Chapter 45 –
'Half a day and still nothing' Vanessa thought as she stood at the front of a marching group, it's already been nearly 12 hours since they set out early in the morning, yet they hadn't found a trace of the beast they're aiming at.
'If we take much longer, we'll have to return, it'll be too dark to do anything at that point… rather it'd be way too dangerous for most of us to engage in a battle at night' She thought through her plans in her head as she sighed.
"How disappointing…" Her voice contained a hint of sadness as she lamented in front of a mass of soldiers behind her who couldn't help but want to retort, luckily some actually had the guts to do so.
"Hey- hey- hey, Vice-captain don't go cursing us like that, isn't it good if the thing hasn't appeared today? Maybe it's gone off somewhere else!" A man half-joked behind her, she stopped before her head jutted around and glared at him, her bright tangerine eyes contained a hint of annoyance.
"Shut it Jack, unless you want to be my partner for morning training tomorrow?" She threatened him, causing his face to turn slightly blue.
"Pl-please spare me there's no way I'd be able to handle you!" Jack said swaying his hands in refusal, he was still a young boy in front of this lady when it came to fights, he'd get destroyed!
"Why do you make it sound like I'm some sort of monster?" Vanessa replied with a slight grin full of malice, as the sight of this not-so-smile a lot of the people following behind her turned their heads away as they recited in their heads 'This is nothing to do with me!'
"I didn't mean it that way! I just meant that I'm still a fresh rookie compared to you, Vice-captain!" He began buttering her up in an attempt to stop her from picking on him further, everyone gathered here knew she gets irritated like this when her hopes for a fight are betrayed and that she didn't mean much harm, but the experience of being her punching bag for training is one thing everyone would do anything to skip out on.
"That's enough Vanessa, you'll scare them before we even find the beast" An older man with a white moustache said whilst patting her shoulder.
"Fine" She turned her heels and started marching once again, her only thoughts were to find something to blow off steam with.
"Thanks Reed, phew, I thought I'd have to be served up on a silver platter tomorrow morning" He chuckled while breathing a sigh of relief.
"You should know to keep your mouth shut when she's like this" He said whilst shaking his head, then he looked at the young man and grinned "Besides who said you're out it? You basically painted a target on yourself right now"
"What?! No way!" Jack's complexion whitened as he started to fear what he'd face tomorrow morning rather than in this mission.
Meanwhile the rest of them started to continue their march while ignoring him and snickering thanking that it wasn't them that was the target.
The forest was still silent save for the blowing of wind and rustling of leaves, there wasn't much talking going on outside of the quiet mumbles between members, most of them were fixated on observing their surroundings, that is until a bright light peeked through the multitude of trees from some distance away, the group picked up on this immediately, and very shortly after the wolves' ears perked up and they started howling in union having picked up the sound from [Echo].
"Finally! Everyone, move towards the flare! I'll go ahead so don't fall behind!" Vanessa shouted and gave the simple orders before stamping her feet into the mud and launching herself through the air at breakneck speed, the soldiers left behind could only admire her over the top use of [Sudden Burst] before Reed's words echoed her own.
"You hear her, move your asses the other group should be engaging the enemy already, we need to be there for backup!" He shouted before the entire group started rushing towards the light in union.
… … …
Her body tore through their air as her hair fluttered behind her leaving a scarlet streak, she could feel her blood boiling as her body prepared itself for combat.
'About time, they shouldn't be too bad off, I'll be able to get there in a couple minutes' Her eyes reached a degree of coldness they lacked before as she placed her right hand on the long handle of the sword sheathed on her back.
As she travelled, she vaguely heard the yells off in the distance along with the sound of collective explosions passing into her ears.
'They had to use the magic barrage?' She was slightly surprised, even she wouldn't want to face such a thing head on which showed the beasts strength, she kicked off the floor once more to speed herself up hopping to at least catch a glimpse of the monster before it was turned to ashes.
'Since it took out Redric I thought it may be a strong aberrant, was I wrong?' She considered before she heard a second set of explosions echoing from the distance.
"A second set?!" She blurted out showing her surprise, as soon as she realised what she heard Vanessa immediately realised something was wrong, if it could survive a barrage like that it was truly a monster, she had to reach the location quickly.
She approached the scene faster than before now with a hint of impatience and worry in her steps, as she did a vague howling echoed in her ears making her feel faintly sluggish before she rubbed it off and carried on, it was another few tens of seconds before she made it to the scene, what she saw caused her to almost swallow her heart.
Her initial observation showed the entire A group laid on the ground whilst various parts of the area were filled with blood and scattered pieces of flesh, there were clear traces where the grass was scorched by a large explosion, but nothing remained in the centre showing whatever was hit survived, then her eyes darted about and saw William running somewhere, her eyes followed his patch and her eyes landed on a creature that resembled a walking nightmare, something that seemed like I'd jumped right out of a grim fairy tale.
As she found her target, she immediately jumped into action, making use of [Sudden Burst] to its fullest she charged ahead with the long sword raised above her head like an executioner's axe.
Right before she swung it down on the creatures head it quickly dodged out of the way and retreated some distance.
'It's fast!' She gasped, despite its size it moved with the nimbleness of a fish in water.
She quickly picked up her sword that had left a deep indent in the ground and faced her enemy, she didn't focus on anything else at that point and paid full attention to the figure in front of her.
Her eyes scanned over its figure as if to gleam every bit of information she could from her target.
'This thing, is it a Ghost Wolf? Wait… I see so it's like that is it…'
She figured out the identity of the enemy in front of her as she raised her sword and had its tip pointed towards the target in a raised stance.
However the opposing wolf seemed to have froze in place, its eyes fixated on Vanessa.
"Not going to move? Fine I will!" She darted forward and in less than a second her swords tip was merely inches away from piercing the wolf's skull, but it once more managed to shift to the side yet it didn't counterattack, it backed off once more.
'Why is it running?!' She yelled in her head trying to figure out what it was trying to do, was there a trap somewhere here that she was being led to? She doubted that, from what she's seen it had no way to make such preparations before engaging group A, let alone it having the smarts to do that in the first place, but she was being cautious.
Her sword danced as it spun through the air attacking the wolf from multiple angles, yet her attacks would at most scratch her enemy without any retaliation, this went on for a few minutes as Vanessa started to feel slight fatigue set in from continuous swinging, she stopped in place to gather her breath and see if the enemy was going to do anything else.
She realised that it was healing all the wounds she dealt to it fairly quickly so she realised the only way to take it out was either to exhaust it or deal a fatal blow from the get go, both seemingly hard tasks right now, but what she failed to notice was the wound on the side of the creature finally closing, it was already close to being healed when she first saw it so she didn't take too much notice of it.
The next moment a black shadow engulfed the wolf, head to toe it turned in to a walking shadow and soon it faded away.
"Invisibility? No, a higher cloaking ability… But I can still sense you!" Vanessa was slightly different from the other people in the village, as her eyes focused, they slightly turned slit and a faint gold aura traced over her pupil.
She could see a faint gathering of shadows ahead of her, as she prepared to engage it once more she realised it was gone.
"What?" She questioned what she was seeing, the wolf had ran!
'No you don't!' She quickly tried to give chase, but she soon realised her attempts were futile, it was much faster than her and her attempt to sense the creature got worse and worse as it got further, she quickly lost it.
"Damnit!" She yelled in regret, she didn't know exactly how many died but she knew they had just lost then and there, she didn't know why it retreated but it hadn't left without thinning their forces first!