A Serpent's Tale
Chapter 133: Infiltration

Chapter 133: Infiltration

We slowly trekked through the forest, avoiding any scouts and getting closer and closer to the demon’s camp. We avoided detections thanks to the dryad that was part of our team informing us whenever an enemy was nearby, so we all stopped and waited for them to pass before continuing on.

This continued on for a while until we heard an explosion somewhere behind us. We turned to look back and saw a tower of black, pillowing smoke forming off in the distance.

The Darkhide patriarch growled in displeasure. "Rrraaahh... This is sooner than I’d like but whatever. We need to get a move on." He signalled for all of us to hasten our pace.

By now I’m sure that the encirclement has begun, with the teams on the edge of the encirclement are making their way to flank the demon’s forces.

As for us, we had reached the outskirts of their base. It was a poorly constructed, crude wooden wall with stakes lining the ground at the edges of it. There was also this menacing red glow coming from inside that emanated this intense malice.

We made our way to the back of their camp and climbed up the walls after waiting for their guard to pass by their patrol. Most of them were goblins so it was quite easy to evade their notice.

After getting up we took a peek at what they were doing and saw them creating some kind of demonic ritual, with a glowing red ritual circle in the middle of their camp, which was where this dread that we were feeling came from.

With a barely audible whisper, the Darkhide patriarch gave us all our own tasks, "Alright, I want everyone except for Traytora to go round and kill all the watchmen, then we slowly move inwards, if we get caught, then just slaughter. As for Traytora, I want you to see if you can figure out what they’re trying to do and counter it. Understood?"

We all nodded in unison and they all went off to silently assassinate the demons. As for me, I took another look at that ritual circle to try and understand what it’s purpose was.

And as I began reading the inscriptions and the way that they were connected, I could hear the sounds on necks being slit open or snapped off in the distance.

I ignored them and continued analysing the ritual inscriptions, deciphering their meaning, because despite my expertise in Astral Runecraft, it didn’t mean that I could just know everything about the runes in this ritual circle and what they did.

No, despite knowing what the runes themselves did, you can combine them together to create whatever you can imagine so long as you know how runes work. But just because I don’t know what this thing does, doesn’t mean that I can’t figure it out, I mean, they’ve literally left this thing out in the open and gave me a full view of it up here.

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After a couple of minutes of deciphering this ritual circle, the Darkhide patriarch came back and informed me that the watchmen had been taken out and everyone was now on ground taking out droves of their forces when a shriek suddenly rang out.

"NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY CHEEEEEEEEEEESE!!!!!"

It obviously came from a goblin given how shrill the voice was, but why it screamed out about cheese was beyond us.

And shortly after that we heard another goblin shouting, "INTRUDERS!!!!!" It seems like that someone had been stunned long enough to be spotted, which meant that we now couldn’t afford any time and just had to kill everything.

With our stealth compromised we stopped hiding and the patriarch told me to continue analysing the ritual circle whilst everyone else went and killed the demonic forces here, so I did.

So far I had gathered that the ritual was meant summoning something and used souls in some way.

*BOOOOM*

My thoughts were interrupted as explosions rang out throughout the encampment, signifying that the real fight had begun, meanwhile I was just sat here, studying the inscription.

I will admit that I was a little upset at my position but it was what I was told to do, and stopping whatever they had planned was crucial, because who knows what would happen if they pull off whatever it is they’re trying to do.

The fighting continued as sparks of lightning and root spikes shot up into the sky and sounds of destruction rung out.

Suddenly I could see the light ritual circle pulsing, getting brighter. I observed the inscriptions and found out that any soul in the nearby area would be funnelled into the formation and empowering it.

I panicked, knowing that anything power by souls was bad news. My father once told me that Hell’s society ran on the essence of a souls pain, so the more souls they got, the more powerful the inhabitants became.

Knowing this I came to the conclusion that this must be some sort of ritual to create or summon a powerful demon, and this was how they recovered their forces.

I immediately gave up on trying to figure out what and went straight to how. How do I destroy this thing before it can gain enough power to do whatever they wanted it to. And I couldn’t do that from up there, so I had to go down and do it in person.

I jumped off of the wall and down onto the ground with a thud. I looked around and didn’t see any of the demonic goblins nearby and assumed that they must have gone to deal with the rest.

Rushing forward through the tents, I eventually encountered a couple of goblins that were rushing to deal with the others when they spotted me and stopped. They then immediately tried to attack me but I just threw some Hellfire at them, burning not only their bodies, but their souls as well, making sure that they don’t go to powering the ritual.

I continued rushing to the middle of the camp, my tail sliding across the ground. I encountered more goblins along the way but just set them all on fire.

As I got closer and closer to the ritual circle, it got brighter and brighter, indicating that it was reaching completion. Screams of death and explosion rang out continuously into my ears.

I reached the middle of the encampment and immediately began creating my own inscriptions to interrupt the one in front of me but before I could, a loud roar was heard coming down from the sky.

"RRRRRAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!"

Something crashed into the ground in the middle of the circle, destroying the ground and causing several clumps of dirt to fly away from the impact zone. I had to fall to the ground to dodge the flying debris, causing my work to be undone.

Once the debris had all been flung away, I looked up at a smoking crater, the ritual circle still pulsating with red light, uninterrupted by the destruction surrounding it. The smoke parted and I could see a red troll rise up from the ground carrying a mace.

He grinned at me and announced his presence.

"I AM HERE!"

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