“That’s… a dragon? A living flying dragon?” Hanke looked up at the figure circling in the dark night, his eyes dazed.
Ignis hovered in the air, wings beating, warily watching the churning, dark blue tide below. A warning growl rumbled in his throat, and Dragon Majesty spread out with the sound waves.
‘Thank goodness he’s here. Otherwise, the situation would have been truly unsalvageable.’
But at that very moment, an ethereal voice, like an illusion, drifted out from the Silent Ancient Forest:
“Leave this place… It has nothing to do with you.”
Ignis instinctively glanced toward the outpost.
On the low wall, aside from Villanelle, whether it was Patton’s tense figure or Hanke’s upturned face, there was only tension and astonishment at the dragon in the sky. They seemed to have heard nothing from the ancient forest.
‘Only I can hear it?’
Ignis shook his head and let out another low roar, this one carrying an even stronger warning than before.
A faint sigh drifted from the woods.
There was no killing intent in that sound, only a heaviness akin to sorrow, starkly out of place amidst the insects’ frenzied shrieking.
As the sigh faded, the Crystal Shell Bugs arrayed on the snowy ground, as if receiving a command, “came alive” once more. They surged forward, crossing the scorched remains of their kin littering the ground, and charged the outpost.
“Get out of here, now! We can’t stay!” Ignis’s thoughts echoed urgently and anxiously in Villanelle’s mind.
He had the ability to inflict heavy casualties on the insect tide with a single Dragon Breath, but he wasn’t confident he could protect everyone if the tide overwhelmed the outpost. Staying here would only add to the casualties.
There was no longer any point in defending the Old Logging Outpost.
Fortunately, almost simultaneously, Hanke made a decisive decision. “We’re pulling back! Head toward the town!”
Villanelle took one last look at the scene beyond the wall.
The insect tide was like a breached dam of dark blue floodwater, but this time the assault was no longer so chaotic.
They subtly divided into multiple streams. Some charged head-on, others flanked from the sides. The pottery jars buried near the wall’s base, meant to warn of burrowing insects, began to emit sounds.
It was as if an invisible pair of eyes had joined the battlefield and was rapidly making tactical adjustments.
“Hanke, take the wounded and go first. Finn, you go with them! Laila, Vila, we’ll stay behind to cover the retreat!” Patton commanded, glancing at Ignis hovering menacingly in the air. “Vila, can your dragon cover us?”
“No problem.”
“Good. Fight and retreat. Buy as much time as we can!”
Hanke led his group down. In the air, Ignis’s molten gold pupils locked onto the leading streams of the insect tide. He opened his maw and spewed a fan-shaped sheet of Black Flame.
The viscous black flames spread rapidly upon contact with the ground, creating a continuous, blazing sea of fire before the low wall.
The Crystal Shell Bugs at the front couldn’t stop their momentum in time. They crashed into the towering flames, letting out shrill shrieks, and burned to ash within a few steps.
Ignis faintly sensed a violent surge of emotion from the direction of the forest… Pain and rage?
He ignored it, focusing on dealing with the sea of insects before him.
The Crystal Shell Bugs fell into brief chaos.
“I’ll cover the rear. You all get moving too. Staying here isn’t much use.” Ignis transmitted his thoughts again.
Villanelle pursed her lips, hesitated for a moment, but chose to respect his opinion. She turned and shouted to those staying behind, “Ignis says we don’t need to stay! We’re retreating too!”
Patton’s face turned a purplish-red.
Though he hated to admit it, when facing a massive enemy like the Crystal Shell Bugs, the few of them combined weren’t as useful as a single scale on Ignis.
He could only fight close quarters. Laila’s arrows were powerful but single-target. Villanelle’s Fireballs also seemed somewhat ineffective, more like applying a damage-over-time and enrage buff to the bugs.
“Can your dragon hold out?”
“Yes, I believe in him!”
The remaining teammates didn’t hesitate further. They ran swiftly with Villanelle toward the outpost gate.
“Wait, the ground is moving.” Laila keenly sensed the abnormality beneath them.
Villanelle planted her Magic Staff on the ground. A large expanse of Ice Fog spread out from her in all directions, covering everything it touched with a smooth layer of ice.
This ice bought them some time. By the time they exited the outpost, the first burrowing Crystal Shell Bug was just breaking through the ice, revealing its sharp mandibles.
Confirming the outpost was now empty, Ignis turned and spewed Black Flame into the Old Logging Camp. He swept the flames across every exposed inch of ground like a mop, igniting towering fires everywhere.
The ground instantly turned into a furnace from the intense heat. Though invisible, the Crystal Shell Bugs that had just burrowed underneath certainly wouldn’t escape.
‘Opportunities to play with fire like this don’t come often,’ he thought inexplicably.
Estimating it was about enough, Ignis began to retreat in the direction Villanelle had gone. As he fell back, he carefully observed the ground situation, occasionally spewing a wall of fire to isolate the insect swarm.
The winter night’s cold wind howled past his ears, carrying the acrid stench of burning protein and the chill of ice and snow.
Guided by some unknown will, the insect tide adjusted its strategy. No longer limited by the narrow attack front around the outpost, they rapidly expanded to both sides, their formation also becoming more sparse.
A portion of the Crystal Shell Bugs turned toward him, adjusting their mandible angles and spewing hundreds of densely packed streams of acid in his direction. But the distance was too great; they didn’t hit.
Ignis didn’t want to get bogged down in a fight and ignored these bugs challenging him.
‘Such is the noble attribute of an air force.’
His full attention was on the retreating party below and the figure within it who kept looking back.
Each time he spewed flame, the accumulated heat within him seemed to diminish a fraction. Each time he beat his wings, he could feel the emptiness of his mana nearing depletion.
The edges of his vision began to darken.
Just as Ignis felt his magical energy was about to be squeezed dry, the lights of White Water Town finally appeared in the distance.
The lights seemed to possess a strange magic. The moment they entered his sight, Ignis suddenly noticed the abnormality behind him.
The insect tide that had been clinging to them like a stubborn plague abruptly stopped its pursuit. As one, they turned back the way they had come, receding like a tide back toward the ancient forest.
Even though the swarm seemed to retreat quite decisively, Ignis didn’t relax.
Only when the last Crystal Shell Bug disappeared over the horizon did the tension in his nerves finally ease.
Ignis descended, flying toward the reunited three-person team like a black leaf blown by the wind, wobbling unsteadily.
Villanelle’s ice-blue eyes brightened. She let out a long sigh of relief, opened her arms, and let the descending shadow plunge directly into her embrace.
“Safe?”
Ignis withdrew all his released aura and pressure, nodding wearily as he rested on her shoulder.
‘Damn, this commission nearly killed me. But it was really thrilling too.’
Gently stroking Ignis’s slightly warm scales, Villanelle’s newly relaxed mood was suddenly weighed down again by something heavy.
The ferocious appearance Ignis had shown in Frostwhisper Forest that day resurfaced in her mind.
‘In the end… the one who carved out a path to survival was still him.’
The outline of White Water Town’s outer sentry camp grew clearer in the night. The flickering light of torches on the wooden palisade now looked somewhat illusorily warm.
Everyone’s spirits lifted.
“Open up! It’s us! People from the Old Logging Outpost are back! Open the gate!” Hanke’s voice was hoarse and broken.
Immediately, a noticeable commotion and exclamations rose from behind the camp’s palisade.
Barricades were hastily moved aside. Several night-watch militiamen rushed out holding torches, hurriedly supporting the unsteady wounded.
The torchlight illuminated faces full of shock and doubt.
“What happened, Hanke? We heard constant commotion from your direction. We were just discussing whether to send someone to check.”
A militiaman who looked like a squad leader asked urgently. His gaze swept over the group’s bedraggled state, especially Hanke’s ashen face, and he had already guessed part of the truth.
“The Old Logging Outpost has fallen.” Hanke avoided his colleague’s gaze, closing his eyes in pain. “Bugs… bugs everywhere…”
Each word he spoke seemed squeezed from between his teeth, soaked in the cold breath of the snowy night and the bitterness of defeat.
The militiaman’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth but ultimately just sighed helplessly.
“So the day has finally come… Alright. I’ll go inform Captain Blake. You all rest in the camp for now.”
Villanelle took a deep breath of the cold air, trying to clear her chaotic mind.
This snowy, windy night was likely far from over.