Resting didn't take long for Dezen, and when he ended, he informed about it Leon and Chloe, who then asked.
- You know who it was, or have any idea?
Leon, who temporarily replaced Dezen at protecting the caravan, answered.
- Drew Richards, one crazy bastard who enjoys murdering people. He may not be popular, or rather infamous, but from what I know he is a pain in ass of many organisations, due to his unique ability to escape.
- He looked stressed though. And had to sacrifice half of his arm to flee this time. Maybe they will catch him soon.
Chloe, shocked because of ability to sacrifice a limb, what was unthinkable for her, said.
- He... Did what. Someone would really willingly become disabled? Even if it's to save life, I don't know if I would do this, even if it could regrow... Sacrificing arm is... I don't know. It's easy to "imagine it", but when you really think about doing this, you can't bring yourself to do it. Though, I have never been in such situation.
Dezen thought about what she said and then spoke.
- Yea... I understand you. - He went silent, thinking whether he could sacrifice his limb, or not. - Someone has to be really decided...
After a while, Dezen stood up, and once again begin his watch over the caravan, letting Leon go back to sleep.
The overseer asked him few questions about his state out of culture, even though he heard Dezen saying he is alright.
At first they all were silent, but soon Chloe found some subject to talk about, and tried to make jokes to make up his mood.
After a few days, the caravan was passing thenext place, where Dezen was going to get new undead - The Liveliest Forest.
It is one of the most, if not the most important source of magical resources in the country. It's production is higher than needs of the Alerih Kingdom and Church of Alen combined together. Thus, they can use the rest as payments, or gifts for organisations and people they want to keep good relationship with.
Dezen is such person, so they informed him about this place, after he signed magical contract to keep its existence as a secret. Of course, the resources he can get are limited, but the number is satisfying.
Since he must keep this place's existence as a secret, he couldn't just randomly go out one night and return with many new undead magical beings. Instead, he will take with him to the caravan one, or two of them, and send the rest, along with the resources, to his house via space magic.
As normally, he left the cavaran camp with his undead, using both on himself and himself them movement spells. During the last week he has been doing it every day, so it wasn't bringing any attention.
He traveled for around hour and 40 minutes, before Dezen stopped and tools his undead in his shadow. The Liveliest Forest has not only defences, but also hiding formations. Some of them take The Forest to special isolated space, and create in its place normal looking part of woods. To get past it, he was given enchanted items, but only one, so he had to use spells to take his undead with him.
The spell he used for this can be considered interesting, because it's not necromancy spell, but kind of fusion between space and primal magic. The first one creates place where he can store undead, or whatever he wants, and the second lets him give impression, that he can only use shadows for it. To not always use combination of spell, which would be a little tiring, he fused them into one, what is possible because of nature of the primal magic.
Dezen started walking forward, not knowing where the forest exactly starts. He found it after a minute, when the air that he touched was "hard".
Dezen smiled and took a step forward.While he was doing this, he could see unknown spaces for fractions of second. Their purpose is to deceive those who will get over the first lines of the defences and hiding, making them think they are the things really hidden there.
When he entered, Dezen could see beautiful forest, but he didn't waste time on appreciating the views. Releasing the undead, he started searching for his main purpose - green bears. They are a size of grizzly bears, and look like them, besides the fact that they green fur and pink-violet skin, which can be seen near they paws and mouth. They are also strong at combat what is the reason he choose them.
Since their population is high in The Liveliest Forest, he expected to find many of them easily. However, after 30 minutes of searching, he found none, what was strange, because they found many traces of them, and went through kilometres of land.
Annoyed, he stopped, wanting to think what he can do in this situation. Luckily, as he did it, some bear roared. With a hope that it was green bear, he went in its way.
Soon he arrived to the place from where he heard the roar, but to his disappointment, he found only 3 green bears fighting with some unknown creature.
He assumed they were plants, each made from veins going high up, where after reaching over 2 metres, they go downwards, resembling a vase, to go up again, after 30 centimetres. There, they merge, creating flat circle. To attack, they used veins.
Raising his voice a little, Dezen said before attacking.
- The hell is that.
Green fire flew at the closest plant, which had caught one of the green bears inside of itself. He could see others also having these magical creatures inside of them, but the one he wanted to "rescue" was the only one left alive.
Luckily for the bear, Dezen's attack stopped the plant, letting him escape its grasp. He ran away for a few metres, before he started regenerating to fight once again.
Dezen appreciated it, but the creature couldn't do much. It was because these plant have strong regeneration abilities, and normal cutting it won't be enough. Fire on the other hand, worke very well, as expected.
To get better results, he set his undead on fire with one of his spells. He could also make them use spells, but it would be a waste of mana for him.
It took them around 6 minutes wipe them out, but unfortunately, the plant were destroying corpses of the green bears with acid, making most of them unable to turn into undead. There were only 2 of them left in state good enough to be revived.
Theoretically, he could the green bear that survived, but Dezen felt some sympathy towards him, and thus, he didn't want to.
After he revived the them, Dezen took corpses of the rest and dead plants to his storing enchanted item. Alerih Kingdom and Church of Alen surely don't about what happened here, so he wanted to inform them and try to find out happened.
It took him some time to find any outpost, but when he found one, Dezen could easily meet with some higher up overseers of The Liveliest Forest.
After greetings them, Dezen took out the corpses and started describing what he found. After he ended, there was a silence for a few seconds, before some woman asked calmly.
- Have you seen more of such unknown creatures? Or something you think was unusual? I understand you probably don't know every creature that lives here, so we will hand you catalogue with all of them.
- I did not, but I have encountered another unknown species, though it was only one being. It looks like a fusion of human and dragon. I checked its anatomy and partly how its body work. It is mostly different from ours. I captured it, but I do not have that thing with me, he is with the caravan I am currently protecting as a mercenary. I can borrow you him, if you want to do examinations.
This time, some man said.
- We would like to, but we would rather prefer buying him from you. Are willing to do this?
Dezen thought about for a while, before replying. He really wanted to do further examinations, but from the start he planned to sell him, and it is probably the best occasion he will have.
- Yes, but I want to have right to do my own examinations on him, and access to yours as a part of the payment. I can also give you what I already discovered.
- I think we can agree on that. I assume it would not be comfortable for you to bring him now, thus you can hand him to us when you end you job as a guard. Now, shall we discuss the details of the payment.