565 Divide and Conquer
The battle on the fleshy hill didn’t take too long to finish. That said, the elven warriors were still visibly exhausted.
“Wow…” “That was…” “Thankfully… Thankfully… It’s over…” They were also all visibly and audibly relieved.
“Hahaha” Some of the elves even seemed to find it amusing that they were still alive which wasn’t at all surprising.
Despite the ‘Victory’, the rate of injury was nothing to scoff at. If one were to assume that all the coming battles would share a similar pattern then one could only conclude that further expedition would be impossible.
‘The elves will obviously increase in power as they grow accustomed to their weapons and armor but…’ Nothing said that the enemies they faced further in would remain as weak as the advance party they just encountered.
While Ed did plan to get involved in any battle from hereon, he did still have to acknowledge that things would be a little difficult. After all, his current body wasn’t at its strongest either.
‘It also feels like quite a bit since I’ve faced a real challenge’ Ed could only hope his senses hadn’t been dulled by his stronger bodies.
Overall, the prospects of the expedition seemed a bit dim but Ed was admittedly still hopeful.
‘There are bound to be new things to assimilate in this place’ Part of the reason why his bodies were progressing at a much slower pace was the lack of new things to assimilate. Currently…
‘Status’ His status still lingered on the weaker side of things.
[Name: Edwa&!]
Type: Elf (Arid)
Health: 680/680
Mana: 211/211 (!)
Vitality: 4
Strength: 5 (!)
Agility: 6 (!)
Constitution: 6 (!)
Dexterity: 5 (!)
~Skills~
[Survivalist lvl. 0]
[Formationist lvl. 6]
[Alchemy lvl. 2] (!)
Most of Ed’s skills remained the same, the only exception being alchemy. Teaching the elves how to make formations ironically did not help him at all to improve in his formation skills but rather helped his alchemy.
‘I did need to make the ink for their brushes after all’ He also had to teach them the basics of it which based off the level of his current body’s skill… it was plainly obvious he was still in the learning process.
That aside, Ed had assimilated a couple of mostly non-green things here and there. One reason was that there weren’t too many green things to assimilate in the desert but the other was that he planned to lean into the strengths of his body this time around.
‘Elves are nimble and occult creatures’ An elf is less suited to hand to hand combat than say an orc. That in of itself didn’t explain Ed’s new attributes however as he had basically gained an attribute in everything except health.
‘Arid Elves are more suited for hand to hand combat than the normal elves however’ A side effect of being able to adapt to things better and living in the rough sandy environment was developing a stronger body. As such, a well trained arid elf could very well beat an orc without a single weapon.
Of course, it went without saying that a good hit from an orc would leave an arid elf vulnerable and dizzy but the odds that happening were slim to none.
With the goal of leaning into his strengths, Ed had both intentionally and unintentionally invested in most attributes.
Even among the battle styles suited for elves there were plenty of options and Ed planned to lean more towards the agile warrior type so he prioritized strength and agility. Dexterity could of course also not be lacking and everything else Ed simply saw it as a bonus. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
‘Having a lot of health is important but only if you plan on getting hit’ Ed had won far too many battles by getting beat up, it was always nice to have a break from pain.
Whatever the case, this new style Ed hoped to blossom was, to emphasize, new and therefore risky. The expedition would have to progress one step at a time.
“One of you take the injured back, the rest will continue to follow me” Ed said to the elves. Alolvi nodded in response and appointed one of the elves to take the others back to the in construction base.
The appointed elf got going with about a third of the group and the confidence of those in the group immediately plummeted. Could they survive this journey further in? What would happen if Ed backed out of battle again?
They didn’t want to find out, but they also didn’t want to find out what Ed would do to them if they refused to proceed. The elves were thus forced to move forward with stoic expressions.
***
Life was fickle, the emperor of the Volcan Dynasty, Mite Volcan, thought to himself as he scoured the battlefield.
Right, the battlefield. The intimidation tactics Mite had employed turned into a proper war as the Galeburst Dynasty decided against sitting back and taking the blatant disregard he was showing for them.
“Your Majesty, the casualties on our side seem to have lessened from our previous battle” An advisor to Mite Volcan came and said.
“That’s good, but how many casualties did we have?” Mite Volcan responded.
“Well… We lost a little over a thousand men, we have yet to verify the exact number” The advisor said with a tinge of embarrassment.
There had been various scuffles in or at the vicinity of the Galeburst mountain ranges and all of them had deaths in the thousands. This scuffle was one which was close to falling into triple digits and was thus seeing as a positive sign but Mite still frowned.
“I might have been too hasty…” Under the pressure from the great fire dragon Pyre, their plans had to be brought up but Mite still felt things were progressing a bit too quickly.
The Volcan people lived at high and cold desolate mountains warmed by the heat of dormant volcanoes. As one could imagine, his people had a very isolated lifestyle where everyone formed closed communities.
This was relevant because it meant that the people of Volcan were few. The snow was thick and heavy up so high in the mountains so food was often scarce. This could be said to be a contributing factor to the small population but in fact not.
There wasn’t much to do outside so there was plenty of time for nightly activities. The average age of the Volcan people ranged between both surprisingly old and surprisingly young. What would happen if there wasn’t anything to feed the babies?
Well, the babies would die. The old people of the close knit communities would spew curses and the younger generation would take upon arms.
Dead children would breed dissatisfaction.
Similarly, if the war dragged on and the few people that he did have started to die en mass then… the dissatisfaction among the individual communities would quickly rise and a revolt would be the only possible ending.
Fortunately, Mite had managed to stabilize and instill loyalty into his populace so such a future was unlikely to occur for at least a few more months of battle.
Nevertheless, Mite was feeling… Oddly uncomfortable. Their casualties were maintained within the range of a thousand or two thousand which sounded bad but the casualties of their enemies were sometimes double or triple that number.
That was a positive thing but this put Mite on edge because the Galeburst dynasty he knew of didn’t only have numbers to back up their strength. They had a long standing history and thus had many never before seeing trump cards manufactured by their teams of extremely talented craftsmen.
Having seen the battlefield for himself, Mite retreated back to their campgrounds and met up with Pyre who he knew wanted to speak with him.
“Mite, now that you’ve seen what happens to your people without my direct interference I hope you have come up with a plan” The first thing Pyre told Mite were some arrogant words.
“Yes, I can understand now” Mite’s capture of the Bosque kingdom was not his feat but rather the feat of the dragon. As if that wasn’t enough, Pyre was injured by one of the Bosque Kingdom’s inhabitants.
Yes, the kingdom that Mite looked down on had managed to injure the mighty dragon that trampled its way to the capital. It didn’t sound like such an impressive feat but it couldn’t be any more so.
“Then I will take my leave” Pyre was never planning to be involved in the affairs of Mite all the way to the end. Though he would be lying if he said he originally intended to leave the mighty Galeburst dynasty to Mite’s lonesome. By now, things had undoubtedly derailed from his plans and the dragon utopia he sought seemed distant.
Since they were pressed for time, Pyre planned to charge by himself into the forest of darkness to get the clues and materials he was looking for. The future he feared was fast approaching but the human continent was still not unified, wasn’t that a recipe for disaster?
When times of crises came the worst enemy of mankind were themselves. As a creature that had lived for centuries, Pyre had seen many kingdoms fall to their own stupidity.
“Good luck” Mite said as Pyre started to stretch out his wings.
Pyre looked at the young boy, no, young man with golden hair who uttered those words. He scoffed before looking away and giving some words of his own.
“You’ll be the one needing it” Pyre then flew, he flapped his wings and took off in a second leaving a strong gust that blew the nearby tents into disarray.