Making sure that the [Starved Shredder Hatchling] was truly dead, the group took a short break and kept the silence while they caught their breath.

Only when they had their composure back did the conversation continue, otherwise it would be hard to understand all the information and historic connections.

“Perhaps it is better if Unico tells you the story of his kingdom, there is a lot of controversy about the past.”

Nisha harvested the claws and unbroken armour plates from the dead insect body.

The blonde girl in her party had made her distaste of insects quite clear, insisting that the creepy crawly mandibles and inhuman eyes, fluids and twitching limbs were entirely unnatural and against god, and that a fire should burn them all to ash.

On the other hand, the dragon was quite okay with them and even liked their crunchy taste, yet she respected Lisa’s personal preference and agreed to trade the chore of harvesting insects for dismantling the [Mad Stonetooth Boars] instead.

The party only did a preliminary job anyway, the merit points hardly differed for a perfectly dissected body compared to the parts, the monsters were used for practice in a specialised class back at the academy.

“It is not much of a controversy. The scriptures are very clear on our history, but the remaining enemies deliberately misconstruct the past. It is of no consequence.”

Clambering down the tree with unnatural grace and poise considering his flowing robes and lanky figure, Unico retrieved the small throwing blades stuck in the insect corpse.

He was much more involved with the conversation now that it concerned his homeplace.

Collecting his thoughts, the young man briefly paused before he took over the spot as narrator.

“Nisha did a good job and summed up most of the history that precluded our country's past.

The archives of the Great Southern Empire held more accurate journals, but much was lost indeed during the fights between the defenders of the empire and the foul traitors.

Before the catastrophe happened, our ancestors initiated a bond with the Holy Guardian Beast to safeguard our lands and people.

We offered it a tribute and services in exchange for protection and the empire flourished under its patronage.

Perhaps in the absence of other powers after the collapse of the Golden Expanse, we might have been the dominating power on the continent in an alternate version of history.

But that all changed when the great foe attacked our lands.”

 

The youth with the purple hued skin rarely talked so much, he was content to listen and offer a small smile most of the time.

Most likely, this topic was close to his heart and he was eager to share the history of his birthplace with others.

Even his comforting fake smile turned more real than on most occasions.

Finished with the handling of the body and calling the elf’s familiar to pick up the loot, the group walked forward and looked for a new challenge.

Lisa paid even more attention and basically hung on the youth’s lips as he gave them an introduction to the precursor of the kingdom he came from.

Nisha only read cursory accounts from the general floor of the [Grand Library], so it was interesting to hear it from the source itself.

“In the most flourishing period of the empire, there were signs of outwards expansion and perhaps it would have grown into something better and bigger.

Unfortunately during that time the greatest catastrophe, the sundering of the Great Southern Empire, happened with the advent of the great foe.

With the protection from the Sacred Guardian Beast and the boons it granted us in exchange, our armies were powerful and the lands peaceful, the Wilderness beaten back outside of our borders.

All of that peace and prosperity got shattered one fateful day, when the darned fiend arrived.”

From the calm and measured pace with which the young man recounted the past events, it almost brought Nisha and Lisa back to that time period, at least in spirit.

They imagined a bountiful land full of peaceful people, all under the umbrella of a benevolent beast silently protecting them all.

But with the last sentence, the story took a darker turn and the shadows grew longer, hiding monsters in the dark and dangers unseen.

The tentative peace was about to get sundered.

 

Unfortunately, the story got interrupted as the group walked into a fight in the next clearing.

Three hogs rammed into a pair of [Starved Shredder Hatchlings], battering their insect plate armour and keeping them contained in the middle.

Because of the numerical advantage, each boar only needed to block one opponent, whereas the last one took large looping tracks, building up sufficient charge to batter the insects hard.

In theory, the trio of warriors only had to hold back and pick off the stragglers, but it was detrimental to the purpose of the trip to miss out on a group fight.

No matter how many one-on-one encounters the young adventurers went through, it was impossible to translate that experience into action if they just got overrun by a larger group.

Hence, a simple encounter turned into a messy group fight, humans against boars, boars against shredders, shredders against boars and shredders against humans.

Nisha crashed into the side of the first insect and sent it flying like a bag of sand, albeit one with many sharp limbs and an ungodly screech.

Because of their nature, it did not take much for the elf to provoke another [Mad Stonetooth Boar], a single slash across its back with the greatsword sent it into a roaring rage.

The clearing turned chaotic as the big fight got broken into smaller segments, her teammates also went to work.

Unico used his greater speed to intercept the charging boar, prodding it with a metal needle or flying blade whenever it showed signs of breaking off and returning to the melee.

While it appeared as if he did less work than the elf, he helped their last team member manage her opponents at the same time, providing ranged support and a quick distraction whenever it looked dire for Lisa.

The blonde girl hardly had effective methods to manage her monsters, so she simply stood in between the two foes trying to tear each other's throat out and warded them off with her buckler and shortsword.

 

In between the swings of her weapon, the dragon appreciated the range her greatsword offered.

It gave her a zone of control that kept the monsters at bay.

Even though the boar and the hatchling hated each other’s guts way too much to work together in any concerted manner against a common enemy, they still pressured the girl with their attacks, often at the same time.

By positing the greatsword between herself and the oncoming monsters, Nisha managed to carve out a space where they either had to step back or risk dire wounds, the life threatening kind.

She mostly kept to low [Slashes], trading smaller wounds on her enemies for higher safety instead of high risk all in moves.

Perhaps she could have simply weathered through the assault with enough time, yet when the elf fell into a steady rhythm and managed to play the strengths of the two monsters against each other with clever positioning, her teammates already finished their opponents and moved to assist her.

Unico bled his opponent dry quickly, especially since the boar only reacted with more anger and strong, beating pulses of the heart that exsanguinated it even faster.

With Lisa and the youth acting together, the second boar and the first insect soon joined the first one in death, injured in critical locations.

Nisha would have fought it out, but she also wanted to hear the rest of the story, so she nearly split the [Starved Shredder Hatchling] on her side in two halves with a hefty overhead [Cleave] and left the last boar to the other two.

Lisa gasped in exhaustion and sat on a big tree root, regaining her stamina and aura spent in the fight.

The purple hued youth did not quite run himself ragged and recovered his hidden weapons, some of the needles buried so deep inside monster flesh that their ends were not visible from the outside.

Nevertheless, it gave the group a break to handle the monster corpses and Unico picked up on the topic of the old empire after they got on the move again.