Chapter 252: The Price of Rescue
Just as Freyja was tracing her final, lethal arc toward the terrified Prince Caelen’s neck, the air behind the royal entourage compressed to a breaking point.
BOOOOOOM!
A supersonic shockwave swept away the snow and shattered adjacent tents. A figure with cracked armor burst into the midst of the carnage: the iron-masked auditor. With bloodshot eyes and at the limit of his strength, he didn’t try to dodge or read the breeze; he predicted the cat’s trajectory based on her hunting pattern and sacrificed his left arm as bait.
CLASH-CRUNCH!
Freyja’s talons tore through the auditor’s arm armor, but in that split second where her body was anchored to the enemy’s flesh, the masked youth executed a counter-thrust with his blade. The impact was no defensive parry: the steel imbued with compressed mana struck the white cat dead-on, unleashing a cutting blast that sent her flying through the air.
MEOW!
𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮
A cry of pain pierced the night. Freyja hit the snow yards away, tumbling. As she pushed herself up, three deep sword gashes crossed her torso from side to side, gushing crimson blood that stained her white fur.
The masked auditor, clutching his useless arm and staggering, raised his blade toward her with a glare. Freyja, realizing that in her wounded state and without the element of surprise she could not overcome the masked fighter’s reaction time, let out a raspy hiss and vanished into the forest shadows, retreating toward the shaman’s territory.
"Move, damn it!" roared the masked youth, his voice cracked from exertion as he grabbed Caelen by the collar with his remaining hand. "It’s our chance! Retreat to the fortress right now!"
Valerius, reacting on instinct, grabbed the exhausted prince alongside the auditor, as the few survivors fled without looking back, leaving behind a camp drenched in blood.
In the village’s central storehouse, the captains and craftsmen had finished counting the loot recovered from the battlefield. There were hundreds of suits of armor retrieved from the defeated legion. Many bore deep dents or were damaged beyond repair from artillery fire, yet hundreds of pieces remained in pristine condition.
Upon inspecting the polished surface of the metal, Kellar noticed they were crafted from an alloy. Activating his identification skill, the gear’s stats appeared before his eyes:
[Magic Silver Armor]
Type: High-Grade Defense Alloy
Forged from: Magic silver alloy, imbued with elemental earth and wind stone powder.
Weight Reduction: 45%
Special Effect: Doubles the base defensive power of magic silver.
It was a war treasure. Upon removing the gear from the corpses, they confirmed they came in complete sets: boots, greaves, cuirass, gauntlets, pauldrons, and helm. Beneath the rigid plate, the soldiers even wore chainmail woven from magic silver thread.
The troops’ sidearms and swords were also forged from magic silver, yet they lacked elemental skills or complex enchantments. Kellar wondered silently whether the kingdom’s smiths didn’t know how to imbue elemental magic into them, or if it was simply because they belonged to the lowest-ranking troops within the military hierarchy.
"Master," said Lennis and Garik, stepping forward with a pair of breastplates in hand, their eyes glowing with enthusiasm. "We can use this material as the baseline standard for our own armor. If each of our soldiers could wear a set like this, their combat power and survivability would skyrocket."
"Keep them all and begin melting down the unusable pieces to—"
Kellar froze mid-sentence. His face turned pale as a system alert echoed in his mind:
[System Warning: Familiar - Freyja critically wounded]
Kellar’s blood ran cold. Rage and panic surged through his chest in a wave.
"Damn it...! LITTLE GREEN...!" roared Kellar at the top of his lungs.
Without a second’s hesitation, the shaman bolted out of the storehouse toward the main courtyard. Little Green, sensing the panic in her master’s voice and mana, plummeted from the sky like green lightning.
Kellar leaped onto the giant winged beast’s back before she even touched solid ground. The eagle beat her wings and shot forward into the depths of the forest, following Kellar’s telepathic directions to intercept the wounded cat.
Little Green sliced through the night air like a projectile, sweeping over the treetops. From high above, Kellar’s eyes scoured the shadowed snow until he spotted a tiny white speck dragging itself through the underbrush.
"Down, Little Green!" ordered Kellar.
The winged beast plunged downward, landing a few paces away. Kellar leaped off her back before the eagle had come to a stop and sprinted toward the cat.
As he knelt and scooped her up into his hands with care, his heart sank. Freyja’s fur was drenched in blood, three deep thrust wounds crossing her torso from side to side. Her breathing was ragged, releasing faint meows of pain as she struggled to keep her eyes open.
"Damn it...!" cursed Kellar through gritted teeth, a mixture of rage and helplessness surging through him as his hands began to glow with an intense [Heal] light. "What were you doing so far away?! I told you not to pursue them...!"
Kellar had never ordered her to chase after the fleeing legion. However, because Freyja was an independent creature who naturally vanished and reappeared in the shadows as she pleased, Kellar had grown accustomed to her absence and never considered that the cat would attempt to ambush the enemy army on her own deep in the forest.
"Signs of... weakness... must not exist, Master..." whispered Freyja in Kellar’s mind, her voice faint and raspy as she weakly pressed her bloodied little head against the shaman’s palm. "I wanted to... eliminate their leaders... for you..."
"Shut up and save your strength," interrupted Kellar, channeling his mana directly into the cat’s wounds to knit her internal injuries and stop the bleeding. "You did more than enough... Now rest."
The torn flesh slowly began to fuse back together under the green aura of his spellwork. Kellar wrapped her inside his cloak, holding her close to his chest for warmth while Little Green emitted a protective screech behind him, watching over the pitch-black woods.