[Chapter Size: 2300 Words.]
Third Person POV
Cintra, northern kingdoms.
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Madara had leapt from Cirilla's room and quickly touched the walls with his feet as he descended, running backwards towards the back of the castle at high speed.
After getting closer to the buildings, he jumped onto the roofs of the castle's smaller structures, jumping again to the next roofs and entering another castle garden while passing by guards and going through the blind spot between patrols, he returned to the city after going around and entering through one of the gates.
He had headed towards his current dwelling with the intention of resting a bit after fighting the bandits and dealing with the princess of this realm.
As soon as he stepped into his room again, he sighed. "So much happening in just one day..." He murmured, looking at the trap Cirilla had disarmed.
"I still don't understand how she found this place and got here... Anyway... these books, not knowing the language of the north is a curse..." Madara thought to himself before setting those books on fire and lying down on the cover to sleep.
Before dawn the next day, Madara woke up and made a meal with his supplies, he would have to return to his missions and his goal at that moment was to hunt the ghoul on the south proton side.
He prepared and went in that direction with his chakra fully recovered, he quickly was outside of Cintra and ran for half a day until he arrived at the location specified by the druid.
"So these mountains are the ones the map indicates." Madara thought, looking at the landscape, putting away the map he entered a forest below the mountain.
He continued jumping through the forest until he found a road in the middle of the forest, what surprised him was not the road, there were many trails that people used to cut shortcuts, but the horse footprints stamped from the earth.
"These marks... they are made recently..." Marada analyzed. It seems he was not the only one in the middle of that forest, the question was who would be here.
Setting that aside, he then decided to continue on the path, even following that road.
Elsewhere, there was a group of horses going through the forest, "Father, are you sure we should be here, we are dealing with a monster...?" A boy in his 15 years spoke on a horse while holding a crossbow and attentive to any movement in the forest.
"Do not fear it, my son, we will kill this beast once and for all, it's been ravaging our cattle, now we will kill it. At your age my father also took me to kill some drowners." A middle-aged man spoke, sporting his large curved mustache.
"But everyone says that a ghoul is the worst of monsters." The boy insisted.
"Relax, Victor. We can handle this." One of the other men on his horse spoke confidently. "We are with 20 soldiers and 3 knights, do you think we cannot fight a monster?" The knight spoke confidently.
This group was a local noble with a large farm in this region, however, he has been a week with a beast terrorizing his farms and has already killed 3 of his servants and destroyed a part of the plantation at the forest's edge, now he formed a group to deal with this creature once and for all.
His name was Meril Hugkil, his son and firstborn here was Victor Hugkil, being Hugkil an old and noble family of Cintra.
"You heard our knight, we will deal with this creature!" Meril spoke humorously, after all, he was a well-humored noble.
The journey continued until they found a trail in the bush, their knights quickly got off their soldiers and went to analyze, "Commander, it's a trail of a large creature, seems to have caught a deer and dragged it into the forest." The man spoke, who seemed to be a hunter in the group.
"This is interesting, we are close to our prey." He said satisfactorily and looked at his son.
"Today you will become a man, killing giving the final blow!" He said and his son a bit scared, nodded reluctantly.
They then left the horse aside and the soldiers began to cut through the bush with their swords as they opened a trail following blood.
As they ventured into the forest, Madara continued his path through the forest for a while longer, he was hours behind these men, so it took him a while to finally reach their horses with a man taking care of the animals, who seemed more a servant than a soldier.
He landed on the trunk of a tree, carefully looking at the trail they began to create in the forest, seeing the blood, he already figured that the group would also be behind the ghoul.
He passed by the man, who noticed a shadow through the air and looked up to see nothing in the end. "I think I'm seeing things..." he murmured while continuing to take care of the horses.
Meanwhile, the members of the small expedition continued venturing deeper into the forest with their swords cutting through everything.
"The sharpener on the farm will be furious when he sees the cuts on our weapons." A soldier joked at the front, drawing some laughter.
"Hey, wait!" one of them spoke up, asking them to be quiet, "Listen to this." He said, making everyone raise their ears to try and hear something.
It didn't take long for them to hear a kind of growling close to them, "This..." One of them said and started to advance further through the brush until they found a kind of crater, there were bones scattered around the place and a beast like a dog with spikes devouring a carcass, what should be a deer they were tracking the trail of.
"It's him, notify the commander, we found our target." One of them said, and a soldier went back with the intention of notifying the others.
The other soldiers, still hidden behind the bush, looked at the creature that was so focused on eating that it hadn't noticed them yet, "What an ugly thing... can we fight against this?" one of them said.
"We can fight, yes, look at our number," one of the soldiers tried to infuse courage, gripping the hilt of his sword.
"I still think it's a bad idea, why didn't Lord Hugkil hire a witcher?" another soldier murmured, as he looked nervously around.
"Waste of time, he even sent a petition to the crown, but nothing was done," replied a third.
"Why are you surprised? You know our queen doesn't like witchers," another soldier intervened.
"Like it or not, they're still useful. We deal with bandits and outlaws, now against these things?" another soldier's voice sounded.
"Anyway. We can't do anything but follow orders, so let's wait," concluded one last, with a sigh, as all the soldiers settled into a waiting position, cautiously observing the creature from a distance.
The commander finally arrived with Lord Hugkil. "Hmm... seems like we finally found our animal... how ugly it is, but we will finish this thing by the end of the day and take its carcass as a trophy, I'll show my noble colleagues what the Hugkil family can do!" Meril said with some joy and looked at his son. "What's that face, boy? It's just a spiky dog, let's kill it." He said, patting the young boy on the back, who nodded.
"Shall we proceed, Lord Hugkil?" the commander spoke.
"Yes, prepare the men." He said cheerfully.
"Okay, I want 5 archers up here, the others come with me, and let's kill this monster." He said.
The soldiers, hearing the command, quickly began to organize according to the instructions. The archers positioned themselves at strategic points above the crater, aiming at the creature cautiously, while the others armed themselves with swords and spears, preparing for the fight, descending the place while keeping swords raised to the creature a little distance away. More and more soldiers fell into the crater, as their numbers increased.
"Shall we go too, father?" Victor asked fearfully.
"Of course, son, let's finish off this creature!" The noble said with his voice full of enthusiasm.
They also descended and began to form a line with swords pointed upwards while having the archers prepared above them.
The ghoul raised its head, making everyone swallow hard while waiting for the creature to attack, but it just kept its wild eyes while its mouth ran with blood, to go back to eating soon after, ignoring them.
The commander sighed a bit, but he would have to face the creature anyway. He turned his attention back to everyone. "Everyone ready?" He checked, looking at his men who nodded, tension was in everyone.
"Son, stay behind me," Meril instructed Victor, who, despite the evident fear, nodded his head, holding his weapon firmly.
"NOW!" The commander signaled with his hand, and the archers released a volley of arrows towards the ghoul, which raised its head with a fierce roar as it was hit. The arrows, however, seemed to only irritate it more than cause significant damage, as only one had embedded in its hide, the others seemed to be repelled.
"Advance!" the commander shouted again, and the soldiers with swords and spears began to move towards the beast, forming an attack line.
The creature, noticing the advance, set aside what remained of its prey and turned to face the invaders, displaying sharp teeth and a wild look as its body seemed to turn red.
"Do not hesitate, attack with everything!" Meril encouraged, leading the group from the front with the commander at his side. They approached the beast, preparing for the direct confrontation.
Victor, following closely, tried to hide his nervousness behind the determination not to disappoint his father. He watched every move of the soldiers, trying to follow them towards the enemy.
What followed was quite shocking; the archers launched another line of arrows, but the creature charged against the soldiers, making them miss this shot altogether.
The commander raised his sword and swung it down to hit the monster; however, the creature was faster and quickly charged at them in the front line, making them fly to the opposite side, as it was much stronger, breaking through the lines of soldiers while Victor saw his father thrown back in an instant, a soldier next to him had been thrown to the ground while the ghoul was on top of him.
"AHHH!!!" He exclaimed in fright as he saw the man screaming while his neck was pierced by the monster's teeth.
"Stop him!" A soldier shouted next to him, throwing his sword at the creature, but it only hit the shell, yet men tried to hit the creature while they surrounded it and their colleague let out his last screams before dying.
"Do not stop!! HM?!" He didn't even have time to react when he and his colleagues who were hitting the creature with their swords saw the spines expand from the creature, piercing them all immediately.
Four soldiers had fallen while screaming with their bodies pierced. Seeing this, the others began to retreat. Running to the crater wall to climb up and get out of there.
The ghoul, already irritated by the attack, started to go after those trying to escape, a man with his body suspended, was grabbed and pulled off the wall while he had his leg pierced as he screamed in pain, the ghoul went for the second while a few managed to escape, the archers continued to launch arrows, but scared as they saw the carnage below them, the ghoul with some arrows embedded in its body, got irritated with them as well, and started to climb a part where there were rocks, the archers seeing that they were the target of the monster, began to run.
Victor was still paralyzed seeing bodies and blood around, there were at least 12 of them there, with some alive, but without their limbs or their body pierced while begging for help. He saw that they had lost more than half of the soldiers so easily and the monster was now hunting the others as they ran through the forest.
Victor, paralyzed, came out of his stupor as he heard a moan behind him, reminded of his father there. "DAD!" He shouted and stood up to see the man fallen with his leg broken in great pain.
"DAD!! How are you?!" He shouted approaching still trembling from the terror he had witnessed.
"Damn...! I shouldn't have come here..." The man regretted at that moment and looked at his son practically asking for forgiveness.
"Run! You have to escape." He implored.
"But... I can't... everyone is dead, the commander is dying next to us, how can I manage to escape?" He said in despair as he saw the strongest man he knew with his whole body pierced and couldn't even speak with his throat destroyed while coughing to death.
"Run, my son! You can't stay here!" Meril implored while having difficulty breathing and in pain.
But before they could react, a roar appeared behind them, and the ghoul had just jumped into the crater again, with its mouth dripping blood as well as its spines on its back.
The boy and his father looked terrified at that, seeing that their end was just a few meters away after that creature had probably massacred everyone in the group.
However, before the creature could advance to eliminate them, a figure landed between the creature and the boy with his father on the ground. This was none other than Madara, who would face a creature he had never seen before.