"Our Quest is to kill fifty Sand Demons and gather their cores," Layim explained. "They are hard to defeat and kill, but what's even harder is finding them."
"The Sand Demons never travel in groups. You might find one and be able to kill it, but that's just one. To go to the next floor, we need to kill fifty, which takes years. We did many things, but none of them relate to the missions."
"You think it's not..." Azekiel smiled. "You're right. It's hard to gather all the Sand Demons at one place or find fifty of them, but hard doesn't mean impossible. All the missions that I gave you were to draw out the Sand Demons."
"How?"
Even now, no one understood how that all linked.
"You stole the crown from the Nature Elves, which made them restless. At the same time, the Dark Elves were manipulated to attack the Nature Elves. That is the first step and the most important. The battlefield will be where we will find the Sand Demons."
"What you all don't know at the moment is that the Sand Demons are attracted by large-scale wars since that's where they can feast to their heart's content. A battle between Orcs and Triads doesn't fit the criteria, not Elves and Dark Elves? That does."
"Both of those sides have hundreds of thousands of warriors. The battlefield will be such that when Sand Demons won't be able to resist themselves. Even though the Sand Demons hate being in the company of other Sand Demons, they would still come together if the bait was big enough, and that's what we will find there."
Azekiel explained briefly, stunning everyone. So the war wasn't his main goal. Was it just bait? But there were still many questions in their heads.
"How do you know about that? How do you know that Sand Demons are attracted to large-scale battlefields?" The Lord of Theft asked.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you that. I just know."
He couldn't tell them that it was his knowledge from the old timeline. It was an incident that happened after almost all the Kings had passed onto the fifth floor after spending years on the Fourth Floor.
A battle between Nature Elves and the Dark Elves shook the entire fourth floor; however, that's also where multiple Sand Demons appeared together.
He still remembered Michael cursing out loud at the news.
He was so upset! He had to spend years to search for the Sand Demons and to kill them, and now that he had passed through, Sand Demons appeared in droves. He was so angry, thinking about all the time he could've saved if this had happened before.
It was at that time when everyone realized that Sand Demons were attracted by large scale wars, but it was too late for anyone to use that knowledge since they were already done.
Unlike them, Azekiel was back in time with the information. He couldn't wait until the inevitable war between the Nature Elves and the Dark Elves. That's what prompted him to use his men to create a situation where a war was inevitable.
There was already a conflict between the two sides. He just used a misunderstanding to make that battle happen earlier.
"I still have a question." Layim thought of something.
"What?"
"I understand why the war between Elves was related to the Quest, but why kill that person? And all the other small tasks?" Layim asked.
"That's just a backup," Azekiel shrugged. "I know that many Sand Demons will arrive on the battlefield of Elves to consume the bodies, but I'm not sure if we'll have fifty there. There's also a possibility that we might lack some. That's why I had this backup created..."
"The person you killed... He wasn't an ordinary person. He was the Younger Brother of the King of the neighboring Empire," Azekiel answered.
"All the other tasks you did... They weren't random. All of them were to provoke another war between the two neighboring Empires. That war is our backup to farm more Sand Demons. If I'm not wrong, we should be done with the Quest in the Elf war itself, but if we don't, we move onto the next battlefield and harvest more."
"Easy..." Azekiel had planned everything before when stepping onto this floor. The only difference was that things progressed even faster than he had expected because he received the help of the Lords.
If he didn't have their help, he might've needed to do things himself which could've taken quite a long time.
"And the Coin that you asked us to retrieve? How does that provoke a war?"
"That's the only thing which wasn't related to the Quest of the Floor," Azekiel explained. "I just wanted that coin for myself."
"Why?"
"Don't worry about it. Just remember, when we get to the battlefield, I will kill the Sand Demons and clear the floor. If you also want to farm some experience, you can kill them as well, but only if there are in excess of fifty. I want fifty for myself at least."
It was decided that the Lords could join the battle to gain some experience, but the main harvest was reserved for Azekiel, so he could finish the Quest himself. Because if all of them killed the Sand Demons, the chances of one of them being able to reach fifty were almost non existent.
That's why the task was left to Azekiel, who was the strongest here and had the highest chance of being able to kill them faster.
The Lords weren't without work either. They were allowed to kill the Elves and the Dark Elves to farm experience if they wanted. There was no restriction on that.
****
The battlefield of the Elves was very far from the village where the Orcs lived. Despite there being so much distance, the journey for them was much shorter thanks to one of the Lords who was able to help everyone fly, using his flight skill.
Through the air, the travel was much faster.
Everyone was still in the air when they managed to see a battlefield in the distance.
It appeared as if the battle had started hours ago. Hundreds of Elves were already dead by now as dead bodies were littered all around. Despite there being so many deaths, the number of the dead appeared to be minuscule when compared to the number of people that were still fighting.
Azekiel and the others landed on the ground, at a safe distance from the battlefield, observing the battle.
Strangely enough, so far, there wasn't any appearance of the Sand Demons there.
