Everybody crouches down and observes the place where they fought against the wood folk group, a couple of minutes pass by and nothing happens, nobody comes to the area to check it. Just as everyone was ready to go and find another group they hear Beast says.
“Wait, I hear footsteps coming close.”
Everyone tenses up and tries their best to regulate their breathing, not wanting to be found out by their enemies. A couple of seconds pass by and everyone could see a couple of wood folk coming out of bushes that were nearby, inspecting the area they slowly make their way down to the corpses of their fallen comrades.
The wood folk inspect everything, the corpses, the ground, shattered trees and rocks, they check it all, as if they were trying to find out exactly what happened, similar to how detectives check everything at a crime site, the view makes Reign and the others widen their eyes, the wood folk were more intelligent than they thought.
One wood folk, seemingly the leader calls the others as he explains something to them, after he finishes the others all nod and pick up the corpses and bigger pieces of them, carrying them back with them. .
Wolf, Reign, and the others all look at each other and nod, slowly following the group from a distance, further away Blackie was doing the same, albeit being much closer to the group compared to them.
Following the wood folk turned out to be harder than they thought, sometimes the group was going slow while at other times they would speed up, trying to follow after them while at the same time not alerting any enemies that were nearby was a challenge.
After some 30 minutes, the wood folk arrive at a giant tree, the tree was enormous, its trunk wide enough to take 15 people to make a circle around it, putting the corpses down at the foot of it they solemnly bow and take a couple of steps backward. The corpses suddenly sink, the soil beneath them turned from solid to an almost liquid state.
Watching what was happening Reign and the others were surprised, and confused, what was happening, what is that giant tree that the wood folks were so respectful towards, why were the corpses put there and why were they sinking?
They didn’t have an answer to any of those questions, all they could do is watch, Reign suddenly gets an idea and tries using his ‘Inspect’ on the giant tree.
[ Branch of Yggdrasil ]
Description: A branch of the sacred tree Yggdrasil, still at an early stage the branch has many of its powers locked, currently it can only bless a small area of a forest, strengthening the creatures in it. Creatures with a high wood affinity and creatures that are made of wood can enjoy its blessing for a longer time and have a chance to be revived if put their corpses are put near the tree.
“Yggdrasil, that’s the so-called world tree right?” Shadow asks while widening his eyes.
“That’s correct, but how come it’s here, we were already in space, if the tree was the same as the one in the legends then we would have seen it right?” Beast puts a pondering look as he asks.
“As they say, ‘Behind every myth lies a truth; beyond every legend is reality,’ it seems like the story in the Norse mythology was right, but only partly as the Earth isn’t a huge tree, maybe in the past it was part of it, but not now at least,” Wolf tells all of them, looking at the giant tree everyone suddenly felt as if it grew bigger in front of their eyes, releasing a huge amount of pressure on them.
“Well at least now we know why they put the corpses there, it’s because there’s a chance they will get revived.” Reign narrows his eyes as he looks at the tree, he thinks about destroying it for a moment before shaking his head, it was impossible, at least it was for them right now, let’s not mention the size of it, the creatures nearby would definitely go berserk and attack them if they tried.
The wood folk suddenly turn around and go another way, everyone sobers up, takes one last look at the tree, and follows after them, even though the existence of the tree shocked them, they had something that they had to do, and nothing was going to stop them.
Following the group for a couple of more minutes they finally arrive at their destination, it was a part of the forest where the trees were higher compared to before, looking down on the ground everyone could see a large amount of wood folk walking around. Looking above they could see buildings on the trees, the buildings were small, they were probably the houses of the wood folk, on interesting thing is that they weren’t built, the houses just grew out from the trees.
Looking at the number of enemies in front of them everyone tensed up, a psychological pressure was weighing down on them, they were certain of revenge before but now, as they were facing their opponents they were a bit scared. The number of wood folk was smaller than the group that chased after them, knowing that made them relax a bit and regain their calm, but they still knew that this fight was not going to be easy, if they just charge and attack them head-on they would suffer serious consequences.
“I propose we go up the trees, if we can kill all of them stealthily we will have a big advantage during the fight, if we don’t do that then it will be much harder to focus on fighting while the enemies rain down their long-range attacks from above us.” Wolf quickly analyzes the sight in front of them, coming up with a quick plan of action.
“The most important thing is that all of us go together, if we attack the same target simultaneously we should be able to kill it in an instant and not alarm everyone else.”
“Alright, but some of us will need to change weapons, I think that huge weapons are not so good for stealth,” Shadow says while looking at Wolf, Tank, and Greenie.
“Of course, that’s why we collected so many different daggers and swords, just choose the ones you like and let’s go.” Wolf nods to Shadow and looks at Tank and Greenie before he puts his greatsword in the inventory and takes out 2 knives.
Tank and Greenie sigh and take a sword each, not being comfortable with daggers.
Everyone nods at each other and slowly climb the trees, making sure that the wood folk can’t see them. Getting high enough they all slowly move from one tree to a different one, until they came across the first house.
Slowly going down they all look around them, making sure no wood folk could see them. Getting down to the treehouse Reign and Wolf get inside first, looking around they find 1 wood folk laying down, sleeping.
Nodding to each other they take out their weapons and wait for the others to do the same, slowly approaching they arrive in front of the sleeping wood folk, lifting up their weapons they all pour mana into it, making them stronger and sharper.
Stabbing down at the head and chest area they manage to kill their first prey successfully as none of the wood folk was able to find out.
The next 2 hours were spent by them as they went from one house to another, a couple of times they were almost found out as some wood folk were just sitting in their house, or were in front of it, they were looking around with a serious gaze on their faces, it was easy to guess that these were guards that made sure that no intruder gets in successfully.
After finally finishing all of them off Reign and everyone else breathed out a breath of relief, happy that they no longer had to hide so carefully, from now on it was a frontal battle, and those were the ones where they excelled at, that coupled with the high ground advantage Beast and Shadow had made them more confident at defeating their enemies more easily.
Looking down they observed the wood folk, during the sneaking they all tried their best to observe the wood folks behavior and to check what areas were the ones with the biggest population so that they could bombard it with their strongest skills, allowing them to kill a large number of them quickly.
They finally found the place, it was near a house and had a big amount of wood folk there, the wood folk were doing the same as the group Reign and the others killed previously, tending the trees, petting them and giving it their all to grow them bigger and stronger. Looking at the densely packed group they flash small smiles of satisfaction, the revenge will start now!