"What do we do now?" Arthur sat down next to Lugh and leaned his back against the tree at the top of the hill as he watched the bodies being gathered into a pile and prepared to be taken back to their families.
"We go back and pray that the rest of this creature's tribe doesn't come looking for revenge..." Lugh also leaned his back against the tree and watched the bodies being prepared with a tired, bitter look on his face.
"Dunul is an Albrid colony, isn't it? Can't we ask the emperor's forces for help?" Arthur asked, still unsure why the Empire had not yet helped these people, even though they served it.
"It's more complicated than it seems..." Lugh glanced to the west, where the setting sun was slowly creeping over the horizon, tinting the clouds and the sky with a reddish hue.
Soon the two men found themselves admiring the beautiful late afternoon scenery together.
"Do you know why the Empire decided to go around the continent and land on the west coast instead of just landing on the east coast?" Lugh looked at Arthur, who nodded in denial.
"For one simple reason: the city-states that control the east coast are far more powerful than the city-states that control this region. Powerful enough for the Empire to prefer a much longer route to this relatively weaker region." Lugh spoke, looking back at the setting sun.
"But even so, the Empire has only managed to send a single legion, stationed in Noster," Lugh concluded.
"If Noster is so close and the Empire has control of it, why can't they send help?" Arthur asked, even more perplexed by the political situation on that continent.
"That's the point, they don't have control." Lugh smiled bitterly, "Noster is ruled by a powerful 4th stage warrior who has an army of 15,000 men, while the legion the Empire has sent to the continent has only about 7,000 soldiers.
With these numbers and no prospect of reinforcements, all they can do is wait patiently, paying tons of gold to the Lord of Noster just to be allowed to camp outside the city and maintain a small office inside.
He is receptive to Imperial gold, but not to Imperial troops, the truth is that helping our village is not enough for the Legion to move and risk creating even more tension with the Lord of Noster."
Having finished his explanation to Arthur, Lugh gritted his teeth before finally commenting with hatred in his voice, keeping it loud enough that only he and Arthur could hear, "I can't wait for the Empire to send a large army here soon and crush those damned barbarian pigs..."
"Me too..." Arthur muttered. That wasn't the truth and, in reality, he was now much more interested in the natives of this continent than in Albrid, but he had to remember that to everyone in this world he was seen as a man from Albrid and one of Conrad's former followers.
After this brief conversation, there was silence, only the sound of the wind caressing Arthur's face as he looked thoughtfully at the men following Lugh.
All these men were natives of this continent, and even after 10 years of domination, only about 30% had converted and accepted the Light of Aelius. Arthur didn't know much about what gods these people were, or at least he didn't know anything beyond the names that were commonly mentioned, such as Badb during battles and Morrigan at the end of them.
Arthur observed the heavy expressions of these people, the sadness in their eyes when they saw their compatriots shouting the name of a god that was foreign to their culture and their people.
Arthur didn't consider himself a good man, or even a defender of minorities, but everything he had seen and heard about Aelius since his arrival in this world made his stomach turn as if his own blood disgusted the name of that being, a feeling that only grew stronger as his lineage grew more powerful.
In the end, Arthur did what he did best: he let that feeling sink into his heart and tried to forget it.
"I fought a strange goblin... it seemed to be a mutated creature or something like that," Arthur remembered the goblin he had fought before and tried to change the subject.
"A mutated goblin?" Lugh's face was filled with pleading, and he felt a momentary uneasiness in his heart. "Take me to its body," Lugh ordered, and Arthur merely nodded in agreement before starting down the hill again, Lugh close behind.
***
Lugh crouched over the creature's body and summoned a small ball of light in his hands, using it to illuminate the small creature's body and examine it more closely.
"Shit..." Lugh grabbed the small creature's body and began to carry it up the hill.
"What happened?" Arthur followed beside Lugh; his face filled with anxiety as he noticed the obvious nervousness on the man's face.
"A mutated goblin is terrible news..." Lugh spoke, and as soon as he reached the top, he called to Eri, who was kneeling with her men, praying for her death. "Miss Eri!"
"What?" Eri asked, a little angry that her prayer had been interrupted, an anger that vanished the moment she saw what Lugh was holding in his hands.
Getting up, she ran over to Lugh and took the creature from his hands before she began to analyze it carefully.
"Sons of bitches..." She dropped the creature's body to the ground. "That explains it... they weren't looking for sacrifices for their god, they were looking for people for a damn transformation ritual!" Eri kicked the ground angrily, her scream attracting the attention of everyone there.
The eyes of the few men who fully understood what it meant twitched, and even those who weren't quite sure seemed completely frightened by it...
"We can't go back... Even if it's too late, we must find a way to confirm this information and warn the legions or even the Lord of Noster..." Lugh said. Though the Lord of Noster watched every move of the legions, he would hardly try to create tension over such a serious problem.
Hearing these words, Eri stopped for a few seconds and looked at her own men.
Unlike Dunul, which was quite close to the goblin camp, Maelis' village was more than 500 kilometers from the camp and far enough away to be free from any goblin reprisals.
In her mind, she wondered if it was worth losing more of her men for a risk that wouldn't affect her people, for a mission that in her mind had already failed.
"I'm sorry, but we're going back." Eri finally spoke before she turned and waved for her men to carry the dead.
"But what about your young master? What about your mission?" Lugh asked, surprised at the woman's decision.
"Our lord has many children... He will understand. Again, I'm sorry, but I cannot risk the lives of good men like this."
Arthur watched the conversation with curiosity but didn't say anything and just looked at the woman's back as it disappeared over the horizon. He wasn't happy about it, but he knew she had made the best decision for herself and her followers.
They were nothing more than people she met at random and who ended up fighting side by side. She had no responsibility to any of them, and if Arthur had been a leader in her place, his decision wouldn't have been much different.
Lugh just watched until the woman disappeared into the forest before he gritted his teeth, took a small piece of paper from his pocket, and approached the tree, using it as a prop to write something on the paper using some kind of magic that Arthur didn't recognize.
Immediately after, he turned to one of the hunters. "Mr. Lin, I have a mission for you."
"Speak" Lin was an old man and didn't seem to spare any manners when answering Lugh. He was one of the most conservative people in the village and didn't like what Lugh had planned for them. The only reason he had been chosen for this task was because he was one of the few hunters who usually came to these parts.
Lugh ignored the man's disrespect and handed him the note. "Go back to Dunul and ask Rolan for one of Lord Greg's horses, then I need you to go to Noster and find the captain of the Albrid Legion stationed in this region and give him this letter," Lugh ordered before turning to the rest of his men and pointing to four more soldiers. "You must take the bodies to Dunul and return as soon as possible. We'll set up camp in the forest and leave at dawn.