Chapter 237: Guerrilla Warfare (Part 2)

Daryl woke up again, only to find that the surroundings were completely different from before, and the sun in the sky was now in the west, almost setting behind the mountains.

“Ah!” 

He immediately sat up. He saw Ling was sitting not far from him, seemingly training her mental strength. Nearby, only a few ghouls stood guard.

“Where’s Wu?” Daryl asked right away.

“He went with Liuli and the main force to ambush the enemy,” Ling replied calmly.

“Why didn’t you wake me!” Daryl said angrily. “Where did they go?”

Ling didn’t answer and continued with her training, eyes closed.

“Ling!?” 

The old Daryl would have stormed off in frustration, heading in any random direction, but now he knew that would be pointless. It would only put him in danger and potentially drag his companions down with him.

“Wu already told you, your job is to rest up. You were so exhausted, you didn’t even wake up when we moved you here,” Ling said. “If you’re hungry, there’s some rabbit meat by the fire. Liuli caught it.”

Daryl sighed in frustration, but he knew Ling well enough to understand that she had eyes only for Wu Qingsong. If something didn’t concern Wu, she didn’t care about it. She wasn’t much for chatting, either, unlike Liuli, who was bubbly and talkative by comparison—a trait that made her seem all the more endearing.

He angrily bit into the half-burnt roasted rabbit. Since it had been left unattended by the fire, half of it was already charred and tasted awful. But after sleeping all day, he was starving and quickly finished it off.

“What kind of enemy did Wu and the others go to attack?” 

Despite knowing Ling’s temperament, Daryl couldn’t help but approach her and ask, “Was it the squad led by the company commander?”

“I don’t know,” Ling shook her head. “There might be more action tonight, so you should try to get some more sleep.”

***

Huff, huff…

On the other side of the mountain peak in front of them, a half-elf named Auden, the squad leader, was desperately fleeing down a valley, running aimlessly. Fear and exhaustion made his lungs feel like they were on fire, but the shadows behind him, like relentless ghosts, kept pursuing him without tiring.

After receiving orders from the company commander and the vice-captain, he had taken all his men and set out southward at full speed.

Following the orders, they circled around the creek valley and arrived south of the Gust squad’s camp, ready to surround and pursue the scattered wolfmen. There was supposed to be a small team stationed there, but the area was completely deserted.

Had they been attacked?

Auden was an old-fashioned and cautious soldier. He immediately halted the squad and sent a team ahead to scout. They quickly reported back that everything was clear.

Cautiously, they approached the camp and found it still intact.

The only damage was to the roof of the barracks, where it looked like a war wolf had jumped onto it and left a large hole. Other than that, there was no sign of an attack.

“Lord Auden, there’s blood!” the squad leader immediately reported.

The floor inside the barracks was covered in blood, scattered everywhere. Auden looked up at the broken roof. It was clear that the attackers had jumped down from the roof, then rushed into the barracks to kill the soldiers inside.

“It probably happened last night,” the squad leader added. 

Judging by how fresh the bloodstains were, it wasn’t hard to tell.

“These idiots were way too careless,” Auden said angrily.

An entire squad was snuck up on and slaughtered in their barracks in the middle of the night. That was an unprecedented disgrace.

“But why didn’t the sentries or the war wolves detect the enemy?” the squad leader cautiously asked.

“Maybe they came too quickly and used firebombs,” Auden speculated.

That was the Silver Moon rebels’ go-to tactic. The fur and grease on the war wolves were highly flammable—if hit directly, there was almost no chance of survival.

However, there were no signs of fire damage where the wolves were kept, only deep claw marks in the ground, as if the wolves had been frantically digging, even to the point of bleeding.

“We only found a few unfamiliar footprints,” another squad leader reported. “It looks like someone was lying down over there—maybe a body, since there’s blood. But the strange thing is, we found a lot of soldier footprints and war wolf tracks heading into the forest, moving north.” 

He looked puzzled.

Could it be that they weren’t completely wiped out and instead managed to retreat north while fighting? 

Auden’s anger subsided a little at the thought.

“No, sir,” the squad leader said, looking puzzled. “The footprints are too neat. When they left, it seemed like they weren’t in a hurry. They must’ve been marching in formation. Plus, we found a few unfamiliar footprints mixed in—small ones, like they were from a woman or a child.”

Everything about this situation was making Auden’s head spin, so he decided to stop overthinking it.

He was a soldier, not a detective. He’d leave the guessing game to the higher-ups.

“Rally the troops,” he ordered. “We’re heading north to cut off the enemy.”

“Sir! There’s someone over there,” a soldier suddenly shouted in surprise.

Auden looked up, following the direction the soldier was pointing, and saw vague figures moving through the trees toward them. Judging by their gear, they were definitely their own people.

Were these the soldiers who were supposed to be stationed here?

“Are those Gust’s men? What are they doing over here?” Auden asked in surprise. “Go ask them what happened last night.”

But then, soldiers began to step out from the woods behind them as well. Something seemed off about the way they were moving. After a moment, Auden realized what it was. They were all moving in perfect unison, doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. It didn’t look natural, more like a bunch of puppets on strings.

“Something’s wrong!” A sudden sense of danger hit Auden. 

“Get ready for battle!” he shouted.

The soldiers, though unsure of the threat, instinctively drew their swords.

“Their… their faces!” one of the soldiers at the front suddenly screamed.

The approaching soldiers had blank expressions, and many of their faces were smeared with blood and deep wounds.

At that moment, in unison and without a word, they drew their weapons and charged forward.

“Take them down! Take them down!” Auden yelled in panic.

Just then, a pack of war wolves silently burst out from the woods on the side, launching themselves at his wolf riders with incredible speed.

The path ahead suddenly vanished, replaced by a massive boulder. One side was a cliff, and the other, a steep slope. Desperately, Auden turned back to see those terrifying, expressionless faces right in front of him.

“You…” He raised his sword in a final, hopeless attempt and tried to shout the family motto. “Sarn—”

But the figures swarmed him without a word, stabbing him to death on the mountainside.