We arrived near Cail. We were now surrounded by trees, this wasn’t the Lost’s Forest, it was just a smaller forest, but monster attacks still got more consistent.

The caravan of the merchants and prostitutes also stopped following us and returned, the zone was starting to become too dangerous for them.

We still haven’t been attacked a single time by Zaven, but this only made the officials more careful of whatever they were preparing for us. Whatever it was, they probably would use it here, before we arrived at the open field in front of Cail so we were advancing slowly, expecting an ambush.

We also knew that Belisar appeared against the Hossian army. He penetrated alone on the enemy formation and dealt heavy damage by going on a rampage, but he was also wounded, nothing that someone like him couldn’t heal though.

At least we knew he wouldn’t appear against us.

During the last week, Roxanne started hunting some monsters when they appeared, and Lae managed to kill a couple too with our help, but now we stopped doing it in fear of an ambush.

While we were marching Ces approached me, he hasn’t been talking to me for a while, I wonder why, he seemed to want to gain my favour at the beginning.

“Hi David, we haven’t talked for a while, how is the war going to you?”

“Fine I guess, it made me understand what it means to actually be inside one, this isn’t something you can understand just by reading books.”

“That’s certainly true. I’m sorry if I didn’t contact you lately, but there have been some troublesome talks about you among the officials lately, so I had to stay away for a while?”

“What talks?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, come to my tent this evening, we can drink some wine again, and in the meantime, we can talk business.”

“Fine, we’ll talk then.”

Ces then returned to his position near the commander. I wonder what that troublesome talk was all about, I was strat getting worried, I might have to get out of here soon.

I continued to ride Direshadow while thinking about that, but after some time, what was expected happened.

A barrage of demonic spells and arrows with runes came out of the forest, aiming for the archers, then a charge of warriors attacked the surprised soldiers protecting them. The Zavenians warriors didn’t go too deep, they just bought time for the shooters to attack, and when imperial reinforcements started coming from the sides, they retreated and disappeared.

The purificators chased them, but the only thing they found was a collapsed tunnel. Freeing the tunnel would take too long and chasing would become useless, so they just returned.

During That time though, another attack came from another spot, aiming at the magicians, they repeated the same method, but this time some warriors also jumped in and went for a suicide attack, killing many mages before dying, sometimes by friendly fire.

This time the purificators were far away, so they had more time to do damage. When the purificators returned and the Zaveninas fled, only some purificators chased them, only finding another collapsed tunnel.

They probably created the tunnels with earth magic beforehand since the scouts would have probably felt them if they did it near them, and digging such long tunnels couldn’t be done shortly.

The commanders didn’t expect two groups to slip over our scouts, that was why they managed to kill so many of the imperial magicians.

The army lost about a hundred magicians, it was a huge loss for an elite army like this, and for that many soldiers, only about ten Zavenians died.

There would probably be other tunnels along the way, so the commander recalled all the scouts and ordered them to search closer to us.

Like this, they could find some tunnels, but the imperial army would know with shorter notice if the Zavenians came at us from upon the ground.

The army stopped for a while, but since this was a bad spot for setting up a camp, the commander decided to advance some more.

After a while we found a decent clearing, there was still time before the night, but since the officials wanted to set up some fortifications in case we were raided, we stopped here for the night.

After mounting our tents, we did some light training with the girls, being careful not to use too much energy in case we had to fight. When the sun started to set I went to Ces's tent.

I entered Ces's tent, the floor was covered in carpets and he was sitting on cushions, drinking a glass of wine.

“Welcome, my friend, sit here.”

I sat in front of him, on another pile of cushions, I wondered if I brought along an extra horse just to transport these cushions.

“So what is the problem?”

“Right to the point, don't you want to drink some wine before that?”

“No just tell me.”

“It seems the officials didn't take well your little adventure with Erian.”

“So they found out.”

“You shouldn't underestimate Hoss's surveillance, it's not as good as the empire's but you can't go around killing soldiers without hoping to be found out. Also, no one of them likes Erian, she belongs to the most extremist faction among the traditionalist and rejects Horus and the new way of the empire entirely. You won't gain anything from her, trust me, I tried to bring her to my side once, but obtained no result at all.”

“And why are you telling me?”

“Why? Because I can get you out of it, of course. You see, the real problem is that they cannot understand what you want, not what you did. The geezers don't like unpredictable factors, in fact, they already have by their side plenty of people that did very questionable things, even inside the empire, but as long as they know what to give them to make them obey, they won't be afraid of them. Another problem is that you always tried to hide what you did, and an even bigger issue is the fact that you succeeded once.”

“I see, so what is your solution? Showing a goal? Like belonging to a faction and wanting to reach a powerful position inside it? Your faction for example?”

“Oh, I would love that.”

“I'm afraid I'm not ready for that.”

“That's too bad, but that wasn't my original proposal anyway. I just wanted to give you a solution, as a show of good faith. Now, it's pretty obvious you are trying to get stronger, and also the fact that you don't like being limited but of course, a hero has boundaries they shouldn't cross. So, why don't you use two identities?

I can arrange something to grant you a second identity as a purificator, you won't have any problems if you use a mask and modify your voice, there are already precedents of purificators hiding their identity so it won't be a problem.

Like this you will have a lot of freedom, you will be able to use the demonic attribute, have the purificators' special privileges with enemy civilians and no one will tell you anything if you kill some small fries of ours. You will be able to use it even after this war, like this you will be able to become an adventurer, join a mercenary group or even join a criminal organization if you want.

You just have to keep clean your image as a hero, don't try to gain political power where the empire can't see you and don't interact with Erian. But, you know, if you really like her you can enjoy her as long as you don't listen to her, she is going to get rid of soon anyway, so no one will care if you have sex with her, or rape her.”

Ces was a person I respected in a way, he was a rational person, and although he was true to his desires, he was controlled by his selfishness, and he wasn't noticing it. So much that he didn't see anything else but himself, he wasn't looking at the world around him at all. He was better than those savage purificators, but he was much better off dead than alive. But although I really wanted to crush his head right here and now I couldn't. Of course, I didn't want to do anything to Erian, but the rest of his proposal had some advantages, well, quite a lot of them actually.

I didn't want to be a dog of the empire, but I needed more power if I wanted to be truly free from the fear of it. The question was if it was better to look for that strength outside of it and flee, or look for it inside and then betray it.

Of course, it was easier to do it with Ces's support, but there were many risks. The more I stayed there the more they had time to set up plans to stop me from doing anything against them, and I wouldn't have total freedom.

Still, the benefits would be huge, I needed to think more about it.

“I'm going to think about it. I appreciate the help anyway.”

“Good, taking decisions hastily is never a good idea. So care to drink with me now?”

We drank some wine and he asked me questions about warfare in my world, I told him what I knew, which wasn't too much, but he was satisfied anyway. After that, I returned to my tent.

That night we received another two raids, but this time they held better, not allowing them over our walls. They retreated without achieving much, but a small group of adventurers still managed to keep the army in alarm, they probably also wanted to wear down the soldiers for the final battle.

At this pace it would still take a few days to get to Cail, they probably wanted to keep everyone awake for this whole time, stronger people could compensate the effects of sleep deprivation with ki easier after all.

By the way, we were asked to appear during the second attack, and just by showing us fighting alongside the other soldiers the morale rose, they didn't use illusion magic this time though, they just let the word spread. We would probably have to appear more times so it would probably be a hard time for us too.

The day after that the army restarted marching and it got attacked multiple times, always by small teams, and rarely with any notice by the scouts.

Other than tunnels, Cail's adventurers used Saurrunners to transport their slowest members and avoided the scouts thanks to their knowledge of the terrain.

There also started to be traps along the road, most of them were scouted but a couple of them took the first lines unprepared.

There were mines, hidden pitfalls, swamps to slow the army down, and killed scouts turned undead and transformed into kamikaze by covering them in explosive runes. A couple of times they also lured monsters to us and stuck to one of them a bag full of bombs.

No mine managed to hit the army, but a kamikaze Spiked Bear managed to take some people with it, the swamp slowed the march, and the undead lowered the morale.

We were the ones asked to take care of the undead and as we killed them from a safe distance with holy magic, I used my mana and magic sense to look as much as I could into it, trying to grasp anything I could.

I already knew the undead had fake cores, but when I tried to examine it, I thought I felt something was alive inside it, but it didn't feel anything like a true core, it was like only a sparkle of life, interesting.

Anyway thanks to us the soldiers recovered their morale a little, they thought we saved their friends from the corrupted arts of the Dark Lord after all.

We proceeded like this for two days, not losing much but getting more and more tired. Then the third day, the scouts notified us of an improvised fortress along the road, protecting the last part of forest before the open land in front of Cail.

They wanted to fight here.