~Hopefully, one of them knows something about Rena. Or at the very least, they may be able to teach us new spells,~ Lucius thought to himself.
"A-As you wish, Lighted One," Pagan replied hesitantly, clearly disappointed with the way things were going to turn out.
*
A minute passed, before Ghost's figure appeared right above Lucius's shadow, four of the eight spider legs that spawned out of her back slowly lifting her off the ground.
"You were right Luci, they have several guards hidden behind the trees. They covered themselves in this... stuff," Ghost reported, blotches of blood on her face.
Lucius turned to look at one of the four front legs she kept raised in the air, and found a Venari warrior impaled through the skull.
"And you're certain no one heard you?" he asked, as Ghost slowly brought the body to the ground.
"I wasn't spotted. The guards are spread out quite a distance, and I didn't see any reactions from the others when I took this one down," Ghost replied, as Lucius began to strip the Venari of his camouflage armour.
It was a green tunic, with dozens of leaves attached to the back and sides.
"Put this on," Lucius commanded, holding the outfit out towards one of the Furtong.
As the Furtong tried to get into the camouflage, Lucius furrowed his brows in thought, trying to figure out what the best course of action would be.
"How many guards are there?" he asked a moment later, now regarding Ghost.
"From what I can tell, they span the entire line," she replied.
"Use your poison to disable the guards positioned from here-" Lucius instructed, pointing at a spot just a few meters to their left, "-all the way to there," he continued, drawing an imaginary line that spanned towards the right.
It was about a 20-meter line he wanted disabled, just large enough for them to sneak past under the cover of vegetation without risking being spotted.
"Bring back the bodies. We need their gear," he added.
"Done," Ghost replied, her body flickering with light for a split second before completely disappearing.
Several minutes passed between each body that she brought back, hinting at the fact that she was taking her time with each strike. A fact that Lucius was happy to discover.
Each time they stripped the guard of their armour and gave it to one of the members of the entourage.
Of course, the Venari—who were about the same height as humans—were larger than the Furtong, Cynomys, and Castor—who were about the same size as their Earth animal counterparts—so the armour ended up being very loose-fitting.
This would no doubt hinder movement, however, they were going to be moving slowly from this moment on, so it was worth more than it took away.
The problem came in the bear-man, who was about the same size as... well, a bear.
Their fix? They threw a few of the camouflage tunics on him and used Elmando to manipulate some of the plant material on them to bind them together.
"You guys go ahead, I'll act as vanguard," Lucius ordered, gesturing for Pagan to take lead.
The group was a little confused about why they were changing their formation now. However, they didn't question the command and hesitantly moved forward, clearly not as comfortable with Lucius not being the one beside them.
~Okay, let's see,~ Lucius thought to himself, as he watched his group slowly encroach on the guarded line.
He made sure to keep his eye on the edges of the line he had told Ghost to disable; it would fall upon him to take out any guards who noticed their movement.
However, that was not the sole reason he had asked to stay behind.
He had asked Ghost to use her poison to disable the guards instead of killing them, however, he couldn't leave them here alive. Perhaps if they were on their way back, he could've taken them in for questioning, unfortunately, there was no telling how long they would take.
"Your death is not in vain. You help bring my children one step closer to safety," Lucius whispered, before changing his core to Kumulipo.
Recently he had noticed that it was getting easier and easier to change from solar crux to Kumulipo; however, the opposite was becoming more and more strenuous.
Perhaps it had something to do with how comfortable he felt using it, or perhaps due to the differences in their characteristics. However, it wasn't something he was going to put much thought into at the moment.
Right now, there was free Helios and evolution points to be had.
"Gluttonous distortion," he chanted, moving the Kumulipo towards one of the poisoned guards.
With that, his energies went rampant within the guard's body, searching for its core like a pack of hungry snakes. In mere seconds, the energies wrapped around the guard's core and shattered it.
Ghost's poison was potent enough to completely disable them, but even then Lucius could hear a muffled gurgle as the energies seeped out from its core.
Once he was done, he quickly absorbed the stolen energies and repeated the process with the remaining guards.
Each time he absorbed their energies, he felt a wave of relief wash over his body; as if drinking fresh water after days of thirst. A thirst he didn't even realize he had.
Unlike before, there was no remorse, no guilt. Perhaps it was because the guards didn't seem to be suffering all that much, or because Lucius kept telling himself that he was doing this for the good of his children.
But whatever the case was, he crushed their cores with the practiced patience of a professional. Not taking a second longer than necessary.
However, it was on his final core that something strange happened.
At this point, Pagan and the others had already made it past the line and were no doubt waiting for Lucius to catch up.
~Huh? What's this?~ Lucius wondered to himself, slightly annoyed.
It seemed that something was pulling at his crux, obstructing him from properly completing his final 『Gluttonous Distortion』.
~You?~ Lucius realized, noticing that his True Elmando tail was glowing.
~It's for the commune. We can't let Helios go to waste,~ Lucius explained, before pushing through the tail's Elmando and draining the final guard of his energies.
All in all, he had absorbed 60 million Helios and had grown to 1.6 meters. He could feel that his evolution was close; it was an edging feeling, as if he were about to lift off into the sky but a small string were keeping him tethered.
~Hmm, if I use this again I'll probably evolve... not ideal right now,~ he realized, before putting away the kumulipo.
He took a moment to change from kumulipo back to solar crux, and with this, he could feel the branding that marked his skin begin to warm up. It seemed that this process required Rena, which hinted at what type of energy it could be.
As far as Lucius could tell, Rena may refer to the mental energy involved in spells. For instance, he had been blamed for over-using his Rena only after his mind had overheated.
However, something told him that mental energy wasn't all there was to it.
After he had managed to successfully switch over to the solar crux, he accessed his helios reserves.
[(Current Helios: 62,316,000)]
~This should be enough to buy sobriquets for the entire commune. A bit more, and I might even be able to complete the evo-points quest~ he thought to himself, waves of euphoria still washing over his body from the cores he had ingested.
*
After dragging the corpses into some nearby vegetation, he made his way towards the rest of the group.
His camouflage wasn't as good as it used to be, what with his body being covered in obsidian marks now. However, with his greatly enhanced senses -which seemed to have gotten even better with the absorption of those cores- he could just make out the sound of the guards breathing in the close distance, better yet, he could smell their scent.
In fact, in conjunction with his newly enhanced earth senses, it felt like he could even tell where they were currently looking, even though that made no sense to him.
After a few minutes, he made it through the lines and slowly snuck his way towards one of the hills in this new blue rock landscape.
"Good job, everyone," he said promptly, before looking out into the field ahead.
The place smelt of sulfur, a putrid smell that clogged his throat if he breathed too deeply. And the gusts of wind that blew towards the forest felt warm and dry, a stark contrast to the moist cool air of the forest.
From here on out, the only cover they would have were rocky hills, which weren't very many to begin with. And with the rough rocky texture of the landscape, moving stealthily wasn't going to be the easiest endeavor.
"Keep your guard up, things are only going to get more difficult from here," he warned, before gesturing for them to proceed.
