[Darkness, thou art our eye, our limb and thine bosom art our home.]
A few days had passed since the attack of the Sun Spears and Kenos and I had spend those days in Cohval.
Our days were long and sleep was a treasured thing.
I spent most of my nights in the world of darkness while my body rested.
I would watch over the people of Coh and making sure they were safe.
The targets of my observation for this night were two soldiers from my favorite squad, Sah and Wolva.
They were working together with the new Scouts, a combination of the first, second and third squads, to take out the mercenaries who had made themselves at home in Startton.
"Alright, we'll tear them apart from the south all while maintaining a safe distance to draw out their strongest men. Best case scenario, they have a few silver knight level people. Worst case, a few golden knight equivalents." Colonel Koráki said while keenly eying the map on the desk.
He was a short and stern looking man who also had the title of "Deadliest Rendaro". He had killed so many people that we had to promote him to colonel just to remove him from the front.
Reports say he killed close to three thousand men during the battles against the vanguard and he had been awarded with a medal known as the Red Raven. A medal given to who perform their duties exceptionally well… it's also given to people who've killed two thousand or more people.
Several other Rendaro stood in the tent with him.
Sah, Wolva, Ndlo and a few others.
"We'll keep a close eye and make sure no one's hurt." Ndlo said.
"Thanks. Sah, could you imbue everyone's swords?" Koráki asked.
"Yes, Sir. Although I'll have to ask that you caution everyone."
"I will. So… with all that out of the way, move out."
"Yes sir!"
Everyone said before marching out of the tent.
The Rendaro were in the patch of forest near the hole where I originally fell all that time ago.
There was about twenty of them, with a large chunk of them being elite soldiers.
They all blended well into the darkness of the forest and this allowed them to sneakily move northward toward the mercenary filled town to the north.
Reports said that there was about two hundred people there although most of them looked like poor farmers who had been forced to work for the mercenaries.
The Rendaro all quietly killed the handful of lookouts they came across before finding themselves a few meters away from Startton's southern wall.
"Oi! Can I ask you a question?" Ndlo suddenly asked Sah.
"What?"
"How do you get a woman to reciprocate your feelings?" Ndlo asked as he, Tim, Sah and Wolva hid in the bushes behind the soldiers who would actually be attacking the town.
"Hoh? I thought the ambitious Ndlo had no place for a woman in his heart." Wolva scoffed, but Ndlo dismissively waved his hands.
"Every king needs a queen and Shiru is the kind of beauty that would surely win over the hearts of the people of the Expanse." Ndlo said.
"Shiru…? Isn't she a close friend of lord Katsíki?" Sah asked with a raised brow.
"That's what I said, but this knucklehead is determined to wed that poor lass." Tim sighed.
"Hey! You're suppose to be supporting your comrade on his romantic ventures!" Ndlo cried.
"First off, keep Your bloody voice down. Second, I think you should forget about that Shiru woman and get a simple Ia girl. I'm sure tons of women are just waiting for the opportunity to hook up with a member of the sixths." Tim said.
"No! It has to be her. So… I've tried being patient, but she always brushes off my attempts at wining her over. She won't allow me close."
"Maybe you should try being forceful. If one truly desires something, they should do whatever it takes to claim it." Wolva growled.
"Oh? The Wraith has decided to share his wisdom with me… tell me, wraith, how do I go about being forceful without scaring my dear Shiru." Ndlo asked.
"Hell if I know. I'm a virgin." Wolva sighed.
"Really?" Ndlo gasped only for Tim to smack the back of his helmet.
A certain Rendaro then approached Sah and company.
She was a short and intense looking woman who's face was riddled with scars.
This woman was Gunguo, captain of the second squad.
"Imbue everyone's weapons." She instructed without expression.
Sah nodded before he and Wolva sent out wisps of death to the weapons of everyone in sight.
The Rendaro to the front then began their assault on Startton and it wasn't long before screams filled the air.
Ndlo sighed before placing his hand on Sah's shoulder.
"You've yet to give me any advice. I hold your opinion in high regard as captain of the sevenths and I also think you hide much wisdom behind your eyes." Ndlo said.
Sah sighed before brushing off Ndlo's hand.
"Go with Wolva's words. She hasn't asked you to leave her alone meaning she doesn't exactly hate you. All you need to do is make you intentions clear-"
"But I already have!" Ndlo cried.
"Then take it a step further or something. Perform some grand romantic gesture and if she rejects you again, look for someone else." Sah said with a deep sigh.
Ndlo's eyes narrowed.
"I see."
I grew uninterested with Ndlo's romantic goals and so I shifted my focus to Gunguo and as expected, she absolutely brutalized any of the mercenaries who dared step out of Startton's gate.
She was a space magician and so she sent out waves of distorted space that split bodies apart in the time it took to blink.
This was the power of the second deadliest woman in the Expanse.
The only other woman deadlier than her was Yna.
With her hand, she created countless waves of distorted space and those waves ate away at Startton's southern wall.
What was distorted space?
Compressed or twisted space.
Anything caught in her waves was simply crushed or twisted to fit the new space.
It was gruesome, yet effective.
How does one counter space magic?
With another space magician.
Yna had shown me that she could nullify distortions in space.
It was quite the sight to behold.
Gunguo droned as a man walked out of Startton's gate and unlike everyone else, he was unaffected by her death waves.
"Everyone keep watch. I'll take care of him." She said before walking out into the open.
The man in front of her was dressed in a leather jacket and jeans. His short brown hair was a mess and he had a permanent frown on his face.
"Are you the bitch responsible for the deaths of my men?" The man asked.
Gunguo sent out a wave towards the man's neck, but much to my surprise, he grabbed the wave and squeezed it until it broke.
This meant that the distortion in space had been undone.
"Haha! It'll take a lot more than that to kill me!" The man yelled before dashing towards Gunguo while raising a steel long sword.
He swung his sword to strike her but much to the shock and awe of everyone watching, she grabbed the blade and broke it.
She then punched her opponent in the chest before distorting the space in front of her fist.
This shredded the man's torso and sent blood and meat shooting out if his back.
Gunguo lowered her fist and looked up at the soldiers on the wall.
"Is he your strongest?" She asked the group of trembling men above.
"No. I am."
A rather tall man said before exiting the town.
He was clad in a mixture of both golden and silver armour parts.
He also held in his hands a golden Lance.
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Trad-"
Gunguo sent out several waves of distorted space, but Trad dodged them skilfully with well timed dashes.
His speed was incredible and I suspected that it had something to do with the silver lines on his dirty skin.
Gunguo quickly dashed back before finally unsheathing her sword, but Trad placed his Lance into the ground before waving his hands frantically.
"Wait! We surrender!" He cried.
Gunguo didn't speak, instead, she backed away until she reached one of her men.
"Make sure none of them escape."
"Yes Ma'am!"
The soldier said before suddenly disappearing along with a few other soldiers.
Gunguo then cautiously paced around Trad, who still had his hands raised.
"Hey… just calm down. Let's talk. We're here for a bounty." Trad said but Gunguo silently circled him all while several crossbow wielding men lined the wall.
"There's a bounty for the head of Red Death and that's all we want. We hold no ill will towards you mud crawlers-"
Trad grabbed his Lance hurriedly dashed backwards as Gunguo sent out countless waves towards him.
He then pointed his Lance at Gunguo, sending fourth an almost invisible second spear, Gunguo dodged it before rushing towards Trad and their weapons met with forceful impact.
But Trad was augmented and so he forced her backwards before raising his Lance to strike her.
She deflected the attack and punched him in the face, sending him stumbling backwards.
Gunguo may have been essentially a normal Rendaro but she and the scouts had been trained by Yna.
And although their primary purpose was surveillance based, they were more than capable of fighting a silver knight for a bit.
"Just point us to where she is and we'll go our separate ways!" Trad yelled before raising his hand, lifting the ground beneath Gunguo.
She lost her footing and this allowed Trad to throw his Lance at her with so much force it tore the air apart.
Gunguo, in a feat that defied even this reality, grabbed the spear, preventing it from impaling her.
The force of this interference sent her flying backwards until she crashed into a large tree.
Trad walked up to her before grabbing her by her collar.
"Tell me where Red Death is and I might even spare you-"
"Ma'am!"
One of the scouts cried as he jumped out of the cover of the forest.
He then ran towards Trad but quickly stopped after being grazed on the cheek by a bolt from one of the men on the wall.
"Get back!" Gunguo cried as Trad looked at her subordinate with a raised brow.
"But ma'am-"
"That's an order!" Gunguo yelled with widened eyes.
The scout nodded but before he could turned around to leave, he coughed out an unreasonable amount of blood.
Gunguo's eyes widened even further the small cut on the scout's cheek rapidly fostered and bloated.
The wound which grew and eventually covered his head.
Gunguo watched as her subordinate fell to his knees all while dearly gasping for air.
She turned her rage filled eyes to a bored looking Trad, but before she could think of attacking him, she suddenly fell to the ground.
Trad looked to find that his entire left arm was gone and standing next to him was what could only be described as an incarnation of death and destruction…
A Kommáti.
"AAAAHHHH!" Trad screamed as he fell onto his butt but before he could even begin to crawl away, the Kommáti mounted him before raising its dark sword.
It then stabbed Trad in the gut, but this wasn't enough to kill someone who had received the same augmentation that knights did and so the Kommáti decided to grab and pull out some of Trad's intestines. It then wrapped of around the hilt of it's sword while he loudly screamed in pain.
This would make teleporting away much harder. If he created a gate and went through it, he'd leave behind his guts and that would severely hinder, if not kill him.
The Kommáti nodded as if satisfied before standing and facing a now standing Gunguo.
The two stared at each other for a moment and in the next, the Kommáti was gone.
Gunguo stood frozen for a bit before realizing that the mercenaries were all fleeing.
"Men! Detain this one and kill the rest!" She barked prompting all of her men to rush out of the forest.
A certain Rendaro approached her.
"Ma'am, are you hurt?" Ndlo asked as his eyes is glowed green.
"No." Gunguo said as she picked up Trad's Lance.
The blade at its end had wisps of white smoke coming from it.
"Give this to the sevenths." Gunguo said while handing the Lance to Ndlo, who's face twisted slightly.
"Understood, but don't you want so sit down? Or rest for a bit? Or-"
Ndlo stopped upon receiving a glare from Gunguo that nearly stopped his heart.
He nodded before walking towards Sah and Wolva who were inspecting the bolt that grazed the scout.
"Umm… here. The captain wanted you to have this." Ndlo said while handing the spear over to a curious Sah.
"Mmm… here. You take it. Spears aren't my style."
Wolva accepted the spear before giving Sah a curt nod.
The two then turned to face Startton and they watched as the scouts cleared out the town.
Some humans were spared and taken to one of the buildings were they were kept.
.
..
"Mmm…" Sah droned as he and the other Rendaro looked into a single black barrel that was filled with an ash white paste from which wisps of white smoke rose
According to information they'd managed to extract from the mercenaries, the paste was extracted from a plant called Kifo which grew naturally in the Araena mountains.
Apparently, the plant absorbed death and used it to coat its leaves as a means of self defence.
Any animals that tried to eat its greyish leaves would fall ill temporarily.
However, some people grew Kifo and killed countless things around the plants and this turned its grey leaves white and now instead of making animals sick, a few grams of from the leaves could kill a person in a matter of minutes.
"I trust that you will handle this." Colonel Koráki said to a cross armed Sah as they stood within one of the many buildings in Startton.
"Yep. Now we won't be the primary source of death. Although we don't have any Kifo ourselves so this only be used in emergencies."
"I agree." Colonel Koráki said.
"And what of that Trad fellow?" Ndlo asked.
"As you may have guessed he is a silver knight… or was one at some point. But due to the state of Lanceberg he joined a group of bandits called the Hellish Horde. He told us that they won't be a problem since their situated in Aurenia, but we can't be too cautious." Koráki explained.
My vision darkened somewhat and I realized that it was time to returned to my body.
So I floated all the way back to Cohval while digesting all that I'd learnt.