Chapter 135: Chapter 123: The fog of war

Looking over the battlefield from above made me feel strangely helpless. I was glad, at the very least, that mother had found some way to protect herself and the bulk of the citizens of this city who had gone to the temple. However, Levin, Rolwen, and Eirlathion were still all valid targets for this enemy to go after.

It somehow felt better when I was down on the ground, directly in the line of fire myself. I could sense that the spirit inside this tree I had grown was powerful, and objectively I knew I could do far more good with this weapon than I was ever doing on the ground. Even now, it was keeping several enemy gnomes out of action. As of Tia chucking that one at me so hard it broke one of the tree’s upper limbs, I now have four of them contained.

With this nigh unkillable enemy, this fight for our freedom has somehow turned into some strange version of ‘capture the flag,’ in which I am simultaneously the flag and the prison guard. When viewed in that way, this is literally the best place for me.

Tia is better both as a field combatant and also in the role of protecting Levin and Rolwen. I know this. However, it is just so frustrating having to just sit here now.

I do what I can, focusing on growing the tree larger and larger as I have it’s roots dig into the actual wall itself instead of just the shards that had fallen off it. At the rate this thing is growing, it ought to be able to rip a chunk out of that wall in pretty short order. Once that happens, we can take this fight out of the city. It is only a matter of holding out and avoiding the enemy until then.

So, it is just a waiting game. I’d noticed Tia lead the gang into a house a little while ago and they didn’t seem to be coming out, so it looked like they might have a similar idea. They were keeping themselves mostly hidden and camping out, which worked well with the new direction of our strategy. That strange gryphon creature Tia came in on, a ‘Zuu’ she called it, seemed to be a more powerful fighting force even than her. The only reason it wasn’t raising hell was was because Tia had apparently ordered it to stay out of the city and avoid causing collateral damage.

The enemy would definitely pursue us out of the city. Escaping from the city did not give us safety. However, it would allow us to use Tia’s Zuu friend there, and that would probably be enough to tilt things fully in our favor.

It was while I was pondering our future direction for our efforts that I noticed something. The light representing the one remaining lookout the gnomes had left inside the crystal wall started acting suspiciously. It was coming closer to my tree, but keeping a safe distance. However, it was remaining quite intently in it’s location just outside of range of my roots.

It was then that I realized it. It also had an excellent vantage point to see the house Tia and the boys were hold up in, along with all the connecting side-streets. I couldn’t tell for sure if it actually had their position worked out, but at this point there were two possibilities for the truth and a corresponding two possible actions I could take.

Either the gnomes knew where Levin, Rolwen, and Tia were, or they didn’t. And, I could either take action and get them moving, revealing their location in the process, or I could do nothing and just hope the enemy hadn’t located them.

Of these, the worst scenario would be if they found Tia and the boys and I do nothing. This scenario is, in fact, so bad that it’s really not worth the gamble of betting on the best scenario of letting them all stay in their hiding place on the off chance they are still safe.

Even if the gnomes haven’t located them yet, they are definitely searching, and it’s only a matter of time.

So, I will just have to find a way to warn them without fully revealing their location and attracting attention… and I have just the thing. I’m getting continually better at giving these ‘seeds’ orders, and now I’ve got one that ought to both get my allies moving while also pulling attention away from their position at the same time. The only issue will be this lookout.

I make several wooden missiles, this time giving them special instructions identical to the ones I’d given the patches of grass as I was running around earlier, telling them to grow a tree that will then launch some seed pods. This is something I was doing like crazy earlier, and it should not cause any suspicion if I were to find a way to just start doing it again.

I give my tree instructions to begin launching them randomly, but I aim one of them myself, directing it at the building immediately adjacent to the one Tia and everyone are in. The second after I had that one away, I changed my focus to aiming more wooden torpedoes directly at that glowing spot of light in the crystal wall, each of these also with instructions to grow trees from earth mana. Only, these ones would not become seed launchers. These ones were specialized for speeding the destruction of this wall.

I can sense a sudden stiffness from the light, and what was once a gentle pulsation of it’s glow froze for a moment and then became more shallow and rapid like a speeding heartbeat as I launched a second and then third torpedo at it’s exact location. The first one had chipped the crystal wall, the second had broken off huge chunks. The third, however, managed to actually embed itself in the wall where it’s roots immediately began to greedily dig into the crystal rich in the earth mana which it was programmed to crave.

The wooden missile germinated into the wall like the seed it truly was, and began sprouting leaves and growing rapidly as it’s roots dug even deeper into the crystal wall.

This was the point where that light seemed to have enough. It immediately moved away from that position. By the time it found a new place to settle down, I’d already prepared three more missiles, which I launched in rapid succession. This time, the second one had successfully embedded, only to be pierced by the third. But, somehow, the two were able to co-exist in that state.

The two of them both grew rapidly. The earth mana in the wall was so abundant that they did not have to compete for nutrients, and the results were explosive in terms of how quickly they grew to cover that surface.

The light seemed to be growing agitated. I simply would not allow it to carry out it’s role of searching the streets. However, these behaviors were very concerning. It clearly meant they really had changed their tactics and had ruled me a lost cause. Their targets now seemed to be Levin and Rolwen, but I couldn’t rule out the possibility they might also go for Eirlation as a hostage.

After a few repetitions of this, I manage to give the spirits animating the tree instructions to continue targeting the light in the wall. I’m fairly certain these spirits will become fully self-aware at the rate things are going, but that’s not even worth concerning myself about at this rate.

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What’s important now is finding Tia and the boys. If they are being targeted, I need to see what’s going on in case there’s something I can do should they run into trouble.

It is at this point I am beyond thankful for these physically empowered bodies. Our physical strength that was ludicrous our small bodies possess, surpassing anything possible back on Earth, was the clear first thing for us to notice. But, since living life outside more after we’d escaped from that village we were born in, it quickly became apparent our senses were sharper as well.

As things are now, despite the fact I was now over 7 stories above the street level of this town, I could still easily make out small details on the streets below.

I scanned the streets, looking for any sign of Tia and the boys. I allowed my vision to become soft and unfocused, allowing my subconscious to take over as I searched for any sign of movement at all. The central portion of a person’s vision is optimized for detecting color. Meanwhile, it is a person’s fringe vision and night vision that are both optimized for detecting movement.

Meanwhile, I also began detecting for their spirits. They had not yet perfected the method for hiding their spirit energy. They would likely need to reach the void stage of their meditation before it would even be possible as the standard methods of this world would likely never be capable of completely concealing them. However, they had still come a long way with it.

They were now able to at least feel like the average Hidan adult to my senses. I’m told that’s still rather powerful by this world’s standards, but at least it’s not completely ridiculous.

I reach out with both of these senses, any means by which I think I can detect them. However, I am finding nothing. There are too many human spirit signatures down there. I can detect the gnomes standing out among them, but with the huge waves of spirit energy from the dome and what few people are down in the houses having apparently not evacuated fast enough, I can detect nothing.

I can’t find them with my eyes either.

Well… in a way, isn’t this a good thing? It means they are doing a good job of concealing themselves. If the gnomes had found them, they’d likely be in the same place Tia and the boys were. But, they seemed to have divided off into two search groups that are moving close together, likely as a defensive measure against a repeat of what Tia pulled earlier. They also most certainly seem agitated at my bombardment of their lookout.

Just then, the trees I’d launched out earlier in order to roust Tia and the boys out of hiding hit their maturity phase and launched their payload into the air. The air born seed pods then split and rained down white fluffy seeds everywhere, greatly obscuring my vision. Seems like finding them just might be a lost cause at this point. Perhaps I should just satisfy myself with observing the movements of the gnomes since they are easier to track.

“Well, this is… very surprising.”

My heart nearly leaps out of my chest as I hear a voice very close to me up here in my tree. I jerk around and look for the source of the voice, and I turn out seeing the pale bluish-grey skin and large alien eyes of a changeling, the likes of which I’d only seen once before in my life quite some time ago.

The man is perched on a branch a short distance up from my vantage point, and he is looking out on the scene below in admiration.

“I somehow knew you must be the holder of the enninim of nature that was being used to fight the hold of Iuutel on this place, but to think you would have an enninim of wind as well.”

“Who… how did you get here?! What are you talking about?!” I demanded, still half scared out of my wits that someone had gotten this close and suddenly talked to me in a tense situation like this.

Also, there seemed to be something else very concerning about this exchange, but it just wasn’t clicking in my mind at the moment. However, my subconscious was absolutely screaming at me that something a lot more significant than the presence of this changeling had just been revealed.

Wait! That’s it! He was speaking English just now! Aside from that one strange word he used a couple times that sounded slightly like ‘enis,’ the elven generic word for a ruler, the rest of his sentence was in perfect English.

“So, either you do not know the significance of what you are doing, you are trying to be… what would be the right word… misleading about your own knowledge? Or, perhaps it goes deeper and you are trying to fool me into thinking you would be so foolish as to think you could hide what you are obviously doing. Whatever the case, we can sort that out later.” The changeling says and shakes his head before he turns his large alien eyes to me.

“For now, I am Sagle. I am certain you remember that name from when we met three years ago when you began moving with the Hidan. I have been watching you for some time on the orders of the queen, and would have likely come to aid you sooner had I not only arrived back to the encampment a short time ago. So, as one person dealing in intelligence to another, I would like to ask you for a report on the current situation.”

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