Chapter 337 - Protect The Kingdom
They were standing inside wide plains with a gigantic demolished city in front of them.
There were thousands of unknown beasts, and humanoid, darkness-emitting beings that attacked the city as their next mission popped up in front of them.
[Protect the Kingdom] The Karn kingdom has been infiltrated and is on the brink of destruction! Help them and protect the kingdom. Time limit: One month. No further restrictions.
Seeing the message, Shane could only frown. Given the time limit, their mission was not only to defend the city from the current attack, but also from the ones that would follow suit.
There was no issue with the task taking one month, but more with the fact that they had to protect the entire kingdom and not just the city.
The task at hand gave Shane lots of information that he could use to comprehend the entire given situation.
.However, in order to do so, he required time, which was something the city in front of them didn't seem to have.
As such, Shane called Umbra before he jumped on his back. Ilya followed suit, while Cosmo had already rushed ahead.
To Shane, it looked like Cosmo was eager to fight for himself too.
This was something he had never expected to see because the Lesser Starlet Fox race was known for being angsty and unlikely to fight.
At most, they would play around with others and hunt weak beasts to feed themselves.
Considering all the above factors, he felt that Cosmo's behavior was weird.
It was only when both Umbra and Cosmo transmitted their thoughts towards Shane, that he was finally able to understand what was going on.
While the [soul connection +] didn't seem to influence him a lot, both of his tamed beasts were affected by Shane's thoughts, emotions, morale, and ethics.
This influenced Cosmo the most, who was more of an angsty beast than Umbra, who could massacre hundreds of thousand beasts effortlessly.
Because of that, Shane ordered Umbra to quickly follow Cosmo, who had already appeared in the middle of the battlefield that was more than a kilometer away from their current position.
By using several spatial portals, the small 35-centimeter tall fox appeared on the battlefield in only a few seconds.
Cosmo had already enveloped himself in a thick layer of mana, causing his silver and golden fur to glow brightly.
While activating his spatial affinity to manifest over 6 spatial portals at once, in order to control the battlefield, he had slashed out at the black-scaled canine-like beast, ripping open its chest.
However, instead of screaming in pain, retreating, or any similar reaction, the black-scaled canine beast averted its attention from the blue-skinned human-like guard it had attacked to Cosmo.
There was no trace of pain in its pitch-black eyes!
Cosmo was stunned for a quarter of a second and barely activated the [Space Jump] ability to retreat several dozen meters in an instant.
Shane, Ilya, and Umbra appeared next to Cosmo where they stopped in order to attack their opponents from a long distance first.
After Cosmo had witnessed the weird behavior of the canine-like beast, he had transmitted everything to his master.
Thus, they decided to get to know their enemies first before barging into the center of the battlefield.
Umbra and Ilya began to conjure elemental attacks, while Shane shot at the demons with Alaran, the bow of destruction.
However, he quickly figured out that his bow was useless against the opponents that simply ignored pain.
Only Umbra and Ilya's elemental attacks that destroyed the head of the demons seemed to be enough to kill them.
Meanwhile, Shane could observe the other blue-skinned race beast fighting against others too.
They were aiming at the center of their opponents, and it seemed like piercing through the pitch-black core they had in the center of their body worked too.
As such, he continued to shoot arrows with his perfect sight which Shane had enhanced with the [Eagle Eye(passive)] skill.
He had further enhanced the skill by injecting more mana into it allowing him to see everything clearly.
While shooting one arrow after another that hit the target every single time, it was difficult for him not to be proud of himself. Shane smiled lightly seeing how the demon beasts he attacked slumped to the ground and met their deaths.
Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said about the Lesser demons that were more resilient to physical, and even manga-based attacks.
Their innate mana and physical resistance were extremely high, and Shane couldn't help but feel that the mission on the third floor would be more difficult than he had expected.
Defeating the beasts and lesser demons in front of him wouldn't be much of an issue, but there was only a single city in front of them!
What about the other cities of the kingdom? Or was this the last one?
Either way, Shane had no time to waste anymore, and instead of looking at the city that resembled an ancient city from the middle ages, he unsheathed Mydra, the Sword of Blood.
By exerting the [Light steps] movement technique, his speed accelerated, while Umbra, who was next to him roared loudly.
A hundred small darkness spears manifested around Umbra which he shot out towards the battlefield, attracting everyone's attention.
At the same time, Cosmo, who was still shocked due to his near-death experience, manifested two sets of spatial portals for Shane and Umbra.
Both of them emerged from the spatial portals they stepped through, and Umbra appeared in the center of the battlefield where he began to wreak havoc owing to his massive body.
Shane preferred being secretive and didn't unleash his bloodlust-killing-intent.
Instead, he had emerged on the outskirts of the battlefield where he rushed through the rows of awakened stage beasts which he beheaded without giving them the chance to utter too many noises.
He was fighting stealthily and tried to be as silent as possible, and only the mana fluctuations enveloping the Sword of Blood, Mydra, could be sensed.
Having concealed his mana pool was advantageous in his current situation, where Umbra attracted most attention due to the commotion he caused.
Other than that, Ilya was doing a great job with her light and darkness element attacks that were accurately piercing through the Lesser demons and their subordinates.
In the end, Shane and Cosmo's existence was the least noticeable compared to Ilya and Umbra.
This allowed Shane to assassinate most beasts and Lesser demons at the outskirts without any issue, while he instructed Cosmo to rescue as many defenders as possible.
If they wanted to protect the kingdom, taking care of everyone was important.
Furthermore, letting those who defended the city die would decrease their future combat prowess.
In the end, this was not something any of them desired, and Cosmo's task had changed from attacking the unique beasts and lesser demons to saving the defenders.
This was as important as the former, and Cosmo who had been feeling low was consoled by Shane, while he rid the outskirts of infiltrators.
Less than half an hour later, the small battlefield had been taken care of, as one of the stronger blue-skinned human-like defenders approached Shane.
"In the name of the Myn kingdom, I'd like to thank Sir for helping us in fighting against the attack of the insolent pest of the Karn kingdom!"
Under normal circumstances, Shane would have ignored the guard's words, but hearing them, his entire body froze as his eyes widened.
"...W-what was the name of the kingdom that attacked the city again?"
"The demons that attacked us belonged to the Karn Kingdom. But why is Sir asking me this?"
'F*CKKKK!!'