Vanessa's sharp tangerine eyes were fixed to the direction the wolf had disappeared, her glare attempting to find any clues, she wanted to make sure it wasn't just feigning a retreat to strike when she was inattentive.
"Angus! Damnit- "A voice from behind her shook her out it, she realised she hadn't even checked the status of group A!
She quickly shifted her gaze and turned towards the source of the voice, there she first saw William crouched down holding someone in his arms, he took out a white bundle of cloth from one of his pockets.
She then saw that the one that had fallen was Angus, her eyes darted to the bloody stump on one of his sides and almost lost her breath, she panicked, dropping her sword and running straight over.
As she got closer, she saw his complexion, his face was almost snow white lacking the fleshy red a normal should have, William was quickly wrapping the bandage he took out earlier around the leaking stump and applying as much pressure as he could to stop the bleeding, but it barely helped.
"It's not stopping! Shit he's lost too much already…" William tried his best, but the wound was still drizzling, even the small amount of blood leaking was nearly enough to push Angus over the edge since he had already lost so much blood, he looked around to see if anyone else had awoken and could help, then his eyes caught sight of Vanessa who was running towards them.
"Good timing! I can't stop it with what I have!" He shouted as she reached them and saw the gruesome wound reflect in her eyes.
"This- Haven't you got any clotting gel?" She asked, but then realised it was a stupid question, the amount he would have on him would barely cover half a wound this size, so it was useless, let along the time it took to take effect.
"Cauterize it!" William said with conviction, he stared straight into Vanessa's eyes as he said so, she wasn't going to argue; This man may seem overly cheerful normally but when it came to experience she paled in comparison.
Of course starting a fire normally would take too long, but Vanessa had a much simpler way to do it, she held her hand out and quickly a fire was lit in her palm, however it wasn't hot enough, she focused more of her mana and it shrunk in size until the flame became a round swirl of blue fire emitting an outstandingly high temperature, her palms were almost bright red from fire but due to it being her mana, and her constitution she could handle it.
She had a trio of abilities that stood out from normal humans, they were intrinsically linked with her bloodline, they were [Flame Creation], [Flame Control] and [Flame Resistance], they were different from using a magic spell like [Fireball] since they were innate skills, she created and controlled flames directly with her will rather than constructing a magic circle.
The heat quickly spread to the surroundings, William took out one of his knives that he had stored in a holster on one of his legs and made the nearly unconscious Angus bite down on the leather handle.
"Do it" He spoke, there was no time to waste.
Without another moments of hesitation Vanessa placed her blazing palm on the exposed wound, loud sizzling sounds quickly echoed in the silent forest as a weak, yet pained yell leaked out of Angus' mouth, he seemed to gain more vigour all of a sudden as the pain from the cauterization quickly outstripped the pain of losing an arm, the knife's handle made creaking sounds as his jaw bit down ridiculously hard as he tried to bear the pain.
After a few seconds the palm was removed and all that was left was a mangled stump of heated flesh, while it wasn't the prettiest solution the blood had stopped leaking preventing Angus' condition from getting much worse, however he was still in a state of weak consciousness and wasn't responding.
Just as the wound was being treated further by William, footsteps quickly enclosed on the area and soon voices sounded out.
"I see them ahead!"
"They're on the floor, they're not dead, are they?!"
"Shut it idiot don't jinx us!"
"Where's the enemy?"
"Vice-Captain we're here!"
They echoed throughout the area slowly breaking the heavy atmosphere that was lingering post fight, Vanessa gritted her teeth and stood up to face the newcomers before yelling.
"Took you long enough you lazy bastards! It's already over!" She attempted to vent her frustration before giving orders.
"Go check on the wounded! Those with medical packs come here now!" after she gave her commands the newly joined group B quickly split up to check on the floored group A, the results that came in made their faces grimace.
At best, the ones that had fainted from the howl were just gaining conscious, however the amount of people that they lost were just over half! The wolve group was even worse off.
"Guts!" Vanessa called for her companion; it had stayed back to keep out of the fight, but it quickly jumped from the shadows.
"Could you track it?" She asked with slight hope, but that was quickly shattered as the old wolf shook its head.
"Shit!" She kicked the mud, they had truly come out without anything positive this time, too many people lost their lives for nothing!
The village only had a population barely reached over 1500, while what they lost today was just near 2% to them it was a massive loss, they barely ever experienced such a massive number of deaths in their village.
She took out a scrap of paper she had shoved in one of her pockets and using a very small flame she wrote a short message informing the village of the failure, and to prepare to take in a lot of injured people, she then gave it to Guts and asked him to deliver it.
"Bark!" He replied with gusto as he shot off in the direction of the village.
As Vanessa watched the wolf's receding figure among the hustle around her, she couldn't help but raise her palm which was covered in black soot and marks from earlier, her eyes gleamed with flames as she swore to not let this blood spilled go unrevenged.
… … …
"So, where are we anyway?" Two figures and a smaller one could be seen walking among the towering trees at a decent pace, they'd stop every now and then as they checked their bearings before moving on, the one who had asked the question was a tall figure with long white hair tied up and a covering shielding his eyes, this was of course Seth.
Chris, the one next to him stopped for a second before realising something.
"Oh, that's right! We got interrupted before, so I never told you…" He trailed off as he glanced at the smaller blue eyed and tipped wolf named Lucia that was happily following beside Seth, sensing his gaze she tilted her head as if asking 'What?'
Rather that's exactly what she was asking her Seth heard her voice sound in his head.
"Ahahaha… The place we're in is called Mist-sea Forest, it's a large expanse of Mavena Trees that we built our village inside, oh our village is called 'Mistveil'!"
"Way to be literal with the naming…" Seth retorted.
"Simple is best!" Chris replied with a happy smile, the tension from their encounter before had slowly melted away as they had been walking.
'As expected, I've never heard of such a place, we should still be in kingdom territory based on what Lloyd told me, this world really has changed a lot…' Seth thought as he sighed again.
"What's wrong? Tired?" Chris asked quizzingly hearing Seth sigh once more.
"Ah, a little; I just feel like I haven't seen proper civilisation in a long time." Seth replied with a worn-out tone, obviously to him it was a bit more than a week but something in him deep down gave him a sense of melancholy.
"Ah, you can get like that if you're out on a mission for too long I know" Chris nodded in agreement before posing another question to Seth: "By the way, where are you from? Were the ruins you explored near your hometown?"
'There it is' Seth thought, the question Chris asked was something inevitable so he had already thought up an answer.
"I'm a wanderer, but my hometown was a place called Crocus village, thought its long gone…"
This was the truth, Seth decided the best way to act was to draw on real experience without giving too much information, based on his current situation trying to pretend to be something specific whilst not having any information was stupid.
"So that's how it is huh… A wanderer, impressive, with your strength it's no wonder" Chris said with praise, though his words confused Seth slightly.
'Is being a wanderer not common? Better not say too much…' He decided secretly.
"So, the ruins?" Chris pushed on with his questions.
"Ah, I'm honestly not too sure where they were since they were deep in a cave system I found, but it seemed to be an old fortress of some kind; there wasn't much there though and before I could explore it all I triggered the teleportation trap." He explained 'truthfully'
"Well, at least you aren't completely lost! Ah, the mist is thinning" Chris pointed out the mist as their vision seemed to be improving.
"And that means?"
"We're nearly at the village!" Chris replied with joy, he now felt he had truly survived.