Chapter 248 – In the Depths of the Valley

From above, the shaking didn’t stop as the Syrus listened to verify the various steps and she confirmed that it very much sounded like hundreds of feet stamping across the ground.

“Was that you?” Anlesa asked the voice that preferred to say hidden.

“Are you assuming it is?” He replied, his voice vibrating in the air.

[What should we do?] (Eva)

[Figuring out where the voice is important, but the priority of today’s job is making sure people don’t die.] (Luna)

[Returning here will be the easy part, even if we have to break a hole in the ground.] (Syrus)

The trio quickly crafted a plan and moved to run out of the cave to deal with whatever mess was happening above. 

“If you don’t want to be dragged out later, I hope you make wise future decisions,” Anlesa warned the voice who didn’t respond. 

Seeing the landscape again after exiting the underground, the valley appeared unfriendly… all the creatures that had been minding their own business were running around in a wild fury. A few beasts started mauling each other limb from limb, but that was the small minority. 

[If it wasn’t the voice, I would really like to know what idiot caused this and ruined a perfectly good investigation.] (Syrus)

They observed the chaos from afar and watched as the creatures slowly spread out. A few found the currently in-progress reinforced exits, and made their charge. These creatures bashed into the gates, and Anlesa could see people try to fight back, but they knew the situation could worsen if the massive pool of creatures all began barreling towards the exits.

The situation appeared it could turn for the worse, so Anlesa knew they had to act fast.

[Shit, looks like we got to play distraction.] (Syrus)

[Sigh… let it be done.] (Luna)

[Do we go all out but stay hidden, or limit ourselves to the disguise moveset?] (Eva)

[No, let’s stick with our standard public abilities. If it gets too much, we will just retreat.] (Luna)

The best plan was going to be risky, but they decided to go forward with it. Syrus locked her eyes on a few scouts in the mountains. 

Syrus beat her chest to clear her vocal cords. 

“I’M GOING TO CAUSE A DISTRACTION TO KEEP THEM AWAY FROM THE GATES! REPORT THE SUDDEN DISTURBANCE!” Her voice echoed across the valley, and some mutated beast looked up towards her.  

“Now… time to party.” Syrus sprinted full force down the mountain and leapt onto the valley floor with a mighty leap. She pulled out her sword as the mutated creature's crazed eyes began to look over at the new shake. 

She pulled out her sword and, with a quick swing, decapitated the head of the beast that tried immediately jumping at her. Then with a crackle, flames burst forth from the blade. “Time to make a loud distraction.” 

The flames intensified even brighter as the swarm of mutated creatures began running towards her. Large muscles with ugly protrusions that had mutated out of shape, and their bodies many times larger than what the original animals should be.  

[Eva! Assist!] (Syrus)

[On it!] (Eva)

The two united their efforts, and the training they had done together was now in full effect. The energy of fire began to condense in the sword, Eva and Syrus working together to ensure a perfect flow and to make sure the sword didn’t go boom. Furnace flame was what they ended up naming the technique they had never used since the Arisea Station incident. 

The temperature rapidly increased, and with all the trying, it shouldn’t explode in their hand. 

“Release!” Syrus swung down her blade towards the herd and searing flames exploded outwards. 

“Roar!!” 

Flames danced in the air as the wave of fire parted the mutated animal hoard, cooking a few in the process. The smell of burnt flesh began to fill the air, and the beasts spiralled in chaos. However, a large cohort of beasts quickly refocused and raged towards Anlesa. 

[Time to do this the hard way now. Is everyone ready?] (Syrus)

[Yep!] (Eva)

[Healing prepared.] (Luna)

The sword wouldn’t be able to repeat the attack so soon, and burst did eat a bit of their mana. 

The game of cat and mouse continued as Syrus jumped, ducked, and dodged her way around the creatures. Using her sword to slice apart the beast when appropriate. Eva was on offensive duty. Since there were so many creatures with various means of attack, it took a lot of effort to dodge them all to play it safe; Syrus only did killing blows when felt the window was safe.

A small voice in the back of her mind told her she was playing it too safe; it wasn’t an inner voice she heard for a long time, but she ignored it and moved on.

The large deer tore up the ground with its charge, swinging its head up; dirt flung into the air along with Anlesa. Eva’s wires grabbed onto the back of the creature and they somersaulted over and cut the creature’s leg upon the landing. 

Blood constantly pumped and revitalised their body. Unlike the previous fight with waves of mutated animals, this time their bodies were completely ready and healed. Fighting for over ten minutes, Anlesa had outpaced many of the mutated creatures, some even reached exhaustion with their unbalanced bodies. 

Still, she chose to keep fighting. Dodge after counter. Strike after parry. Every foe they slayed or injured meant one less threat for others to contend with. 

After another five minutes of fighting, the hoard had lessened, and their attention was scattered. There were still easily over a hundred mutated creatures in the valley, but many had taken a pause to consume their fallen brethren. 

[That is enough Syrus, let’s leave.] (Luna)

[You sure? We can take many more out if needed.] (Syrus)

[Our mana is enough to do that, yes, but I have no idea how difficult the next possible fight may be.] (Luna)

[I agree with that logic.] (Syrus)

The flames around her blade calmed down, and she began to retreat back towards the mountains away from the camps. There were still many mutated creatures, now many bloody and injured, that wanted her dead, but they could wait until later. Syrus sheathed her blade. 

Once they neared the mountain, they did a quick search to see if there was anyone or anything in the area. Eyes specifically on the lookout for any unfamiliar faces. 

Eva’s wires ejected and hooked onto higher points and then used them as an anchor to pull herself up. Syrus gripped the fire and yanked herself up after jumping. Multiple creatures slammed into the mountains, but Anlesa kept on moving. Making it to the opposite side of the mountain, she broke sight contact. She then moved quickly around the outside to reach the camp again.

Before they even reached the camp, from a distance they could see the disturbance that had occurred. People were moving around hastily, and there were mutated creature corpses being moved through the camp to ensure the way in wasn’t blocked. Syrus thought for a moment about using the corpse to stack the entrance, but the risk of the other creatures smelling the blood and coming over to investigate was an issue with that approach. 

[At least everything is intact.] (Syrus)

[At least. Their preparations were successful.] (Luna)

[I hope no one is too injured.] Eva kept trying to see if there was anyone clearly injured but from this distance that was nearly impossible. [...There are potions… So I shouldn’t be too worried.] 

Finally close enough, standing high on the cliff, she looked down at the camp. Seeing the commander of the area. “Yo! Do you know what on earth happened!?” 

The commander raised her head to the voice and noticed the cause. 

“We were hoping you would know the answer to that!” The commander yelled back, “You are only the second scout to have returned.” 

“Sorry, no clue, I was investigating the back end of the mountains when I heard the noise!” Syrus jumped and slid down the mountain, then leapt off to land near the commander. They weren’t going to tell them they were looking underground, but they were looking at the back end of the mountains. “Once I noticed the situation looking bad, I played distraction to try and keep the creatures away, then returned here to make sure the fort was holding.” 

The commander paused. “Distraction…?”

“Jump into the pit and stab, chop, and run around to cause a distraction,” Syrus answered very simply. “Then once it looked like they were mostly confused, I came back to ensure everything was okay.” 

The commander paused again and put two and two together and decided that commenting anything to the woman who was the likely suspect of the smell of burnt flesh the whole camp could smell from the valley was a bad idea. He also crossed Syrus off from the list of people who could’ve caused this. Again, mostly he didn’t want to join in the currently burning corpses. 

“I see…” The commander coughed and looked over the camp again. “Currently, we are fine. No one is dead, but a few are injured, though nothing permanent.” 

“Good.” Syrus nodded. “Are there any immediate counter plans?”

“None. We will be continuing fortification operations in case the full frontal assault from those crazed beasts comes.” The commander sighed. The attack wasn’t something they wanted, but they did expect something could go wrong. The commander looked back at Syrus. “I know what you said earlier, but did you see anyone in the valley?”

[...I mean… if it was the voice under the ground… then that surely doesn’t count as our fault, right?] Eva nervously asked, as she would rather their actions not be the ones that caused a bunch of people to be injured. 

[Again, no one died, and if it was, let’s just blame the voice.] (Syrus)

“No. I did not see anyone, even when I was running in the valley. If you aren’t able to find someone, I guess worst case they might have been eaten.” 

The commander's face darkened, hoping it wasn’t that possibility. “Anyway, thanks for the report. Are you going to stay and reinforce or continue your scouting?”

“The latter was looking at the flora on the mountains, and I wanted to continue that. Also allows me to jump in as a distraction again if something occurs.”

The commander frowned, not exactly happy with the idea of someone looking at plants, but he did remember Syrus was an alchemist. So there was value in her operation, and her actions had proven her priorities; she was ready to jump in to help protect everyone, even in the most dangerous area.

“Understood, good luck, hunter.”