“You are bleeding…” Sigmir reminded me, once the fighting had calmed to the point that she had breath to care about anything other than keeping Centaurs from running either of us through. After taking a deep breath and settling my mind a little, I felt the wound I had suffered at the beginning of combat and decided that Sigmir had the right of it, I should deal with it, before it weakened me even further. The wolves had fully encircled the centaurs and were happily bleeding them to death, one bite at a time.

Holding one hand over my wound, I sent my mind inside, feeling the blood-flow of my body until it reached the ragged edge of the wound that the centaur’s dagger had cut into me. Again, I mentally scolded myself for my idiotic stunt, fighting head-on was not what I was good at. I had to remember to keep doing what I did best, use magic and subterfuge to fight my battles, either of those or a combination of them, were what I excelled at.

Connecting the edges of my wound took a little time, healing myself was a little more difficult than healing others, the pain and the changes directed at myself meant that I couldn’t focus as easily as normally but it was still something I could do quite quickly and without too much magical effort.

“How does the fighting look?” I asked Sigmir once my wound was closed.

“The wolves harried the centaurs as much as they could, I think a few of the wolves are wounded but the centaurs are all dead.” Sigmir explained and, hearing her, I took a quick look to the event-log. It confirmed her statement, there was a long, drawn-out tally of the fighting, giving an overview of both forces and stating that we had killed twenty-four centaurs of various levels, how the EXP were divided between the forty wolves and my group and that I had gained a nice chunk of twenty-five thousand EXP. Those EXP were enough to boost me to level sixty-two. There were also quite a few skill-up notices, making me quite happy.

The travelling had caused my character-progression to slow to a crawl; sure, I had gained quite a bit of power thanks to Lenore crossing the first divide, but other than that, I had hardly progressed in a while. I’d have to go look for a dungeon or three to get back on track, the others who started at the same time as I did, and who didn’t travel around all the time, would completely outclass me otherwise.

Shaking my head, I focused on the here and now, organising my thoughts before tackling the tasks I needed to fulfill after the battle. The first was healing the wounded wolves, making sure that our force was in as good a shape as possible. Another was to make sure that the signs of battle were obscured as much as possible, I had no doubt that, at some point, the centaurs would want to find out what had happened to their patrol. Keeping as much from them as possible would only serve us, to increase their sense of unease and trepidation, which would, in turn, cause them to stay in their camps, allowing us to fulfill our task without losing too many wolves. And that point, of them coming to find out would most likely be reached in a few hours, so we were on a timer.

Finally, I wanted to have at least one of the centaur corpses to study - not just for me, but also for Rai. I knew some human anatomy and was able to make relatively uneducated guesses regarding the anatomy of other humanoid races based on that, but centaurs were different enough that I wanted to make sure what was where. They were one of the major forces that claimed the chaotic plains of Central- and West-Aretia, so more information was something valuable to me.

“Windpaw, are there any wolves who can mask and hide the tracks the silly ponies took to get into the forest? I want their tracks to simply disappear, without anyone being the wiser.” I asked one of the pack-leaders while starting to make a mental list of the wounded wolves.

“While you take care of that, I’ll heal those of you who need it. We need you as healthy as possible, there will be more fighting.” I added, gesturing for those I felt needed healing.

“What is it that you are planning?” Snowdust asked me, while Windpaw started to select a couple of healthy wolves.

“Simple, I want the Centaurs to be afraid. They know about wolves and the threat posed by them so I doubt that they would fear you, at least not without major attacks from you, with enough power to make them fear you. On the other hand, the unknown is something most beings fear, or at least respect, because it is just that, unknown. They have no idea what is waiting for them or if there is something waiting for them. My hope is that their minds conjure up ideas worse than anything we could come up with. Or at least as bad.” I explained, while inspecting the various injuries. Most were not too bad, the wolves had the prudence to stay back once they were seriously injured, preventing the centaurs from using such an injury to take them down. Unless we lost a fight, I was relatively sure that the robust and hardy wolves would last until I got to them and was able to try healing them.

But while I could deal with most injuries, a few would need more than what I could do quickly; broken bones were still something that gave me trouble, healing wise. I could set the bones back into alignment and use ice to form practical casts but at the end of the day, the four wolves with broken bones would need time, days, maybe even a week, before they would be back up. And even that was only thanks to the system that increased their natural healing to insane levels.

Once I was done healing the wolves that had been hurt, I started to consider how to hide the actual battlefield. Part of me wanted to try burying them but I quickly discarded the idea as impossible, or rather, impractical. Sure, it would be the way to make discovery of the corpses as unlikely as possible, yet the frozen ground would make it hard to actually get them underground. Another way to deal would be to burn them but I didn’t even want to consider the amount of fire needed and the traces that would leave.

“I can deal with them.” Lenore told me over our link, while angling her flight downwards.

Her statement made me curious - sure, I had seen her use magic to animate a corpse and turn those we killed into animated dead, but animating so many centaurs at the same time seemed more difficult. Shrugging, I simply took out the perch I had made for her, so she could comfortably sit, while casting whatever she was planning.

“Sounds good. What do you need me to do?” I asked, once she was next to me.

“If you could lend me some power, that would help a great deal.” she told me, so I stepped near and focused on the link I had to her, letting my Astral Power flood through it, into Lenore. Meanwhile, I called out to the wolves that they didn’t need to worry, that Lenore and I would deal with the Centaurs.

What happened next surprised me a great deal, one of the centaurs near us was glazed over with a soft, dark-grey light. Moments later, the corpse started to decompose but instead of taking weeks and months, the process only took a minute, maybe two before the centaur’s body had turned into dry, slightly sludgy powder.

“Impressive but I think if we work together, we can do that better.” I nodded, causing Lenore to hop over to my shoulder, returning to her Hallow. With her joined in my head, I explained what I wanted to do, using my blood magic to use the fluids inside them to make the process easier and less messy. With the ice and snow in the surrounding area, I would be able to mix it with the decomposed remains, making them all but undetectable. Sure, the bones would remain - my connection to Lenore told me that it would take far too long to cause them to decompose - but the bones were much easier to hide. Maybe, some of the wolves would like them as chew toys.

Now, together, I let Lenore take the reigns, allowing her to form our combined Astral Power, and, feeling her intent in her magic, I was able to work my own magic into the spell, causing the decay to speed up even further and reduce the amount of power needed to destroy each corpse. Together, we made our way across the battlefield, reducing the corpses to a mix of dust and snow, spreading it around to make it nigh impossible to perceive them.

After maybe half an hour, there was only one centaur left, the one that had tried to run away and which I had attacked using the mix of Mind and Death-Magic that came natural to Lenore and me.

“Rai, come over here! There’s a lesson to be learned.” I called out, causing Rai to hurry over.