These words hit home and many people began to tremble, including the villagers of Hellhound Village who had never been imprisoned. Some of them had even participated in their capture.
They, too, were in some ways at the mercy of the whims of Oxyxcrest Pride. Their lives were miserable because they were too weak.
If they were stronger they could easily pay the annual tribute and still eat their fill. If they were strong enough, they would not have to bow to anyone. If they were strong enough, they wouldn't have to live in fear of what tomorrow would bring.
In the end, it always came down to a matter of strength or intelligence. And right now, they had neither.
Ikaris studied their faces with curiosity, paying particular attention to those who had been most affected by his speech. Those who still had a functioning body, no matter what abuse they had suffered, still had the ability to hope, but the men who had been used as snacks and lost an arm or a leg were the least receptive to his uplifting speech.
He sighed as he saw their desperate faces. As long as they weren't healed, he would have a hard time motivating them.
"Let's go." The teenager finally announced, deeming he had made his point.
Horny, who had disappeared since the beginning of the raid, trotted merrily towards them, his face smeared with a red-magenta liquid. It looked like blood in the dim light of the galleries, but Ikaris caught a whiff of berry as he approached.
"Where have you been?" He yelled at him with tight lips and a quizzical raise of his eyebrow.
"Mooo?" ( How the heck does that concern you?)
Ikaris' eyebrows arched, but he held back from kicking his ass. Just as they were about to leave, a furious, panicked scream sounded behind them.
"Where are my Poppers Blueberries?! That was all I had left!"
The boy turned around and saw that these dejected cries were coming from a Beastman nearing sixty. Not counting Liam's grandfather, he was probably the oldest man in the Hellhound Pack. Just by the name of these fruits, Ikaris could already imagine what their benefits were...
At this thought, a cold perspiration ran down his spine and he glanced at the bulky bison who was beginning to suffer from the side-effects of this dietary deviation. He kept snorting while rubbing himself against everything he could.
'Serves you right, you stupid bovine. That'll teach you a lesson.' Ikaris laughed inwardly.
He reminded himself to ask in the future where the Beastman had picked those red fruits. He wasn't interested in the aphrodisiac effect (well, not yet), but anything that grew in this world that was out of the ordinary usually had some sort of outstanding nutritional or medicinal properties. With Appraisal he could easily identify these properties.
The return trip went smoothly but took almost three hours. In a straight line, the distance was just shy of 10 kilometers, 2 of which were underground and 6 on open ground. What slowed them down considerably was crossing the two kilometers of dense forest with their packs and carts while protecting the migrant cohort from the Demonic Beasts swarming around.
Because neither Ikaris, Malia, nor Liam had the confidence to stop a horde of rabid monsters, they had to move very slowly. If Liam hadn't condemned the burrows opening directly onto the plain, they could have covered this distance in half the time.
This was to prevent them from tracking them after their previous raid on Last Saint Village. They could easily be reopened, but these tunnels were too narrow anyway to let anything as wide as a wagon through.
Such an underground path existed, but it led directly to a gold mine 50 kilometers east of Last Saint. It had taken their tribe decades to dig it, but since a Magical Beast and its horde had taken up residence there they dared not go near it.
Ikaris was disappointed when he heard this, but then he focused on the positive.
"If this is a recent phenomenon, I guess you must still have a lot of gold left, right?" He asked excitedly.
Liam stiffened as he felt the oppressive greed exuding from his new Lord, but after a slight adjustment in his posture he cleared his throat and confessed,
"It is indeed part of the resources we carry on our carts. Onyxcrest Pride likes gold, but less than Demonic meat and herbs. Unless it's a magical ore with special properties, they're not interested. We have accumulated a little over 100 kilos of gold ore, but we used to have a lot of silver. When we first offered it to them as a tribute, the Onyxcrest Pride asked us to sink all our silver to the bottom of Tartarus Lake. We also mined a bit of white gold and some other base metals."
Listening to the Alpha Werewolf, Ikaris received a lot of intriguing information. White gold could refer to anything from a gold-silver alloy, to platinum, iridium or palladium. In any case, it was very valuable.
But what really intrigued him was why the Onyxcrest Pride had reacted in such an extreme way upon receiving a silver tribute. Magnus confirmed his suspicions soon after,
'All Werebeings are vulnerable to two things: pure silver and wolfsbane. Actually, Vampires aren't big fans of silver either. If the enemies of the Oxyxcrest Pride had access to enough silver to craft weapons, their hegemony would quickly be endangered. I'm also willing to bet that it will be nearly impossible to find a single wolfsbane plant on all of Cutthroat Island.'
Liam concurred with the old Vampire when Ikaris mentioned wolfsbane. Although he was an Alpha Werewolf himself, he had never heard of it.
'Am I to conclude that Vampires are also vulnerable to garlic, holy water and wooden stakes?' The teen joked telepathically with Magnus.
The late Archmagus snorted in contempt, but after rumbling under his breath for a few minutes he spilled the beans.
'Garlic... The smells it gives off are horribly nauseating to Vampires, but it's harmless. Holy water, that's only true if it's produced by the priests of Zar, the Sun Saint. And the wooden stakes? Sure, that might work. But if you can kill a vampire with it, you'd better use a sword instead. It's not only stronger, but it cuts much better.
By mid-afternoon, they finally arrived at Last Saint. Nardor and the others building the wall panicked as they saw a crowd of Werewolves, Beastmen, and Wolf Daemons marching toward their village, but they relaxed as they recognized Malia and their Lord among them. The towering figures of Horny and the Tartarus Enforcer were impossible to mistake.
Upon arriving, Ikaris was intercepted by Plume, who immediately offered to tend to the wounded. Apparently, as a Nature Sorcerer and Fae she could also use basic Healing Spells.
At first he doubted her qualifications, but when he saw Danchun come out of her tent to greet them, all his doubts vanished. The bloody runes from the morning that she had carved on her body had not disappeared, but they had been replaced by faint scars.
"I can't erase the scars, only speed up the natural healing process." The Fae explained with an apologetic smile. "That's why I can't make scars disappear, nor can I regrow limbs unless the patient already has that ability."
"It's good enough." Ikaris thanked her earnestly. "I'll let you take care of the wounded, but ignore the wounds of the envoy and his guards a bit longer."
"I intended to. " She grinned snidely.
Her gaze grew cold as she met Liam's, but after a short stare-down she ignored him, pursing her lips. The Werewolf Alpha winced bitterly. He deserved it.
"If you want to make yourself useful, go see Nardor. He'll tell you what to do." Ikaris patted his shoulder.
Kellam and Danchun then oversaw the settlement of the new immigrants, providing them with tents, food rations, and clothing when necessary. Ellie took charge of inventorying their resources.
Knowing that the village was in good hands, Ikaris went directly to the thatched cottage where his Elsisn Stele was stationed. The population had grown to over two hundred and he was fulfilling the requirements for the next upgrade.
He placed his hands on the artifact and connected his mind to it. He immediately received a mental notification.
[Last Saint Village fulfills the conditions for advancement. Do you wish to upgrade the Stele?]
Ikaris accepted without hesitation. A faint glow of white light pulsed from the Stele, spreading throughout Last Saint like an invisible, harmless shockwave.
The cottage he was in experienced incomprehensible changes. The only room he was in expanded abruptly, and then divided into 6 parts, an entrance hall forming a corridor leading to a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and two bedrooms.
The thatched roof, the walls and the dry earth floor were replaced by waterproof and clean wooden boards, a rudimentary fireplace was added at the back of the living room, the non-existent furniture was enriched with a sofa, two double beds and other common furniture such as a table, chairs, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe.
The quality and aesthetics of the furniture was very low, but compared to the dingy cottage of before, it was practically a renaissance. It was as if an old tramp stinking of piss and alcohol had suddenly turned into a beautiful young Hollywood star.
With some apprehension and eagerness, he then checked his Elsisn Stele's new status.
