Swamps in Silce

The chant continued for minutes as the professional soldiers were lined up perfectly with the road as they fit exactly twenty people per row and continued to march down.

Leon continued to stare at the organized, symmetrical stream of soldiers and thought it was quite intimidating.

After almost five minutes, the professional soldiers at the start of the marching formation were already far down the road.

Crushing Fang didn't do anything for three minutes until the group of around 2000 soldiers was far into the distance.

Taking another look down the road and seeing no one, Crushing Fang continued to move through the thick woods towards where the soldiers came from.

"Let's hurry. Those people were probably the closest battalions to Framas. There'll definitely be more."

The group continued to move through the forest until they could finally see the end of the dense woods. It took them about half a day to come this far and Leon realized that Crushing Fang was not wrong.

Through that time, the group had to pause a few times as soldiers were always passing by. Their sizes were usually between 100 soldiers to roughly 500, however, there were none that were as big as the first group.

Also, Leon realized they were all looked like veterans or professional soldiers, which he could only attribute to the fact that the 'invasion' was so sudden that they wouldn't be able to draft citizens that fast.

As night fell just in time, the group was at the forest edge and had to figure out what to do from here.

Crushing Fang looked at Aurora and whispered.

"Your up now. I don't know much past this point."

Aurora hadn't left the capital too many times, but she had to sit through numerous lessons of geography teachers rambling on about the landscape of Silce and the other Coalition states. So she was quite knowledgeable despite her lack of hands-on experience.

"By road, it'll be about two days from here. However, we could go through the swamplands which the road avoids, but there will be beasts. That'll only take us around a day from here."

Suppressing a laugh, Crushing Fang gave Aurora a rub on the head and pointed towards the group of elites.

"Don't worry about beasts. We'll take care of that."

The group that followed Aurora's instruction eventually found the swamplands that she talked about and entered.

They kept Aurora in the middle of the group with Leon who was 'protection' even though he knew that he really couldn't do much if anything at a C-Tier or perhaps even a high D-tier level beast attacked them.

Before they entered the swamplands, Aurora reminded everyone about the dangers.

"Remember about the monsters and beasts, even professional hunters who hunt these swamps don't dare tread near the middle. In fact, I think I once heard father say that the only reason the government didn't do anything to the strong beast was that they didn't leave their territory near the middle of the swamp."

Unbeknownst to Aurora, Crushing Fang and the others were intrigued about such strong beasts and wanted to go through the middle now.

After getting the general direction of where they should be going, the group went through the swamps.

They tried to keep on land as best as possible and stayed away from the water like it was lava.

Although Leon and the group couldn't tell, they were slowly drifting closer towards the center of the swamp, and unknown to them they had entered the territory of a strong beast.

A pungent, dirty, sulfuric smell wafted through the humid air. Sweat drops had already appeared on everyone's face, while Leon felt like his entire back was drenched in sweat. As his leather boots were starting to succumb to the viscous water of the swamp.

The group was forced to walk through the water that was heavy and difficult to move through like honey or cement, but luckily the water was only up to Leon's shins.

Unfortunately walking through the swamp became incredibly difficult and taxing on Leon, even with his improved physique, which was why Aurora was on the back of Crushing Fang who didn't seem like the weight and dense waters affected him.

Finally seeing land again, Leon sighed and started to speed up towards the water. All the others had already reached land effortlessly and were waiting for him, meanwhile, a few warriors slowed their pace so that Leon wouldn't feel awkward.

Only a few meters away, Leon started to move more chaotically which caused ripples through the water.

Soon a shadow so small and unnoticeable appeared along the waters and started to move towards Leon and the remaining warriors.

Most people would've never have seen it, even if someone pointed it out towards them. Fortunately, Crushing Fang was not most people and his instincts told him something was wrong, and saw the shadow.

"Beast in the water!"

All the warriors took out their blades and even Raging Bull and Little Lighting, who were waiting for Leon alongside him in the swamp, managed to take out their weapons.

They all stared at the shadow that was approaching faster and faster and noticed that more shadows were appearing in the water, meanwhile, Leon didn't want to find out how powerful the monsters were in the water and started wading through the heavy waters with brute force.

As the shadow approached Raging Bull and Little Lighting, who were backing up towards the land, it jumped out of the water and lunged at the two warriors.

When it broke the water, Leon was panting as he lied on the dirt ground just out of the water and got good luck at the beast. It looked like a crocodile with a long torso and scales meanwhile its maw was huge with serrated teeth that looked like sharp knives.

Its body was huge and over five meters long as its tail had large spikes on it.

As its deadly maw filled with daggerlike teeth closed in on the two warriors, who were a few feet away from land, Little Lightning almost scoffed and stabbed the beast three times in its open mouth in the blink of an eye.

Leon didn't know exactly how powerful Little Lighting was, but since he was in this squad he had to have either great fighting capabilities or potential.

The strikes pierced into the beast's mouth and it roared as bright green blood started to flow from its wound. Before they could do anything else, the shadows that were following the first beast revealed themselves and soon another twenty beasts jumped out of the water.