Chapter 122: Outside The Walls
She ran across the training yard, waving her hands to get the attention of her own friends... the mid-tier girls she had been suffering in the mud with all week.
"Elara! Vala! Kaal!" Reina shouted, calling out eight names from the infantry and scout blocks. "Drop the training gear! Grab your field kits and heavy ropes! We’re going on a raid with the Lord!"
The girls dropped their wooden spears and practice bows, their faces lighting up with pure shock and excitement.
They scrambled toward the armory to grab their real weapons, chattering frantically about getting to see Silas fight up close.
Fifteen minutes later, Reina and her newly assembled squad of girls jogged across the eastern tiles and approached the towering black steel-weave gates of the Blessed Land.
Silas was already standing there waiting for them.
The Lord wasn’t wearing his casual black shirt anymore. He was fully geared up for the Unknown Zone.
He wore his heavy, dark steel-weave chestplate, his thick leather boots, and his dark canvas trousers.
The heavy, silver-patterned hand-and-a-half blade he had forged that morning hung securely at his hip, radiating a dangerous aura of starlight.
Standing right beside him, looking completely pristine and untouched by the grime of the world, was Aeliana and clinging tightly to his right arm, practically vibrating with joy, was Brida.
The commander had her heavy Kraken shield strapped to her forearm, and she was leaning her shoulder against his bicep with a wide grin on her face.
Silas looked up as Reina and the eight junior girls approached.
He let out a long quiet sigh, gently trying to pry his arm loose from Brida’s iron grip without much success.
"Welcome to the hunting party, ladies," Silas greeted them with his deep voice calm and commanding as he looked over the excited nervous faces of the regular infantry girls. "I apologize for interrupting your afternoon drills, but we have a major logistical upgrade to execute, and I need your muscle."
He gestured toward Reina, who was standing at the front of the pack with her snare ropes coiled over her shoulder.
"This entire operation is happening because Reina noticed a flaw in our patrol stamina and pitched a solution," Silas announced to the squad, making sure every single girl heard him clearly. "She designed the Beast Pavilion, and she’s going to lead the taming process today. Follow her calls when we find the pack."
The eight infantry girls immediately turned to Reina as their went eyes wide with respect.
"You designed that massive place?" Elara whispered in awe.
"That was your idea?" Vala gasped, clapping Reina on the back. "That’s incredible, Reina! You’re going to get us off foot patrol!"
Reina’s face flushed bright red again, but this time, it wasn’t from embarrassment.
It was from pure pride.
Silas hadn’t taken credit for the build even though he had been the one to build it... He had publicly handed the glory directly to her in front of her peers, elevating her status in the barracks instantly.
She stood up straighter, gripping her snare ropes tight.
"Alright," Silas said, drawing his hand-and-a-half blade from its sheath.
The dark steel hummed softly in the damp air. "The Unknown Zone is hostile territory. Keep your eyes on the treeline. Do not break formation, and do not engage a monster until Reina gives the signal to drop the snares. If a Corrupted Alpha breaks the line, fall back and let me or Brida handle the impact."
He turned toward the two heavy-infantry girls stationed at the gate cranks.
"Raise the gates!" Silas ordered.
The two girls grabbed the massive iron wheels and threw their backs into it.
With a loud grinding screech, the heavy steel-weave portcullis slowly dragged upward, revealing the dark terrifying ironwood forest of the Umbral Basin lying just beyond their safe stone tiles.
The cold wind of the Unknown Zone blew into the courtyard, smelling like wet decay.
"Move out," Silas commanded, stepping past the threshold and into the mud of the wild.
Brida marched right beside him, her battleaxe resting on her shoulder. Aeliana floated silently behind them with her hands glowing as she primed her defensive spells.
Reina took a deep breath, stepping through the gates alongside Elara and the rest of the junior squad. She looked at the broad armored back of the Warlord leading them into the dark.
He had listened to her, He had praised her in front of her friends, and now he was walking into danger just to help her fulfill her class potential.
’I won’t disappoint you, My Lord,’ Reina thought fiercely with her heart completely surrendered to the cause as she marched into the forest. ’I’m going to build you the greatest cavalry unit this world has ever seen.’
The heavy, iron-reinforced gates of the Blessed Land slowly ground shut behind them, the massive steel-weave portcullis dropping into the mud with a resounding crash that echoed through the damp trees.
The exact second that gate hit the dirt, the entire atmosphere shifted.
Inside the walls, the territory smelled like roasting meat, woodsmoke, and the clean scent of Thora’s forge.
Out here in the Unknown Zone, the Umbral Basin smelled like wet rot, swamp water, and suffocating decay.
The massive towering ironwood trees blocked out the bruised purple sunlight, casting long, jagged shadows across the forest floor.
Silas stood at the front of the formation, his boots sinking a half-inch into the soft, treacherous black mud.
He rested his right hand casually on the pommel of his newly forged hand-and-a-half sword, feeling the comforting hum of the starlight Damascus steel vibrating against his palm.
He didn’t draw the weapon. He simply turned to his right and looked down at the ash-blonde Beast Tamer standing beside him.
"Alright, Reina," Silas said, his deep voice carrying clearly over the rustling leaves and the distant sounds of the swamp. "Your show."
Reina blinked, her hands tightening around the heavy coils of thick, treated trapping rope slung over her shoulder.
She looked up at him, a flicker of nervous hesitation crossing her face. "My Lord?"
"I don’t know the first thing about tracking a wild animal, let alone a corrupted monster..." Silas explained, stepping back to formally surrender the point position to her. "I’m a Lord. My job is managing logistics and hitting things very hard when they try to bite us. You are the Beast Tamer. I want to see exactly how you plan to push a pack of apex predators under your control. You lead the way and we follow your calls."
Reina’s chest swelled.
The anxiety that had plagued her all week completely evaporated, replaced by a surge of fierce pride and a bit of shyness..
He wasn’t just bringing her along as a token guide so he could do the heavy lifting himself; he was legitimately placing the success of the entire operation squarely on her shoulders.
"Understood, Lord Silas," Reina said with her voice dropping its nervous edge and taking on a sharp tone.
She offered him a quick respectful nod. "Thank you. I won’t let anyone down."
She turned around to face the squad of eight junior infantry girls, the towering Brida, and the silently floating Arcanist, Aeliana.
"Keep your footsteps light!" Reina ordered the squad with her eyes scanning the dark dense underbrush of the ironwood forest. "Umbral Wolves have hyper-sensitive hearing. If you snap a dead branch, they will hear us coming from a mile away... Do not draw your weapons unless I give the signal. The scrape of steel leaving a scabbard sounds like a dinner bell to a starving pack."
The junior girls nodded quickly, adjusting their leather belts and making sure their gear was tied down tight so it wouldn’t rattle.
Reina turned back to the treeline and dropped into a low crouch. She didn’t look at the horizon though, instead she looked straight down at the wet, black mud near the roots of a massive rotting tree stump.
She reached out with her bare fingers, gently brushing aside a cluster of damp, heavy ferns.
"Here," Reina whispered, pointing to a series of deep, massive indentations pressed into the muck.
The junior girls crowded around, peering over her shoulder.
The footprints were massive... easily the size of a standard dinner plate with four distinct toe pads and deep gouges dug into the earth right at the front of the print.
"Wolf-type monsters usually leave these exact kinds of tracks," Reina educated the squad, tracing the edge of the print with her index finger without actually touching the mud. "Notice how the claw marks are dug deep into the front of the track, while the back heel pad is barely pressed into the dirt? Standard wolves distribute their weight evenly when they’re walking or patrolling."
She stood up, pointing her finger deeper into the dark, tangled brush.
"But these claws didn’t retract, and the weight is thrown entirely forward," Reina continued with her Beast Tamer instincts actively processing the environmental data. "That means they were digging in for traction. They weren’t just wandering through here... They were actively running. Something spooked them, or they were chasing prey. The mud hasn’t filled back into the claw gouges yet, and the water pooling at the bottom is still cloudy. These tracks are fresh so probably less than an hour old."
Silas watched her work with genuine appreciation.
’That is exactly why you recruit specialized classes,’ He thought. ’If I was out here alone, I would have just walked right past that mud puddle and wandered aimlessly into the swamp until something tried to eat my face... She’s reading the dirt like a book, like Tasmin.’
"Follow the trail," Reina commanded, slipping seamlessly into the role of squad leader. "Keep your eyes on the brush. They moved east."
The hunting party fell into a loose formation. Reina took point, tracking the disturbed mud and broken twigs.
Silas walked a few paces behind her, acting as the primary physical shield, while Brida guarded his flank.
Aeliana drifted quietly at the rear, her glowing silver eyes scanning the high canopy for aerial threats, while the eight junior girls filled the middle of the pack.
As they pushed deeper into the Unknown Zone, the initial terrifying tension of leaving the safe walls began to slowly fade.
The forest was dark and creepy, but with Silas and two important women casually walking alongside them, the junior infantry girls started to relax.
And when a group of bored, isolated military recruits started to relax, the conversation inevitably drifted toward the one topic they all obsessively gossiped about in the barracks...
"Lord Silas," Vala, a short energetic shieldmaiden, whispered from the middle of the pack, trying to keep her voice down so she wouldn’t spook the woods. "Can I ask you a question about your gear?"
Silas didn’t turn around, keeping his eyes on the dark trees ahead. "Go ahead, Vala."
"That sword you forged last week," Vala asked, staring at the dark gray, silver-patterned hilt resting on his hip. "The commanders were talking about it in the mess hall. They said you folded virgin silver directly into the core and it created a magic circle that makes the blade unbreakable... Is that true? Or is Thora just exaggerating again?"
"It’s true," Silas answered casually, stepping over a thick rotting root. "The silver reacts to high-density mana. It creates a reinforcement loop so basically, the harder I swing it, the harder the metal gets."
A soft chorus of impressed murmurs rippled through the junior girls.
"That’s so unfair," Kaal, a lean spear-fighter, whispered with a grin. "You already have one of the highest physical strength stats in the entire territory, and now you have a sword that can’t break. Do you ever actually get tired during a raid, My Lord? Or do you just have an endless cheat code for stamina?"
Silas chuckled, ducking under a low-hanging branch.
"I get tired. The Core regenerates my energy reserves faster than a standard human, but if I swing a heavy piece of iron for six hours straight, my shoulders burn just like anyone else’s."
The conversation started innocent enough, but the girls were recruits.
They spent all day practicing spear thrusts in the mud and talking in the dark.
Once they realized Silas wasn’t going to punish them for speaking out of turn, the questions rapidly escalated.
"Is it true you fought a Kraken bare-handed?" Elara asked with her eyes wide.
"Eh? I didn’t fight a Kraken but a Mire-Drake." Silas corrected her.