novelraw Chapter 177: Gearing for battle
Chapter 177: Gearing for battle
After several long days crossing the valley, Evil Spirit Lucas and his team came to a sharp stop at the edge of a steep cliff that dropped down into a sunken compression in the earth below.
This was the spot.
The designated meeting point for the rest of the Athen members.
The group descended into the lower ground and settled in. The compression walls cut the wind and dulled most of the sound from above. It felt quieter down here. Smaller.
"Don’t worry, that’s just how these raids go." The Fire Jackal drifted toward Guilliman with a casual expression, speaking like he was sharing something useful. "Unless you’ve proven your value, the team won’t put much responsibility on you. That’s just how it works."
He meant it as comfort.
He had heard from Eric that Guilliman was new to this kind of operation. He remembered his own first raid. The energy he had shown up with, the mental image of cutting through beast after beast, leveling fast, reaping rewards. He had been so sure it would go that way.
It hadn’t.
In a team with this kind of structure, history mattered. Results mattered. People who had been here before, who had built a record, those were the ones who got the real assignments and walked away with the real gains. First-timers were carried. Observed. Assigned nothing critical.
It took time to break out of that.
"Ehh, why are you telling me?" Guilliman looked at him, genuinely puzzled.
The Jackal blinked.
Guilliman had killed four Gale Bulls at Wayfarer rank on this trip alone. That wasn’t counting the abomination. The near-Great Abomination that had chased them all across the sky and sent half the group scattering in different directions.
He had reaped more than anyone else here.
That included the team leader.
The Jackal opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again.
"Ehh...." He scratched the back of his neck. "Just a heads up. Not everyone is as chill as Brother Evil Spirit."
He gave a small smile, then turned his head and looked out over the edge of the suppression, letting the subject drop.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Time passed quietly.
Then, at the edge above, two shadows flickered briefly.
A token reflection flashed against a glance mirror positioned in the rock face nearby. The light caught it at a specific angle. A moment later, a second reflection appeared on the sand mirror from the opposite direction.
Confirmation of identity.
Two figures made their way down into the compressed space and joined the group.
"What happened to the rest?"
Poison Lilly’s frown was immediate. She looked at the two A-ranks in front of her. Both soaked in blood. Dried and fresh mixed together. Neither of them carrying the composed posture of people who had come out of something clean.
"We ran into some trouble," one of them said.
His eyes moved over the group beneath Lucas. Complete numbers. Nobody missing. Nobody dragging themselves in with critical damage.
’Why are we so unlucky?’ The thought passed through him quietly, not meant for anyone else.
But as he laid out what had happened on their end, he started to understand. These people hadn’t had it easy either. The abomination alone was enough to have wiped all of them. They hadn’t escaped it cleanly. They had scattered and ran and relied on Guilliman to handle something that had no business being handled at all.
Lucky was relative.
And something else was becoming clear as he spoke.
Something was moving through the valley.
Not just the abomination they had encountered. Something wider.
That feeling was reinforced over the next stretch of time as more Athen members filtered into the location. Each group that arrived came in smaller than expected. Some came in injured. Quiet. Carrying the posture of people who had made decisions they hadn’t planned on making.
Some days later, the last of them arrived.
River Bandit at the front.
The full number was finally together.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
"I think most of you already know," River Bandit started, scanning the group slowly. "A small war broke out in the valley."
The group was still.
"The Red Mane Lions and the Silver Fur Baboons."
He let that sit for a moment.
"Both factions have a Great Abomination at their head. Both of them are insanely powerful."
He paused, allowing the weight of it to settle properly before continuing.
Just a clash between regular abominations was something you didn’t want to be near. The ground changed. The air changed. The beasts surrounding them went unpredictable. It was the kind of thing that turned a hunting zone into a graveyard in under an hour.
But Great Abominations?
Two of them, on opposite sides, actively going to war with each other?
The valley had essentially become a death zone. The stronghold was almost certainly already pulling its stationed people back from the surrounding area, sealing access, waiting it out from behind walls.
"Are we trapped?" one of the Athen members asked. Flat voice. Practical question.
If the stronghold sealed the entry points, fighting back in wasn’t an option. Not without paying for it.
River Bandit closed his eyes.
A few short moments passed.
When he opened them, his voice came out steady and clear.
"We go according to plan."
He looked around the group.
"This isn’t Red Mane Lion territory. It isn’t Silver Fur Baboon territory either. They have no reason to come here. And going back takes a week minimum. By the time we’d make it out, this whole thing would already be over."
He didn’t frame it as a question.
The group absorbed it.
Then, one by one, the rationalization started.
"Yeah, no reason to panic."
"Makes sense."
"If everyone else is distracted, we can move more freely and take more."
It spread through the group quickly. Not forced. Not manufactured. Just natural. The way people from Athen tended to think.
These were people who had chosen to live in direct opposition to the Kong Shi family. Who had set up inside their reach, operated under their surveillance, and continued anyway. Day after day.
A small war between two beast factions somewhere in the deeper zones?
That was something, but not something impossible. .
River Bandit watched them settle.
His jaw stayed relaxed but his mind was still running.
He was far from S-rank. The gap was real and he knew exactly how real it was. Every day that passed without progress was a day that gap stayed the same size.
This couldn’t be allowed to slow things down.
Not for him.
Not for any of them.
They would continue.