Chapter 534 Dawn Reveals Destruction

Chapter 534 Dawn Reveals Destruction

The hours until dawn passed quickly, with sporadic attacks two or three times an hour, as the farmers from the surrounding area, and those who had been on the run in the area, had all come to them after the second bellow by the Royal Rank Minotaur.

His effort seemed much more effective than the first attempt, and Karl wondered if there was something about the voice of Minotaurs that changed with their Rank.

Now, they had nearly a hundred Minotaurs in place and as the sun came up they were making plans to fortify this farm, so they could fall back to it as an emergency resource in the future. "A trench line with a rake fence of spiked poles would slow down even a Giant Boar for a few minutes before it smashed them all apart." One of the farmers was suggesting. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"And where would we get thousands of trees to make it from? We could do a low wall of dirt and stones with a trench on the other side, but that would still mess with the runoff for the fields, and we would risk drought on the farm. Or we could do just the yard." The Matriarch of this farmyard insisted.

That would be a pain for them going to and from the fields, but they could put bridges over the wall, and pull them in if there was danger.

The defensive fortification didn't need to stop an enemy forever, much less actually hurt it. It just had to slow it down enough to give the defenders the advantage.

As the sun came up and everyone could see properly, the extent of the devastation became clear. Hundreds of house fires poured black smoke into the air, while Karl could see ten different red smoke streams, similar to the green ones that had been deployed when the patrol unit called for reinforcements against the Orcs.

But worse, there was a massive plume of black smoke to their east. A pillar of smoke that marked a freshly sacked city on fire. The size of the column made the source unmistakable.

No matter where they looked, there were signs of destruction, and the further into the distance they looked, the worse it got.

The Naga General gestured at Dana and a Satyr guard. "Mage, how strong are you? Can you use that air walking to carry a guard into the air where they can see further? We need to know how far this extends and if there are others we might need to help."

Dana nodded. "It's not a problem. At my rank, carrying a Satyr with me as I [Wind Walk] isn't a problem. I will take them a hundred metres into the air to scout the area, and we will report back in a minute."

While the General was unsure what to do, back in the fortress, the Oracle had a much better idea of how to handle this situation.

He was seated on a cushion in his scrying room with a stack of notes on one side and a nearly empty bottle of rum on the other.

"His arrival marks disaster and great danger for the Fortress. Gods dammit." He muttered, casting bleary eyes up at Leafa, the Haint tree woman Overlord.

"Do you think that he's cursed? Could it be a side effect of pulling a System User through time? He has a powerful presence, far beyond his Royal Rank. It is possible that these incidents are occurring near him simply because he exists." She suggested.

"So, we send a team to kill him?" The drunken Oracle asked hopefully.

"And leave the focal point of the anomalies permanently located next to the fortress? I think not. If he is the focus of the instability, it's best that he takes them somewhere else.

But there is another possibility. We have reports that he might have been with the Yellow Tusk Orcs when the Dungeon outside Halsearing first opened.

We know that he speaks Orcish, so the reports are plausible. It might be a side effect of that anomaly, in which case we have to worry about the Orcs and every other person who entered the Dungeon that first day spreading the instability."

"Aren't you just a ray of fucking sunshine?" The Oracle slurred.

"I do try. But I can confidently say that he does not know. He didn't have the aura of malice on him when he was here. If he had known that his presence could trigger this disaster, I would have seen it."

The Oracle finished the bottle of Rum. "Just be thankful that it happened after he left. If not, we could have been Mitford, with our walls full of enemies and an army surrounding us at midnight shift change."

Leafa nodded. "I will check the reports to see if there have been more incidents in the west that we have not had an opportunity to review yet."

They normally only went over the important parts of the reviews, so small attacks, or incidents in rural areas might not have been noticeable enough to form a pattern in the reports yet.