Raaa! Raaa! Raaa! The enraged shouts of the barbarian chief filled the entire forest as he lashed out at everything unable to find Liam.
He pummeled the barbarians nearby. He uprooted the trees in anger. His bloody eyes scanned the crowd around him but all he could see was dust and commotion. The insect he was fighting with had once again slipped out of his hand.
After a few more seconds of madly running around and bulldozing everything in sight, the barbarian chief finally calmed down. His eyes turned towards the wilderness in the distance.
"Search!"
The barbarians instantly dashed into the wilderness on his command.
On the other side, Liam did not stop running. "Do you guys know the path through this place?" He caught up to the elves easily and asked them in a hurry.
But the thing was if he was able to sniff them out, then the barbarians would also be able to do the same thing. It would only be a few minutes until they were caught especially if more barbarians could use that kind of strange boosting skill.
Liam was now more and more curious about this special strength that the barbarians had. He never knew about these beings in his previous life.
What was behind their crazy unbelievable strength? What was that aura around the barbarian? Some kind of berserk skill? Maybe some sort of innate ability?
He also didn't know what he could do to become a match for him as he completely couldn't understand the barbarian's power.
Breaking his thoughts, Lyana suddenly spoke up, "It's no use running." The elf panted coming to a stop. She was no longer running and all the other elves stopped as well.
"It is impossible to run away from them. We cannot escape this wilderness. There is no path here. This is the forest of no return." The woman started lamenting.
Liam paused, letting out a deep breath. Now he was beginning to get irritated with these elves. They neither had any useful information nor any other helpful tips.
All they were doing is dragging him down. This was more than he bargained for. Perhaps it was time to make them into soul pets and get everything they knew out of them.
His cold gaze landed on the five elven women when suddenly the quest once again popped up in front of him.
<Ding. Quest - Gain ten levels is completed>
<Ding. You are now trusted by the elven soldier Lyana>
<Ding. New Quest Available>
<Ding. Part2 - Find the secret behind the barbarians' strength>
<Ding. Reward - Return of Lyana's lost memories>
<Ding. Do you wish to accept the quest? Y/N>
"Hmmm?" Liam's lips twitched. Just when he was planning to convert the elves into something more useful, unexpectedly the next part of the chain quest popped out.
It also looked like a very basic quest with step by step instructions. So it might prove to be extremely valuable, teaching him something important. Liam did not want to ignore such a quest.
"Find out the secret of barbarians, huh?" This was something he was also interested in.
He first summoned the barbarian soul minions currently in his possession. Earlier he was not asking the right questions but now he knew what to ask.
However, ten minutes of interrogation later, he was back to square one. He couldn't get any information from the group he had captured.
All he could gather was that only a few barbarians were privy to this information. Possibly very strong ones. Perhaps they underwent some sort of special training?
Liam pondered over it for some time, but he shook his head and stood up. No matter how much he thought about this, it was all going to be just speculation. So he did not want to waste time.
There was work to be done. He needed to find people who knew more about this. He asked the elves to hide properly and also gave them Luna to safeguard. He wasn't going too far so this much was acceptable.
Liam then entered stealth and retraced his steps heading back to the waterfalls. Coincidentally, he did not have to travel long. Within a few seconds, he came across the first group of barbarians who were hot on his scent.
The bad news was that they were very skillfully tracing the small disturbances in the thick forest and were already on his trail. However, the good news was that the chief wasn't with them.
Liam did not hesitate and immediately summoned the full force of his soul minions and attacked the group along with them. He needed to finish this fight fast and without much chaos.
So he used the full extent of his strength and finished the five barbarians in under a minute. One of them was about to send some sort of signal with a whistle but Liam swiftly prevented that from happening.
"Hmmm. The first part is done. Now onto the next part."
He quickly grasped two of the dead barbarian souls. While fighting he tried to also analyze who was stronger and he selected specifically those souls.
Perhaps because he was in a hurry or perhaps because of the pressure of a strong enemy looming behind him, Liam's forging speed was quite good this time.
He managed to forge the two souls in record time, but… once again he couldn't get any answers.
Liam sighed and quickly got back to business.
The first two might be a failure but in this huge horde of barbarians, he refused to believe that at least one wouldn't know the answer to his question!
These guys were also right under the chief so chances were very high that they knew something important. Sticking to his theory, Liam continued to hunt down the barbarians who were coincidentally hunting him.
Soon minutes turned into hours and a couple of hours passed by with him simply running around the forest and searching for more search parties.
And it looked like the barbarians had also wisened up as now all the groups had at least a dozen members. So at least one of them would be able to send a distress signal.
However… what they did not account for was the growing soul army on Liam's side.
With four to five soul minions ganging up on each barbarian and Liam's aoe attacks, the bigger teams were also instantly killed.
Liam did not know when he would be hitting the next limit but for now, he was busily racking up the numbers. The only drawback was that no one had the information that he wanted.
And soon… this also changed!
When Liam was tackling the fifteenth group of barbarians, suddenly one of the barbarian's eyes turned blood red.
