Magus: Rise of the Darkness Empress

After Peria had also cleaned up and had joined Weiss as her new subordinate, next it was time for her and Eve to know a little about what Weiss was planning and what they needed to do.

Even though Eve and Peria had pledged to join her, it was impossible for Weiss to completely trust them so quickly. So what she told them was just a general outline of the plan and also about their role in it.

Weiss did not need Peria and Eve to risk there lives for this plan. They also did not need to meet back up with the other mercenaries. So she told them to hide and wait in the forest for the time being.

When Karl scouting, he had found a few safe locations that he had not revealed to the other members of the scouting team. And Weiss told Eve and Peria to hide in one such locations.

As for their their task, it was help Weiss with the transportation of the valuable materials. Terry should already be writing just outside the forest with a carriage.

...

After both of the ladies went in the forest to hide and wait, Weiss hid her presence again and started visit all the locations where the mercenaries were sent. After visiting almost all the spots, Weiss found that 60 percent of the mercenaries had already died.

Fortunately, Feberend and his two friends were still alive even though one of them had lost his dominant right hand.

As Weiss considered them to be her teammates, she revealed herself as a knight and rescued them. Then sent them away to another one of the somewhat safe locations that Karl had marked.

At the same time, she also gave them the offer to join her but did not promise them the guaranteed rank up to the official knight realm.

Still all of them decided to join her as with how injured they currently were, they would have a very hard time making a living as a mercenary in the furure.

The fact that Weiss was willing to take them in felt very generous to them. One of them had even lost his arm which made him almost completely useless. Feberend had also lost one of his eyes.

But still an official knight like Weiss took them in. For their current situation, it was an offer that they could not miss. And they were well aware of Weiss cold but straight forward personality and trusted her quite a bit.

...

Now that Weiss was done checking on the mercenaries, she was now very sure of what Count Falgur was planning to do. It was a cruel plan but the chance of it being successful was not low at all.

After learning about the Earth Overturning Great monster, Weiss had done some research on it. From one of the books that she had gotten from the Seven Heroes Conclave, She had came to know about habits and lifestyle of this powerful monster.

Earth Overturning Great monsters most of the time buried themselves under a mountain that it had created and slept there for weeks, months and even years. Digging it out was extremely hard, almost impossible, even for a high level knight like the count.

But there were several ways to bring it above the ground. The simplest way was to create a lot of noise and disturbances on the mountain under which it slept.

There was a story of how a village had woken up a sleeping Earth Overturning Great monster during their festival and the village was destroyed by it in the process.

This method was not very reliable and by using it, it was extremely hard to control where the monster would attack. So it made sense why the Count was not going to use this method.

As for the method that Weiss was sure he was using, it was to use a lot of human blood to lure the monster out from the ground.

Human blood was something that that most monsters were very interested in, especially if the blood belonged to a knight or apprentice knight who had a very active life force. That was even more true for an Earth Overturning Great monster.

That was why the count had recruited to so many high level knights because only they would have a life force that was sufficiently active to attract the attention of this Great monster.

As for how he was going to bring the monster exactly where he wanted, that was actually easy.

After the Earth Overturning Great monster was out of the ground, it should definitely notice the present of powerful life force of the knights that the count had brought with him and be attracted toward it.

The count most probably have some kind of item that was capable of hiding his life force. If the Earth Overturning Great monster sensed him, a high level knight, there was a possibility that it might not attack. These monsters were relatively intelligent compared to other beasts.

So according to Weiss's observations, this should more or less be the plan how the count was trying to lure the monster to his traps.

As for what kind of traps the count had prepared, that was also something Weiss had made some guesses about.

The thing that he had mixed with the food was most likely some kind of substance that had little effect on humanz but had a strong adverse effect on the monsters. And that substance was most likely to be inside the blood of the dead mercenaries. .

Weiss was very curious about what kind of effect this poison had. So she immediately went to one of the dead bodies and started to draw some blood from him.

After that, she captured a lizard beast and started a quick experiment. If the Earth Overturning Great monster would be effected by this poison, then these regular beasts with life force should also be effected.

...

After the experiments were oner, just as Weiss had expected, the blood of the dead man did have some poison but in a very low quantity. To effect just a weak beast, she needed use quite a bit of it.

She found this to be extremely mysterious. Even though Weiss had read a lot of books, she had never heard of this substance.

Something that only affected the monsters and was harmless to the humans was extremely special. Weiss really wanted to know where the count had found this.

She did not forget to collect a lot of blood samples for more research.

...

As Weiss was doing her research, the battle between the mercenaries and the beasts had came to an end. More than 80 percent of them had died and only a limited few had managed to run away.

As the blood from the dead mercenaries soaked the ground and went inside, the large mountain suddenly started to shake lightly.

Noticing this, the count immediately took out a bracelet and wear it. Two mid level knights including count Devonok also did the same. Immediately after that their aura disappeared completely.

Only someone with very high perception like Karl was able to tell that they were hiding their aura. Anyone else would have thought that they were just regular humans. And even Karl could not properly guess the actual realm of the hidden person.

This showed just how effective the bracelets were in hiding a knight's aura. As the ground started shaking more and more, one of the knights under the count holding a mirror came and reported -

"My lord, a monster with an insane amount of monster energy had appeared in the northern side from us."

Hearing the report, the count smiled and order the remaining low level knight and one last mid level knight to activate their life force with full intensity. It was time for them to lure the great Monster here in this exact location.