Seeing that the people around her weren’t quite sure how to react to their sudden appearance, Elise decided to go into business mode.

“What’s the situation?” She asked.

After a moment of silence, a male deerkin that had a patch sown on his clothes depicting three lightning bolts (probably a symbol of military rank) took a step forward and spoke:

“The situation hasn’t changed since our last communications. We’re still able to keep repairing our defenses by operating in turns but we’re getting worn down. At this rate, the walls will fall within three days.”

“We certainly can’t have that. I believe reducing the pressure on your defenders should help, right?”

“Yes, it would. Are you capable of doing that?”

“That’s why we’re here.” Elise declared confidently “Nalia, you’re up.”

The fairy did a gesture of agreement and flew back up into the barrier of branches. She also dropped her enhancement spell on Nina, leaving just enough magic on the armor to maintain the illusion that she was commanding it.

“You see, we were already planning things out ever since we learned of the way this place was arranged.” The contractor began to explain “It is very convenient because Nalia is small enough to move around your defensive branches without issue.”

As she was saying that, Nalia flew through the branches until reaching close to the area outside, but without leaving their cover. Then she conjured a spell, manifesting a fireball beyond the area of the branches and shooting it into the largest concentration of enemies she could see.

She didn’t even look to see what had been the effect of her attack. The fairy immediately flew sideways, quickly reaching another portion of the defensive screen and aiming at the enemies closest to it, this time using a sandstorm spell.

And as Nalia kept on doing the same thing, showing an amazing variety of spells in the process, Elise explained exactly what the idea was:

“The biggest issue you have is limited means of counter-attacking, because having to passively defend is an inherently disadvantageous situation. But now they are the ones who have to deal with attacks they have no way to directly counter.” She smiled “Nalia is only using harassing attacks, intent on injuring them and forcing our enemies to split their efforts in order to take care of the wounded. And that means she can keep that up for hours before getting tired.”

She waited a moment to let that sink in.

“This should reduce the pressure on you guys enough you can recover.” Elise concluded.

+0+

Things progressed like Elise had said. The enemies were hindered too much by Nalia’s attacks to be able to put enough effort into their own siege, so the deer reduced the amount of soldiers on wall duty, giving them enough leeway to begin recovering.

Nina had been a little disappointed over not getting to do anything, but Elise told her that it was a good opportunity to progress her training further and actually reach the level where she wouldn’t need Nalia’s help anymore. Elise also said something that made the rabbit girl immediately become serious:

“[…] Also, while this strategy is enough to defend the village for now, the enemies aren’t just going to give up. They will try doing something else we can’t predict right now. It’s quite possible you’ll get a chance to fight before this mission is over.”

That, plus the amount of extra motivation she had from seeing the results of her previous training resulted in Nina diving back into it with a zeal that one could only describe as “fanatical”. That wasn’t entirely a good thing, as oftentimes her focus would become too narrow, resulting in her making avoidable mistakes. But overall the effect on her training speed ended up being positive.

Elise, for her part, was also quite busy. Despite still needing to supervise her partner’s training, the girl also went around the village and got to know the people and the lay of the land. She was sure that things would become dangerous at some point, so it was good to have some advance preparation. Understanding the place and making some inroads with her allies would undoubtedly help.

Besides that, it also gave Elise a chance to look into things to try and figure out whether her thoughts from before had been correct. And it wasn’t like doing such things was a chore. She actually thought the place was pretty interesting.

The most immediately striking part of the deer village was their houses. The village was completely covered in trees, but most of them had been warped almost beyond recognition, sometimes being twisted and bent around houses, sometimes growing straight through them and sometimes turned into houses themselves.

And it wasn’t just the shapes of the trees that had been changed. Their colors had also been changed, sometimes into simple bright color schemes that made the houses look prettier, while other times there were outright pictures made entirely from altering the wood.

Elise hadn’t spent a lot of time on the bobcat tribe village, but she was sure that it wasn’t this unique. She wondered what other beastkin villages would be like.

Still, the thing that drew her attention the most was not the way the village was built, but the people who lived in it. Elise took advantage of the situation to get to know the villagers, who were too grateful for her help to mind her curiosity.

The deer who had talked to her was named Noumiso, he was one of the ‘branch commanders’ who were responsible for managing the defense teams of the village. He wasn’t very good at manipulating wood with magic, but instead focused on leaves and was actually one of the best in the village in terms of direct combat while using that specialty.

Another one was a female deerkin called Maracta who worked as a cook and knew quite a lot of stories regarding the history of the forest, which Elise was quite interested in knowing more about. There was also a female called Charlotte who was different from the others due to having horns.

That was because she wasn’t originally part of the village, but a traveler from a distant land and a different race that had decided to settle on the forest. She was working as a soldier and seemed to be quite good at hand-to-hand combat.

And there were many more. Elise tried to get to know at least a little bit about each of them, not only because it might be useful later, but also because she was simply interested. The girl was a contractor after all, so her path in life was based around connections with others. Having an interest in people was simply normal, even if they weren’t contractor candidates.

Of course, she was still willing to make more contracts with beastkin of the forest, but none of the deer she talked to attracted her interest in that sense.

The following days passed in such a manner, Nalia would do her work to reduce the pressure on the deer for a few hours and then she would go to sleep and leave them to defend on their own until she recovered. Nina would spend nearly every waking minute in advancing her full awareness training, soon reaching the third step and having to try and keep that awareness while doing mental exercises and engaging in unrelated conversation with her contractor. And Elise herself supervised Nina’s training, explored the village and talked with the deer.

The original deadline of three days was reached and surpassed. Four days passed, and then five. But finally, when the sixth day passed, Elise’s words came true.

+0+

It happened while Nalia was sitting on Elise’s shoulder, resting from her latest round of harassing attacks while her contractor wandered around the village. They suddenly began to hear shouts that sounded incredibly frantic and desperate, and so Nalia cast a mobility spell to allow Elise to rush towards the source of those sounds.

It wasn’t far away, and so the duo quickly saw that it was coming from a mass of deer who were next to a section of the village’s defensive wall. The reason for their shouts quickly became obvious, as that part of the wall was warping and darkening at a speed visible to the naked eye.

‘It looks like the wall is… decaying. Some sort of bio-weapon, I imagine.’ Nalia said ‘They’re pouring so much magic into the wall, but it’s barely slowing down the destruction rate.’

Elise had also called over Nina who was nearby, and the rabbit got there right then and spoke:

‘So this is their new plan. Why didn’t they do it earlier?’

‘I think this is something provided by the Strangers, but they’re also tribes of the forest, so they didn’t wanna use that type of weapon.’ Elise replied ‘As such, they tried to bring this village down without it, but it just wasn’t working so they were forced to do it.’

‘What should we do?’ Nalia asked for instructions, seeing that things were about to go from bad to worse.

‘There’s something I can make use off now that our enemies reached this point. However, I’m gonna need to convince the village chief to let me do it and it will also take a bit.’ Elise said to both of them ‘I need both of you to work together with our allies and hold the line until that’s done.’

‘Understood.’ Said Nalia.

‘Okay.’ Said Nina.

Both of them ran towards the decaying wall, readying themselves for the coming battle. Their contractor instead looked around and managed to spot the village chief, a middle-aged male deer with orange eyes named Helodorne, who had come to see what was going on.

Target spotted, Elise rushed over to his side and spoke:

“They’re not gonna be able to hold for much longer. The wall is going to fall.”

He looked at her, not quite composed but not in panic “What are you going to do?”

“We’ll do our best to hold the enemies back, as that’s what we were tasked with, but we can’t win this battle for you, not with any normal methods.” Elise replied.

“And what about… Abnormal methods?” He realized what she was getting at.

The girl smiled at him before adopting a serious expression “There is one method, but it will require your cooperation.” She paused “I need you to bring me to the sanctuary beneath this village.”

+0+

Just as Elise had expected, the wall could not resist for much longer, as a series of attacks from the outside hit the weakened portion, and the defenders were unable to prevent it from being broken through.

The first hole expanded and was joined by others as that portion of the wall completely collapsed. And most horrifying of all was how the decay was still spreading, infecting along the length of the construction and even the barrier of branches above it.

Recognizing that it was useless, the group of defenders stopped trying to fix things, instead pulling out their weapons and preparing to fight with all they had. Yet the first ones to meet the enemy were Nalia and Nina, who had flown or jumped over the defenders.

The armored rabbit slammed down into the ground with a powerful punch, forcing the first line of enemies backwards from the shock wave. This had been done entirely without Nalia’s aid, as Nina had managed to reach a point where the effects of the boost were almost negligible.

This meant that the fairy had a lot of power to spare, and even more from not needing to split her focus to defend her contractor, so she followed up Nina’s attack with a wide range cold spell that made the enemies in front feel like they had been hit by a sudden blizzard, briefly hitting hypothermia temperatures and losing a large amount of fighting strength in the process.

The effects became lesser and lesser as the distance increased, but slowing down the front essentially congested the enemy forces and delayed them, as Nalia was trying to gain the time Elise had asked for.

Nina did get hit by some of the spell’s effect, but between her training and the way Nalia had controlled the magic to avoid affecting her as much as possible the rabbit girl simply felt quite cold for a bit. She then swung a haymaker, sweeping her arm through the air and bowling over the closest enemies, increasing the confusion even more.

However, that was when the enemies began to rally. Several wolfkin among the enemy forces howled and unleashed their bestial natures, powering up. A trio of monkeys who were close to the front of the pack joined their hands and triggered a powerful spell that released a wave of heat, countering some of the cold. Several flying enemies of disparate species began shooting a multitude of arrows that Nalia was forced to block with a series of barriers. Two moose who were at the edges of the group grew to twice of their (already considerable) size and dashed forward. And there were even more like those, all around the enemy mass.

They had been conserving themselves during the siege, but now that it came time for the climatic battle, they were no longer holding anything back. Nina and Nalia were very strong, and combined with the fairy’s particular set of skills, both of them together were a fighting force to be reckoned with, but against so many strong foes they just weren’t enough by themselves, and the duo was pushed back by the enemies.

However, they weren’t by themselves. The deer soldiers rushed in to back them up, and they fought with a terrifying ferocity as this was for the sake of defending their home, not to mention they were unbelievably angry at the enemies for their use of that atrocious weapon. Their archers were firing arrows at a rate where each of them seemed to be an entire squad. Their close-range combatants were tearing through the enemy lines with a bloodlust that overshadowed even the bestial wolves. Their magic users were covering the battlefield in leagues of entangling vines and razor-sharp thorn. And Charlotte, the deer from a foreign land, showed her strength by clashing against one of the two powerful moose, which was about four times her size, and actually pushing him back.

The duo of Nalia and Nina added to it, the later bringing down the other moose and proceeding to cause mayhem among the enemy lines while the former watched over the battlefield, using her spells to support whenever their allies seemed to need help. Altogether, the deer and their allies were actually managing to match the originally much superior force and even slightly surpass it.

A minute passed, the bio weapon had devoured over two kilometers of wall and a large amount of the trees inside the village, but the defenders held. Another minute passed and a quarter of the village had been destroyed, but the defenders still held. But thirty seconds after that, they began to falter. The deer had overdrawn their own strength in order to achieve that feat, and their energy began to run out.

Little by little they were pushed back, Nalia and Nina having to redouble their efforts to prevent then from breaking and then…

‘I’m done.’ Elise’s sounded in their minds.

And then the duo felt an amazing amount of power flowing from underneath.

+0+

“You… But that’s-” Helodorne began to speak, but was interrupted by Elise.

“Before you answer, please listen to what I have to say.” Her tone was so serious that he could not talk back “The sanctuary beneath the village is the target of the enemy forces. It is also a place where the power of the guiding spirit manifests in the form of lights, which will occasionally condense together into shining stones carrying unbelievable amounts of energy. Am I right about all that?”

“Y-yes, but how do you…?” The chief was in shock.

“Let me just say that this forest is not the only place that has those characteristics. When I heard the story of how the tribes came to this forest I had my suspicions regarding the identity of the guiding spirit, but learning that the Strangers were apparently seeking ‘shining stones’ made me almost certain of it.” Elise explained “And talking to you gave me the final confirmation I needed.”

“I-I see… But still, letting an outsider int-” His words were interrupted by the terrifying sound of the wall breaking.

“There’s no time to hesitate!” Elise scolded him “I believe the spirit would share their powers willingly for the sake of this place, so you need to make a decision now: Refuse and watch this village die today, or accept and let me save it. Choose!”

He reacted almost as if he’d been physically struck. His eyes reflected the conflict within, but moments later his face became set in grim determination.

“Come with me.” He spoke and began to run in the direction of one of the nearby buildings.

Elise followed him (he slowed down upon noticing her falling behind) and the two went inside. Helodorne pressed his hands into a trapdoor that was sealed by a complicated wooden mechanism and used his magic to manipulate the wood into unlocking said mechanism, then reached deeper and did the same to an equivalent on the other side of the trapdoor.

Once it was unlocked, he opened it and rushed inside with Elise close behind. They ran down a descending corridor until they reached their destination, a circular room made of immaculately carved wood that contained a series of holes which for their part contained brilliant points of light, just like Elise had said.

The spirit who had brought the beastkin to the forest was part of a species called ‘Agents of the Cycle’. Their role was to create new lands and life in places where it had been exhausted. They created things like the forest of Theremis and called over others to live within before sealing themselves into those places in order to rest. It took a lot of time for their energy to recover after a particular act of creation, but having an active population on their land helped.

Elise knew about them because of her sisters, of course. Which meant she also knew of the true identity of the ‘shining stones’, thus deducing that the reason the deer village was under such heavy attack must have been because they had a place that had the right conditions for them to be produced.

Elise’s words to Helodorne regarding the spirit sharing their power willingly were because those stones were actually created as a side-effect of the process such agents had to go through in order to restore themselves, and she was sure the deer were aware of that connection. But they didn’t have full control over that power, or they would have used it to save themselves.

That explained the chief’s hesitation over letting her go and make use of it. For them, the spirit’s power must have been more like a blessing than a simple, convenient source of strength. But for Elise, that power was simply a tool that she could use to accomplish her mission.

As such, the girl didn’t hesitate and simply walked to the back of the room before using her Soul Speak once again. And as she began to establish a communication with the forest, Elise reflected on the fact that her plan was only feasible because of the enemy’s actions.

‘I’m sure it must have been a very difficult decision for them. They are also people of the forest, so using a bioweapon that was inimical to the forest itself must have been against all of their instincts. But they still did it in the end, so this can probably be called karma.’

She thought like that because it usually wouldn’t be possible for her to use the spirit’s power to any great effect. This went beyond simply doing the equivalent of asking a question that she had done to be able to locate the Stranger, as it would require not only trying to command the forest, but also command it to act against its own children, the beastkin that lived there.

Even after deducing that such a sanctuary existed, Elise had never planned on making use of its power, but now the enemies had unleashed a weapon that deeply hurt the forest. It didn’t matter that this was just at a local level, because the sanctuary was right there, very close to the point that had been attacked. This caused the traitor’s forces to be considered enemies by the forest.

So all Elise had to do was giving it a way to fight back.