Chapter 165
Chapter 165
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 165
Chapter Title: Mowing Down the Hunt (6)
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After smashing three wyverns and lopping off the heads of two sirens—with the last one tucked under her arm—Lilia returned to her spot.
Bam!
The final ogre's skull was shattering against the mud golem.
Galen lightly leaped down from the golem's shoulder, which had carried out its mission flawlessly.
It was a height that might burden an ordinary person, but a subtle application of Earth Bind made it trivial. He landed with a solid thud.
"Welcome back?"
"Yeah. You wrapped it up quick."
Lilia spoke as she casually dumped the third siren on the ground like trash. Galen shrugged lightly.
"Caught 'em while they were still dazed and hit hard and fast."
The mud golems from the Okurane ruins were powerful enough to bury a handful of Gold-rankers and dozens of Silvers if Galen and Lilia hadn't been there.
But since his Territory Advance was still Gold-rank, handling eight Gold-rank fiends solo would have been tough.
So he'd made just one golem, concentrated his power into it, and struck during the command confusion after the sirens died. He'd mixed in some other spells for support, too.
A Gem-rank mage might scoff at the effort, but the point was he hadn't used any Gem magic at all.
"Basically done now, right?"
"Yeah. The sharp-eyed mercenaries probably realize it's time by now."
Lilia hadn't deliberately spared any one of the three. She'd just grabbed the last one standing.
By coincidence, the two she'd killed turned out to be the sirens commanding the left and right fiend legions.
With the central legion they'd breached suffering overwhelming losses, the left and right now made up far more than two-thirds of the remaining numbers.
Once their control snapped, most of the fiends regained their freedom, naturally devolving into chaos.
Even the formation atop the hill was starting to shift.
He'd mentioned it before the battle started: switch to offense once the fiends fell into disarray.
Any mercenaries sitting idle while the fiends turned on each other deserved to lose their licenses.
"You'll interrogate it, right, brother?"
"Yeah. Won't take long."
"Then I'll clean up around here?"
"Suit yourself. I'll help with the small fry."
Galen reclaimed the Territory Advance mana from the giant mud golem and redistributed his remaining reserves efficiently.
Shhh!
New mud golems rose around them.
He didn't have much mana left, and he'd prioritized quantity over quality, so none reached Silver-rank strength.
But they'd already smashed all the tough fiends on the way in, so these were plenty. Plus Lilia was there.
"I'll head out first! Don't slack on the surroundings, okay?"
"No worries."
Lilia leaped into action. Free from guarding Galen, she flew like the wind, carving through fiends left and right.
Galen set the mud golems to auto-hunt and splashed a bucket of water on the third siren's face.
"Puhah! Cough! Cough!"
The third siren woke coughing violently. Galen ignored it and asked.
"Which number are you? Second? Third? Fourth?"
"Wh-what?"
Snapping awake to ominous words, the third siren panicked.
"How do you...?"
"Fifth, maybe? Heard it from her."
On their first day in the pioneer lands, they'd stormed through four sirens.
The last one snagged, the fifth, had suffered the most before dying—learning from the mistakes with the suicidal seventh, the berserk first, and the bitten sixth. Poor thing. Or not.
"She spilled everything easy once I asked."
"Liar!"
"Nah, that was a lie."
"You bastard?!"
"She did spill, but not easy. You'll be the same soon enough."
Ending the banter, Galen invoked Life mana.
Days had passed since stealing Demonic Voice Seal from the first siren.
Normally, progress that fast would be impossible, but with the status window as his cheat sheet, even a few days meant a lot to Galen.
His once-rough technique had smoothed out considerably.
"You... filthy...!"
Realizing her sisters' fate, the third siren trembled. Sadly, that was the extent of her resistance.
"Hypocritical bullshit from bitches herding thousands of fiends."
Galen snorted, crushing her will to fight.
Her rebellion soon ceased.
"Alright, then..."
Galen pondered, choosing words carefully.
Experiments on the fifth had shown indirect questions skirting frenzy triggers worked decently.
Asking "Where's the demon?" outright killed them mid-sentence, but "Is the demon living among humans?" got a "Don't insult my master with lies" response.
One downside: the sirens didn't know much to begin with.
Spawned fresh for this mission, they only had demon-related scraps beyond that.
So this was more cross-verifying the fifth's info than expecting revelations.
Unexpectedly, the third let slip one new tidbit before dying.
Galen incinerated the siren's corpse and joined Lilia.
"All done?"
In the minutes he'd interrogated, Lilia had shredded any standout fiends in the central legion, taken a break by smashing trash mobs. If that counted as a break.
"Yeah. Went smoothly."
"Anything new?"
"Not sure... maybe?"
"Huh? Like what?"
"Probing the collaborators, and it slipped out by chance."
The demon's human collaborators were practically confirmed.
It traced back to discovering demon beast spreaders.
Back then, theories split between ancient stockpiles or fresh demon-forged ones.
He'd leaned toward the former, but evil ghosts tipped it toward the latter.
Anyone delivering hot-off-the-press demon beasts was the demon's lapdog, obviously.
Unable to ask about the demon directly, he'd circled via collaborators.
But the fifth's answers were vague—security block or ignorance?
The third, surprisingly, dropped a hint. Unwillingly, of course.
"Something about 'handling mana spirits.'"
"Mana spirits?"
Lilia tilted her head, eyeing Galen's wrist. Wrapped around his left arm was a bracelet-shaped spirit.
"That first one we met... didn't it call your spirit a mana spirit?"
"Right. Said it fit better since it's born from mana."
"...So the collaborators are spirit mages?"
"Died before I could dig deeper. Nah, she barely spat that out—would've croaked anyway."
"Conversely, it means deep demon ties. Still, spirit mages are rare even among mages, so easier to investigate."
"Unless that Dawn Archipelago ghost-summoned-by-demon-beast wasn't called a mana spirit."
They shelved it as a clue for now.
Not immediately useful.
Watching mercenaries dismantle their formation and charge downhill, Galen said.
"Mind thinning the big ones on the left legion? I'll take right."
"Mana left?"
"Almost done, just a splash of water."
"Ah, got it."
Lilia headed left; Galen right.
Silver-plus fiends were mostly pulverized by them already, remnants mopped up.
Only numbers left, and even those in self-inflicted chaos.
The 2,200 mercenaries' charge swept them easily.
Fiends meant to drive-hunt humans got drive-hunted themselves.
Five or six thousand fiends dwindled to a fleeing few; mercenaries lost far fewer.
An absurd victory. Everyone knew who to thank.
Lilia beamed, having defended her home. Galen was satisfied too.
His MVPs, Illusory Inferno and the precision killer Territory Advance, had leveled steadily.
Thus, all Galen's spells save Water Flow Manipulation hit Lv.69 100%—Gold's pinnacle.
In mere days, a pioneer lands massacre averted in super-speed.
The six fiend legions totaled at least ten thousand.
Even without individual strength, that many rampaging like wild beasts should've wrecked the pioneer lands.
Fortune smiled: they clustered in legions, advancing leisurely.
Villages and fields on their path got trampled, but strays survived. Sirens cared little for total devastation.
Material damage was heavy but not fatal.
Human losses were shockingly low. Efficient evacuations, one big clash with minimal casualties.
Abaca sent aid too. Mira arrived piled with relief goods.
Also to handle admin on-site. Pioneer lands were her jurisdiction; resettling victims and compensations would be grueling.
She had backup: Daimus arrived days later.
No one doubted Lilia's prowess now, but Daimus—decades ruling northeast and east—was a heavyweight name here.
His presence signaled church high-ups cared, steadying hearts hugely.
"You timed it to calm folks, didn't you?"
"Spot on. Naturally, I wanted to see you too."
Reuniting in the first village, Daimus smiled warmly.
"Rushed back fast, and you'd already wrapped it up."
"You trusted us—had to deliver!"
"Your results always exceed expectations. Plague in the southwest too—who knows how many lives you've saved."
"No need for that."
Galen and Lilia demurred. Not from false modesty—praise and thanks had flooded in pre-Daimus.
They were near-worshipped now, complicating daily life. Time to move on.
Chatting loosely on the siren takedown, Galen pivoted smoothly.
"So, what's the Holy See's response?"
"Ah, well..."
Daimus trailed off.
Pondering his opener, he suddenly spoke.
"Right, you're a spirit mage too, aren't you?"