Night Culling

It was now night. Timir decided to make camp in the clearing where Fol's body was, he lacked the stupidity needed to search for an unknown enemy in the night especially when there's a high probability of the enemy being a demon. Some of his men had decided to give Fol a burial, thus he joined the pyre that was placed at the center of the clearing. Some low-level demon races are known for eating humans therefore they didn't bury their friend in fear of him being dug up and becoming a snack.

Timir sent a glance to Imad's direction and the other shook his head. 'No movement' Imad's ability allowed him to detect any movement within a certain range. Timir had relied on him the moment he came back to Fol's body to keep track of the surroundings but Imad had gotten nothing. That left Timir with 4 possibilities; the first one is that the enemy is already dead and they're wasting their time, the second was that the enemy is injured to the point that it can't move or passed out, thirdly the enemy decided to wait it out and didn't move the entire afternoon or lastly the enemy had escaped already.

He didn't like the 3rd option and considered it unlikely. The trackers had already told him that the enemy was injured and he had seen the blood, the red blood bordering on purple did not belong to any human he knew. An injured enemy couldn't escape Imad's range in the minutes it took to fetch him.

He didn't want to go with the first option too soon especially without evidence. Not only would it be betraying his comrade but it might bring trouble and distrust in the group. Nobody wants to follow a leader who doesn't care for their lives, especially in a group like his which is mostly held together by a strong sense of camaraderie. He had to spend some time on this before giving and hoping the enemy is dead.

That left Timir with the second and third option. Both implied that the enemy is somewhere near them. What Timir didn't know is whether the enemy could move or not. But he wouldn't risk it.

Aelar and Imad were the best trackers he had, but Imad's ability tired him a lot so Timir gave him the first half of the night to rest, he'd be in charge of surveillance for the second half. Surveillance for the first half thus fell in to Aelar's hands. Timir gave him two hours of rest where everybody still had energy and their emotions had yet to die down. He didn't believe in his own surveillance skills but he still could handle two hours and most likely the enemy wouldn't risk it attacking so early.

The enemy was most injured so it probably couldn't fight well. It wouldn't fight all of them at once even if it was at its peak, it can only try to skim down their numbers to increase it chances of not being found tomorrow. Their enemy was most likely to be the demon the guys saw, its vision was probably much better than them. The night was its only chance therefore they have to survive the night, come morning and they'll be at an advantage.

With these thoughts Timir took some rations walked up to a tree and sat down leaning against its trunk. He bit down on his rations with his eyes fixated on one direction and his ears desperately trying to hear more than the sound of his chewing. Eventually two hours passed and Timir got someone to wake up Aelar.

Aelar stood up as if he'd never slept, stretched his body a bit and immediately went up a tree. Seeing this Timir yawned and closed his eyes to sleep. He wasn't fully asleep, he could still hear the sounds of guards patrolling and the sounds of leaves rustling in the wind causing his paranoia to almost wake him up fully.

He didn't know how long he had been sleeping for but the steps of the patrols got louder and he could hear people shouting.

This alarmed Timir so he woke himself up and asked the nearest person what had happened.

"Three patrols went to relieve themselves in the forest, it's been around 20 minutes and they haven't come back. There's no answer when we yell for them."

Timir didn't consider his man weak, if that was so they wouldn't be in this forest robbing warriors who have the necessary strength to go to the Plains, or at least get pretty close to them. Anyone who could take down 3 of his men without a noise has got to be at least initial knight stage. That means head on only 7 of his men could fight this enemy. This was getting more troublesome than he would have liked.

Timir ordered everyone to come back to the clearing and not go look for those they've lost. This was met with some protests but he couldn't care about this at the moment. He called for Aelar and asked him for a report.

"They were seen going to the east, according to Yun they mostly went straight for a bit over a hundred meters and stopped there for a while. She most likely stopped paying attention to them at that point and when they didn't come back after a while she didn't find them when she looked for them again."

"Over a hundred meters in the middle of the night, she shouldn't have allowed that especially with an enemy nearby."

"How likely is it that the enemy is knight stage?" Aelar asked at that point.

Timir smirked at the question, satisfied that Aelar had come to the same conclusion as him, "If those three are really dead, almost guaranteed. But of course it they were careless upper squire stage would have been enough."

"What should we do?"

"What can we do? We probably have a.knight stage enemy within a couple hundred meters of us who's probably skilled at assassinations. Only the eight of us can handle knight stage cultivators. We have to babysit 23 of those below knight stage and I'm not gonna split us up to have some look for the enemy while others guard the camp. Just because we already being slaughtered like lambs doesn't mean that we have to deliver ourselves to the slaughterhouse."

"We're bandits, we're always kill people with surprise attacks and numbers. To think we're losing in pretty much the same conditions."

"The men aren't weak, we had a pretty bad battle yesterday and the men got drunk and slept late celebrating their victory and survival. Woke up early in the morning to start marching and the late afternoon was spend thinking about more dead comrades. They're tired physically and mentally."

"Simply said they make easy pickings at the moment. Our enemy is rather lucky ain't it?" said Aelar before climbing back up his tree.

Timir sighed before going back to lean against his tree. He has to save energy in case there's a fight tonight.

Timir was disturbed once again by a yell coming from one of the trees," Magic!"

The yell had barely faded when someone fell from one of the trees hitting the ground with a thud. Timir was sure that he heard more than a few bones breaking. Timir ran up to check on him, it was Aelar. He was broken but still alive, a good doctor and a couple months of rest should bring him back to his peak. He was saved by his knight stage constitution, if it were anyone else they'd be dead or close to it.

Timir's sense of crisis rose at that point, someone was able to attack Aelar from long range is at least upper mid-level knight stage. The number of people on his side who can deal with such a person aside from him is only 2.

Timir was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of another person crashing on the ground. This guy wasn't as lucky as Aelar, the skull had split open and brain matter could be seen leaking out and mixing with the pool of blood forming below him. It didn't take much thought for him to order the rest of his men to get down from the trees. Once everybody was down he counted them quickly and was relieved to see that no one was unaccounted for.

He had lost seven people and Aelar was out of the game. Aside from him there were six knight stage left. To an enemy who was probably bordering on upper level knight stage everybody else was cannon forder. But Timir didn't want to lose his men without any certainty of gaining anything, they were bandits, they're willing to give their life as long as there's treasure to be had.

There was no treasure to be heard therefore Timir gathered everyone in the clearing and woke up Imad. He couldn't lose any more people so he had to make sure they survive the night. He needed Imad to keep track of any movement, if the enemy had started attacking it will most likely keep attacking. If the enemy makes any large movements in the next two to three hours Imad would know then they could attack as a group, Timir was doubtful that the enemy could outrun him and once Imad locked into your position you can't hide unless you escape his range.

Imad activated his ability while everyone else waited uneasily. Everyone was jumping at the slightest noise and it didn't help when after a while something came wheezing in their direction so fast that Imad barely managed to warn them. Most couldn't react in time and the object caved some guy's chest and exploded into multiple pieces killing a few while injuring many. Chaos spread among the bandits at that point and those with weak willpower who could still run ran into the forest. The enemy wouldn't chase them all, those who died could blame their own luck.

But Timir knew that they didn't need any luck to escape, they had trapped their enemy and it couldn't deal with their numbers. Their running away meant it would be easier for it to escape, not only would there be less people searching but they'll be more people to confuse those who are. Unluckily for the enemy Imad already knew where that object came from, he led the way and Timir and the rest of those who were knight stage followed.

They had barely ran a hundred meters when a dark figure rose up from the ground and ran away from them. Its speed surprised Timir, it was slower than expected, that speed was at best at the level of initial knight stage not the mid-level he was expecting. Maybe it a trap, that's the conclusion Timir reached after thinking for a while.

They're were around 200 meters away from the enemy and closing in fast. In roughly a minute they had almost caught up, it would have taken less than half if Timir weren't so careful. The figure in front of them was rather short at around 1.5m, the black hair that reached just above the neck suggested its female and the vermillion red neck meant that it definitely wasn't human, it was either a monster or a demon, they couldn't be sure. It was wearing what at best could be called rags, with tears here and there and some injuries and scars could be seen. They all noticed this but they didn't care, they only wanted to kill it therefore Ingrid didn't waste time before throwing a flame javelin in its way. It evaded by jumping forward causing the javelin to strike the ground just behind resulting in an explosion that catapulted it forward. It tumbled when it reached the ground, Timir didn't miss the red light that covered one of the stones where it landed so he jumped over it. Others also noticed and jumped over it but some missed and one particularly unlucky person stepped on it causing it to explode destroying his leg and injuring the two people closest to him including Imad.

Timir cursed in his mind but didn't stop for them, with 3 people down he only had 4 knight stage refiners left and he wasn't willing to let the enemy go. The other two were of the same mind as him and at almost the same time they sped up to catch the enemy who had yet to get up to speed. That's when Ingrid sensed something, weak bursts of mana coming from the enemy's feet. A movement spell. If the enemy relied on a movement spell and could only get this fast, they had vastly overestimated their enemy, the enemy is probably not even upper squire. Ingrid noted another point, the enemy's mana manipulation is terrifying. She was so close but she could barely feel anything, the enemy was probably a skilled mage with that level of skill but aside from the rock thing she hadn't seen it attacking with any spell. She quietly shared her observations with the others. They decided to press on but Sil and Timir who had good magical defense would be in front.

At that point Ingrid sent another javelin in the enemy's way, the enemy took a sharp corner dodging behind a group of thick trees. The javelin exploded when it reached the ground but Timir and the rest ignored that as they followed the enemy around the tree, careful of the traps that the enemy seems to like and they found one in the form of a large rock glowing in red light on a parabolic flight through the air. They all understood that it'll explode when it reaches the ground destroying anything in the vicinity. They saw the enemy jumped behind another tree and they decided to follow suit, but the rock dashed their hopes when it became even brighter while still in the air and exploded sending fast projectiles which killed two and injured the other two, some smaller trees snapped while the larger had cavities in their trunks.

Sil and Timir survived but Sil couldn't move, as for Timir the rocks lodged in his thigh and abdomen and that broken rib made it difficult to move. But he was stubborn, after checking up on Sil for a bit and pulling out the rocks in his body he continued to run after the enemy with a slight limp. But in the end he was still faster, in roughly 2 minutes he had caught up to the enemy who had stopped and was looking at him.

Timir was appalled, he hadn't expected the source of so much trouble to be a succubus, judging from its horns and size it was probably a lesser succubus. It was breathing raggedly and it pupil seemed to be dilated showing that it overspent its mana. He didn't know whether he should laugh or cry, he could feel it, the succubus in front of him had a constitution at the bottom of mid-level commoner. He could kill it 10 times over with a single punch, and that would be holding back. The only reason that it had managed to run this far probably was the movement spell, it was of pretty high quality if it could close such a gap in constitution. He didn't know how something so weak managed to kill so many of his men but he didn't care anymore, he just wanted to kill it to hide his disappointment.

With bloodshot eyes Timir covered the 10 meter with a single jump and threw a punch so fast that the succubus could barely react but it still managed to jump backwards to mitigate the force of the punch. It landed roughly over 15 meters away and started coughing mouthfuls after mouthful of blood. It probably had severe internal injuries but Timir didn't want to wait for it to die, he wanted to get over this and go back to his men. He walked slowly towards the injured succubus but he stopped when he felt a sense of danger when he was 4 meters away from it. He stood there carefully watching the succubus.

It eventually stopped coughing and slowly stood up, but now it had two daggers in its hands, a bluish silver dagger in the right and a snow white dagger in the left. They released a weak aura, he couldn't tell what it was but he instinctively knew that the white dagger is dangerous.

His instincts told him to wait until the succubus ran out of the mana and stamina necessary to maintain those magic weapons but the succubus didn't give him a chance.

It reactivated its movement spell and closed in on Timir with the silver dagger held close to the chest to defend and the white one held out to slash when it got close enough.

Timir saw no technique aside from that, the succubus in front him never took a step on the martial path in its life, which he found understandable considering that it is a succubus. How it found a twin pair of magical daggers, he doesn't know, but the fact that it didn't know how to use them made things easier for him.

His guess was proved right when the succubus slashed at him for the first time, there were so many openings that Timir had trouble choosing which to exploit. He took his Ulfberht which had a longer reach and slashed at the succubus' shoulder. It was moving too fast, it couldn't dodge and Timir didn't think much of it when the silver dagger in the right hand went to block his Ulfberht, even if it managed to block him it would be knocked away and be on the passive, he'd just have to kill it at that point.

Without a sound the Ulfberht was stopped by the dagger without any trouble excluding the slight trembling of the succubus right hand.

Timir didn't have much time to be surprised by this as the white dagger continued to near, it gave him a sense of dread so didn't even think before jumping back a few matters. The succubus stumbled a bit when he jumped back but it stabilized itself while maintaining its momentum and within a couple of steps had covered the distance. This time the silver dagger went for stab while the white dagger was held to the side ready to slash at the first chance it got.

Timir responded by twisting to the right while sending a sideways slash towards the succubus' torso. It showed its prowess in using its movement spell at that point, it jumped back one meter dodging the slash and with little delay sent a stab at Timir's now exposed back as he tried to control the momentum of the slash. But Timir was more skilled at fighting with his body than the sword, when the succubus got close enough he landed a roundhouse kick on the succubus' chest causing it to cough blood but it still had enough strength to stab both daggers before being sent flying almost 20 meters away, it couldn't even pull out the daggers.

Timir put his foot on the ground before looking at the daggers sticking out of his leg. He raised his head to look at the culprit. 'No way its gonna stand up after that.'

The difference between mid-level commoner and upper level knight was a strength difference of more than 20 times. Even if that wasn't a proper kick but the strength difference made it nearly impossible for the succubus to survive, so when it struggled without success to stand up Timir admired its willpower before closing in to finish it off.

He had barely taken 3 steps when his body started hurting all over and his muscles stiffened. He looked at the dagger still sticking out of his leg.

'There's definitely something wrong with that dagger, ' that was Timir's last thought before he collapsed to the ground and his heart clenched signifying the end of his life.