"Arghhh!! These fucking bastards!!!! How useless can someone be!?!"
The Kitsun Lord's wrath reached an entirely new level as the news of the downfall of the second border settlement reached him.
His forces were still traveling across the Savannah region to reach the border area to fight the invading Lord when several pieces of news reached Haro Ki.
The oldest report stated that the invading Lord and the Elemental Empress were indeed working together to burn down the border settlements. But they did not just set everything on fire. No, they first eliminated a large number of Kitsun Summons before moving over to eliminate the Awakened stationed in the border settlement.
Once the Awakened had been killed, more fires would be ignited before the invading Lord ventured deeper in their territory. All-in-all they didn't spend more than an hour reducing a fully intact, thriving settlement into a burning pandemonium.
It had been years since the Kitsun Lord lost connection to so many Summons and Awakened within such a short period of time. However, that was not even the worst. Two particular factors didn't allow the Kitsun Lord to regain his calm and calculative persona.
The first factor was that the Kitsun Lord couldn't accept reading about the Elemental Empress running around his territory, unrestrained and freely using her powers, especially against him.
And second, another worrisome report arrived. The first half of the report stated that the scouts of the three neighboring Lords had been seen crossing the border. The Lords found out about the burning settlement. But the spark that set ablaze the last shred of patience left in the Kitsun Lord's mind was the second half of the report.
It stated that the second border settlement had been set ablaze as well.
The Awakened inside the second border settlement had been eliminated and everything was on fire. All of that happened not even one hour after the invading Lord left the first border settlement with his people.
That meant the invading Lord took less than an hour to travel close to 100 kilometers – using the Greater Eagles as a means of transportation – and to find and kill a total of 84 Awakened. Several hundred Links of Loyalty had been cut in close succession as well.
"This bastard is a menace! A pest that has to be removed as soon as possible!" The vice-leader of the reinforcement growled loud enough for the Kitsun Lord to hear.
The Kitsun Lord's head flicked to the vice-leader, his eyes bloodshot.
"If you guys weren't entirely useless, we would have already been at the settlement before this piece of thievery trash would have been able to reach the Xia settlement!!" He shouted, every word leaving his mouth filled with rage and fury.
Haro Ki continued to curse loudly, and his voice grew even louder as a young Kitsun rushed up to him.
"What do you want?! If it's nothing important, you'll be dead meat!" The Kitsun Lord snapped at the young Kitsun, who flinched violently.
"S-Sir…The enemy…the invading L-lord arrived at the Zum settlement…"
For a moment the Kitsun Lord was too stunned to speak. He stared at the young Kitsun hoping to find a lie in the Kitsun's words. But the Kitsun was not lying. If anything, his words couldn't be closer to the bitter truth.
"Already? How?" Haro Ki asked, unable to get his act together.
However, before the young Kitsun could say anything the Kitsun Lord retrieved a large golden crystal from his storage space.
"No. Don't tell me. It doesn't matter," The Kitsun Lord said, a sudden sense of understanding dawning upon him, "I don't have to know."
Even though Haro Ki had been fueled with nothing but wrath, anger and obsession for the last few hours, he calmed down all of a sudden. The losses of his territory along with the casualties had reached a dangerous level. He couldn't allow the third border settlement to collapse as well. If the third border settlement were to fall, the three neighboring Lords would most-definitely initiate an all-out war against him.
They would probably gang up against him and divide his territory among themselves once everyone had been killed.
The Kitsun Lord's patience had been reduced to a cinder, yet he remained eerily calm as he charged the golden crystal with his origin energy.
"My Lord! Do you really want to use the Spacika Crystal for this? We planned to use it to destroy the Valyr once you advanced to the 4th Ti-...." The Vice-leader of the reinforcement began hesitantly, staring into the bloodshot eyes of his master.
"If I don't use it now, my territory might not exist anymore by next week. Forget about the Valyr… I want this Lord. No matter what it costs, I want this bastard's life! He took my Empress, killed my people, and destroyed my plans…" The Kitsun Lord grit his teeth, anger resurfacing on his calm face, "I will show this puny existence that he made enemies with the wrong race!!!"
The Kitsun Lord spit the last words out, while continuing to channel energy into the Spacika Crystal.
The crystal stored a teleportation skill that could be used to transport people from one anchored place to another. Its cost was tremendous, draining more than two annual incomes of the Kitsun Lord's territory just to purchase the Spacika Crystal. After purchasing the Spacika Crystal several years back, only now did he feel the need to use it. Hence, the Kitsun Lord began to charge it with energy.
By now – years later – the Spacika Crystal had just enough energy to teleport 30,000 people to another location.
Haro Ki's effort and meticulous planning over the past few years would have been successful, allowing him to invade the Valyr Lordess' headquarters in a few weeks. His spies had already installed an anchor in the Lordess' headquarters, and he would have initiated an attack with the bloodthirsty beasts and his strongest forces once he evolved to a Higher Lifeform.
However, the arrival and actions of the invading Lord destroyed all of his carefully crafted plans. Not only that but the invading Lord's actions actually endangered the future of his territory. That was something Haro Ki never imagined to be possible. It was totally out of expectations. After all, the initial reports of his scouts in the Untamed Jungle had clearly stated that the invading Lord was not powerful and 100% not a threat.
'I will torture those scouts and bathe them in the blood of the invading Lord once all of this is over. They won't be able to escape my wrath. WEAK? NO THREAT? This bastard is strong enough to sweep through my settlements with less than 10 members!! How can that be weak?!?'
"I will move a few thousand Guards to the Xia and Kix settlement to extinguish the fires and up the defenses against an attack of the bordering Lords… The rest will come with me to annihilate this thieving bastard!" The Kitsun Lord announced.
There was no time to waste. It was now or never. He wouldn't underestimate the thieving Tier-2 Lord anymore. If anything, the Kitsun Lord would use all of his remaining means to obliterate the sneaky Lord.
The all-out war against Michael Fang, the Lord of the Untamed Jungle, thus began for the Kitsun Lord.
**
After they attacked the first border settlement, Michael and the rest improved their tactics. They used the blitzkrieg tactic to attack the second border settlement. The Golden Stinger Wasp and the Elemental Empress brought them inside, Liopham lured everyone to the center of the settlement, and the remaining members of the EmeraldLeaf Adventurer team began to hunt both Guards and Awakened while acting as the main distraction.
At the same time, the Golden Stinger Wasp and the Elemental Empress used their remaining energy to move through the entire settlement. They set a few fires before focusing on spreading the flames across the settlement to inflict as much damage as possible.
The rapidly spreading flames and the EmeraldLeaf Adventurer team created enough chaos so that Tiara and Michael could slip past most Guards amidst the chaos unnoticed. They moved through alleys and jumped over buildings searching for Awakened. Due to the rising smoke and anguished cries, that was not further difficult.
All Awakened were under a Soul Pact. They were forced to aid the Kitsun in case the settlements were under attack. Michael and Tiara made use of this to observe their surroundings, find their target, and strike from the shadows.
Interestingly enough, the second border settlement had two Tier-3 Awakened to defend the settlement. To their misfortune, Michael went all out as he attacked from their blind spot. Six enhanced Qi Glacicle Swords and a fully empowered Spirit Disturbance were more than enough to kill a Tier-3 Kitsun Awakened from a blind spot. His surprise attacks bore much better results than Michael fathomed.
Thus, they didn't even spend 20 minutes before they disappeared with a killcount of a few hundred Summons and 84 Awakened.
Once their attack was completed, they rushed to Icarus and his mate. Their next target was the third settlement that they advanced towards while Michael extracted the corpses of the Awakened.
He focused on extracting SoulStar Fragments and Soultrait Symbols and ignored the rest for the time being. The other loot might be of great use in the future, but the SoulStar Fragments and Soultrait Symbols were more important right now.
Michael crushed the Soultrait Symbols with Extraction to amass more SoulStar Fragments, which he then used to form the outlines of Glacicle's 5th star. He didn't possess enough SoulStar Fragments to upgrade Glacicle in one go, but that was no problem.
Glacicle's power output increased considerably as the outlines of its 5th star formed.
Even though Glacicle was a simple power, Michael liked it quite a lot. It was not as powerful as Kaleb's Frozen Nova, or Alice's Frozen Kingdom, but the essence of their power was different in the first place.
Michael's focus would never be on Glacicle. If anything, Glacicle was a good weapon to deal with large numbers of enemies, and that was something he would have to do soon enough.
A big battle would break out soon. He could feel that clearly.
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