Aoi and I interlace our claws together and recite the fellowship chant, "We swear to share our war and our soul, and to always keep each other's company."

Then her name appears in our "Companions" entry, while in hers, all of ours appear, and she gains the "Helios (Fellowship)" entry in her "Affiliations."

"Hehehehe!" Aoi laughs happily as she stares at the Identification Crystal's tablet, then she checks the fellowship bond. "Now it's even easier for me to know where everyone is!"

"Yes. The bond gave me a lot of comfort before [Bind]," Lina agrees with a nod, making her cute bangs sway.

Same.

Aoi grins at her, then she quickly gets distracted as she plays with the bond and stares at the tablet. Her mind wanders, and she starts thinking about her own status and how to open it, so we leave her with her thoughts for now.

We [Equip] our armor and wait in the main hall while the High Officers gather. Our thrones are quite comfy, so the dragon coils up and goes to sleep, making me feel a bit drowsy.

Sandoro is the first to appear with a detachment of Lordsguard, and I'm happy to see Romy among them, though we're all about to enter battle, so warm greetings are left for another time.

I see that their weapons all have blank spirits, so their training of [Equipment System] is progressing very quickly, and soon, they'll be able to cast [Equip] since that skill is so easy to learn.

Suddenly, Silvano barges in with a big grin and bows quickly, then saunters on, proudly parading with his two bastard swords hanging from each side of his waist.

"You won't be fighting," I pop his bubble of joy with a sadistic grin.

"What? Why?" He stops in his tracks and moans in a decidedly not cool whine as he's caught by surprise.

"This time, we want you all to just watch so that you can better understand how we fight," Hana happily explains, excited to show off.

Silvano turns his eyes to her as he delicately grabs his chin and coos in wonder. "Ooh~…" Then he suddenly shrugs. "Well, this is also fine, I guess."

Alcander comes in soon after with a meek elven Space mage in tow.

"Your Highnesses," the imperial obediently greets as he lowers his head, then he motions for the elf to come forward. "He'll open a [Gate] to our forward scouting party, then I'll cross through it and open my own for you."

I yawn and nod. I wonder if being so carefree in front of my subordinates is a good thing or not, but I'd rather that they know the real me instead of keeping up a mask all the time. Ciel and Roxanne certainly can't avoid sounding casual occasionally, so they know that we all have our quirks.

As long as I can pull the dragon out at a moment's notice, their faith in my leadership shouldn't take a significant hit.

Alcander disappears when he touches the black circle, and I notice that the Space mage immediately starts to breathe heavily. Sending a person so far must've drained him quite a lot.

A moment later, another circle appears right in the middle of the hall, which is our cue that Alcander is waiting for us.

Just to be safe, I send a bird ahead, then we all cross through.

On the other side, Alcander patiently waits for us to ready ourselves, his face solemn as usual, and he doesn't even seem to break a sweat from teleporting so many people in quick succession.

While everyone takes a moment to get used to the change in scenery, I take the opportunity to observe my surroundings.

We're now deep into the High Forest, somewhere northwest, near the center of our territory, which is likely in Amada's sub-territory, the elder subordinate Heart Lord.

The High Trees are quite wild here, becoming messes of branches and thick trunks with impenetrable bark, which impedes most of the glowing plants from growing on them. These trees are a far cry from the beautiful "tree-knitting" of the more civilized areas, but they have their own charm from just existing in their natural state.

The elves don't mess with the roots of the High Trees to make it more difficult for non-natives to walk through, but they at least prevent their states from getting even worse. At some spots, they get so thick and thin that they become like brambles, making it impossible to pass through them, but also dangerous to walk on them since they're so brittle.

I think only a light-footed Legolas could get through here, but our soldiers are definitely too heavy to walk on snow without leaving footprints, and I'm sure that they don't have anti-gravity boots on.

Yunia smiles wryly at my musings, but she nudges me internally towards Almaria, who's currently busy doing something.

The golden elf has her eyes closed, arms spread apart, and palms open wide. She seems to be sensing the wind, a faint breeze that rustles the leaves and makes a rather loud sound in the otherwise silent forest, then her small nose flares as she smells the air.

How peculiar.

Her eyes suddenly shoot wide open, and her cute face distorts in worry. "There are bad omens in the wind. Not our doom, but death, corruption…" She whispers, though her voice carries quite far in the quiet forest, then she suddenly turns to me, her droopy eyes giving me an intense, creepy stare. "Undead."

"Indeed," Alcander agrees solemnly and closes the [Gate]. "This is why the scouts are too frightened to get near it," he adds, sounding rather disappointed.

"Their intuition is correct. It isn't a weak Aberrant, of that, I'm sure," Almaria excuses them, then her face turns subtly sorrowful as she tries to contain her emotions. "And I believe it's already claimed some victims."

Sai raises her head attentively, then casts [Spirit Eyes] and [Spirit Link]. "There are spirits out there," she states out loud, and the mood of our group sours.

Ciel frowns and silently prays for them. Victims of the undead have difficulty getting into Paradise since their spirits can easily become twisted.

I pull out the golems, and Alcander frowns confusedly as he stares at them, then his eyes go out of focus as I believe he has pulled up his own "Status." I'll commend him for being so attentive if he noticed that his MP isn't as low as it should be since the heavy golems didn't actually cost anything extra due to being stored in my "Items."

Sandoro organizes the small detachment of Lordsguard around the High Mages to protect them, and then the scouts come down from atop the High Tree nearest to us.

One of them is riding a Gatun, which I assume is their leader from how composedly he sits on his mount. His body is completely horizontal and stiff as a board while the beast climbs down the wild tree, which is rather impressive.

The other elves wear light ghillie suits, and they use clawed gauntlets and boots in the same way that a Gatun does. Their longbows are slung over their shoulders while only their leader has a short, composite bow.

One of the elves is visibly more nimble, catching my attention. He suddenly jumps off the tree and falls through the air from over five metri up before landing on his feet and rolling to disperse his momentum.

He stops right before Sandoro's unamused glare and immediately stands up properly, then he notices who's before him and freezes for a second before immediately saluting in the customary elven way.

"Master of Hunt Ardian, reporting for duty!" He whisper-shouts and lowers his head to shield himself from Sandoro's mental attack.

"'Master,' indeed…" Sandoro repeats with a low growl.

"You know the adventurer types, Sandoro. They'll never learn," the scout leader comments amusedly while still perfectly horizontal and gives the old commander a grin.

Something about this Ardian sounds somewhat familiar to me…

I walk towards him, and he suddenly raises his head as he notices my steps. He's a mature golden elf with a familiar face, but his hood is hiding some of his features.

His eyes turn to me and suddenly open wide in shock as I assume that he's just recognized me.

"Your Highness?" Sandoro asks as he gives me a curious look.

"You seem familiar, Master Ardian… have we met before?" I politely ask, trying to hold back a grin as I notice his expression become as stiff as dry leather.

Sandoro sends a stern glance towards Ardian, suddenly very suspicious of him. "There's no need to call his kind 'Master,' your Highness, that's just a lofty title that adventurers give themselves."

The leader of the scouts seems very amused with this situation, so he decides to expose Ardian, eager to see how things develop, "He used to work as a Caretaker at the Academy in Goloria, helping out the students to not get killed while doing requests for the monster hunter's guild. Perhaps you met him when you were still an adventurer."

"He came here after you raised the bounty prices, your Highness, which should tell plenty about his honor," Sandoro grumbles. He obviously doesn't like the mercenary type.

Wait… Goloria's monster hunter guild…?

"You're the one who mistook us for students of the Knight's Academy!" Alissa exclaims, her memory picking up on things faster than mine.

"Yes… I believe so… your Highness…" Ardian mumbles, now sweating cold.

I remember now. He's the one who called us "damnable brats."

I grin sadistically and take a step closer to him. "Well, Master Ardian. What can you tell us about the Aberrant that we're about to face?"

 

Nobody comes to save him, not even the scout leader who was the one that's actually responsible for giving us the report, so Ardian fumbles his way through an explanation like a fool. And he kind of is one since he hadn't bothered to look at our portraits in the Shell properly, otherwise, he'd have known not to show off in front of us.

Aoi's intense gaze seems to be the one affecting him the most, even though she isn't trying to be threatening. I guess it'll take some time until everyone gets used to seeing a dragon and not shitting their pants in fear.

Ardian's report is quite short, though, since nobody has actually fought the Aberrant aside from small scale, short battles with its "minions."

Once he's done, we let him relax and stay at ease while we discuss our strategy.

"How close can the High Mages be to us without it being unsafe for them? This Aberrant seems to have a very far reach," Yunia questions, mostly worried about Almaria's safety.

"Its minions aren't that powerful, and we easily handled one of them on our own, but it's the exposure that gets you. As long as the battle doesn't take too long, you can get pretty close, I believe," the leader confidently answers.

We set up some guidelines for the Officers in case shit hits the fan, and the meeting is over rather quickly.

"I understand that you can handle yourself, but I don't want outsiders to watch this fight, so I'll have to ask that you remain here," I order the leader.

"Understood, your Highness," he obediently agrees and salutes.

I especially don't want a Buscuador like him to see this.

Then Yunia turns to Almaria. "Open the way for us," she orders, and the High Mage obeys.

Almaria swallows an Eia pill and turns to the mass of roots ahead of us, then she pulls out a dagger from her robe and slits open her palms. She lets the blood drip onto the forest floor for a few seconds, then assumes the pose she held when she was feeling the wind and starts whispering a chant.

Suddenly, roots burst out of the ground and sneak up along her legs, then they enter her open wounds.

That's metal…

Alissa's ears twitch, and she opens her eyes wide in surprise as her [Sense Presence] tells her that what "Almaria" is has become a bit hazy as she "communes" with the vines.

"Almaria" spreads through the ground and takes over the roots ahead of us, becoming thinner and weaker the further her "presence" is from her physical body.

Once her presence's "expansion" seems to have stopped, the roots start to creak and crack, then they tremble and disentangle, opening a way forward for us. In under a minute, there's a long, clear path that's wide enough for all of us to walk abreast.

Her MP drops just a little, so it seems like it'll be easy for her to open a path for us towards the Aberrant. She's also calmly walking forward, not showing a hint of discomfort from having vines in her hands, which is a rather odd sight.

"Her Eia pill should include an anesthetic, so she shouldn't be feeling a thing, actually," Yunia corrects me through [Bind].

 

I let the dragon spread its wings, and we all gradually leave our carefree demeanor behind. Now it's time for business.

Once we're far enough from the scouts, I summon three Shads and Hollys to scout and keep us safe. It's been a while since I've had to rely on them, so it's nostalgic to be able to see through their eyes again.

The Mages and the Lordsguard seem surprised, but more of the "ooh~…" rather than the "AH! MONSTER!" kind of surprise since they should all already know about my summoning capabilities.

Then I [Equip] Patrono and give it to a tentacle that holds it above me, just for safety.

"Are we going to use that sword?" Hana asks concernedly.

I shake my head, and joke with a smile, "No. It'd make things too easy. We need the experience and the Experience."

She snorts and affirms, "I'd say exactly that if you had answered any differently." Then she sends me a fist-bump through [Bind].

The illumination is pretty bad here, well, worse than in the more civilized parts of the High Forest, so I make Patrono shine faintly to light the way with an inspiring holy glow. If I make it too bright, it'll attract monsters, so I keep it somewhat weak.

 

The Holly scouting directly ahead of us is the first one to find a "minion," which tells us that we're headed in the right direction.

She sees a white skeleton covered in a sort of transparent, lightless flame that blurs and darkens the area. The plants that get near it wither and wilt, becoming a sickly-looking and pale white color. Roxanne's magical knowledge tells us that this sort of flame must be Necromancy, something that burns HP or the life force of things, while the blur might come from the Undead corruption.

"That's definitely Necromancy. It burns Life to sustain itself," Almaria agrees with her assessment, then she turns to Yunia, her droopy eyes looking softer than usual. "I taught you that, didn't I?" She innocently asks.

"Of course you did," Yunia answers and gives her a glance, her tone more stern than usual, but Almaria is perceptive enough to notice that and smiles for a brief moment before becoming serious again.

"How damaging is it if you get close?" I inquire.

"If it's Undead, its corruption could compound with the flame, so I recommend [Earth Bullet] to the head," Almaria diligently answers.

I grin and turn to the golems. "How many boulders do you guys have inside your [Item Box]es?"

"Five sets of varying sizes," Ted begins.

"Each with five boulders," Suzy finishes.

"Then you'll put what you learned from Arreira to use."

 

As we get closer to the skellie, I deactivate Patrono's light, and we cautiously move in the near-total darkness, but it still seems to see us first and immediately breaks into a sprint, bursting through walls of thin roots like nothing.

The three golems [Equip] their basketball-sized boulders and use [Telekinesis] to launch them.

"Head," Ted claims.

"Chest," Suzy claims.

"Waist," Jarn claims.

The boulders line up, forming a pillar that crashes into the skellie. Its body is blasted into small bits while its arms and legs simply tumble forward, then they immediately start crawling creepily towards us.

"Huh… fucking undead…" I grumble in annoyance.

Just to test things out, I send Patrono forward with a looong tentacle and feed it some mana, making it flash brightly with holy light. The skellie arm exposed to the light doesn't just vaporize, it's completely annihilated, leaving no trace that it ever existed aside from the drained plants.

The golems finish off the rest of its bits by pummeling them with their boulders, breaking them into even smaller pieces, then the undead loses all cohesion and starts disintegrating into a cloud of toxic dust.

Once they pull back their boulders, we notice that they're too corrupted to store them back in their [Item Box]es, so Silvano restores their physical integrity, then Yunia breaks the corrupted spirits with [Spirit Sword], and the golems [Itemize] them again.

"Let's just use [Earth Bullet], then," I give up. It's too much work to do this after every battle.

 

The next skellie ends up shattered all the same, and we annihilate its remains with [Spirit Light]s.

After a few more, they seem to start to converge on us, then they come at us while already sprinting from far away.

We use some spare weapons to crush them so that the undead corruption doesn't ruin the enchantments of our main equipment. There's no reason to give Lina and the enchanters more work than necessary.

The skellies try to swarm us, but Ciel's [Holy Spirit] becomes a beacon of purification for us, weakening them and making their bodies brittle.

Once she starts to have to spend too much MP, we switch to Patrono's light to let her converse her mana, but we still kill the skellies with our own efforts without relying on the Heavenly Weapon.

Their numbers increase even more, and they almost begin displaying coordination in their attacks, then they suddenly stop coming. The Aberrant doesn't have infinite skellie minions, so it must be preparing for the upcoming battle.

We take a short breather and drink some refreshments.

"Your coordination is… perfect… without uttering a single order," Sandoro whispers in awe.

"We have telepathy, so we can speak in each other's minds," Roxanne reveals with a grin.

"And sometimes, the inside of my own head becomes insufferable," Yunia nonchalantly comments, and I give them both a look to stop playing around.

"So, is this what Dokkanchee saw?" Sai questions curiously, her bright tone in contrast with the gloomy environment.

"Precisely," I answer with a gentle nod.

The halfling woman controls her excitement and becomes professional again, returning a stern nod.

Questions and awe can be left for later, so we move on.

 

The Hollys find a patch of wilted, decaying forest that assaults them with the undead corruption from the very moment that they enter it, and inside, they find the Aberrant.

Surrounded by over forty skellies, they see the pure white skeleton of a Grim Giant slowly crawling forward. A black, sticky fluid is seeping out of its mouth and eye sockets like a Weeper, and its whole skull is surrounded by a faint, weak necromantic flame like the other skellies.

It seems that since there's no living being anywhere near them, all of their flames have weakened considerably.

They also notice five peculiar figures walking ahead of the Giant Skellie. They seem to be humanoids, and from looking at their equipment, I'd guess that it's an adventuring party, but a closer look reveals that they're all half-decayed corpses. I assume that something like a Corpse Stealer is possessing them, but it also has to be an undead being because all monsters attack undead on sight, just like they do with humanoids.

One of the corpse mages raises their staff towards the first Holly, and a storm of sand starts surrounding it, then the sand squeezes my summon, trapping it in a [Sand Coffin] as it's crushed and suffocated.

Goddamn, they're high-level adventurers.

I unsummon it, and the other two soon fall to the same spell, so I re-summon them and order them to keep their distance this time.

"They must've been overconfident due to their experience and died…" Ciel guesses, her tone full of sorrow.

"It's not a fast monster, so it's possible that they could've escaped if they didn't engage it," Sandoro expands on her reasoning.

She nods in agreement and steels her mind, letting her heart burn with determination. "Let's avenge those poor souls."

 

Just as we're about to reach the patch of dead trees, Alissa senses something coming our way.

"Dryads," she whispers, feeling nostalgic as she remembers our meeting with Gecynd, but also somewhat wary since she doesn't know who these dryads are.

Almaria pulls back her control over the vines so that her Life doesn't mix with the dryads, which would be very unpleasant, I've been told.

Alissa senses three dryads coming from underground, traveling through the roots, then they go up into the nearest tree to us and stop.

Three spots of bright green moss start to grow on the bark with incredible speed, then a hand pushes out of each patch, as if they were being blocked by a sheet of elastic moss.

The moss starts to wrap around the hands' shapes like skin, and three bodies appear as the dryads "walk" out of the tree. They quickly regrow their characteristics, revealing that they're actually two males and one female.

I block the males from my memory since I don't feel like looking at horse cocks, but the woman seems to be the leader, anyway, so I focus entirely on her, and by the Gods, she's stunning.

Her hair is pulled back and long, composed of straight vines that pour down her back and spread on the forest floor, decorated with cherry blossoms all along its length. Her exposed body is the perfect balance of curvy, sexy, thin, and muscular, but her square jaw and stern gaze tell of a strong personality. Her eyes don't seem to be the "bend over, humanoid" kind, but rather the "we shall fuck" kind.

"Greetings, Lords of the Ryder family. I'm Cereleia, the guardian of Aloresta," the dryad greets with a slow and measured tone.

"Greetings, I'm Wolf Ryder," I respond in kind without lowering my head. We can only bow to the Elder Council and the emperor himself now.

Then the girls introduce themselves, and after that, Almaria and Yunia share a kind, cordial nod with Cereleia since they've already met before.

"I've come to fight this wretched intruder," Cereleia immediately announces after the introductions are complete.

I have a quick mental discussion with Yunia to get myself acquainted with dryad diplomacy, then I politely decline, "We wish to fight it ourselves as a test of our abilities."

Her stern eyes soften, and she gives me an awfully elven, subtle smile. "Ah, I see. That's acceptable, though, from what I heard, you already possess astounding power yourself."

"We have to put in the work regularly to not get rusty," Hana interjects.

Cereleia gives her a long and slow nod of approval. "I can't say that I relate to humanoid difficulties, but I do understand the need." Then she turns to me. "After your battle, I'd like to collect your seed, if you'll allow me, to raise strong children for myself, then I'll give you the names of my lovers so that you don't involve them in humanoid disputes."

Alissa and I share a look. I'm going to fuck this dryad's brains out!

 

I like Cereleia's assertiveness, but right now I'm in "Rip and Tear" mode, so I don't let "Ravaging" mode get a hold of me.

After a very enthusiastic nod from me, the dryads join our group, and we move on together. Almaria continues opening the path ahead of us instead of the dryads since they're known to be lazy, so we don't even bother with asking them.

After a short walk, we finally reach the patch of dead woods, and the dryads visibly scowl in anger.

Once we enter the corruption, Ciel and one of the Lordsguard cast [Holy Spirit], and I summon a light elemental-wife so that we can keep the foul air at bay. I also use Patrono's light to its fullest, and it seems to have the strongest effect at combating it.

Unfortunately, nobody in our Lordsguard knows [Sanctuary], so this will have to do for now.

Almaria is now visibly struggling because her exposed Life is quite vulnerable to the corruption, so I walk beside her, keeping Patrono above her head.

"How are you feeling?" I concernedly ask the small elf.

"Cold… as if I'm bleeding to death, which isn't too far from the truth," she tiredly answers, but then she gives me a small smile. "I'll be fine after some Eia extract drink, though."

I feel like drinking something high-grade again.

"Cinco Flores?" I name the more expensive extract that our Eia farms produce.

She raises her eyebrows in delightful surprise. "I'd go for Unflor, but if you're offering…"

We smirk for a brief moment, then look ahead again.

 

We reach the point where the Officers should be able to see Big Skrellington, so they stop, and we move on ahead of them.

We put on our helmets and steel our resolve.

It's show time.

I leave Patrono with the light elemental-wife and summon another to ease off the corruption from us. Gify stays on the elemental-wife we left behind since she's too "important" to let her precious little soul get harmed by the corruption.

Gih.

Shameless.

The pungent smell of acetone burns our lungs, but I feel like it isn't really too much of a bother. Our natural resistance to the undead seems to have increased by a noticeable amount since the last time we fought one.

Big Skrellington suddenly stops crawling when it notices our light approaching, and every single skellie turns their empty, white skulls towards us, their vacant eyes staring in our direction in a way that reminds me of the golems.

We give the signal to the Officers that we were spotted, then Silvano raises the ground around them, creating a platform to keep them all a bit safer. Silvano's [Mana Control] is terrible, so he struggles a bit with using the unfamiliar spell, but the dryads decide to help out and join them on top of it, so his shame doesn't grow too large.

The skellies don't charge immediately and merely wait in place, forming a wall between us and the Big Skrellington, with the corpse adventurers standing at their front.

We use the [Fly] enchantment in our armor to slowly float forward above the brittle knots of roots until we find a particularly thick and tall one that we can stand on, then we land on it and observe Skrellington.

A chilling silence settles in as nobody makes a move, except for us since we still need to breathe.

"Peculiar…" Alcander mumbles and shares a look with all of the Officers.

"Why are they not attacking? Are they intelligent?" I question the girls, letting my curiosity overtake my wariness.

"Assume that all undead we meet are intelligent, or at least powerful enough to survive being cannibalized by the monsters," Ciel answers in a scholarly manner.

"Ah, that's survivorship bias," I reply with a nod of understanding.

"Can we communicate with it?" Lina asks a question that gives me pause.

That undead Dragonoid we met in the Wisps of the Proud dungeon was pretty communicative, though it was filled with relentless bloodlust, so we couldn't have a proper conversation.

"The undead have mysterious spells and powers. I recommend that we don't try," Ciel cautions us sternly.

Skrellington's jaw suddenly clacks repeatedly for a brief moment, producing a rather chilling sound that echoes throughout the dead patch of forest. After that, the skellies raise their arms and spread their legs, then they start stomping on the dessicated forest floor in a macabre dance.

"I believe they might be incapable of talking," I offer a casual guess, and all of the skellies suddenly stop moving.

I raise an eyebrow, and we all clearly see Skrellington nod at us.

"Well, shit. It's sapient," I blurt out.

"That's the first time I've seen a Lord actually try to talk to an undead," Silvano comments with an amused grin.

Well, nothing is simple in this world.

"It doesn't change our duty," Ciel grimly reminds me.

The skellies clack their jaws once and lower their arms, their stance appearing awfully aggressive, perhaps in response to Ciel.

My researcher instincts tell me to capture Skrellington, but I have no idea how to safely contain it. Also, Ciel is very afraid of the potential for some sort of mental manipulation if I were to interact with it regularly, so there's no easy way for me to get what I want.

Perhaps questioning a heretic would be more fruitful, but then, it'd be even more dangerous…

Yunia turns to me, her stern face revealing a hint of disapproval. "There isn't any room for discussion. Their existence is a threat to ours," she asserts.

"Very well…" I accept the facts and draw my sword. All of the skellies react by lowering their hips slightly, clearly getting themselves ready to break into a sprint. "Let's finish this."