The Return of Lilietta - Chapter 205

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 205

Upon making her decision, Lillieta raised Silvergrass and spoke urgently.

“Change of plans, Luca! We’re breaking through to where that fire is burning via the shortest route! We’ll take the lead and have the Special Agents follow one beat behind!”

“Yes, Sister!”

Lucas immediately relayed the orders, then transformed into a beast and lowered his body for her. Rita climbed onto his back and aimed her muzzle forward.

Bang! With a sharp gunshot, the head of the largest yeti-type monster blocking their path exploded.

Lucas kicked off the leaf-strewn dirt and leaped over the massive body of the slowly collapsing white-furred giant.

Continuous gunshots rang out from atop the charging blue wolf as the heads of fast-moving gnolls and goblins, as well as flying butterfly-type monsters, burst open. This left only the relatively slow-moving ones.

Kieeeee!

Kruaaaah!

The surviving monsters howled grotesquely as they pursued the running wolf. One of them ran in a different direction to report, but its conspicuous movement exposed its back to the mage gunner, making it the target of the next bullet.

The Special Agents cautiously followed behind the monsters chasing Lillieta and Lucas. Rita looked back at the monsters to check on their safety and maintain her oath, but was startled and quickly looked forward again.

‘Wait, the number of monsters ahead…?’

She could sense hundreds of corrupted mana masses. There didn’t seem to be any Named-class ones, but there were too many to just break through, and her oath not to let any recognized monsters escape would be a hindrance.

But if they dealt with them one by one, they might be too late. Using something like Twilight to sweep them all away at once would risk setting the forest on fire, and the stamina drain afterward would also be problematic.

Gid might be fighting Pascal beyond that forest right now.

‘To avoid the Oath’s punishment while preserving as much strength as possible…’

Urgent objectives and current assets, ally capabilities and constraints, battlefield conditions, enemy characteristics and numbers, terrain conditions rapidly combined in her mind.

As soon as she reached the optimal conclusion, she grabbed Lucas’s scruff and turned around to fire Matan in rapid succession. The monsters that had been chasing them fell one after another as Lucas skidded to a stop.

“Sister?”

“Minimum 200, maximum 500 monsters ahead.”

At Rita’s brief words, the blue-furred wolf’s ears perked up sharply. Before he could say anything, she immediately explained the strategy.

“We’ll assassinate the Command Unit and create bait to lure the monster horde to the Winterfield Walls. Once the monster horde leaves the area, just the two of us will proceed toward the Whispering Cave.”

When a monster legion under a Commander gathers in certain numbers or more, there’s always a Command Unit. It’s an entity more closely connected to the Commander that receives direct orders, and the other monsters are controlled by this Command Unit rather than the Commander directly.

Therefore, if the Command Unit is killed, the monster legion will break free from control and move on instinct until the Commander designates the next Command Unit.

This was one of the differences between human armies that could distinguish allies from enemies and remember operational objectives even if their commander died, and monster legions forcibly subjugated to a Commander, and it was also a characteristic that formed the basis of combat rules for facing monster legions during the Ash-covered Era.

Lucas lowered his voice and asked back.

“The Special Agents have to lure the monster horde to the walls?”

“The Winterfield branch Special Agents train alongside the Ranger units, right? I planned this strategy judging that their forest traversal capabilities are sufficient. Do you think it’s impossible to execute?”

“Uh… well, it should be fine as long as there aren’t any extremely fast monsters.”

“I’ll snipe the ones that rush out first, so don’t worry. There are no Named-class monsters, so if they fight carefully along the walls with Winterfield’s support, the Special Agents should be able to handle them just fine. That’s why we had the cannons maintained.”

“I’m not worried about the castle, Sister. Like you said, there are cannons and they’re already prepared for battle. The Ranger units will join up after dealing with the monster groups too…”

“Our oaths will be fine too. It’ll be recognized as the battlefield being divided rather than the battle ending, so we can go help them as soon as we finish here.”

Lillieta’s oath to ‘eliminate all monsters that come into sight’ and Lucas’s oath to ‘not turn away from the crisis of the weak’ could defer punishment by using the perception that ‘the combat situation has not yet ended.’

It was the same method she had used to mitigate punishment when facing the Mimic before.

Back then, she had to endure the Oath’s punishment first while convincing herself after unexpectedly letting one escape, but by planning the strategy in advance like this and perceiving it as ‘not letting monsters escape but entrusting them to comrades’ and ‘not pushing danger onto the weak but dividing roles according to strategy,’ they could prevent the punishment from activating at all.

It was a kind of technique devised by experienced Oathbinders to survive various variables, and Rita could do it because she already had extensive experience, and Luca had also become familiar with it through training under her.

“Yes, then that’s fine. But Sister, I don’t think our Special Agents will be able to create proper bait.”

“Ah, that’s the problem.”

Bait in combat with monsters means something rich in mana.

Since monsters are ultimately monstrous mutants caused by mana corruption, they tend to be drawn to masses of mana that haven’t been corrupted yet. That’s why, without other variables, mages are usually the first among humans to be attacked by monsters.

To counter this, mages of the Ash-covered Era developed ‘bait magic’ that created phantom-like duplicates that seemed to have more mana than the original to lure monsters, but this was quite tricky since it required inflating mana beyond its actual amount, making it difficult to learn.

Nevertheless, the mages of that era who faced monsters day in and day out desperately learned bait magic to survive, so most could use it, but Tritoma’s mages who had only been sworn for a few years and had little combat experience hadn’t learned it yet.

Rita pondered for a moment, then asked the artificial spirit in her mind.

‘Gnewg, do you happen to know bait magic?’

[Analysis: I have knowledge about the structure of bait magic, but directly casting that magic is impossible.]

[Opinion: Baby Gnewg was born to assist mage gunners, so functions related to mages’ survival methods are absent. This is definitely not because Gnewg is lazy or incompetent.]

‘I never thought that. Anyway, you said you know the magic structure? Then do you also know the magic circle structure?’

[Search: …The creator input numerous magic circle information into this artificial spirit to help the user identify magic circles. Among that list is an item for bait creation magic circles.]

‘Good. Can you output that like when you display 3D maps with butterflies?’

[Analysis: Of course, user.]

‘Please do it right away.’

While asking Gnewg, she also made a request to Lucas.

“Luca, peel off some tree bark here. Large enough to use as a paper substitute.”

“Paper substitute? Uh, um, would this size work?”

The beast’s claws easily peeled off the tree bark. Rita took it and quickly copied with a pencil the magic circle that Gnewg had drawn in the air using her Oath.

Meanwhile, another earthquake-like vibration occurred from beyond the distant forest, accompanied by an explosive sound. Startled birds fluttered up into flight and a faint smell of burning drifted over.

‘Gid.’

No matter how anxious she felt, haste would ruin the strategy. Rita gritted her teeth and finished drawing the magic circle, then called the mage Special Agent closer.

“You have magic circle tools, right? Use them to make this exactly as drawn.”

“Yes, yes sir!”

The innocent-looking young mage pulled out magic circle tools that looked like a carving knife set with trembling hands and began painstakingly engraving the bait magic circle into the tree bark.

Rita gauged the completion time based on his slow pace and modified the strategy on the spot. She quickly explained the strategy to the other Special Agents and called Lucas.

“Luca, let’s start by assassinating the Command Unit while that’s being made.”

“S-Sister, I’m not Gid or Ethan. If we approach, we’ll definitely be detected…”

“We’re going to snipe from long range, so why worry about being detected? Climb to the treetop and support me.”

“Ah, I’m confident about that!”

Lucas wagged his tail vigorously, adjusted his beast transformation to shrink his size, stood on two legs, then carried her on his shoulders as he climbed the sturdiest nearby tree.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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