After losing the three items that occupied my mind, I had nothing better to do than train in the underground base, unfortunately there's not much I can do in such a closed space so I spent the next few days training my control over my elements.
Days passed and just before giving two weeks of intensive training Raven showed up, she looked fine on the surface, but it was obvious she was tired. It seems like the last few days have been difficult for her, I think Mia wasn't the only one facing exhausting challenges.
Raven gathered the entire team together in an empty room in the underground base.
"Hey, did you get enough rest?"
"No!"
"You do not count, Mia. Since it looks like everyone's mood isn't right, we'd better get straight to the official business. Our first mission was a success, more or less."
"We managed to kill their leader and a good part of his coven, but unfortunately the hazardous materials they had were not completely recovered, more than one of the secret deposits we knew of was cleared. We thought they would be moving these stories to their main base, but we were wrong."
"During the weeks after our attack several templars attacked the routes that were supposed to be used by the cultists, they were deserted as were the warehouses. It looks like someone made a move before us, but we don't know if it was a cultist who was part of Felix's coven or someone else's, but ultimately the danger we should have destroyed isn't over."
"The threat from the evil god Whiro's faithful still exists, but right now we don't even have a clue where the threat is located and that sucks. But finding their whereabouts or clues about them is not our mission, we are not such a tracking group."
"Our new mission is tied to a new threat that is positioning itself within our realm in a much more direct way. Some of you already know a little about this subject, but most of you don't, so I'll start at the beginning."
"Several months ago, a base created by a criminal was found and the team that made it discovered that they were hired by a necromancer, but without her base to serve as a lair she did not enter the realm to prepare her forces any more than one of her companions. looks bolder."
"I fear that a necromancer entered the realm with the intention of taking advantage of the war that already has a date to begin. The war will start in a month and a half, troops are already heading south to defend the kingdom from the attack of Kavenus and Mirue kingdoms. I fear that our actions on Kavenus triggered the war, even with the interference of the templars the king of Kavenus decided to start the war in full force."
"Not one of the temples will interfere in the war?"
"No, the war and business of mortals and the temples has no intention whatsoever of interfering with it from the start, even after we found a large number of cultists in Kavenus it didn't change the fact that the war between the realms was going to happen."
"And at this very moment we are at the most important moment for teams like ours, with the war starting and the exact moment where those scavengers tend to position themselves to be able to enjoy all the death and destruction that a war entails."
"Our target is to eliminate the necromancer identified as red sparrow, we have some information about him, but we don't even have a picture of what he looks like. He usually keeps company with two death elemental warriors who also serve as a platform for his experiments, they won't be easy to face."
"The red sparrow doesn't use many undead but rather cultivates some elite and different type undead, most of you have no idea how many types of undead there are, but during this quest try not to die to any of them."
"Our target has entered through the southern area of the kingdom, but he's not trying to stay close to the eye of the hurricane called war the cretin seems to be the patient type. There is a good chance that he will avoid big cities and take up residence in a small village on the edges of the southern region."
"Wouldn't he stand out in a place like this?"
"No, Sean he wouldn't stand out because he's probably going to kill the entire village. During times of war most of the population will not have an eye on a small village that has disappeared or appears to be empty. An abandoned village is a great hiding place for someone like the red sparrow, it has the space and cover for him to keep his pets hidden while feeding them from the village graveyard."
"Food?"
"Certain types of undead have the need to feed on corpses on a regular period of time, if they don't, they start to rot and lose their strength. Their food needs to contain the element of death so it is quite normal for a cemetery to serve as a source of food for a long period of time, the bigger the cemetery the longer the necromancer can stay there in isolation."
"The red sparrow would probably choose a smaller, older village as well, this location would allow it to be able to hide for a long period of time waiting for the right moment to be able to get involved in the war. Perhaps he used ghost birds to check movement in the south or to get a message from some of his colleagues who are outside the realm."
"In any case, we're going to start traveling through the southern region of the kingdom in search of the red sparrow. I already got a map with several small villages marked that are active, we are lucky because during the conflict in the southern region by territory a thorough survey of the southern region was carried out to accurately map the boundary of each territory, thanks to this many small villages and new ones have been marked as possible trade routes to be used in the future."
"Now the work is patience and luck, finding the red sparrow without him knowing about our presence will not be easy because he has the advantage of being in the kingdom for about two weeks. He may have already found a place to hide or not, but that doesn't matter so much because for both possibilities our plan is the same."
"Let's go south and start checking village by village without attracting unwanted attention, which means we won't be in contact with anyone during our trip. The red sparrow will be disguised as a group of traders or adventurers in the southern region if he hasn't set up a base, so we have to avoid being seen by him if he's on the road."
"We will be using some magical tools to try to find the trail that undead can leave behind, the other way to find his trail would be Ulric, but I don't know if he is able to find the trail of the undead with energy left behind by them is different than the elemental energy of living beings. You've never encountered an undead before, have you?"
"Yes, as far as I know I've never found one before."
"Well, now you're going to have your first time. After we track him down it will be your job to kill the undead or death element warriors that will be there to protect him, I will take care of the necromancer as I have more experience fighting necromancers, it wouldn't be safe to send some of you do that."
"Before one of you gets the wrong idea, I'm not saying this to say you guys are weak or idiots. Fighting a necromancer can be more complicated than fighting a plague mage, you know you can wait when you face a mage, but a necromancer can have many difficulty levels and attack ways."
"First we don't know which god the red sparrow follows which could give us some clues to his combat style, he can either use his death element to attack us directly or attack our souls if he has his god's patronage, but the worst case would be if he is a hybrid necromancer this type of necromancer is one who has modified his body to only turn a part of his body into an undead type."
"It would be great if he was an academic necromancer, killing this type is pretty easy since the danger is in the annoying empowered undead. Although I like to think that fighters are a sign that he's not very good at combat and his focus and research, but it's always good to be careful. Neither one of you can let your guard down during combat, fighting the undead is a very different experience than fighting a warrior they have very unique abilities and don't always seem to have a strong connection to the death element."
"Let's leave in an hour, prepare everything you need and remember to take several rations we will use level three shadow element magic beasts during this quest, we were allowed such an advantage because superiors want the necromancer dead quickly, because another target dangers besides the one you want our team to eliminate."
I feel like this mission is easier than the last one, but I also feel like I'm in a much more dangerous situation this time around. The necromancer's undead must be level three and that means I'll be in combat, far more so I'll have to participate in combat.