“There it is! Quickly, go create more solutions while I prepare the ritual.” Seeing that they had finally found the second stele inside the mountain pass, Aurelia sighed in relief.

  It was quite difficult to find, and they weren’t sure of its exact location.

  “Alright, be careful,” Illyan told her as he ran around, trying to find more of the bandits.

  Since they were just thugs, Illyan used his nails to ssh them to death. He moved like a ghost within the stronghold as his white robe blended with the snow and ice around him.

  However, at some point, he suddenly stopped. Illyan’s shoulders stiffened as he tried to feel the spiritual energy around him.

  ‘Something is following me… It’s not human, but it has a humanoid build…’ Illyan confirmed that a certain creature was coming after him.

  It was climbing one of the mountain walls vertically from above, watching over him.

  Since it wasn’t after Aurelia, who stayed there, and instead followed after him, then it was probably interested in the blood spilled by him.

  Illyan thought about it for a second before using one of his nails to ssh a shallow cut on his finger.

  One droplet was squeezed out of the wound before it sealed itself on its own.

  But this one blood droplet was enough to rile up the creature.

  “Grieeyeshish!”

  There was a screech full of desire as Illyan felt the creature rush toward his location.

  Illyan didn’t wait as he rolled on the ground. In that split second, the ground he had stood on just moments ago exploded as dirt, snow, and dust flew everywhere.

  The creature lunged at Illyan with bloodthirst in its eyes, leaving behind a small crater.

  However, it didn’t stay there for long as it rushed out of it toward Illyan.

  Finally, its full body was revealed.

  It was humanoid and without any hair. All its limbs and even its fingers were extremely elongated, and its face was just two big, cloudy eyes and a maw full of sharp fangs.

  ‘So it’s wendigos in the end… You wouldn’t leave it so easy for us, huh?’ Illyan thought to himself as his face turned solid cold, staring at the creature.

  This was the slender type of wendigo.

  During the ndslide on their way to Faruin, they were ambushed by one of these creatures.

  They were quite dangerous, though not as much as the beast versions.

  ‘Last time, when I fought the wendigos, I was much weaker. It should be much easier to kill them now.’

  Illyan thought so as he watched the creature charge at him after its ambush was thwarted.

  He sidestepped, and with a quick draw, he unsheathed one of the sabers and cut off one of the creature’s arms as it passed by him.

  “Graaaggh!” Screams of agony resounded as it fell to the ground and writhed in pain.

  “What was that? First, the ground shook, and now this?” Illyan’s sensitive ears heard some of the bandits' confused voices while running to this pce at high speed.

  He wanted to end the wendigo’s life, but considering that Aurelia could be in danger, he decided to spare it.

  Illyan didn’t know if the bandits knew about their monster allies, but he was pretty sure they couldn’t control it.

  Now that it was agitated and injured…

  The moment they showed up in front of it would be their end.

  On the other hand, the wendigo would be distracted.

  Using his enemies against each other was much more effective than mindlessly sughtering until exhaustion. It was also amusing to watch.

  Illyan grinned as he ran toward Aurelia for now. Since there was one wendigo, there would definitely be a second and a third.

  He could collect the bodies ter on.

  Soon after he left, a group of bandits arrived.

  “What the hell happened here?” one of them said with shock in his voice when he looked at the crater left behind.

  “Hey… Is that… O-one of the Lord’s p-pets?” As they looked around, one of them stiffened after seeing, farther away, the wendigo writhing in pain.

  “What? But it should show up only if there’s an intruder… Shit!”

  “The intruder shouldn’t be too strong, right? He ran away without killing it first.” One of them felt that the intruders didn’t kill the wendigo because of weakness, but the other one felt uneasy.

  “Let’s go! We need to find the intruder! That beast is hurt, and it will need to feast—Argh!”

  Unfortunately, while this bandit realized the situation, it was all for naught, as the wendigo had already stood up and, with a resentful expression, stared at the people around.

  “Huuu-maaans!!!” Its mouth opened fully, saliva dripping on the ground as it lunged and bit off the closest bandit’s neck.

  “Run!” Other bandits, horrified at the sight, ran away without a care.

  But they were too slow. It stared at them for a few seconds before lunging at their exposed backs…

  ……..

  Aurelia, who set up several Dark Stones in certain arrangements around the stele for the ritual, heard the commotion and furrowed her brows.

  ‘He wouldn’t be so careless from what I know about him… So Ezekiel truly prepared something. Or rather, it is almost guaranteed that it’s wendigos. I guess that Illyan will come here to join the force. The wendigos will come on their own, and we can immediately sacrifice them. Great…’

  Aurelia thought with a malicious glint in her eyes as she broke one of the Dark Stones and put its shards on the ground while covering them with snow.

  Using certain chants, she made sure that the energy within them didn’t dissipate and that even a light touch would stir up the votile energy, turning it into small but dangerous traps.

  Then she unsheathed her sabers and waited.

  Sure enough, soon after, a group of five bandits arrived at the scene.

  “Intruder! Kill him!” the one who seemed to be the leader yelled out as he pointed his scimitar at her.

  The others immediately unsheathed their weapons and rushed at her.

  She wore a bnk expression as she just threw the sabers.

  Squelch

  No resistance was shown as the sabers went through the two foremost bandits before changing direction and bisecting the other two.

  “W-what?” The leader who had yelled out before now felt weak in his legs as he tried to retreat.

  Aurelia did nothing to stop him and instead recalled her sabers.

  There was no need to do anything, as the blood had already covered the ground.

  “Y-you monster! What kind of—Squelch!”

  The man didn’t even have time to scream as his head was bitten off from behind by the towering figure of the wendigo.

  “This time, it’s the beast type. No, there are ‘slenders’ lurking around too…” Aurelia clicked her tongue.

  The wendigo first bit off the head and then continued chewing the body. In a few seconds, only stains of blood remained.

  However, the hunger remained as it looked at Aurelia, who was currently the freshest piece of meat here.

  But she wasn’t worried.

  All this time, she worked alone and had to suffer a lot in order to get what she wanted.

  But now, she had a very reliable ally.

  “Hah!” Illyan, who had just shown up from behind the corner, saw the wendigo charging at Aurelia.

  Seeing it was truly the wendigo he was familiar with, his eyes burned with bloodlust as he rushed at full speed.

  The beast couldn’t even react before he slipped between its legs and sshed its leg tendons with sabers.

  “Graugh?!”

  Confused, it suddenly couldn’t continue running as it started to violently roll on the ground.

  Illyan didn’t miss the opportunity to attack as he stabbed one of the sabers into the wendigo’s open maw and then kneed the saber even deeper.

  The beast whimpered in pain as it brandished its cws to stop him.

  However, Illyan let go of the saber inside the mouth and gripped one of its antlers as he leapt over its shoulder, narrowly avoiding the attack while still holding onto the beast.

  The wendigo tried to shake him off, but his grip was too strong.

  In the end, he thrust the other saber right through the eye socket into its brain, smoothly killing it.

  The body convulsed a bit before colpsing on the ground, with Illyan still standing on its now-bowed head.

  ‘I got stronger…’ Illyan thought for a second as he felt the cold wind blowing against his face.

  While he was still far from being a fabled magic user, he was much stronger than before.

  ‘However… It doesn’t have the bck rods inside its body. It didn’t show the same abilities as the one during the ndslide either. Is it because they were supposed to be sacrificed to the stele, or because Ezekiel cannot mass-produce them? It is probably a mix of both… I hope at least, or it would be difficult to get rid of him…’

  “Illyan, there are still some lurking around, so we should get rid of them. If we collect all of their bodies, we will have enough energy for all other nodes!” Aurelia called out.

  Illyan turned around and smirked.

  “That sounds good.”

  Killing these bastards was something he enjoyed very much…

  “Jump over to me. There are traps around,” Aurelia said with a sigh.

  Illyan didn’t say anything as he used the wendigo’s body as a stepping stone to jump over the rest of the distance to the stele.

  Soon after, several other wendigos swarmed the pce.

  Most of them were the slender type, but a few of them were beast types that took the charge.

  However, all of their momentum disappeared the moment their legs exploded into bloody mists.

  Illyan and Aurelia also didn’t waste their time as they started to massacre all of them, leaving no living creature in the perimeter behind…

  ……..

  The next day.

  “This pce is also barren. Looks like all their attention is on Aziro, and even your father has gone after him.”

  “That sounds good at first, but they will probably all gather at the st pce…”

  “There is nothing we can do about it. Let’s just use this opportunity to sneak inside without a fight and go to the mines as soon as possible…” Illyan, who got to the third node, talked with Aurelia.

  The day before, they killed all the wendigos and used them as the sacrifice. Thanks to that, no living being was inside the stronghold, and they could easily run for the next node.

  The third node was the one Brynjar’s team occupied, and his men were guarding it at the moment together with the rest of the acolytes.

  But from what Illyan observed, it seemed that it would soon be time for them to sughter the acolytes. Because of that, they needed to hurry.

  “You don’t need to be considerate of me. There are very few people I care about in the cn. If I see them, I will tell you. But these men are father’s loyal men, so I doubt they would be here…”

  Aurelia said with a calm heart.

  Illyan gnced at her with a side eye.

  “Alright, then let’s go.”

  “Yeah.”

  Without any sound, two figures hiding disappeared as their presence faded into the snow…

  …….

  While Aurelia and Illyan passed through the almost abandoned outposts, Aziro was fighting for his life deep down inside the mine shafts.

  “Damn these lowlifes! Do they not understand how grave the situation will be for them once I die?” Aziro’s angry mutters echoed through the dark tunnel as he y on the ground tending to his wounds.

  The vials holding the potions were emptied one by one as he used them both externally and internally.

  “They will pay… They will pay for eternity when I turn their bodies into undead…”

  Once the potions were applied, Aziro used his ghost fmes to burn the wounds.

  “Grrgh!” While gnawing on a piece of stick, he endured the pain and stopped all the wounds from getting worse.

  “Ahh… So tired… Maybe I should rest for a while. They won’t be able to find me here…”

  “Are you sure?”

  Suddenly, a familiar voice resounded in Aziro’s ears.

  “Y-you! You are here too?! So you guys were in it together the entire time…?” Aziro, who heard the voice, gritted his teeth in hatred.

  “Fufu… It is nothing personal. You were the one hunting me down, so you should have been prepared for others to do the same thing to you, don’t you think so?”

  Clear steps echoed as the silhouette of a man soon appeared in front of Aziro’s eyes.

  Along the way, he even started cpping as if to mock his longtime enemy. Or maybe a toy.

  As he came closer, the face of the man was revealed.

  It was an old man with dark gray skin, red eyes, and long ears.

  If Illyan were here, he would immediately recognize him.

  It was Ezekiel.

  Standing on both legs, cpping with both hands.

  “Now then, my babies are hungry, and they are not satisfied with the rotten puppets you use… Will you help me out as a friend?”

  Ezekiel smiled as the tunnel behind him revealed dozens of blood-red eyes surrounding the tunnel walls.

  There was no noise or movement, only big red bulbs staring while Aziro stared back in horror.

  “Y-you!” Aziro was horrified at the sight. There were so many of them that his fighting spirit was crushed immediately.

  “Now then, please don’t resist,” Ezekiel grinned as he snapped his fingers.

  “Grieyshiesh!”

  “Grraeegsh!”

  “Grieeyshiiessh!”

  Sounds of despair drummed inside Aziro’s ears as the eyes converged around him…