364 The Noose Is Tightening

After designating a few tasks, Baiyi and the Fairy Walker took to the air and zoomed off. The Fairy Walker lead the way because she could pinpoint where the energy undulations let out by the Caudillo Butterfly Bow was coming from. If the Wise Mad King was crazy enough to destroy a village, there was no reason to think that he would hold anything back from killing Baiyi's cheap grandniece-in-law.

Hence, Baiyi had to act immediately. The night was long enough for many unsettling things to occur.

The poor Fairy Walker was in a somewhat unstable state. Baiyi had to call out to her multiple times before he could get her attention.

Unsure of how to comfort her, the Fifth Walker could only slow down and say, "Um… Everything will be fine. The village could still be rebuilt—"

"I was just thinking," the Fairy's said, with self-loathing, interrupting him, "That, perhaps, an unfortunate woman like myself should have never returned home. I have brought misfortune to the village, again."

"No, no!" Baiyi quickly rebutted. "It's not your fault at all. This is all on me. When a simple welcome dinner began to bustle as much as festivals did, I realized it, but I did nothing, even though we both know what festivals are like."

"You… you know you have always acted pig-headedly, but sometimes, you say things that make a girl smile," the Fairy Walker replied softly. Suddenly, she froze, and a look of panic appeared on her face as she yelled, "Little Nydore is in trouble! She's already using the Caudillo Butterfly Bow! It's just as you said; the enemy struck very quickly!'

"Then, there's no time to fly at this speed," Baiyi said before increasing his flight speed drastically, rushing in the direction the Fairy Walker was pointing at. Not only had he just dragged the Fairy Walker along, but he had also jacked the range of his psychic energy sensing to the maximum, hoping he would not miss any anomalies that occurred in the vicinity.

A second after he jacked his psychic energy, something unexpected happened. Baiyi detected a change in his psychic sensing. It made him remember what the Eight Walker had made him see, a while ago. His vision began to change as large swathes of lurid colors filled the area in front of him. It made Baiyi feel as though he was wearing night vision goggles.

With the change in his psychic sensing, Baiyi could now see a large, red area in the distance; it was in the same direction that the Fairy Walker was pointing at. Although the area was still very far away, the crimson color within it was bright and, for some reason, vulgar. It made his body hairs stand on end. Baiyi had felt this before, but back then, he had no idea what it meant.

Now, he understood. This was a sign that a heated battle was in full swing.

'There is something odd about this place as well.'

Baiyi's flight came to a sudden stop, and he looked downward. Moments later, he landed close to the buttress root of a large tree. He quickly crouched and began to rummage through the fallen, dried leaves underneath its canopy.

The Fairy Walker was a little puzzled, but Baiyi said nothing and continued to search. With the new vision that had come with his psychic energy, Baiyi found a single leaf that was different from the others. 

On closer examination, one would see that it was not a leaf; it was actually a dragon scale that had a strange rune inscribed on it.

One could use dragon scales for many things, but inscribing magic runes on it for whatever purpose was very rare to witness. Although magic runes could remain for a very long time, most would not lose their enchanted items, especially in places like these. Hence, this enchanted dragon scale must have something to do with Godsfall, Baiyi believed.

"Analyze this for me, and find out what its purpose is," Baiyi said to the Voidwalkers as he showed them the dragon scale, and after that, he took to the air, with the Fairy Walker in tow, and sped off in the direction of the red area.

Baiyi's cheap grandniece-in-law was in trouble.

The girl was only five-hundred years old, and she had only just gotten her Zephyr title, but she was now facing her most grueling battle ever.

She only had eight men and eight sabercats at her side, while the enemies numbered over two hundred. The Zephyr's team were cornered in a rift valley within the woods. The enemies contained sorcerers, heavy knights, archers, and even assassins. They had many small team combinations they could pull off.

As if things could not get any worse, the enemies seemed to know how to perfectly counter Gale Snipers. They had erected a wide barrier around themselves, so arrows fired by Gale Snipers would do very little damage to them.

The dark night did not favor the fairies. This was a battle they saw no hope of winning. Only Nydore, the Zephyr, who was now using the Caudillo Butterly Bow, had managed to deal some damage, thereby reducing the enemies' numbers. The seven Gale Snipers with her were nothing more than deadweights to her now. If not for the complex geography and the fact that the enemies clearly wanted Nydore alive, the Zephyr's team would have been slain long ago. 

"Father! Take Nydore with you and flee! We can still hold them off for a while!" Behind a broken boulder, a young, handsome male fairy was hurriedly speaking to an older male fairy, who had a goatee and a manly disposition that made him resemble a middle-aged bishonen.

"If anyone should flee, it would have to be you, youngsters!" The middle-aged fairy said before propelling himself above the boulder. He did a complete 360-degree spin in midair and fired off a straight arrow. At that same moment, he ducked, and an arrow whistled past his head. His arrow, on the other hand, pierced through a tree, which an enemy sorcerer had been hiding behind. The arrow struck the protective barrier in front of the sorcerer.

'Ding!' A piercing sound echoed through the already noisy forest as the barrier shattered. Alarmed, the sorcerer halted his chanting and ducked, all the while trying to repair the barrier.

The middle-aged fairy used that moment of reprieve to flee with his son. With his son in tow, he leaped over the border and streaked through the woods with a series of agile leaps and ducks, and soon, their silhouettes vanished into the darkness of the rift valley.

If the middle-aged fairy had not used that chance to escape, they would have been killed by a magical explosion or arrows fired by an enemy archer, whose attack the middle-aged fairy had to dodge only moments ago.

"This is not good. Without the help of a druid, we can't possibly persevere against the enemy's sorcerers. Damn it! Where is the druid who inhabits this part of the woods? Hasn't this fight made enough noise and caused enough damage to rouse it?" The middle-aged fairy groaned as he tried to catch his breath.

Two Gale Snipers suddenly leaped over the boulder which the father and son were hiding behind. One of them was grimacing in pain from an arrow that had pierced his butt.

"Bairn of the Grover clan, you good?" The middle-aged fairy asked.

"Sir of the Clearaquaen clan, I'm fine. It's only a scratch," The Gale Sniper replied, gritting his teeth as he pulled the arrow out. Fortunately for him, it did not pierce deep enough to damage any bone.

Nydore, too, had taken managed to retreat to the back of a huge tree, with the help of two other fairies. She reached over to her quiver and found nothing.

"I used the last of my arrows to kill a few more. Get me new arrows, now!"

The middle-aged fairy was not happy with that announcement. His gazed shifted to the bow in Nydore's hands, and he saw something silver at its side.

When the Zephyr received the bow from the Fairy Elder in Eom Village, it resembled a standard blackwood bow, and now, silver spots resembling butterfly wings had appeared on both sides of the bow.

The more the Caudillo Butterfly Bow is used, the more it changes. At first, it would resemble a normal bow, but as the number of times it is used increases, its power would grow exponentially, and it would begin to change. The little silver spots were only the beginning of its transformation. At full power, the bow would change into a large butterfly. 

And when the box had reached its maximum power, its form would change into that of a butterfly, and the silver spots would leave the bow, becoming little butterfly-shaped motes of light. These motes of light will begin orbiting the bow, even when the user fires off arrows that could shatter the hardest materials in the world. Even if the user only flicked the bowstring lightly, the damage would still be as mental.

The price of such power? The worst of them all: the banishment of the wielder's existence.

The weaker the innate skill of a user was, the quicker the bow changed and the sooner they had to pay the ultimate price. The Caudillo Butterfly Bow was never intended to be an ultimate weapon of power, as Zephyrs weren't elected to use it in battle; they were elected to control it.

The middle-aged fairy stopped his son from giving Nydore his quiver of arrows. "Zephyr, you should not use its power any longer," he warned gravely.

"It's going to be alright, uncle," Nydore said with a forced smile. She looked down at the silver spots, and her expression darkened. 

Naturally, she, too, knew the secret of the Caudillo Butterfly Bow; after all, she was the Zephyr of the current generation. What she had not expected, though, was for the bow to begin transforming as soon as she began using it.

Had she been this unskilled all along?

She remembered a discussion the adults in her family used to have amongst themselves in the past. It was about a troublemaking fairy girl from the Sidhe family. This fairy's grandmother once wielded the Caudillo Butterfly Bow, too. When this young fairy was handed the Caudillo Butterfly Bow, she used it to shoot pebbles she had placed on the heads of innocent mole rats. When the Elder of the village got wind of this, he almost burnt his beard in fright.

Despite how frivolously this young fairy, who she later realized was her grandaunt, had used it, the bow did not transform.

'Is that how far behind I am compared to her?'

Nydore shook her head sideways; now was not the time to think about these. What she had to focus on was how to get out of this, alive.

However, she did not know how she could escape without using the Caudillo Butterfly Bow. All she could feel was guilt. Had she not attacked the troop they encountered the day before — a choice she made on impulse — she would not have exposed her location, attracting many more enemies over.

The way she saw it, she had only two choices: she could either draw out as much power as she could from the Caudillo Butterfly Bow to force an opening, or she could venture to the back of the rift valley, hoping that there was a way out there. Failing to make a choice soon would cost her and her counterparts their lives, for the enemies were drawing even closer, sealing off the remaining paths they could escape from.

Luck was not on her side. One Gale Sniper, who was assigned to scout the area ahead, returned with bad news: there was no exit at the end of the rift valley. As if that was not enough bad news, they were informed that they were no more hiding places which would give them as much breathing room as their current location.

It seemed the enemies had known this all along, so they must have forced the fairies into this corner on purpose; it was checkmate.

The enemy had come prepared.

"I have no other choice, then." Nydore's grip on the Caudillo Butterfly Bow tightened as the remaining wisps of indecision left her. "Give me all of your arrows, and follow me. We'll force our way out of here!"I'm already seeing it… In turn-based tactical strategy game mode!