Chapter 123: A Battle To The Death
"What about the rumors from the upper Keep?" another girl chimed in, her tone turning slightly mischievous. "The girls on laundry duty said they wash your shirts, and they’re always completely shredded... Do you really go through three shirts a week just from flexing too hard?"
"That’s mostly from monsters trying to claw my chest open," Silas deadpanned, fighting a sigh. "Not flexing."
"Speaking of the Keep..." Kaal leaned forward, a devious inappropriate smirk spreading across her face.
She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
"We all know the commanders have their own private washrooms up there but the rumor in the barracks is that the Lord doesn’t bathe alone. Is it true you share the tub with the Goddess and the Pirate Queen?"
The entire squad of junior girls gasped, a collective scandalous giggle erupting from the middle of the formation.
A few of them blushed furiously, turning their heads away, while the bolder ones stared directly at Silas’s broad back, desperately waiting for him to answer the perverted question.
Silas closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, feeling a massive, throbbing headache forming right behind his temples.
’I am trying to run a professional military operation...’ Silas thought, groaning internally. ’And my troops are acting like a bunch of high schoolers at a sleepover. This base has zero HR oversight.’
Before Silas could formulate a proper socially acceptable response that would shut the rumors down without causing a riot, a muscular arm violently wrapped around his bicep.
Brida stepped aggressively into the center of the formation.
The towering commander didn’t just hook his arm... she yanked Silas firmly against her side, pressing the heavy, dense muscle of her shoulder and the soft swell of her massive chest directly against his ribcage.
She glared over her shoulder at the squad of giggling recruits as her stormy eyes flashed with fierce possessiveness.
"Alright, back off, you nosy little grunts..." Brida barked, her booming voice completely devoid of any real anger, but dripping with smug superiority. "The Boss’s bathing habits are strictly classified command business and even if he did share a tub, you lot aren’t high enough level to earn a spot in the water."
She squeezed Silas’s arm tighter, leaning her head against his shoulder and offering the junior girls a wicked, highly arrogant grin.
"Besides," Brida boasted, puffing her chest out. "The Captain is busy today. He’s my personal escort for this raid... He’s mine for the afternoon, so keep your perverted questions to yourselves and keep your eyes on the trees before a swamp-troll eats you."
The junior girls immediately erupted into a chorus of disappointed groans and jealous complaints.
"That’s so unfair, Commander!" Vala whined, pouting. "You get to hang out with him all the time during raids!"
"Yeah, stop hogging the Lord!" Kaal grumbled, crossing her arms. "We want a turn to hold his arm!"
"Rank has its privileges, ladies!" Brida laughed loudly, completely ignoring their complaints and refusing to let go of Silas’s bicep.
Silas just sighed, shaking his head.
He didn’t pull away from the woman.
If letting Brida cling to his arm kept the recruits from asking any more highly invasive questions about his private life, he was perfectly fine being used as a piece of armed arm-candy for the afternoon.
"Quiet."
Reina’s voice cut through the banter like a whip.
The playful joking atmosphere in the squad vanished in a single microsecond.
Reina had stopped dead in her tracks about twenty yards ahead of them.
She wasn’t crouching to look at mud tracks anymore. She was standing perfectly upright with her body rigid as her hand was resting firmly on the hilt of the hunting knife strapped to her thigh.
Silas immediately dropped the casual demeanor.
He gently untangled his arm from Brida’s grip, stepping forward with his hand dropping back to his sword hilt.
"What do you see, Reina?" Silas asked quietly, his eyes scanning the dark oppressive treeline.
Reina motioned for him to come closer.
Silas stepped up to the Beast Tamer. Reina pointed to the thick moss-covered trunk of a massive ironwood tree directly to their left.
Splattered across the dark green moss, roughly four feet off the ground, was a massive, fresh streak of thick dark crimson blood.
"The tracks changed," Reina whispered tightly. "The claw marks aren’t uniform anymore... They’re chaotic. Deep gouges tearing the roots up, overlapping footprints and scuff marks indicating something heavy was dragging its back legs."
She looked up at Silas, her face pale but determined.
"They didn’t just run through here. They were ambushed. We’re tracking a pack that is actively bleeding, and we might be walking straight into whatever hurt them. Keep your guard up as we are getting very close to a fight."
Silas nodded with a sigh.
He looked back at the squad. "Weapons drawn and no more talking. We must move silently."
The junior girls drew their shortswords and nocked arrows to their bowstrings, the metallic scrape of steel barely making a sound as they prepared for combat.
As they slowly crept forward, following the bloody trail through the dense ferns, Reina fell back a half-step to walk directly beside Silas.
"Lord Silas," Reina whispered, keeping her eyes scanning the dark brush. "If we find the pack, and they are in a compromised state, we need to execute the trapping plan flawlessly... We cannot just grab random wolves and drag them back to the Sanctuary. If we want to breed a functional high-endurance cavalry unit, we need specific pack dynamics."
"Tell me what you need," Silas replied, his eyes locked forward.
"I need several healthy females to establish the breeding core," Reina explained clinically. "If there are any cubs or juveniles, we prioritize capturing them... Cubs are incredibly malleable; if I bond with them while they’re young, they will view the Garrison as their natural den, completely eliminating the need to break wild aggression."
She paused, taking a breath.
"But most importantly, I need at least one, preferably two, strong Alpha males. A wolf pack’s social hierarchy is built entirely around the dominant male. If I can mentally break an Alpha male and tether him to my command, the females and the cubs will automatically submit to the territory... Without a male, the pack structure will collapse, and they will fight the saddles to the death."
Silas nodded, absorbing the tactical information. "Understood. Females, cubs, and an Alpha male."
He took two more steps through the mud before his Warlord brain violently hit the brakes.
Silas froze mid-stride, his boot sinking into the muck. His heart skipped a beat, a sudden, terrifying realization slamming into his mind like a physical blow.
’Wait a damn minute,’ Silas panicked internally, his eyes widening as he stared at the dark trees. ’A male?’
He remembered sitting in the dirt of the Blessed Land, reading the core rules of his territory expansion.
’The trait literally bans men from my base,’ Silas realized in horror. ’If I capture an Alpha male wolf and try to drag it back through the gates of the Keep, is the system going to register it as a male entity? Is it going to trigger a territorial violation and instantly smite the wolf to ash? Or worse, will it penalize my territory for breaking the core rule?!’
He couldn’t risk it.
If he spent all this time building a Beast Pavilion and hyping up a cavalry unit, only for the system to obliterate his mounts the second they crossed the threshold, Reina’s heart would break and he would look like a complete idiot.
’System,’ Silas thought urgently, projecting his mental query directly into the Warlord interface floating in the back of his mind. ’Clarification required... Does the territorial ban on male recruits apply to non-humanoid beasts and monster mounts?’
For two agonizing seconds, nothing happened.
Then, a crisp, glowing blue tab materialized directly in the center of his vision.
[System Query Acknowledged.]
[Processing Territorial Parameters...]
[Answer: Negative. The territory trait restriction applies strictly to Humanoid, Sentient, and Demi-Human male entities capable of holding command, hero, or troop designations. Beast-class entities, mounts, livestock, and non-sentient familiars are classified as ’Territorial Assets’ and are fully exempt from gender-based summoning/housing restrictions. Male mounts may be safely added to the Blessed Land.]
Silas let out a massive shuddering sigh of pure relief, closing his eyes for a second as the blue text faded from his vision.
’Thank God,’ Silas muttered internally. ’I thought I was going to have to run an entire cavalry unit entirely on angry female wolves.’
"Is everything alright, My Lord?" Reina asked softly, noticing him stop.
Silas opened his eyes and offered her a quick, reassuring nod.
"Everything is fine. The plan is solid. We secure the females, the cubs, and the Alpha male. We can proceed."
They crept forward for another ten minutes, following the bloody trail as it grew thicker and more chaotic.
The air in the forest grew incredibly heavy as the suffocating scent of decay mixed violently with the sharp tang of fresh blood.
Suddenly, a massive, deafening roar echoed through the dark canopy ahead.
It wasn’t the high-pitched echoing howl of a wolf.
It was a deep bone-rattling roar that sounded like a mountain tearing itself apart.
The roar was immediately followed by a chorus of desperate, vicious canine snarls and the sickening sound of heavy impacts.
"Down!" Reina hissed, dropping flat into the wet ferns.
Silas, Brida, Aeliana, and the junior squad hit the dirt instantly, crawling on their stomachs through the wet mud until they reached the edge of a steep, rocky ridge overlooking a small, sunken clearing.
Silas slowly pushed a heavy fern aside and peered down into the basin.
The scene below them was an absolute bloodbath.
Built into the side of a massive rocky cliff face was a small, dark cavern. The entrance was narrow, choked with heavy roots, but Silas could clearly see movement inside the dark opening.
Two female Umbral Wolves... massive beasts the size of draft horses, their fur a sleek dark midnight black were standing side-by-side inside the cave mouth.
Their teeth were bared in fierce, defensive snarls, and tucked safely behind their legs, whimpering in terror, were three tiny, trembling black wolf pups.
Two more female wolves were stationed just outside the cave entrance, their backs pressed against the rock wall, refusing to give an inch of ground as they protected the den.
But the real massacre was happening in the center of the clearing.
The muddy ground was completely torn apart, littered with uprooted trees and massive craters.
Lying dead in the dirt were the massive broken corpses of four Tier 2 Blood-Mane Grizzlies.
The bears were gargantuan... easily twelve feet tall, covered in thick, matted brown fur and plated with jagged bone armor across their skulls and shoulders.
The wolves had managed to kill four of them, but the cost had been devastating.
Fighting desperately in the center of the clearing against the fifth and final Blood-Mane Grizzly were the two male Umbral Wolves.
One was a younger male, clearly exhausted, limping heavily on a shattered back leg, its midnight fur soaked in its own blood.
The other was the Alpha.
The Alpha was a magnificent terrifying monster.
It was twenty percent larger than the females, its dark fur pulsing with faint streaks of violent purple umbral energy but the Alpha was losing.
Its left eye was swollen shut, its flank was torn open by deep, horrific claw marks, and its breathing was quite wet.
The fifth Grizzly was a nightmare.
It was completely untouched.
The massive bear stood on its hind legs, towering over the wolves, its rusted-iron claws dripping with blood, thick saliva frothing from its terrifying maw. It let out another bone-shaking roar, stepping forward to crush the wolves and raid the den.
"It’s a raid..." Reina whispered in horror, her eyes wide as she watched the slaughter from the ridge. "The bears are trying to eat the pups and the males are fighting to the death to buy the females time to run."
Down in the clearing, the fight erupted again with brutal violence.
The young male wolf lunged forward in a desperate, suicidal attempt to distract the bear, snapping its jaws toward the Grizzly’s hamstring.