Eliminating the Guards and Awakened in the barracks wasn't that difficult. No one had reached the 3rd Tier, and none of the Awakened had an overly powerful Soultrait to counter Tiara and Michael's prowess either. They were overwhelmed with brute force, unable to do anything.
Their only fortune was that their deaths came fast. The Kitsun didn't have to suffer too long before they died. Michael and Tiara didn't have enough time to reconsider letting the Kitsun suffer and draw out their deaths. They didn't know how much time they were left with before the reinforcement of the Kitsun Lord would arrive.
Michael didn't want to face the reinforcement right now. He didn't know the number of the opponents that would arrive as reinforcement, and how many powerhouses the Kitsun Lord sent over to get rid of the invaders. Instead of facing the Kitsun Lord head-on, Michael decided to change his tactics. He decided to use his brains and attack the Kitsun Lord where he least expected it. The only exception was the current attack.
Michael chose to attack the guard settlement north to the Kitsun Lord's territory intentionally. He figured out that the Kitsun Lord had realized by now that there was a connection between Michael and the Monkey Troupe that had attacked the main settlement. The Kitsun Lord should also have noticed that the Greater Eagles were under his attacker's control as well.
Thus, instead of wasting time to order Sun Demos to retreat, it would be the easiest to cross a large distance with the Greater Eagles and attack the northern guard settlement. The Kitsun Lord expected his attack, yet he didn't fathom that Michael would attack so soon. The reinforcement was still moving through the Untamed Jungle's undergrowth, and making detours around obstacles while Michael moved swiftly.
'Since the reinforcement is focused on me, my territory won't be facing too many difficulties. The Kitsun Lord seems a little dumb… No, he just lost his reasoning like me after losing the Elemental Empress and thousands of Elementals.'
Michael was rather quick in regaining his composure. Slapping himself to get back to his senses had been successful. However, the Kitsun Lord wouldn't have it that easy. His hard work of 12 years had been destroyed just like that. The Elemental Empress was now free of his clutches, and both Lesser Elementals and Elemental nobility were dead. Nothing had been left behind.
The Kitsun Lord hadn't even been able to get rid of the trespasser and thief. It was the exact opposite. The thief was still in his territory, wreaking havoc, and the worst was that the Elemental Empress was by his side.
'It's really good that this crazy, sadistic bastard is extremely possessive,' Michael thought. He was grateful that the Kitsun Lord was overly possessive of the Elemental Empress.
The fact that she was alive and traveling with Michael would be more than enough to distract the Kitsun Lord from Michael's territory. The Kitsun Lord's full attention would be on the Elemental Empress' whereabouts and the most important question; how to get her back?
Since the Kitsun Lord lost his most important source of income, he wanted to retrieve it if possible. The death of a few thousand Guards and dozens of Awakened must have hurt quite a bit, but it was worth the investment as long as the Elemental Empress returned into his grasp of control.
Michael came to the same conclusion. That was also why he led the Kitsun Lord's army and reinforcement as far away from his territory as possible. Even if they wanted to attack his territory now, the army and reinforcement would have to travel more than 100 kilometers through the densely grown Untamed Jungle. A few individuals could travel this distance in half a day, but what about an entire army? Forget about a few hours, even an entire day wouldn't be enough for such a large group to reach Michael's territory.
Thus, Michael had more than enough time to initiate his next plans after the northern guard settlement had been eliminated.
Michael spread his origin energy through the barracks with a wave of his arm. He stored the corpses and everything of value inside his War Rune's storage before he turned to Tiara.
Tiara stepped out of the barracks, where she saw a small group of citizens. They were either the family of some Guards or worked for the Guards to feed them and tend to their needs in the guard settlement.
Michael saw Tiara rushing toward the citizens, tightly clutching her spear. He was just about to stop her when a tinge of hesitation resurfaced. For a quarter of a second, killing citizens didn't seem okay. It felt wrong, but only for a moment.
He recalled the terrifying things the Kitsun Summons had done – and were still doing – to other citizens of the Origin Expanse. The Kitsun Lord had enslaved thousands of Summons after killing other Lords. The Kitsun Lord destroyed their territories and turned the Summons into slaves, just like the Lesser Elementals. The Kitsun then publicly tortured the new slaves almost like it was a tradition to do so whenever the Kitsun Lord came back from war – victorious, of course.
Now that he thought about it, Michael hadn't seen a single kind-hearted Kitsun in the memories he'd read until now. It was strange, but it was also why Michael believed that the entire Kitsun race might be sadistic and devilish. Some races were just like that – pure evil, without a shred of mercy.
The mercy and hesitation that shrouded Michael's mind for a moment disappeared, and he watched Tiara do what Michael ought to have done. She killed the Kitsun in front of her and stored their corpses after they dropped dead to the ground.
After killing the citizens in front of her, Tiara moved to the settlement's walls. She saw countless corpses littering the northern wall and turned to Michael.
"Mika is really a one-man-archery-unit. If he signs a Soul Pact, giving him some Archery-related Soultraits would be great, don't you think?" Tiara asked, the excitement of the countless possibilities Michael's Extraction unraveled spreading through her entire being.
She was already amazed with her own powers, and how much a single Soultrait changed her fighting style. And, watching Mika's rain of arrows pierce through dozens of enemies from more than 200 meters away was just as amazing. Mika's Soultraits had yet to be upgraded to 5-Star Soultraits, and he could fuse with a lot more Soultraits to further improve his prowess as an archer.
The more Tiara thought about it the more excitement filled her heart at the prospect of Michael creating powerhouses all around him.
As long as Michael was given the opportunities and enough time, he could turn weak Awakened into powerhouses and dominate other Lords. If he kept progressing at this speed he could even rule the Untamed Jungle and the Zentika Empire one day. It was truly amazing and made her feel giddy.
"I think so too. Creating my powerhouses from scratch seems like a good plan," Michael said, switching the Wyverntooth Spear with Zark. He condensed an energy arrow and released it alongside a barrage of Glacicles.
Since he wanted to keep most of his energy aside for stronger opponents, Michael used only as much energy as he could replenish with Extraction tapping into the energy streams in the surrounding area. Being able to see the energy streams, Michael could easily target them and drain the energy for himself to use later. He used as much energy as he annexed to keep Eagle Eyes and Spirit Gaze activated. Other than that, he used bits of energy for his Glacicles to target the Kitsun around him. Most non-combat Kitsun Summons had never received any special techniques to fortify their bodies or increase their ranks. They were either Tierless or Tier-1 without strong defenses.
Killing them was rather easy. A single Glacicle was enough to pierce their throats and freeze parts of their throat and neck. Meanwhile, Zark's energy arrows were released one after another to kill the Guards roaming through the settlement. Many Guards were trying to extinguish the fire on the buildings that had been set ablaze, but before they could even do something more fireballs poured down from the sky, setting more houses ablaze, and some got caught in the melee too.
The Forest Elves from above had been focusing on the guards stationed on the walls from the beginning. This resulted in a huge gap in the guard settlement's defenses on the northern wall, which Sun Demos and the Monkey Troupe had long since exploited. Sun Demos and his Blood Oath Demon Monkeys crossed the open area to the settlement and climbed up the walls. After reaching the top of the walls, they began to overwhelm their enemies with their numbers and tremendous power.
They retrieved some sharp stones they'd collected and put them in small satchels that had been given to the entire Monkey Troupe a while ago. Aiming at the guards, they threw the stones with tremendous force. After energy was channeled into the stones they turned into deadly forces – especially if thrown by Superior Existences at the Peak of Tier-1 and at the 2nd Tier.
The physical strength of the Blood Oath Demon Monkeys was not something Kitsun could go up against. Kitsun were physically much stronger, and their battle awareness was also much lower. All the Kitsun could do was use trickery and deceit to fight slyly. Unfortunately, the traps installed all around the settlement had not caught a single monster, or intentionally triggered beforehand. Almost no Blood Oath Demon Monkey died due to the traps, leaving the Guards and Awakened no chance but to face the Monkeys head-on – or to be shot and killed by a downpour of arrows.
Even if the Kitsun wanted to do something against the Greater Eagles and the Forest Elves, who attacked the settlement from above, they would have to reach the barracks, or defense towers first.
Unfortunately, the Elemental Empress turned the inside of the towers into blazing torches, while Michael and Tiara killed everyone in the barracks before plundering everything.
The guards didn't have the means to attack someone more than 200 meters away from their location now that the towers were about to turn into cinder and the barracks were filled with nothing but death…at least not since their enemies were located high above them rather than being somewhere far away on the same height.
All the Kitsun in the guard settlement could hope for was the reinforcement to arrive soon. They prayed and begged in their hearts, hoping to be among the fortunate to survive. In fact, many Kitsun were even daring enough to push their friends and lovers in front of their enemies to stall for a second or two.
However, all they received was death. That was all they deserved.
