Chapitre 34: Encounter
In the evening, everyone had completed their daily training. They were now even more determined about it, they were working hard. They decided on their schedule for the next few days. When will they wake up, when will they train, eat, and sleep? It was decided that they'll be leaving in 5 days, as staying for more than 5 days would cost a lot. Day and night, later they began training even in the night time. By doing so they were working on enhancing their senses. Training got even harder on day 3 when they were being trained blindfolded, only to enhance their instincts. Nuae and Aeneas knew that only a few days weren't enough, but for their first adventure, it could work out. Every day, they were being tested to their limits, but no one complained as they knew that staying weak wasn't an option now. The training was toughest on Theodore as he lacked great Vitality that others had and also strength, with only one blow he'd just get blown away. He was working on enhancing his own body in order to get better. But a tight schedule of just 5 days wasn't enough for that, even though he trained his butt off.
After the last training session on the fifth day, Nuae told everyone to get some sleep. After everyone slept, for some reason Theodore couldn't sleep. He felt uneasy, so he worked up to take a stroll nearby. He found a perfect spot to relax. He was able to feel every muscle on his body, his hands had a few cuts and to hide them he used torn clothes, from which he just did a bad job at bandaging. He unwrapped the piece of cloth and washed the cuts with water. It was stingy but he endured it as cleaning those wounds was also necessary. He was sitting on a rock nearby the banks of a small river, from where Catherine used to bring water for them. In the nighttime, the moonlight was flooding the entire plane and on the still surface of the water, he could see his reflection. He took off his shirt and wiped himself, he had a few cuts here and there. After cleaning his body he put his legs in the water and sat there looking at the distant moon. For some reason, he felt that the moon was looking back at him and was also trying to say something. Weird enough he even heard a voice in his mind, humming a beautiful melody. Listening to which his heartbeats slowed down, his mind got in a relaxed state, he could feel his surroundings even better. The only thing he didn't notice was that his pendant was emitting a very small amount of light, resonating with the melody and a shadow which was looking at him curiously from the other side of the stream.
Clang! A sharp noise of metal slashing was clearly audible in that calm and deep forest. As expected, they'd crossed paths with patrolling dark elves and now had to plow their way out. If they were still the same from before, it'd have been a difficult job, but now they had leveled up quite a bit. Just a while ago they had scouted a wide area of forest with the help of sylph's new skill, 'Shy View'. With the help of it, they were able to locate quite a lot of patrolling parties of the dark elves. The closer they were to the dungeon, the denser the parties became. They planned to use Naomi's charisma to attract attention, basically using her as a trap to lure the parties in. Once they were in the range, everyone would go berserk. This now was their first attempt and they'd successfully lured in a party of 8 elves, and now a close-ranged battle took form. Everyone except Catherine and Naomi had an advantage at such close-ranged encounters and thus they were playing the role of support. With sylph using her buffs, the offense was at an advantage. "Damn these mortals, how can they fight that swiftly?" One of them cursed while fighting off a female assassin. "Told you not to go close to that girl Damn, I knew it was a trap! These filthy mortals dare to go against us?" Another one replied while running through the bushes. Out of 8 who attacked, only 3 were able to move, others were pinned down. Before they could run away, a shadow suddenly appeared in front of them, blocking their exit. Her eyes were glowing red in the dark region and gave a killer aura off. She held a heavy-looking short-sword in both of her hands, a signature stance of paladins. With a smirk, she pounced on them. They were prepared to take her on by now but little did they know, she was a mere distraction. Two shadows hurried through the branches of the trees with extreme silence. As Naomi kept them distracted, both of them jumped just behind them, from the branch above. With a soft landing followed by a roll and a quick jump, in mere 2-3 seconds, they had their daggers on the necks of those elves. A moment ago they thought the situation was on their side and now it was the opposite. "Whoa! You guys rock, just a few days of training and you are all in such good sync." Nuae stepped out of his stealth while dragging two more dark elves. Both Theo and Vivian were out of breath, in the longest time, this was the most pressure demanding run they'd ever done. Only one thing was left, getting information out of those dark elves before barging in. No one in their right mind would blindly enter an occupied territory, especially one that was occupied by the underworld's forces. They were quite formidable, and in their own territory, they'd easily outnumber any party. Now interrogation was something that Catherine held the specialty in. As the first hand of the ruler of a kingdom, she was taught all such practices. After a while, all those dark elves were seemingly on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Cadeaux
-- Cadeau
reçu État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone