Chapter 56: On the Edge
Black radiance in a pitch-black room was strangely noticeable, for the blue wolf easily found the crystal emitting it and sat down opposite of it. Two black eyes, resembling two eclipses, hovered to his shoulder; he turned to them.
"We can begin." Sounded in his head.
"Not yet." He answered, blue glow in his pupils.
"The humans turned to be weaker than we predicted, retreating now would be too suspicious. I have ordered for our army to slowly fall behind, but It will take some time."
"Humans, how disappointing."
"But I do not care, start preparations. This vessel is starting to rot."
The stork thought for some time, then said:
"After using your body to absorb light, I will help to regenerate. Now, start."
"If you insist, master."
The blue wolf suddenly twisted his claws into his chest, ripping it down the guts. His face twitched, long canines exposed, but he endured, and soon there was enough of "free space". The stork, meanwhile, was already lying dead, a black five-sided crystal before it.
Mo Pu took it, looked over, sighed, and thrust into his ribcage.
The world around him vanished.
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Ch!
"Do you like it, puppy!"
Li Song spat a handful of blood to the green ground, his punch connected with the head of a large two-meters tall hairy dog; the pitiful beast yelped and tried to scratch him back, but the next second his silhouette was several meters away.
"What? Can't get to me?" The youth made a mocking smile; the back part of the dog's body was deep in the ground, it could not move at all, scratching around, displaying its rather low intelligence.
"Get another!" Li Song's silhouette vanished, and the next second a bronze boot slide at the dog's head from above; its skull cracked and a white-red substance splashed around.
"What, that's it?" Li Song brushed a squashed eye from his shoulder.
"Then have a peaceful rest, bitch."
Suddenly, the ground that the dog was entrapped in turned into a quicksand and swallowed the beast whole in less than several seconds.
"Now…" The youth rubbed his forehead and jumped on the earth wall that was surrounding his battlefield with the dog. Immediately an arrow rang off his copper armor.
"Sorry Young Master!"
He paid no attention to the clumsy soldier and instead observed the whole battlefield, a strange expression on his face.
The beasts, whose offense was so strong when he just started fighting with that dog, currently were falling behind. He expected to see thousands of animals around the cage he made to stop them from interfering, but instead, there were only human soldiers, mostly archers.
"You bastards… Feng!"
Suddenly, he once again looked at the soldier that shot him, distinguishing the face of his servant behind the helm.
"Why the hell are you hiding in the back line, pretending to be an archer, you laziness knows no bounds! And why no one helped, I was fighting with that damn dog for an hour!"
"S-sorry young master, but you just said to kill enemies around your wall and not interfere…"
"I said it because there were so many beasts around that I was afraid they will break through my barrier. After you pushed them you should have helped me. How much time was wasted?"
He jumped from the wall and the next second it crumbled.
"Come here; tell me how it's going."
Feng, still holding a bow in his hands, ran toward Li Song.
"It's, it's going well young master. We are pushing them back, you see, General Du Fu slashes through beasts like a death-machine! Hey, look, they are retreating."
Li Song looked to where his silly servant was pointing, and indeed, the beasts' masses were running away, into the forest through the pits left from the formation field. The soldiers were celebrating the end of the harsh battle; happy shouts were filling the sky.
"Hm?" Suddenly, a black eagle landed at Li Song's hand, little white paper tied to its leg.
"Se!" Feng quickly untied the message and spread it out, but before he could read it, Li Song impatiently took it from him.
"…"
His expression was surprised at first, then even darker than previously.
"General!" He shouted, lifting his head and running to Du Fu, whose black armor turned into red.
"Have you noticed anything strange during the battle?"
"Of course I did, brat, do you think you are only one with brains around? At first, we have been pushed back thanks to your great strategy to divide our forces, but then the animals lost their spirits or something; they started retreating slowly, then more hurriedly. Feels like they want to lure us somewhere. How the other forces?"
"I just received a message, they are okay. My people have already joined them, and so far, everything was smooth. They haven't noticed anything. If the beasts really made some kind of trap for us, they are hiding it well."
"Nothing… Maybe they noticed our second army and now trying to deal with it?" Suggested Du Fu.
"No, in that case, it would have been better for them to crash us here, and than deal with the other forces in the forest… What do you think, general? Should we follow them? Or order the second army to retreat?"
"What I think doesn't matter." Said Du Fu, who strangely looked much calmer than before the battle. Seems like bloodshed it good for his nerves, noted Feng.
"You are making decisions here, remember? Or is this thing for nothing?"
He pointed at the dragon pendant on the neck of Li Song.
"I was ordered to give my army to you."
"Yes, you were…" Li Song clenched his teeth and looked around. Though some soldiers were celebrating, some were crawling between bloody corpses, hollowness in their eyes.
The youth clenched his fist.
"So many lives have been lost already…"
He looked Du Fu into eyes.
"I don't want them to be in vain; we will proceed with the plan, general."
"So be it."
Du Fu nodded, his face expressionless. He lifted his hand and made a sign.
"!"
"Follow them!"
Sounded his elderly voice.
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