Chapter 852: The second day of the evaluation trial (part 5)

"I still think that it would have been easier if I just barged in head on and slaughtered them all, but it is true that the blue flaming board likes to make things annoying for me, whatever", mumbled Alice as she calmly approached the enemy’s camp, in absolute silence.

All that metal equipment and weapons would normally result in clinking sounds and the polished sharp edges of the swords and spears would also reflect the light of the moon, which would give away Alice’s position.

But for the clinking part, everything was perfectly secured and it was feather-like light for Alice, so there was no chance it would produce even the slightest sound, as for the second problem, the swords had scabbards and the shield and spear tips mounted on Alice’s back were wrapped in pieces of cloth to prevent reflection from happening.

As for all the "armor" she was wearing, it consisted in lots of metallic plaques that were sandwiched between leather jackets so none of it was exposed in the open, and the rivets used to secure things in place alongside the special glue prepared by Mylene, were applied black paint, from the very beginning the brigandines were designed by Aster with the idea to trick the enemy into believing that they were "vulnerable" so it was fulfilling its function as stealthy armor perfectly as of current.

Since she promised to "behave" in order to increase her score to exchange for rewards later, Alice properly stopped speaking out loud past a certain point too.

After all, a human with averagely good hearing which is improved by having their sight reduced at night, will still have it impossibly hard to know whom do step sounds coming from far into the distance, belong to, they possibility of them belonging to an animal is higher than them belonging to a human, especially because the invisible limits exist.

However, voice is different, if you suddenly hear someone speaking from the distance at night, chances are that that an enemy is trying to pull a fast one on you, of course the possibility of someone with monstrous hearing like Mira or the little girl, existing in an enemy group wasn’t zero either.

However, if they had someone like that, they would have noticed that a certain giant eagle was spying on them a couple of days ago, because you see with a bit of Fawn’s cooperation, Mina did some experiments to test how acute was the perception of the targets.

And that’s how she decided that some among the group could, in a dimly illuminated situation pretty much approach the camp head on without being noticed, of course not everyone had this capacity.

James’s former teammates are indeed pieces of trash, but at the same time they aren’t weaklings and are also experienced mercenaries, so of course they had removed any object that would obstruct their view directly around their camp.

They then built two watching towers made out of wood, one looking at the north and east while the other faced at the south and west, the camp was relatively big for the total number of participants that back then and even now lived in it, but it wasn’t large enough to need more than two people in watch duty at the time, especially because they had a deep and wide trench isolating them from the rest of the surrounding terrain.

No joke, those guys had dug enough to separate their camp from the other side of the ground by like fifteen meters, they also didn’t fill the trench with water as that would allow the enemies to cross said distance by swimming, but were smart enough to not only dig the walls flat so that descending and climbing them would not be an easy thing to do, also they actually placed small sharpened wood sticks and bone bits at the bottom of the trench, which were of course laced with the poison about which Regina had informed Aster earlier.

If the enemies descended into the trench without noticing the sharpened wood sticks, they would have their feet pierced by them and then would be poisoned, if the enemies had reinforced footwear, they might avoid the previous, but the bone bits will crack and that would alert the ones in watch duty, it was not as refined as what Mina would do under the same circumstances, but it was not a bad system of defense.

And that is without taking into account the fact that there were around three hundred meters of open ground between the walls of the camp and the trench, so, even if the enemies with effort crossed the trench, they still had to make a rush towards the walls while being shot arrows by the ones in watch duty, for twenty seconds in a rough calculation.

So, realistically the only ambush that could be used on them were arrows being shot their way, but that’s what the walls and refuges were for, and with the trench they needed arrows to cross more than three hundred meters from a low altitude, unlike the ones shot from the watch towers that could use the height to extend their range to a certain extent, one of the privileges of being the one defending is that you get to set up the stage in which the fight will happen, and Mina was fully aware of that, since she was in charge of doing so back at their fight with the bear, alongside Eris.

With all the previous being said, they still committed a huge mistake that Mina wouldn’t though, they basically prepared against the most-likely situation and or common situations that they could face, and that means that an "abnormality" completely escaped their scope, and they have one of such abnormalities right at their door as of current, both literally and figuratively, to understand how it happened, let’s go back a couple of seconds.

When Alice who was calmly moving while following a specifically timed pattern, which aligned with a blind spot that was naturally created by the ones in watch duty looking at their surroundings in a half-baked way, because well they were the last "serious" shift of watch duty before the sun started to shine upon them, and also because like previously stated, they had the trench and a clear view of their surroundings, arrived at the front of the trench to then casually jump over it.

What’s more, the wild dragon princess not only easily jumped and crossed the fifteen-meter-wide trench, but actually landed another fifteen meters past the other side of the trench.

And she did so in such a perfect way, that no sound was produced by her landing on the ground, of course that’s because she used her knees to take the impact, which would have made a normal person cry from pain considering the distance and the whole bunch of metal equipment that Alice had on her, but for the wild dragon princes, it was nothing.

’I expected them to have placed those wood spikes and pieces of bones to cover at least another fifteen meters past the trench or to have dug a hidden second trench and camouflaged it past the first one, like the oldest of those three redhead sisters would have done, so I even doubled the distance of my jump, but just like I said these guys are nothing special, so I should be allowed to just break in and kill everyone in sight to not waste time...’, thought Alice as she then rushed at high speed, crossing the three hundred meters of open ground between the walls of the camp and the trench, in less than ten seconds.

’Tsk, controlling my strength so much to not make any sound is so annoying, at this point if I was the only one fighting, it wouldn’t matter if they noticed me, they would be dead before they reacted’, thought the wild dragon princess, as you can see, an abnormality had come to the enemies and was now casually leaning her back against the tall fence that the enemies had built to defend themselves.

That was another negative point for them from Mina’s point of view, the way the watch towers were positioned didn’t allow them to see what was directly close to the walls, this is because they tried to maximize the long-distance range view rather than integral view.

And now, we get to see the amusing scene of Alice casually sitting down on the ground, as she waited for the last shift of watch duty to happen, which is when she was allowed to start acting in the open.

Of course, the wild dragon princess couldn’t see anything from this angle, but she didn’t need to do so, like previously stated, they followed a perfectly timed pattern earlier and now Alice was counting seconds in her head.

Regina stayed enough to let Fawn see how long did they take to change the watch duty shift, and to make sure there were no errors, Mina when the arrived and the girls of the sect through the night, made sure that the time each shift lasted was exactly the same, so Mina just converted that into seconds and gave the total to Alice who was counting them right now.

You can imagine how that impatient wild dragon princess felt having to remain sitting down for around fifty minutes which aligned with the relative moment at which Aster dismissed everyone after Nim took human form.

’It should be around now’, thought Alice, whose confirmation came when her sharp ears caught a few male voices coming from the relative directions of the watch towers.

"Yo, how are you old men doing?", asked a first young sounding voice.

"What do you expect us to say, it will be the damn same as usual, it sure is shitty to have the last shifts of watch duty assigned", answered a second much older sounding voice.

"Yeah, you don’t get to sleep well and after being awake for three damn hours and with the sun coming out in just one more hour at most, you can’t go to sleep again damn it", cursed a third also relatively old voice.

"Heh, go complain to the captain and see what happens to you, since he has been in a horrible mood lately", mocked a fourth younger than the previous two, voice.

"Tsk, why is it our fault that they were punished by those blue flames, they deserved it for locking us up and the worst part is that they actually killed those girls, damn mercenaries, they don’t know self-control and now we are getting bored as hell because of that", said the second old voice.

"Don’t even think about that, you should be thankful that they tested the waters for us in a sense, otherwise you would also be a "cripple" like them now", jokingly added the third voice which was also old sounding.

’Oh, judging from the distance those two are the ones staying for the last watch duty shift, perfect they sound like pieces of trash whom I can outright kill, my rewards wait for me~’, thought Alice, which actually made the second old voice add.

"What, did it suddenly get colder than usual?".

"Huh, don’t try to feign being sick to skip watch duty again, we are going back, see you at breakfast later", said the first voice which was a young one.

"Ask old Charlie to hug you maybe it’ll warm you up", jokingly added the fourth voice which was also a young one.

And with that the ones stationed in the watch tower officially changed, but Alice didn’t act right away, since she had to wait for both some time to pass to make sure that the other two were gone for good, and for a "signal" from the rest of the group.

Which came in the form of a familiar tall black horse figure approaching from the distance, while making sure that the ones in the watch towers caught a good glimpse of him, that was of course Mule.

"Hey, look at that, a horse", said the bundle of points number one, as Alice had baptized him in her mind after listening to the conversation of earlier.

"How weird, we saw a couple of them running at the north from the camp, but there weren’t any black ones, also is it my imagination or that horse is really tall?", said the bundle of points number two.

"Yeah, it might be one of those weirdly smart animals that suddenly started appearing after we were released from captivity", answered the first one.

"It’s alone though, so let’s just...", before the second one could finish his sentence, a fully armored figure appeared within his range of sight.

Now, Alice’s face was covered by the helmet, but the red glow of her eyes could be noticeable from the apertures left so that she could see, and that combined with the tall, and armed to the teeth figure of the wild dragon princess was which had also appeared out of nowhere from the point of view of the enemies, was... terrifying, also her next words didn’t help either.

"You two not only sound but even look like pieces of trash, perfect, become rewards for me!", excitedly said the wild dragon princess who had jumped twenty meters into the air to then twirl her body and descend tail first towards the fence.

"Booooooom!", as if a meteor had landed on the wall, the tall fence as well as the much lower log wall were blasted away due to the impact of Alice’s tail combined with her descending momentum.

That pretty black scaled tail in "non-killing" mode and without any previously gained momentum could break trees in half, so you can imagine the result of Alice lashing her tail with momentum and at maximum output as well.

"Aghhh!", as a mortal Alice couldn’t produce a shockwave that would travel and hit the enemy, as she would normally do by breaking the barrier of sound, however all the broken ground debris and broken wood resulting from the impact was indeed shot frontwards with incredible strength, as a result the watch tower that directly faced the part of the wall which was blasted away, got hit head on and was nearly toppled on the spot.

But that’s not what caused the previous pained scream, but the fact that some of that shrapnel hit the guy who was stationed on said tower, the stones destroyed his face basically and a large piece of irregular wood pierced his chest, he was dead before he landed on the ground.

"C-Charlie!", shouted the other guy also known as bundle of points number one, only to feel that "cold" sensation again, with the difference that this time it was overwhelming, and for a good reason, given that a tall fully armored figure had just landed on the railing of the watch tower where he was stationed and was now looking down on him with those red glowing eyes that could be seen below the full head helmet.

"Damn it...", bundle of points number one tried to get ahold of his bone knife as he bit his lips to overcome the fear, but his head was blasted away from his body by a black lustrous scaled tail before he could even completely turn around.

"Thud", the enemy’s headless corpse fell to the ground the next second.

Like Tiana had said, Alice was like a calamity released upon the enemies, especially because she wasn’t unleashing any killing intent or the lineage pressure, she just became able to use during her past two days of training with Aria and the pair of little girl and little wyrm.

Since the wild dragon princess was basically unable to complete her mission, given that she had to literally kill people with her tail for it, then she turned her attention to something else, in order to keep growing stronger, because even if she didn’t show it, she could tell that Aria, Espi and Kana never stopped improving.

And since she was happy with her tail and her lineage was now in the open, then she tried to learn how to stimulate it to see if she could "freeze" enemies like the little wyrm did.

And being the monster she is, Alice of course reached a minor success in it, in just two days, though she couldn’t use the actual pressure that those who had attained it through the achievements of this place like Guardian or Espi, nor was she able to imitate it perfectly with her killing intent like Aster can, as he is an exception given that his killing intent is insanely strong, a consequence of him killing people with annihilation.

But Alice being Alice, simply brute forced her way into producing an intimidating feeling by focusing her strength on her tail, but no, contrary to what it might have looked like, she didn’t use that on the enemy earlier.

That guy simply was afraid of the cold red eyes that could be noticed coming from below the enemy’s helmet, which didn’t see him as a person in the slightest, as for the shiver he had felt earlier, that’s because from the moment Alice became able to intimidate others by focusing her strength on her tail, whenever she got a bit too "heated", her lineage seemed to be stimulated.

And earlier she was thinking on the rewards she could get from Aster, so yeah, that guy felt fear while Alice was imagining herself doing lewd things with Aster after exchanging his corpse for a reward, not to mention that to overcome it he had to cause himself pain to wake up from his stupor too, a pretty sad way to die, not that it was undeserved considering the kind of conversation they were having earlier.

It’s also worth mentioning that these two middle aged guys whom Alice just slaughtered, didn’t have burning scars on their bodies, well, now they had a lot of wounds, but originally, they didn’t have a single mark on them, so they belonged to the five that were originally captured by James’s former group.

As Aster had deduced, they not only didn’t care about those girls that actually teamed with them, but some among them had the same idea about them as those guys that Blue Sky burned to ashes.

"Hey what the hell was that, did a tremor destroy the wall!", the first voice that could be heard coming from the enemy’s camp was the first one from before which was relatively young.

It’s worth mentioning that all of the previous happened in less then twenty seconds, and it took another ten seconds before other people’s voices could be heard coming from the rough wood refuges that were also built too far from the walls, as they came out to see what was going on.

"That’s two in the bag, what a shame that I was only allowed to kill the ones in watch duty if "necessary", but that’s still a fifth part of the originally sure to kill list, so I guess it’s not that bad", casually said Alice as she reached to her back and stretched her neck while holding onto a spear.

"Crack!", Alice’s right arm tensed, her grip on the shaft of the spear was so strong that the high-quality wood out of which it was made cracked, earlier during the fight with Ryan, it took Aria crossing the safety limiter of her muscles to be able to crack the shaft of her spear with just her grip as Alice seemed to be casually doing.

Which is understandable, certainly Aria gained quite the high physical strength, but that ability worked with her normal strength as its base, so of course she couldn’t match up to the wild dragon princess and her crazy strong body whose talent fully focuses in attack power, let’s say it like this, Aria’s current peak is around Alice’s low-mid strength and that was still enough for her to propel herself into the air and destroy enemies head on by the way.

"Boooom!", like a shooting star, Alice threw the spear which she was holding onto, making it land on a refuge a hundred of meters away from her current relative position, the spear packed enough of a punch to make the whole frontal face of the refuge crumble apart on the spot.

"Crack!", why did I say that it was a hundred meters away from Alice’s "relative position" you ask, well, that’s because the watch tower couldn’t endure the backslash of Alice’s throw and the support for those that were stationed on it to stand on, collapsed on the spot, so Alice was now standing on the ground, meaning that it wasn’t her exact same previous position, but relatively the same one.

"Booooom!", continuous loud explosive and crumbling sounds were produced as the wild dragon princess casually threw the remaining eleven spears, half destroying another eleven refuges.

Despite the previous she didn’t look happy in the slightest, because Alice knew that she didn’t get any more "points" for her reward, given that those refuges didn’t have enemies living in them.

"There are enemies at the front, what the hell are Charlie and that other bastard doing!", shouted the second young voice from earlier.

"Stop wasting time, you five go and see who is attacking us, the rest do your respective thing!", shouted a much calmer and deeper voice, that was of course the leader of the camp, who instead of charging, remained at the back.

"Ah, even if it’s just breaking their limbs, the "boss monster" would be worth a bunch of points if I defeat it, what a shame that only these small fries were sent", said Alice as she saw the group of five, two of which were young guys that looked at their late teen years and had no burn marks, while the other three were in their middle twenties and did have different levels of burning marks.

"Look for the other enemies...", one of the three scarred guys who seemed to be in charge was giving instructions when one of the young ones interrupted him.

"Wait, look, those are metal weapons!", he said to which the second young one added.

"And they aren’t throwable ones, we are facing multiple enemies with metal equipment!".