized that there were actually two Level 8s apiece in all four outposts.
This sort of lineup just to guard the village painted a completely different image.
One of complete confidence.
The good news was that they were all FF-‘s. But since they were just guarding the village, something told Sylas that there were even stronger monsters on the inside.
‘We could always take this one step at a time.’
Sylas’ mind began to churn. He had already made up his mind.
He was going to have to take another risk.
A cooling sensation ran through his mind, his eyes floating like two green orbs of death in the night.
