Valar was forced to wait as Ciel and Arthur surveyed their surroundings. He was still hard at work healing himself, and as the situation was quite dire, he really needed to be in top health. That would take time, so he just sat there and looked on as the others surveyed the scene of destruction.

  The only reasonable explanation for the incident was that the mist had somehow exploded. Now that he was out of the thick mist, Valar had realized that the whole forest had never been covered in it, just the areas they had traversed. The mage, whoever they were, had controlled it from the start, dragging it with the expedition until the bandits could set up a trap. In short, they had been played.

  Now, most of the expedition was dead. Abyss, he had nearly died! Valar’s expression turned into a rictus frown as he felt his heart. He wasn’t supposed to feel his heart! The wound had left its mark, and at least for a while longer, Valar would remember where the pain had blossomed from. The feeling was upsetting, both to his mind and stomach.

  He threw up.

  Maybe this job isn’t that great after all… I’m still at iron rank but I’ve already been close to death more than once!

  “We need to move,” Rodrick grunted when he finally got his feet under him. The warrior leaned on one leg more than the other as he started walking, and for good reason too. His right leg had snapped just twenty minutes ago, after all. “We need to return to the wasteland and rush back to Lyndale. This is beyond us right now…”

  “There are people we could save!” Arthur yelled from the newly formed clearing full of corpses. “Pixie is alive, at least!”

  “We can take her with us if you can carry her,” Rodrick grimaced as he leaned his weight on his still injured leg. “As you can see, I can’t.”

  “I’ll carry her,” Ciel muttered. “Valar, can you help her?”

  Valar nodded. He was pretty sure he could do that even though his burgeoning headache was starting to surface. The last time he had lost his consciousness from overexertion the headache had been way worse. “I can stabilize Pixie and heal Rodrick’s leg, but after that I think I’m spent. There’s been a lot to heal today…”

  “That’s more than enough,” Rodrick said. “Stabilize her first. I will endure.”

  Valar walked up to the small woman and started casting Lesser Restoration.

  “My teammates?” A small croak escaped from Pixie’s mouth, surprising everyone. They had thought she was unconscious. “Save them first!”

  “I don’t think…” Valar started, but he couldn’t finish the sentence. They are all dead, aren’t they?

  When the silence stretched, the small woman realized what he had just been about to say. “No… that can’t be true! You’re lying!”

  She started thrashing on the ground, but Ciel and Arthur arrived with quick steps and pushed her back down. The small rogue continued her sobbing and thrashing but it brought her nowhere. “Phonis, Lindon, Jeremiah… No, that can’t… No…”

  “Lesser Restoration,” the incantation felt strangely hollow coming from Valar’s mouth. He could heal her body, but what had just been wounded was not something his magic could touch. He couldn’t very well heal her soul, could he?

  “Knock her out,” Rodrick sighed when the woman wouldn’t stop thrashing. “We are at least saving one life, even if she doesn’t want to be saved…”

  “Are you sure?” Ciel asked. “Should we show her-?”

  “No, that would be bad. She will hate me, but seeing the corpses of her friends would be too much,” Rodrick said. “Do it gently, would you?”

  “As best as I can.”

  Dark purple runes appeared on Ciel’s arm, almost looking like shadows dancing upon her skin. She placed that hand upon Pixie’s forehead and whispered, “Sleep.”

  It was a quick thing. One moment, Pixie was wide awake and sobbing, then she was fast asleep. “Perhaps her dreams will be better than whatever reality is right now,” Ciel said. “I truly hope so.”

  A short silence fell down upon team Cookie Sandwich. The noises of the forest were mixed with panicked shouts as the lone adventurers who had been lucky enough to survive the explosion ran away, consumed by fear. For the adventurers, it felt like paying their respects. A silent thank you for their service, both in life and death.

  Soon, however, came time to move. Valar healed Rodrick’s leg back to working condition, but he had to stop before he could fully finish the job. The headache simply became too much, and he was pretty sure that he would pass out if he continued the spell.

  “Sorry, I have to stop here,” he grunted to Rodrick. “Can you walk?”

  “I can, thank you,” Rodrick nodded. “Now let’s get away from here.”

  Unfortunately, they ran into their first issue nearly instantly. Since they had walked the whole trip within the mist, the team had no idea where to go.

  “I say we go in that direction,” Ciel grunted as she lifted Pixie up to a princess carry. “The trees are sparse there.”

  “I’ve got no better ideas,” Carla commented. “I’ll prepare some spells as we walk so we can actually defend ourselves too.”

  The rest of the team didn’t have anything to say against Ciel’s suggestion, even Arthur’s gut instinct staying silent. Since there were no better ideas, they followed Carla, who led the way and headed in the direction of sparser trees. Maybe it would even pay off and they would be out in only a jiffy…

  …

  They were lost.

  Team Cookie Sandwich had no idea where they were, and as the minutes turned to tens of minutes and then an hour, their worries only kept magnifying. The fact that they didn’t encounter any bandits was a good thing, but as the walk only became longer and longer, they couldn’t even be sure that they were heading in the right direction at all.

  As they walked, Valar recounted the events leading up to their unfortunate situation. In hindsight, entering the forest after they discovered that the enemy had a mist mage on their side had been a blunder. Pieter wouldn’t hear the end of it for years to come. He wouldn’t be getting promoted at least, that was for sure.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  The mist had turned out to be an issue that they couldn’t deal with more than momentarily, but Valar wasn’t that rattled about the loss of vision they had experienced, but the explosion that followed it.

  “Why was there an explosion?” he eventually asked the team. Perhaps one of them would have a better idea about what had just happened.

  “The mist exploded,” Carla said matter-of-factly.

  “It exploded? Mist doesn’t do that!”

  “I’m not a mist mage myself, as that is quite a small branch of water magic that very few focus on, but I’ve heard of mist explosions before,” Carla explained. “Even though mist is just very tiny droplets of water, it can explode if provided with enough heat and pressure,” she glanced at the sleeping Pixie in Ciel’s arms and cringed a little. “As much as it pains me to say this, I think Lindon’s Phoenix Descent did this.”

  “What, his spell?” Rodrick lifted his eyebrow as he surveyed their surroundings. “He’s a bronze ranker. Mist mages are rare, but if they countered fire mages that badly, it would be much more known.”

  “I think it’s mostly about circumstance,” Carla shrugged. “His fire wouldn’t have been enough to ignite the mist normally, but the mage had just brought it back, remember? Joanna pushed the mist back periodically, and bringing the mist back over us would cause a rise in pressure, right?”

  “This is going right over my head,” Arthur muttered.

  “I have to agree,” Valar shook his head ruefully. “Although it kind of sounds like one of the uncommon usages Viktor described in his class at the academy.”

  “Based on what you’ve said of them, you might very well be right,” Carla nodded. “As for you, Arthur… Mist was packed very tight for short moment, fire made it go boom!”

  “I’m stupid, but I’m no goblin,” Arthur said. “You don’t need to speak like them when you explain stuff to me.”

  “We’ll have to include that in the report,” Rodrick sighed. “But first, we have to get out of the forest, and I think we aren’t doing very well on that front…”

  Rodrick’s words were definitely true… As they walked on, Valar had no clue if they were even heading in the right direction. They could have very well been traveling straight towards the forest’s center, but they would have no clue until they either reached the forest’s edge… or something else.

  The most insidious killer of men was not some beast or even the men themselves, but fear. It often began from only the smallest seed of doubt, but with enough time, even the mightiest fell in the face of fear. As the nerve wracking trek through the forest dragged on, that small seed of doubt started to sprout within Valar’s mind.

  What if we’ll die here? I don’t want to die in this shitty forest! Where do we go… What’s the right direction?

  “Calm down,” Rodrick’s calm voice rang out, dispersing the growing fear in Valar’s mind. “We’ll be out of this forest in… What’s that?”

  The party emerged from a particularly overgrown thicket of trees and bushes, but surprisingly, no more trees awaited them. Instead, there was a corpse.

  A big corpse.

  When Selin, the branch leader of the Lyndale adventurer’s guild and gold ranked earth mage, had offered them an additional payday, the team’s attention had been on the money. Honestly, what did they care about some cloud serpent corpse? That kind of treasure was too valuable to be wasted on some bronze and iron rankers.

  Now, that corpse laid on the ground in front of their eyes.

  “Am I seeing this right?” Valar asked. “Please tell me I’m not looking at a cloud serpent right now.”

  “I’m afraid you are…” Rodrick said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Calling the carcass of the beast in front of them massive would have been an understatement. The former gold ranked danger noodle was tens of meters long, and its body was as thick as Rodrick was long. It was as white as the clouds in the sky above them, suggesting where the name could have come from as well.

  In life, it had surely been a mighty predator. No beast became as strong as to be at the peak of gold rank without being exceptional, and the cloud serpent had definitely been just that.

  “Those scales…” Arthur pointed at the pure white scales, each one the size of an adult’s head, with a hungry look in his golden eyes. “Imagine how much money we could make!”

  “My armor would be much better with scales like that,” Ciel muttered, walking closer towards the serpent. “Even if I could only harness the tiniest bit of their latent power, my defence would soar…”

  "No, that's idiotic," Rodrick grunted. "These things are never unguarded. We need to-."

  “Excuse me,” Valar froze, cold sweat starting to run down his back, as a gruff voice rang out in the large clearing. “But that is not your treasure to claim. Hands. Off.”

  A man, his hair as orange as the autumn leaves and his eyes as green as the grass under their feet, walked out from the trees. He was of medium height and as thin as a reed, but he was by no means scrawny. His arms were like thin bundles of cordlike muscle, and his pointed finger was aimed straight at Ciel's approaching form.

  “I would tell you to leave and never enter this forest again, but it's too late for that, isn't it?” the man laughed, his gruff voice in stark contrast to his thin frame. “Unfortunately, you’ve seen too much already. I’ll make the death as painless as I can, alright?”

  There was no doubt about it. Valar was looking at the leader of Crimson Talon, Edwin, the Undying Horror.

  The seed which had slowly grown in the past hours finally sprouted, and he knew fear. I’m going to die!

  Carla wasn’t a religious woman, but she recited a small prayer to the goddess of ice when she saw the man who had just entered the clearing. We should’ve ran as soon as soon as we saw the damn thing! Why didn’t I tell us to run?

  She of course knew the reason, that being greed, but admitting to herself that she had been swept up in the exact same stupid fantasies as the rest of her team was surprisingly painful.

  Because that’s what those thoughts of wealth and newfound power had been… Fantasies of a tired mind. An unguarded gold rank corpse of a top tier beast like a cloud serpent? What were we even thinking? Now we’re face to face with that guy, and he’s not going to let us go easily.

  “Unfortunately, you’ve seen too much already. I’ll make the death as painless as I can, alright?”

  Yup, exactly what I expected. But what do we do?

  Even if he was alone, the man dressed in a simple grey sleeveless robe on the other side of the clearing was way too much team Cookie Sandwich, and that was when they were in top shape. Valar was basically out of mana, Rodrick’s leg wouldn’t let him fight at his full power and Ciel was carrying another person. Basically, the only people who could fight were she and Arthur, and their opponent was a peak silver ranker called the Undying Horror.

  Carla’s first spell activated in only a brief instant, and Arthur’s arrow followed closely behind the spike of ice heading for the silver ranked menace. We need to distract him for long enough… Maybe we can escape?

  “Run!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. I hope they know enough to not stay in a situation like this!

  The young ice mage did not turn her head to see if the others left, hoping that they had gotten her message. Her full focus was on her target, and what she saw didn’t raise her confidence by one bit…

  Edwin clearly wasn't particularly fast for his rank, but he was still a silver ranker. The thin man leaned out of the way when her and Arthur’s attacks came, and even turned to look at them as they flew into the distance.

  “Well trained, I see,” he muttered. “Quick reactions to danger, decisive… If you hadn’t seen this, I might’ve even recruited you two.”

  “Recruited?” Carla asked. We can burn some time if he’s ready to chat. At least I can give the others a chance to escape… “I haven’t heard that the Crimson Talon ever recruits people. You seem to mostly kill and kidnap instead…”

  “True… true,” the thin man with deep orange hair laughed. “We mostly kill, yeah, but there have been some recruits along the years. Lynis, our mist mage, was a good one, although I only recruited her a few years back. I do hope she’s still alive. That was quite the explosion…”

  “We didn’t see any people that were alive,” Arthur commented, his bow aimed at the so-called bandit king. “Sorry for your loss, I guess.”

  He let another arrow loose.

  This time, the bandit leader sidestepped the arrow aimed at his heart. “Your condolences mean little when they are accompanied by something aimed to kill me… I think I need to return the favor.”

  Saying that the man disappeared from her sight would have overstated the man’s speed. Disappearing in an instant was a feat of speed only reserved for those of gold rank or above, and Edwin wasn’t even that fast for a silver ranker. From the perspective of a bronze ranker, it didn’t matter, however.

  The Undying Horror’s shin impacted Arthur’s stomach at a speed that would have been hard to dodge even at the best of times. It wasn’t a perfect hit, but Arthur was still launched meters away. The archer landed in a heap, coughing up blood as the bandit king brushed off the dirt from his leg.

  “Fast for a bronze ranker, that’s for sure. I’m sure I aimed for your core, but somehow you managed to get hit on the lower abdomen. Good job,” Edwin commented. “Now for the girl…”

  Shit.