AK - The Alchemy Kingdom

Year 2, Summer, Third Month, Second Week.

The team moved carefully through the trees as every sound could be the announcement of a dangerous beast approaching. Tael finally saw the dense trees far ahead, but instead of relieved, he became even more alert. The mere sight of Forest brought him chills followed by bad memories. Fortunately, their mission wasn’t to enter the Forest, only to start clearing its outskirts. His team wasn’t the first one to come, Diana’s and Sania’s teams had already explored this part. Even though they met any problems, Tael couldn’t push away the dreadful feeling that something bad was going to happen.

With the escape plan in full motion, exploring the parts near the Forest was the Hunting Department’s next milestone. They planned to start constructing an Outpost in the Forest borders as soon as fall came, which meant they would have a couple of weeks to control this area. Therefore, the hunting schedule went up from a couple of times a week to every day.

Tael stopped the team with a high-hand sign and pointed to a beast eating from a carcass almost a hundred meters ahead of them. It was a hyena, one of the weakest beasts, so he breathed in relief. However, what happened next was too sudden and startled him. In a few seconds, the beast screamed while being torn apart.

The yellow fur, the feline appearance and their fast movements triggered a memory of the night they passed outside Forest. Tael’s heart skipped a beat, he remembered they were rank two wind beasts. He quickly counted the beasts arriving at the dangerous number of nine and swallow dry.

The last time, instead of facing the beasts directly, they used fire and arrows to keep them at bay until they gave up and ran. Although they had improved a lot, all of the team members were using metal weapons and their enhancements only got better, he didn’t like the odds. Half of his team members were still too green, once one of the beasts passed through the defenders it would be impossible to avoid serious wounds or worse…

He would be confident to face the beasts in an ambush but in the open, it was too risky. But how could they retreat without drawing the beasts’ attention? Wind beasts had keen smell and hearing senses, if they weren’t already aware of their presence it was only a matter of time.

Tael stopped dwelling on it and made a decision, he signaled for the archers to be ready and for everyone to stay still, hopefully, the beasts would finish eating the hyena and leave, but if they noticed, he would be ready.

A few minutes passed but annoyingly, the beasts hadn’t moved on. Tael looked around and saw tight grips over the weapons, the villagers were trying to look fierce and eager to fight, but that was just a mask to hide their fear. Time passed but the tension didn’t lessen. Unfortunately, a chink sound spread among them until it reached the beasts. He looked back and saw that a pale-looking defender had fainted.

Tael only had time to bit his lip before the beasts were moving on them. He quickly drew an arrow and let it fly, breaking the hesitation of the other archers. The volley of arrows flew another two times before the beasts met the tight barrier of four defenders. Two beasts down and many wounded was a good start for the team. Nonetheless, Tael had already moved the archers to the sides and waited to take down any beasts that passed through the defenders.

They didn’t have to wait much, four beasts had chosen to circle the defenders and moved fast towards the second line. Tael shouted to shoot while releasing his own wind-enhanced arrow. The beasts were so fast that looked more like they were diving through the air than running, but the arrows were faster. The shine of the Array’s activation was barely seen before the arrow had already met either its target or the ground. Two beasts died, one was delayed with an arrow to its back leg, but the last one continued speeding towards the attackers.

It jumped on the nearest attacker, ready to tear him apart. The trembling defender thrust its sword forward trying to impale the beast midair. The sword entered the beast's side but it didn’t prevent the beast from pawing his shoulder and chest. The beast roared in defiance to the pain, but couldn’t avoid the attacks that came from the other attackers.

The previously wounded beast received another arrow to its back but didn’t stop until it met one attacker. The girl tried to stab it upwards with her spear, but the weapon only slid through the beast leaving only a cut before it was on top of her. She tried to protect herself by pressing the weapon’s shaft between them, but the fall’s impact made her falter on her grip. The other attackers moved to support, but an arrow went through the beast's head first.

They pushed the beast off the attacker and found that she was bleeding from a wound on her neck. Tael saw the defenders were handling the three remaining beasts, so he told the healer to help the bleeding girl. Just like in training, the defender protecting the support members accompanied the nervous healer to the wounded.

The fight wasn’t over, Tael could only push his feelings back and move towards their first line to help finish the beasts. Soon, arrows were shot and all the beasts were dead. The adrenaline started to recede, Tael’s vision blurred and he let his bow fall, he accepted the support offered by the closest defender while he looked over the scene. Reality hit him, they survived but not without a cost.

***

Karl walked towards the Council pavilion observing sad expressions all around. The villagers were used to adversity, but they were quick to hope that everything would change. The excitement of working for themselves while everyday novelties appeared to make their lives better, made them forget the harsh world they lived in, but reality was loyal and never fail to visit.

The line of sick-looking villagers forming in front of the healing pavilion, strengthened the knot in Karl's heart as he started to second guess his decision. Maybe he had pressed them too much, maybe he didn’t consider all the consequences of his plan. Nobody knew, but Karl had thought of other options to escape from the nobles. However, the plan he presented was the only one that would help them advance in Alchemy. It was both the best option for him and the village, in the long run, the only thing that would stop the Kingdom was power.

What Karl regretted wasn’t the plan itself, he still thought it was the best option, but he regretted not telling the other options and let everyone decide. He promised that he wouldn’t become like the nobles even if he got power. But now he wondered if he was the same or even worse than them, he omitted the other options and let them believe this was the only way forward.

‘-- You cannot blame yourself for everything. You gave them a choice and now you have to respect their freedom to choose. You are not a tool, devoided of dreams and ambitions, you only chose the best path for yourself. --’

‘But they chose it out of desperation, they had other options, they only didn’t know about it…’

‘-- True, but could those options work without you? Would you sacrifice your future for it? You made your choice, now you have to learn how to live with the consequences. --’

‘…’

Karl entered the room and greeted the other Council members, apparently, he was the last one to arrive. Since everyone had other tasks to attend to, Omero didn’t delay them any longer.

“The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the development of the escape plan and the last… unfortunate events…”

Tael stood up and said:

“I would like to apologize for what happened to a member of my team, I failed to respond correctly to the attack and she died… I think I should resign my position in the Council and as a team leader…”

Diana couldn’t listen to it quietly.

“Stop speaking nonsense! We already assessed what happened and concluded that you made the right choices… Unfortunately, we’ll face stronger beasts from now on and she won’t be the last to die… We need you leading a team Tael, now more than ever…”

Tael nodded and calmed a little. Katlyn thought it was a good time to speak.

“Hmm, I talked with Karl and Reiner about crafting something to help us even the odds against the stronger beasts… Besides that, we’ll be regrouping the teams to form fewer groups with more people, we might find problems to hunt smaller and weaker groups of beasts, but we need to be prepared to face the high-ranked beasts… Anyway, apart from this incident, the expeditions near the Forest are being successful… I propose we make a camp there before entering the Forest…”

Omero looked towards Alfeur, who spoke.

“A temporary camp wouldn’t be difficult to built, it could also be good training for when we had to build the shelters in the Forest.”

They agreed with Katlyn’s proposition and the other Department Heads made their reports. For the Crafting and Farming departments, there wasn’t a lot to report, for now, everything was ongoing according to their plan. The Health Department, on the other hand, was facing many problems. After complaining about the increase of magic poisoning cases, Mary asked for more people and more tools. They agreed to move 20 more villagers to help her and next was Reiner.

“The Alchemy Department is on track to finish the important tools before the harvest, but we still need some resources. We hope Keller can bring them on time… The magic re-drawer freed a lot of hands and now we can at least afford to improve the weapons’ enhancements and imprint some more coat enhancements, I don’t know if that would be enough for now…”

Katlyn nodded and Reiner continued:

“The disciples have progressed a lot lately and they’re finally being useful… Our most pressing problems are time and resources…”

They continued to discuss the specific points until everyone was satisfied. After listening to Master AI, Karl felt much better. He decided to push away his doubts and focus all his attention on Alchemy and improving their escape chances. The beast locating tool and the magic barrier would be essential during their escape, but their designs were on another level, he could only start with the smaller and simplest parts.

“How about the wild horses? Have they recovered already?”

Grandma Marlen was surprised by the question but answered Karl anyway.

“Two horses recovered enough to move around but the third one is too wounded and might die at any time…”

They didn’t ask, but the inquisitive stares were more than enough to prompt Karl to explain:

“Hmm… I want to test a new Array on them…”