After Lord Heatiaz left, Felix found no reason to keep leading the army to reclaim the lost territories at this moment, knowing that it would take a long while before the Scorchlanders could restart their offense.
Chief Drogath knew this as well and took Felix back to the village, leaving his commanders to continue pushing forward.
“What happened?” Selphie asked with a worried tone after Felix regrouped with them inside one of the huts at the edges of the village.
“Well, I have officially declared war on the Scorchlanders and Lord Heatiaz.” Felix coughed, “It’s best that you don’t cross the territorial line for now.”
Felix knew that he would be on Lord Heatiaz’s radar for a while, which meant the moment he stepped inside his territory, he would be waiting for him to capture him or his friends.
“You must have done something bad again.” Olivia rolled her eyes at him, knowing that Felix wouldn’t be at ease without creating trouble.
“Bad or good, who cares?” Bodidi asked with an eager tone, “When are we going to join the fights? I am itching to vent my boredo…Cough, to help the poor swamp people.”
Bodidi might be still a shameless worm, but he had indeed gotten much stronger in the past six hundred years.
“Soon, for now, sit tight and don’t make trouble for the villagers.” Felix said as he stood up, “I am going to get my payment.”
Without delay, Felix went to Chief Drogath who was waiting for him at the village hall.
He jumped straight to the point and requested, “I am planning to begin my training right now, I hope you can assist me.”
Chief Drogath sized Felix up and down in silence instead of answering him.
Felix remained patiently waiting for him, trusting that he wouldn’t go back on his word due to his demonstrated importance in this war.
After a few moments of this deathly silence, Chief Drogath asked, “So, you want to train your poison manipulation.”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“From this environment? I only require to train my poison manipulation.”
“I see.” Chief Drogath inquired, “How do you want me to help you?”
Felix explained to him the process of channeling purified condensed poison energy through him.
As expected, Chief Drogath didn’t seem to mind it too much even when he heard that Felix would be needing this process on daily basis.
A smile broke on Felix’s face after finally receiving a confirmation…Although he had made himself a powerful enemy in the process, Felix still felt that it was more than worth it.
He just couldn’t imagine himself working on his elemental manipulations anymore without enhancing his shitty talents first.
It was like he was asleep before and he was finally awakened to witness the world’s magnificent beauty…There was no way he would allow himself to go back to his sleep!
“Can we start now?”
“Sure.”
….
While Felix was taken to the most poisonous swamp in the tribe’s territory to begin his training, Lord Heatiaz was holding an emergency meeting with his tribal heads.
“The outsider isn’t to be underestimated.” Lord Heatiaz said coldly, “He is capable of attacking the souls through his elemental abilities somehow.”
Just the sound of it made the tribal heads nervous and a bit spooked. Due to their immortality, none of them worried too much about what happened to them during their fights as they could always get revived.
But now? They realized that if they fought Felix, he was going to make them beg for their death by torturing their souls!
“Should we send reinforcement?” Iavroim suggested, “Now, that we know about his soul-burning ability, we can create a counter method against it. In the process, it is best to send reinforcement to avoid giving up too much of our conquered territory.”
“This sounds good and all, but the only way to send reinforcement is if we reduced our armies from other frontlines.” One of the tribal heads retorted, “This will definitely alarm the other tribes and make them take advantage of the situation and go all out on us.”
“He is right.”
“Our forces are already stretched too thin.”
The other tribal heads agreed with him one by one, knowing that their tribe’s situation was quite special.
While other tribes engage in one vs one, Lord Heatiaz ordered his tribe to attack all the bordering tribes simultaneously.
Since they were situated at the center of the continent, this implied that they were sharing borders with multiple tribes.
“They are bound to find out about this sooner or later as Chief Drogath isn’t an idiot to not take advantage of his favorable position. Not sending reinforcement as soon as possible will only lead us to lose more territory. All of you know how difficult for us to win over even one meter of territory.” Iavroim doubled down on her suggestion with a serious tone.
“She is right.” Lord Heatiaz supported her before the others could open their mouths.
“Send as much reinforcement as needed to completely overwhelm the Mire Marauders and their new toy.” Lord Heatiaz ordered coldly, “I don’t care if it meant losing territories from other tribes. We can always retake them in the future.”<.com>
Although this plan seemed risky and had a big chance of getting them screwed over by the other tribes, everyone knew that it was the best solution to handle this variable.
In their eyes, if they went all out on the Mire Marauders, having Felix on their side would mean jacksh*t!
After all, hundreds of thousands of Elementals working together against merely a thousand Elementals and a human was pure bullying!
“What are you still doing here?” Lord Heatiaz eyed them coldly, “Move it!”
Whoosh Whoosh!…
The tribal heads exited the chamber room swiftly and went to take care of his order, leaving only Iavroim behind.
“Father, I know I was the one suggesting sending reinforcement, but what if the other tribes decided to create an alliance again and attack us from all fronts simultaneously while we are at our weakest?” Iavroim thought with a worried look.
“The last time my enemies tried allying against me, they failed horribly.” Lord Heatiaz sneered, “History will repeat itself if they dared take this road.”
Iavroim couldn’t help but recall the first conquered tribes and what happened to their chiefs when they decided to ally with each other and assault her father’s territory.
All of them got absolutely owned by her father…This while his territory wasn’t even half the size of their current territory, which meant his strength was much weaker!
“I apologize for worrying too much.”
….
Days went by and then weeks…Felix was still committed to boosting his poison affinity talent, training new abilities, mastering old ones, and increasing the range.
Because of his previous experience in the Cold Lone Island Tribe, his start was hundred times better, making him improve at a noticeable speed even in merely a couple of weeks.
As for his party? They went to the front lines to help out the Mire Marauders to reclaim their territories and also train whatever things they had learned before.
“Explosive Madness Fungi!”
With a high-pitched shout from Olivia, The sky above the Scorchlanders was illuminated with thousands of green runic hexes, causing them to feel a sudden urge of dread, knowing exactly what was coming for them.
“Freeze!”
Before they could attempt to create defensive measures against Olivia’s incoming assault, they found themselves unable to move an inch besides their pupils!
Just like them, the lava sea, the explosions, the thrown abilities, and everything near them was frozen in time!
Selphie appeared hovering in the sky next to Olivia, looking as radiant as ever, making it impossible for anyone to imagine such a pure-looking soul casting this horrific spell!
Phew! Phew Phew!!
While everyone was frozen in time, thousands of grotesque and unsettling dark mushrooms began to rain down on the Scorchlanders!
Because of the time being frozen on the battleground, they suffered from the same fate the moment they entered the area where the time was stopped.
However, this didn’t pose much of an issue as Olivia was capable of manually blowing them!
“Now!”
So, the instant she blew them, Selphie unpaused the time in the battlefield, allowing those explosions to engulf any Scorchlander near them!
Boom boom Boom!
The Scorchlanders might be immune to heat, but the explosion force still did plenty of damage to their physical bodies as some of the golems had gotten blown out!
Since Elementals could easily recover their physical bodies, this wasn’t really their purpose for the assault.
“Push now!” Olivia shouted cutely at the Mire Marauders.
Splash!!
Without the Scorchlanders to defend their lava sea, the Mire Marauders pushed their swamp forward and managed to reclaim a bit of territory.
Sadly, this didn’t really change anything since the girls’ spells range wasn’t as vast as Felix, which meant they affected merely a small area in the battleground.
Rumble Rumble!!
Suddenly, everyone was forced to focus on the far distance behind the Scorchlanders after the ground began tremoring.
What came before them was a massive thick storm of Volcanic ash, heading in their direction.
Before anyone could react, thousands upon thousands of Scorchlanders appeared within the smog, causing the Mire Marauders to have their eyes widened in disbelief and horror!
“THE REINFORCEMENT HAS ARRIVED!! ATTACK!!”
