Explorer of Edregon

Vin hid within the canopy of the forest alongside his team and the hundred and fifty combat classes that had volunteered to take part in the surprise attack. Most of the fifty Earthers looked a bit out of their comfort zone, balancing up high on the branches and shooting frequent glances at the near-frozen elves hidden up even further above them. The assault force was stretched out across a decent chunk of the western forest, waiting for the Red Dawn to come running into their trap.

According to Golrim, he'd used his soul-bond to indicate for Curash to meet him by the edge of the fragment border that morning. Rather than speak with the man himself, he had a message delivered via arrow to the Hunter from an elven warrior. That way if one of the Red Dawn members had tailed Curash and was watching from afar, it would only look like an overeager elf had taken a pot shot at their leader while he was examining the forest, and their plan might still work.

"They're coming," Golrim whispered, carefully clinging to the vine beside Vin as he monitored Curash's position through their soul-bond. While Golrim wasn't planning on joining the fight if he didn't have to, he needed to be nearby for this very purpose.

Vin still found it a tad strange that Spur had to hang back in Terra for the ambush, but Golrim had explained how at least two members of the Red Dawn were known to have passives that quite literally made leader-type classes stand out like beacons in the night to their eyes. Apparently, it was to make things like raids and pillages easier, as they could instantly identify who was in charge and make a beeline straight for them. Because of that, Spur's Commander class would have ruined the entire ambush. He hadn't been happy to hear the need for him to sit this one out, but he'd at least understood.

Vin had been curious if his Concealment spell would be able to counter the mentioned skill, but they didn't exactly have any way of knowing, and they decided not to risk ruining the entire ambush finding out.

"Showtime," Vin muttered, nodding at Shia to begin the next phase of the plan. Together, the two of them began using Whispering Wind to alert the various squads and groups hiding around them to stop talking and prepare themselves. Vin handled the Earthers and Shia the elves, and in almost no time at all, the canopy had gone completely silent.

A few more minutes passed, and Vin blinked as the leaves and foliage underneath them seemed to grow a bit more dense and spread out, concealing them from the ground below all the better. He'd expected some sort of magical camouflage, but he quickly realized this was even more genius, really. Large quantities of magic might be picked up on from afar by those with high magic attributes, but there was nothing too strange about particularly dense portions of the forest canopy. Especially not in this one, which was filled with hundreds of different kinds of unique trees unlike any Vin had ever seen before.

As they waited with bated breath, Golrim held up three fingers, indicating that the Red Dawn was that many minutes out. Then he dropped to two.

Before he could even drop to one, they heard the screaming.

The Red Dawn was finally here.

Vin's heart began racing at the distant sounds of hooting and hollering as somewhere around forty highly skilled and prestiged murderers ran toward their location. Based on how quickly the calls were growing in volume, most of the Red Dawn had to be rushing ahead of Curash, because Golrim's prediction was slightly off.

As if agreeing with Vin's thought, Golrim skipped one finger entirely, raising a closed fist and indicating that the Red Dawn were upon them. The closest squad leaders raised their own fists in turn, sending the silent signal across the waiting warriors as they mentally prepared themselves. A few more seconds of screaming and cheering hit them…

And then the first of the marauders dashed by underneath them.

Vin wanted nothing more than to grab his staff and ready himself, but he refrained from so much as thinking about the weapon, focusing instead on the overall plan. Golrim had informed him that a good number of the marauders were known to have the Danger Sense passive, which would alert them that something was afoot if they weren't careful. What few people knew about the Danger Sense passive, however, was that when it came to warnings due to other people, the passive was only triggered by people both intending harm and holding their weapons at the ready.

Most likely because otherwise the passive would be triggered far too frequently if it relied on only one or the other.

For that reason, they'd left the few Brawlers who fought with their fists behind, and every single person hiding in the treetops had their hands far from their weapons as they waited for the signal. Finally, after the faster members had gone by, the largest clump of the Red Dawn caught up. When nearly two dozen members were running underneath them, Golrim gave the signal.

In near perfect unison, a hundred elves whipped their bows from their backs, a hundred bow strings were pulled back, and a hundred arrows were fired straight down to the ground.

Killing nearly a dozen members of the Red Dawn instantly.

A number of the members nearly tripped over their own feet as they suddenly detected danger, and while most of those members managed to dodge the initial wave of death via nimbly tumbling out of the way or activating defensive abilities, they didn't have a chance to warn their comrades before they were succinctly turned into pincushions.

"DROP!" Phil screamed, pulling his sword free and throwing himself at the largest, meanest looking orc of the bunch that had shrugged off the arrows by turning his skin bronze and metallic. As Phil plummeted to the ground and smashed his knees into the familiar orc's face on the way down, the other forty-nine Earthers dropped right behind him, landing fanned out among the shocked members of the Red Dawn and beginning the assault.

A few seconds later, Alka smashed into the ground herself, having dropped nearly a hundred feet from the top of one of the taller trees. She missed landing on her target, but the impact caused dirt to spray everywhere, adding to the confusion and buying the assault team another split second before the Red Dawn reacted.

Unfortunately, once they'd lost the element of surprise, the fight turned far harder in an instant. The Red Dawn members that had ran ahead of the ambush or were only just now catching up joined the fray, and despite many of them fighting one on two or even one on three while dodging arrows from above, the Red Dawn showed just why they were such feared marauders as they gave just as good as they got.

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"Find your targets!" Phil screamed, still locked in a one on one against the snarling orc, who was already looking rather worse for wear. "Shia, direct them! Vin, cover their movements!"

Just like they'd practiced, Shia and Vin got to work from their high vantage points. Shia quickly scanned through the chaotic battlefield, picking out specific targets they'd planned for ahead of time and using Whispering Wind to direct specific Earthers where to go. As soon as they'd received their directions, Vin would help them break off from their current match up with some carefully placed Stone Walls. If the Red Dawn member tried to follow by either smashing through or maneuvering around, he would then deter them with some mana-empowered Stone Shots. The Stone Shots combined with the continuous stream of elven arrows were either enough to force the Red Dawn members to back off and pick a new target to fight, or if they got lucky, they would take down the marauder in question all on their own.

Every so often an Earther would cry out for help, and a small handful of elves would drop from the canopy, taking over the fight and pulling the wounded Earther free. It was clear that most of the elves weren't nearly as strong in physical combat as they were at range, but they had a few rather capable warriors that didn't mind getting up in the Red Dawn's face in the slightest. While most of the squad focused on fighting defensively until some fresh Earthers could take over, one or two would work together to retrieve the wounded Earther and get them to safety.

Just like that, the battle raged, with Vin and Shia acting as eyes in the sky and intervening with spells wherever they could. A few members of the Red Dawn with ranged weapons themselves quickly wised up and tried firing up at them in the hopes of taking out the command center, which was when Golrim revealed yet another one of his trump cards.

The first time a female beastkin with a shortbow tried launching a screaming arrow up at Shia's head, Golrim jumped in front of the attack right before Vin could. To both Vin and Shia's amazement, the very air seemed to harden into a visible shield for a fraction of a second directly in front of him, causing the arrow to snap against it and fall to the ground.

"Left middle finger!" Golrim called out, shooting a wild grin back at Vin as the beastkin that had tried shooting them was attacked and forced to defend herself. "I can only do that one a few times. It drains mana like a sieve!"

The battle continued on after that, and as more and more of the Red Dawn fell to their carefully crafted ambush, Vin began spotting members attempting to turn and high tail it out of there. He and Shia did their best to stop them from leaving with rapid casts of Stone Wall and Entangling Thorns, but at least three members proved to have mobility-focused skills as they evaded their magic with little issue, taking off into the forest.

"Let them go, follow the plan!" Vin reminded Shia as she clicked her tongue when yet another member slashed their way through her magical thorns and fled the battlefield.

With every marauder that died or fled, more Earthers were then able to gang up on those that were still standing, causing the fights to turn even more one-sided. The last few members of the Red Dawn capable of holding their own against two or even three unprestiged warriors at a time quickly discovered that they couldn't do the same against five or six attacking all at once, and even they eventually fell to the combined forces of Terra and the Sacred Forest.

After what felt like an eternity, but what couldn't have been more than five minutes or so, the Sacred Forest was silent once more.

The battle was over.

Immediately after he saw the last Red Dawn member fall, Vin dropped to the ground, not even registering the twenty foot drop as he ran over to a fighter with a large red gash cut across their arm and began casting Renewal, stopping the loss of blood and getting a grateful nod from the warrior.

"I didn't give the all clear," Phil grunted, suddenly appearing beside him. Despite having gone toe-to-toe with arguably the physically strongest Red Dawn member after Trod, the Challenger looked entirely unfazed. If it wasn't for the blood splattered all over his armor, Vin would have thought the man had just finished a light round of sparring.

"How does it all look?" Vin asked, deciding not to argue with the man.

"Now that the battle is over and they're not in any danger, the Druids are taking care of the more minor wounds, but we have a handful that didn't get off so lucky." Phil paused, grimacing as his eyes darkened. "...Despite everything, we lost six people during the battle. The elves nearly twice that. Two of our losses were from the first wave, even. Their names were Patrick and Carl. Good men."

"Damn it," Vin cursed, finishing up his healing and letting the man run off to check with his squad mates. "How did we lose them? I thought pretty much all of the first wave had prestiged by now."

"Most have, which is why they chose to go after the more dangerous members Golrim warned us about," Phil said, his lips forming a thin line. "It looks like Patrick went down in battle, but I personally watched Carl take a blow meant for one of the second wavers, giving up his life so the young woman could live. Poor girl is going to have severe survivor's guilt over that."

"I think Myers mentioned we have a therapist now or something," Vin said, trying not to think about what he might have been able to do differently to save the six dead Earthers. He knew Shia and his actions had been essential for pulling off the ambush as well as they had, but part of him wouldn't stop shouting in the back of his mind that if he'd just jumped into the melee himself…

Squashing that down before it could eat at him, Vin watched as Golrim dropped from the canopy as well, brushing himself off as he walked over to join them. Though rather than his usual smile, he had a hard look on his face.

"This should have been a perfect ambush," he frowned, his gaze hard as he took in the bodies that were being collected. "We had nearly perfect intel on the enemy, an excellent plan, and a far greater number. The fact that we lost six people goes to show that we desperately need an actual Strategist for this sort of thing. You and Shia did phenomenal with what you had, but not even the two of you working together are a match for a high level Strategist."

"I'll run it by Spur, maybe he can persuade someone to try going that route," Vin sighed, suddenly feeling far more tired now that the adrenaline was leaving him.

Just then, Scule and Reginald darted out of the forest, quickly spotting Vin and running over to him.

"Four more confirmed kills on the fleeing Red Dawn members," Scule grinned, saluting with his blowgun as Reginald did the same with his tail. "Took down two myself, and found two more killed by Alice's traps. Is that all of them?"

"I saw six manage to slip away, so that still leaves two unaccounted for," Vin frowned. "That's going to be a problem. Who knows where they'll end up?"

"Sounds like something I can help with."

Everyone drew their weapons as they spun around toward the unexpected voice. Phil looked surprised to hear someone he didn't know sneak up on him like that, but Vin and Scule recognized the voice instantly.

Out of the forest walked Curash and Trod, with an unconscious Waltz cradled in the massive orc's arms.