He wondered for a moment why he was being shown this information, but then he got the sense he needed to choose where the transit rift would send him. He raised an eyebrow, since he just assumed he'd be sent to the city itself, but now he had the chance to do something else.
"I can select where to be sent," he said. "I can just go into the city, but I could also place myself outside of the siege to strike at them, which might actually be more useful to the defenders. In particular, I see a convoy slowly making its way to the siege that I could attack to disrupt their supply lines."
As he was finishing, he got another notification to choose from.
>>Select form of support:
>>Armed Forces: Rift allows for supporting forces to join the siege. Material support limited.
>>Logistical Reprieve: Rift allows for substantial material support, but no personnel exchange.
>>Evacuation and Escape: Rift allows for defenders to escape, including the trial taker, in the case the siege is successful. Utilizing this option still results in challenge failure.
He briefly also described these options, even if it was obvious what the right choice was, in their case.
"Awww," said Moxlin. "It would've been nice if I could go in person, too."
"Sure," said Axl. "Also a shame we can't send our puppets over there, but we don't have so many active anyway."
"Most puppets also cannot properly operate outside the manse grounds," said the servitor. "And I'm hesitant to leave for any significant period of time due to the regular attacks and invasions, particularly the ones not triggered to test me specifically."
Axl nodded, since that was what made her lose the mansion to him. It was an invasion she didn't see coming, and he wasn't keen on risking the manor getting attacked, even if this time they had to get the [Keystone pendant of Pelitrel's legacy] from his soulspace to fully claim it.
"Agreed, it's best if you stay behind and protect the place with the other guardians. I'm sure I'll keep you plenty busy with shoveling stuff over and managing the reagent production."
The servitor nodded, a slightly larger smile blooming over her polite demeanor. "It will be a pleasure to have our manse display its might once more."
Probably it would've been better for the siege if Axl went straight into the city, but something about that convoy tugged at him, and it took him a while to realize it was his Call of Undeath. There were seven other pinprick sources of that surrounding the siege, and he figured another coming in was important to the attackers in some way.
He chose Logistical Reprieve, then selected an area slightly away from the road the convoy was on.
An elliptical rift formed to the side of the room, and Axl gripped [Webcutter], ready to fight, then stepped through it.
The forest beyond was dense with crooked, knobby trees that produced dense foliage high above, making the midday sun feel shaded, almost dark. The muted browns of the naked bark were in contrast to the blue grasses that covered the ground, stepping on them oddly quiet, as if the leaves were purposefully muting all sound.
Without hesitation, Axl spread [Mana Shroud] and crouched low, leaning against a tree. To his touch, the bark of the tree crackled, a dense yellow sap seeping out. He quickly leaned away, letting barely any of the thick liquid touch him, but he could sense with Bilesong that it was only very weak poison, likely a mild paralytic.
He sensed nobody around, luckily, but kept still for a few more moments, getting used to the thinner Mana in the air that was a mix of earthen density and various flavors of air attunement. It was almost a relief compared to the dense mess inside the vale, and Axl savored his ability to almost perfectly mimic the Mana mix as his own, making his Mana signature seem indistinguishable from a passing breeze.
People could still literally just see him, but any detection Skills that were based on Mana detection, which were most of them, would be quite readily thwarted by his use of [Mana Shroud]. Even the ones that targeted related things like body temperature or changing air pressure would be blunted by his matching Mana, since even those usually detect those disruptions by how they influenced nearby Mana.
Reasonably content he wasn't likely to be detected, Axl collected a few vials of the tree sap and started to make his way to the convoy. His mental map skill was limited only to within the vale, but he still memorized the one the system showed him, and he could feel the pull from Call of Undeath, both the many weak ones in the distance and the stronger one moving in front of him.
Slowly, Axl started towards the convoy, balancing his [Mana Shroud] on mimicking ambient mana and boosting his Perception. Barely twenty minutes later, he noticed a scout crouched behind a tree trunk.
He was wearing leather armor with a metal pauldron on his left shoulder that Axl felt was a metal he hadn't seen yet. The scout was scanning the area, clearly not having seen Axl at all before being detected.
Axl ducked behind a tree and wondered if he should activate one of Moxlin's camouflage arrays to sneak past the sentry. Ultimately, he decided not to, since he only had six of them on him, and he was unsure when he'd be able to get more. He had no way to actually access the mansion supplies, even as he examined the nobility title and the associated challenge notification. Apparently, he'd only be able to access that inside Valioon, or so he hoped.
Instead, Axl climbed up a tree, quickly enough to avoid the bark's sap forming, then, as he reached one of the upper branches and a good view of the scout, he took a [Venombite Fang] loaded with Centipede poison. Taking but a moment to aim, he threw, his muscles combined with [Minor Telekinesis] to launch the projectile with substantial force.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
Gone were the talismans for having the dagger extract itself and the spider silk tied to the handle's ring, the new talisman wrapped around the handle was one that dampened the sound the projectile made when it flew. Axl noticed that when he used his full Strength and [Minor Telekinesis] to throw the dagger, it produced quite the cutting sound. Nothing at the level of a gunshot, but loud enough that even low-level cultivators with mundane Perception could hear it from not too far away.
The talismans didn't silence the dagger entirely, but did make it sound about half as loud as a normal arrow cutting through the air. The dagger hit the scout squarely on his forehead, piercing through the brain and coming out the other side, deeply embedding itself in the ground. A surge of Karmic Energy confirmed the kill.
Axl quickly jumped down the tree, the sap sticking lightly to the bottom of his boots, and soon he made his way to the corpse and collected his dagger with a flick of [Minor Telekinesis] back into his left-hand ring.
The dead scout was an elven undead, with shriveled skin and yellow eyes. He had rather bad gear on him, all of it in the G-Grade, so without additional hesitation, Axl took the body into his ring, not wanting it to be discovered. He did nothing about the large splotch of black blood staining the area, and carried on towards where Call of Undeath was pointing.
Soon, he saw a line of carts and large beasts beyond the treeline, and carefully approached, making sure he stayed undetected by the few soldiers that were walking within the woods. These weren't scouts, but more heavily armed and armored fighters that clearly focused more on Endurance than Perception. He even saw one trip over a root that wasn’t remotely hidden by the blue grass.
Easily making his way to crouch barely a meter away from the armored figure walking away from him, Axl examined the line of soldiers and carts slowly making their way across the narrow road. The clump of twenty soldiers in front of him was all in the G-Grade, carrying long spears that were decent for the Grade, but wearing barely anything more than civilian clothing.
He waited a few more seconds, a cart pulled by a pill bug-like creature trudging past, the smell of medicinal plants and other alchemical reagents subtly wafting from beyond its curtains. But that was clearly not the important thing in there, because Axl could sense the source of Undeath from that very cart.
Just behind the cart, he got his suspicions confirmed, since there was a quintet of very well-armed and alert F-Grade cultivators. The next cart in the line gave the party a good half dozen meters gap, as if the man leading the pill bugs was afraid of them. Each party member had specialized gear for their role in the formation, three heavily armored in the front, one archer, and one mage in the back. Of the heavily armored three, one had a tower shield and mace, the other a massive battleaxe, and the third a long battle-stave that reeked of Mana.
He recognized that the last one was an armored healer, a common unit in Lomenkkar, even if it was a rare build in the orc longhouse.
Axl ducked back again behind the tree for a moment, letting the party pass him by. From what he could tell with [Mana Shroud], they emitted Mana consistent with cultivators early in the F-Grade, except for the healer, who seemed a bit stronger, likely in the middle of F-Grade. Not the mid-Grade terrors that were Suliana and the guardian servitor, but more at Brillhit's level, which he felt absolutely confident he could take. This was a full party, however, and one leagues above the sad group of kobolds he had decimated outside of Treeheart, so it would still be a real fight.
He wondered if he should try to come up with some plan to get to them more efficiently, say with a distraction, but he figured this would only increase the chance he'd mess up and lose the element of surprise, so he decided to just go for it. Time to see how his recently raised Attributes and two weeks of practice stacked up against a real F-Grade threat.
Axl threw a pair of daggers at the archer, using every stich of his Strength and [Minor Telekinesis], one aimed at the neck, the other at the center of mass. Both hit squarely and deeply embedded in the undead's body, throwing him to the side, a surge of Karmic Energy confirming the kill.
The rest of the party turtled up around the healer in a quick, practiced motion and immediately turned to face him. Axl threw another dagger at the mage as he charged towards them, but the shield-bearer managed to take the attack instead. The strike put him off-balance, and the tower shield was heavily dented where his dagger hit.
As the shield-bearer recovered, the healer and mage started drawing out glyphs as the battle-axe warrior stepped forward to block Axl's charge. Realizing he just wanted to stall for his comrades to finish casting, Axl feigned to strike with [Webcutter], and at the last moment before their weapons clashed, used [Bolting Motion] to sidestep the wide warrior entirely, then again to pass by the shield-bearer, finding himself in front of the mage.
Before he even stopped moving, Axl drew [Webcutter] and shifted the empowerment of [Mana Shroud] to Strength and Agility, letting him smoothly cut at the mage's neck, where there was a gap between his cap and vest. His head was seamlessly cut off, with so little resistance that Axl almost lost his balance.
The shield-bearer slammed the shield against Axl's back, the force greater than he'd expected, throwing him far into the tree line on the other side of the narrow road. He expected more damage, but the metal shield felt familiar as it struck his body, doing barely more than some minor bruising, likely thanks to his [Metal-hewn body of Grand Profundity]. Axl let his passive Vitality work on that as he recovered his stance.
As he turned back to the party, Axl noticed with [Mana Shroud] another F-Grade figure among the trees, just in time to dodge the arrow, a nearby tree nearly exploding at the force of the strike. He silently thanked Alifren for the practice with almost exactly this scenario, since without it, he most certainly would've been hit.
Axl had to again use [Bolting Motion] to dodge the next arrow, then ran to start closing the distance with the figure weaving between the trees, raining explosive arrows at him. A symbol appeared atop Axl's head, a pair of overlaid glyphs for marking and revelation, and then a black mist rose from the ground in a thick sheet.
The arrows paused for a moment, which also let Axl take a break, his legs shaking from the overuse of [Bolting Motion]. He activated a fraction of his healing potion from orbital storage to help, pushing his body to keep running. The arrows soon returned, each one faster and with a greater punch, but not quite as difficult for him to dodge.
The obscuring mist was supposed to blind him entirely, but [Mana Shroud] let him detect the arrows and the environment quite well, and let him actually move faster, since he didn't need to empower Perception at all. In fact, it seemed like the mist was a bigger problem for the archer, despite the glyphs over Axl's head that were supposed to be the killer synergy for this sort of attack.
Axl therefore managed to make his way towards the archer, weaving between arrows and the bumbling G-Grade undead troops that were being torn apart by the friendly fire. Oddly, Axl got Karmic Energy from each of those kills as well, almost half of what he figured he'd get normally, but still more than he expected, considering he didn’t even indirectly attack any of them.
As Axl got closer, the archer clearly started to panic, and used more powerful arrows at him, one made of golden metal that felt like it burned the air around it, another of a blue wood that was coated in a toxic sheen, and on and on. Axl dodged each one, even as the archer transitioned more and more into trying to outmaneuver Axl. Just as he reached the range where he could use his daggers, she turned and ran, a cloud of electrified material blooming around her, fighting against the dark mist.