While his mind was full of joy for successfully holding back his strength, yet successfully dealing with the enemies, his instincts did not react fast enough.
Thankfully, Sirious was there, who instantly controlled his body to jump up into the air, as two fireballs passed below him.
And, coincidentally, they hit the two knights, removing their last hopes of survival. However, Daron was not happy with this turn of events. Instead, he became more serious.
'How many mages are there exactly? I won't be able to deal with them unless I use my Intermediate knight strength… but there is not grantee that a mage is not in charge of overlooking everything in the fog, or that some of the mages are peeking using their own methods. There could also be the chance that someone might expose his identity.
Quickly making a decision, he dragged the terrified Patrice with him to the inside of the ship. However, he did not stop, and brough along everyone else who had survived, including Rudolf, Doug, the last remaining mage apprentice called Susan, as well as a few knights in training that had stayed inside the ship.
With them, he quickly discussed the plan, sharing his opinion and taking their points, coming up with a simple plan within 30 seconds, and initiating it.
The opened a window on the ship, jumped off, and ran away from the aggressors, who clearly outnumbered them.
Why would they give up on their ship so easily? Simple, because there were 2 weeks left. In fact, unless they had overwhelming strength, waiting on the ground till the very last moment was in fact the best plan to conserve their own strength and waste the strength of their enemies.
The group of 8 surviving children below the age of 15, and a dog in Daron's arms, quickly ran in a particular direction, which was towards the mountain. Due to the fog, they could not see their enemies, however, nor could their attackers see them, and the world once again returned to silence.
However, Patrice, Susan, and Doug were getting tired of the physical strain, since they had very poor vitality to begin with due to the occupation it came with. Therefore, Daron took Doug, Rudolf took Patrice, and Susan was being passed around among the other 3 knights in training to be carried on their backs.
With that, not only did they speed reduce, it even increased, and soon, they were around a kilometre away from their enemies. Due to the fact that the knights in training were wearing light leather armour, just like what Daron had been wearing during his days as a knight in training, and Rudolf was wearing full-body metal armour, they were rather tired after this sprint.
Daron, on the other hand, was wearing normal clothes of a mage, just holding a sword, and the thin Doug only weighed 40kg, which was almost nothing to an Intermediate knight.
Putting the extra baggage down, Daron told everyone to form up and begin searching for some sort of shelter without leaving the formation, since the thick fog would easily cause them to become lost.
Within just an hour of walking on the mountainside, the group of 8 finally found a cave.
Hey did not create a fire, since it might reveal their location, and just sat down to relieve their stress, anger, humiliation, and tiredness from the events that just occurred. On the other hand, Daron, Patrice, and Rudolf were busy planning what to do next.
After another hour passed, Daron sighed and stood up.
"I'm going to get food for everyone. Stay here and take care of the cave. If anyone comes, just run away, and try to take over a ship yourselves. If no one comes, then just wait for me."
With that, Daron left, no waiting for the objections of anyone.
In reality, he was not going to search for it, or battle with others for it. Instead, he was just going to waste some time like that, and just going out of view of the cave. The reason? Simple, he had already stored all the left-over food from the food storage in his inventory, which was enough to last them a month!
In fact, this had even shocked Sirious, because the monsters that attacked the group on a daily basis had meat that was even tastier than normal meat in the storage. The only thing was that is spoiled quite fast, only lasting a day before it went bad.
However, Daron had secretly stored up half of the meat every day in his inventory, while also storing up other food materials from the food storage.
And just before leaving, he had also completely cleaned out the remaining bits of food, leaving nothing for the enemies.
'Haha! I'm a genius!'
[Of course, Master Daron. You are truly the great and marvellous being that boasts about following the suggestions of an AI called Sirious]
'Akh' Daron nearly choked on his own tongue from the mental shock he received.