"What do you expect us to do?" Zaos asked. "Hit and force them to stay with us?"
"You don't need to go that far," Ameria said. "But you can't give up on them that fast either."
"We are soldiers, Ameria. Talking isn't our forte," Zaos said. "All of us did our best to keep these people safe throughout the night, but we can only do so much while considering their own free will. You are not their princess, Ameria. You can't force them to obey you."
Ameria looked at Orleand, and while he seemed conflicted since he knew what would happen to those people, he couldn't do anything else to help them. He was the most influential man in the country, but even he wasn't trying to force everyone to recognize his point.
Around fifty or so people left the group, which was one-third of the original number. If one looks coldly at the numbers alone, they might think that things weren't looking so bad. The only problem was the fact that of the remaining people, only half of them could imagine how dire the situation was, while the other half still was thinking about leaving at some point.
"We might start making some plans from now on," Orleand approached the soldiers and then said. "We aren't exactly out of danger, but we need to start worrying about factors such as food and water."
"I can sense the presence of animals, so food won't be a problem," Zaos said. "The real problem will be cooking them without revealing our position."
"Hmm… maybe we can use that in our favor," Erean said.
"Oh, I think I get it…" Zaos smirked.
"What did you get?" Drannor asked.
"That you sucks at coming up with strategies," Zaos said. "Shouldn't we get going or are we waiting for those that left to change their minds?"
"Yeah, let's go," Erean said. "Sir, lead the way with Drannor and Ameria. Your family should conserve your energy since you will be less convincing looking exhausted. We will keep watching our backs while we also try to hunt some animals."
It will be a pain to hunt animals to feed one hundred people, not to mention animals have sharp instincts. Hence, they tend to move away from places where there are many noises, and with a group that big, a lot of noise was being made as they moved.
After they assumed their positions, the carriages began to move again, and now Zaos had to focus on looking for some large-sized animals as well, but right at the moment, he had something else in mind.
"Captain, staying on the defensive right now is really the best course of action?" Zaos asked. "Perhaps if we approach the post and send some messages to Orleand in the other islands."
"I already assumed that all of our means of communication had already been destroyed by those five individuals the very moment the sun began to rise," Erean explained. "We weren't attacked at night because the enemies are wary of you, but they know that we can only fight in tip top shape for so long under these conditions. They will wait for our strength to wane since we don't have soldiers on our side, just like we don't have food and water. Even without some proper places to rest even people like me and you will slowly lose their strength."
"...I guess that once more show us that the enemy isn't someone stupid," Zaos said after a long sigh.
Back at the Ojala family's mansion, a group of individuals was crossing the mansion gates. They were looking at the aftermath of the previous night's battle with some concerned eyes.
"Give me a detailed report of what happened here,'' a young, handsome, black-haired man who had sharp light brown eyes asked.
His name was Ferdinand, one of the five merchants that Orleand had mentioned to Zaos's group the previous night. Despite not even being in his thirties yet, he managed to make a fortune building ships and selling to the other rich merchants of Vezar. To answer his question, a tall, broad-shouldered man who was wearing a long dark Cape that covered almost his entire body stepped forward. He was the commander of the assassins, and the people only knew him as Crow because of his cape, dark eyes, and dark hair.
"According to the reports of those that escaped, the attack went as planned as soon as you left, sir," Crow said. "The guards of the mansion were quickly disposed of, but then the guards of the princess attacked from the side and made them waste some time. Despite that, a good part of the guards were killed. However, when they were about to enter the mansion, a weird boy showed up with a sword that summons lightning bolts and killed the assassins one after another. Based on the records, the princess and another boy helped the first kid and they killed fifty of my assassins in a few minutes."
"Did you kill your men for this pathetic excuse?" Ferdinand turned around and faced Crow.
"Can you see this?" Crow asked after he looked around for a short while and then found some corpses with burn marks on their faces. "This isn't a normal burn mark, not to mention, aside from this wound, this assassin is completely fine… this one died after getting hit on face by an attack powerful enough that only burned a small part of his face and yet it killed him. My guess is, this one was hit by the said lightning bolts in the head and was killed instantly."
Ferdinand wasn't convinced, but Crow and he checked other bodies. Some of them had burn marks. Some of them just got split in half by a big sword. Considering the wounds, they assumed that most of them had been killed by the same person.
"What do you know about the guards that Sairus princess brought with her?" Ferdinand asked.
"I know that ten of them were ordinary royal guards, tough soldiers, but they were unable to survive due to the crossbows," Crow replied. "As the other two… they are the heirs of Seres and Sielders family."
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