NOVEL NEXT Chapter 57: Invasion Forces
Mila
“What do you know about other invasion forces and the natives?” Mila asked as she and the Flare Clan cultivator kept walking away from the inheritance site.
“Of the eight other invasion forces, I only know of five. First is the Amoranth royal family from the Amoranth Kingdom. They’re the enemy of the Kingdom of Night and their relationship is worse than that of the relationship between the Gale and Flare Clans. I don’t know much about who they sent but their force should be about as powerful as the Kingdom of Night’s royal family. The Vol Clan and the Quill Clan from the Amoranth Kingdom have also both been confirmed, though I barely know anything about their forces either.”
Mila found it interesting how Omniglot Reader translated his words. Clan names like Gale, Flare, and Quill were translated by what they meant even though the words used weren’t Universal Standard, while names like Amoranth and Vol, which were more associated with the clan than any original meaning they might have had, didn’t.
“According to the Gale Clan, it seems the Amoranth royal family visited the inheritance before we or the royal family from the Kingdom of Night arrived, so they’ll likely come and try to compete when the inheritance opens.
“The undead have also sent a force and the fact no one knows where they are has everyone nervous. Historical records show that if the undead, yet alone those from a B rank force, are given a year to grow secretly, they generally take the world two thirds of the time.
“Finally, we know the Kindar Raiders have a force. They are pirates who plunder the trade routes between the Kingdom of Night, the Amoranth Kingdom, and the Life Tree Empire. I don’t know much about who they brought, but they are probably weaker than the Flare, Quill, and Vol clans.
“There should be three more forces, likely subordinates of the Life Tree Empire or maybe some independent planets who got lucky, but I don’t know who they would be.
“The location of the Vol Clan and Quill Clan’s Pillars of Conquest are both known and should be on the map our squad leader was carrying, but I don't know the location of any of the others.
“As for the natives, they seem to be divided into three main groups. There are the rebels who killed this world’s previous world leader, the forces loyal to the five main generals who used to serve the world leader, and the rest, who mostly hate both of those forces.
“The rebels in the entire north of the continent have mostly been wiped out, as nearly all of them came to the inheritance site and were killed by us. And I’ve heard two of the five generals are dead, but I don’t know much more.”
“Alright then.” Mila transformed the Twin Dragons into its shield form and hit the man with about half her strength in the head before he could get his sword out from its sheath. It wasn’t enough to knock him out, though, so she hit him harder and this time he went down.
Then she checked his pulse, finding him still breathing, and she felt relieved. If she’d accidentally killed him she’d have had to use her Shadow Princess uniqueness to break the contract and she would prefer to hold that trump card back forever if possible.
Mila then used telekinesis to completely strip the man, placing all his belongings in the Left Hand of the Runescribe’s subspace, before lifting him with telekinesis and moving away from the inheritance at a quick jog.
A few minutes later, she found an F rank monster and threw the man in front of it. The lizard bear thing looked at her for a few seconds, then it moved forward and stepped on the man, placing most of its weight on his chest, and took a bite out of his leg, ripping off a large portion of his thigh.
The man didn’t wake up even from that, so Mila quickly moved away, not really wanting to see what happened next.
Unlike her or the natives, the invasion forces had chosen to come to Hira to start a war of conquest. And the four forces around the inheritance had slaughtered all cultivators they came across, not just the beastmen, so Mila didn’t feel at all bad about killing the four men to get information. She wasn’t that good of a person.
Feeding the man to a monster, however? She could probably find a better way to kill those she’d made a mutual non-killing contract with.
Mila was getting close to mastering her three new illusion skills after using them all the time, closer and closer to being able to merge the skills and gain Nana Xara’s prepared charm skill, and that would help a lot with the problem.
She then quickly found a place to hide, moving over 100 kilometers away, and there she took out the three corpses she’d collected, stripped them, and left them in front of a different monster.
Feeding a live man to a monster she had a problem with. Dead ones, not so much.
Mila then looked over the map the last man had mentioned and found the locations of the Vol and Quill Clan’s Pillars of Conquest. The Vol Clan’s Pillar of Conquest was located in the southeast of the continent, past the southern desert, and the Quill Clan’s Pillar of Conquest was in the west of the continent near the coast.
There were no other marks on the map, but, given only those two Pillars of Conquest were known, Mila expected the Flare Clan’s Pillar of Conquest would be in either the far south or somewhere in the southern desert.
It likely wouldn’t be that difficult to find, however. If a random cultivator squad of the Flare Clan had the locations of two other invasion forces marked on their map, other forces would probably have the locations of different forces. And the best source of information would likely be the nearby Gale Clan.
They knew about the inheritance first and obviously very much cared about getting their hands on it, so they’d invested more manpower than the other forces and had likely sent scouts all over the continent.
Before anything else, however, Mila felt it wise to set up her teleportation platform. She was good at sneaking around, but she didn’t have a stealth skill and she wasn’t confident enough in her knowledge set about any of the invasion forces to kill a female cultivator, take on her identity, and safely get into her camp.
If she set up the teleportation platform somewhere, however, the token she carried would allow her to escape so long as she managed to exit combat for 13 seconds.
So, instead of sneaking around or finding anyone else to question, she took a day to run back to the desert and found a cave, very far from any type of normal route. Then she took out the platform and activated it.
The platform, which looked like a 3 meter wide stone slab, lowered the mana in a kilometer radius, making it very easy to sense for any cultivator who entered the area, but by placing it in the desert, where almost no cultivator would go, she could be reasonably certain no one would find it, at least within the next few months.
Along the way, her Law Egg of Calm rose to peak grade, which was nice, and her mastery of her illusion skills grew by a few more percentage points, raising her mastery having become much more difficult once she’d surpassed 75%.
Mila then moved to the west and ran through the desert for a good 500 kilometers before turning north again. She wasn’t sure what type of tracking skills the invasion forces had, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. Her main goal at the moment was to improve her skills and that mainly required time.
From the south, she entered the region controlled by the Gale clan, a forest filled with trees which looked like oaks, then she found an area where monsters still roamed about 20 kilometers directly south of where she assumed their Pillar of Conquest to be.
She didn’t hunt herself, however, and instead used her Law Egg of Obfuscation to help hide her presence as she climbed up the largest tree in the forest, finding a good concealed spot 30 meters up.
There she sat and waited. One of her main minds focused on improving her Law Egg of Illusion, another focused on improving her Law Egg of Obfuscation, and the third practiced with her Blur and Second Self skills, making sure to place each second self in other hiding spots. It was left to her two dumber minds to monitor her senses for what she was looking for.
A few hours later, a group of eight cultivators entered into her sight, but that was too many to capture someone, so she just watched as they hunted and didn’t take the risk of trying to take one of them for interrogation. Then they left before it got dark.
From what she’d seen, two of them had been about as powerful as Roland, an early grade air element Law Egg infused into their attacks, and that made Mila nervous. Sure, those two looked like they’d been in their forties, and had been the only ones in the group with greenish blond hair, which likely meant something, but it was still scary.
The invasion forces could only bring in G ranks, so it seemed the Gale Clan at least had kept some of its cultivators from advancing for a long time. The average strength of their force was likely far higher than Mila had assumed, so she decided to be even more cautious than she’d been planning.
Then, a couple hours later, the perfect target arrived, and her high Perception allowed her to make him out in detail from afar. Tall, with salmon-colored hair and fuchsia eyes, he otherwise looked like a typical European from Earth, albeit built like a bear. He was wearing leather armor and had a spear over his shoulder which was in disrepair, the blade slightly chipped and the shaft looking like one of the lizard bear monsters had bitten it. Most important of all, however, he was alone.
Mila was pretty sure he was one of the Gale Clan’s generals, the so called Pink Ursa, and he would likely have far more information than anyone else she could possibly capture.
