Devourer
Chapter 236: Old Hunter

Chapter 236: Old Hunter

Minuvae looked down from the trees as she readied her bow. The words from the elders still stung her ears.

If you wish to cease this war, then go end it yourself!

“Stubborn fools…” Minuavae muttered as she stared down at the Imperial troops below her. Her gaze shifted to the monstrous machine trundling across the undergrowth, its immense frame crushing roots and vegetation beneath its weight as though the forest itself were nothing more than an afterthought.

It was worse than she had imagined. A walking fortress of mithril and dwarven engineering, its surface shimmered with the glow of inscribed runes, each one pulsing with a power that defied the land’s ancient enchantments. This was no crude battering ram or ironclad siege tower, it was a war beast designed to carve through the very heart of the elven realm. Along its flanks, turrets bristled like the quills of some monstrous creature, each one sweeping the trees with mechanical precision, ready to unleash death at the slightest movement. But even worse were the weapons mounted atop its armored shell, ballistae and repeating crossbows rotating methodically, hunting for threats in the canopy where she and her kin now lurked. These dwarves had come prepared for an ambush, their machine a rolling deathtrap, built not just to survive the elves’ resistance, but to end it.

Minuavae cursed under her breath as she watched her fellow elves unleash a hail of enchanted arrows, their tips glowing with the power, only for them to glance harmlessly off the mithril plating of the dwarven war machine. The runes carved into its hull pulsed in response, absorbing the magic, twisting it into useless sparks before fading into nothing.

Then the machine answered. Its turrets roared to life, spitting fire and death into the canopy. Streams of alchemical flame rushed through the branches, turning leaves to ash in an instant, while whirling crossbows loosed a relentless volley of enchanted bolts. The trees themselves became deathtraps, splintering under the onslaught, raining shattered bark and burning foliage on the elves, who in turn scrambled to reposition. One of her kin cried out as a bolt found its mark, sending him tumbling from his perch, vanishing into the undergrowth below.

Minuavae’s heart pounded as she pressed herself against the thick trunk of an ancient oak, her breath coming in quick, measured bursts. They were losing their advantage. The dwarves had crafted this beast too well, not just to withstand elven ambushes, but to turn the trees, their greatest sanctuary, into a killing field.

The Empire was too well prepared, the Dwarves would not have been able to make these monsters so quickly. There were more of them, scattered along the tree line. They were escorted by infantry, which meant Minuvae couldn’t get close to it. The progress was slow for these abominations since the trees were dense but they were making progress. There was a limit to how deep they could punch into the forest but if they gained ground, the Empire could more easily look into how to start killing the trees. The bark and branches can be blasted apart but they grew back quickly, the bark would actually recover in hours. As for the trunk? You could set it ablaze and it would recover by the next day. So thus the trick of using the bark as shrapnel was rather ingenious, a well-thought-out solution.

Minuvae exhaled slowly, steadying herself against the rough bark beneath her fingertips. The others saw an unstoppable engine of war, an invincible monstrosity of mithril and dwarven craft. But she saw something different. She saw a beast. The others were warriors of the trees, hunters of men, masters of ambush and retreat, but they had never faced something like this.

Minuavae had spent years outside the forest, walking paths her kin would never dare tread. She had fought creatures that wreaked terror, wyverns with hides tougher than stone, chimeras whose breath could melt steel, and dark creatures who lived in places few dared thread. This dwarven machine, for all its brutal craftsmanship, was no different. It was just another monster. A monster of metal and runes, perhaps, but a monster nonetheless. And Minuavae knew how to slay monsters.

Her eyes swept over its massive frame, not with fear, but with the trained gaze of a hunter. She watched the turrets move in precise, calculated arcs, leaving fleeting blind spots. The plating, though enchanted, had gaps where it needed to move, joints and exposed mechanics.. The runes that shimmered across its hull were powerful, but no enchantment was perfect. If she could disrupt the power source, jam the gears, or crack the weak points in its armor, she could bring it down.

The other elves were attacking it as they would an invading army, striking from the trees, loosing enchanted arrows that could fell men. But this was not a foe that could be felled by mere volleys. She pulled up her hood, blending into the shadows of the canopy. Let the others keep its attention. She had a beast to bring down.

Minuavae narrowed her eyes, blocking out the chaos of the battle as she honed in on the machine’s weakness. It was just like hunting a wyvern, ignoring its thrashing claws and snapping fangs to focus on the moment it exposed the soft flesh between its scales. This mechanical beast had no flesh, but it had places where no armor, no matter how enchanted, could fully cover.

Beneath the rotating turret, where the heavy mithril plating met the mechanism that allowed it to swivel, there was a gap, a sliver of exposed machinery, no wider than a dagger’s edge. It was small, but it was enough. She whispered the incantation under her breath. [Wyvern Strike]. Magic surged through her fingers and into the arrow, the tip glowing with the ghostly light of a spell crafted for a single purpose. The energy coiled around the shaft like a living thing, sharpening its edges, honing its force.

She exhaled. The turret twisted, scanning for movement in the trees, but Minuavae had already lined up her shot. She pulled the bowstring taut, felt the power hum beneath her fingertips, and let it go.

The arrow streaked through the air like a bolt of silver lightning. It struck home, burying itself into the exposed gap with a sharp, metallic crack. The moment it hit, [Wyvern Strike] discharged, sending a pulse of raw force into the turret’s turning mechanism. Gears shrieked, metal buckled, and the entire structure shuddered violently before locking in place. The turret, once a relentless hunter scanning the trees for elven targets, now sat frozen, its aim useless.

Minuavae's breath was steady as she drew back her bow, fingers light against the string. The second turret had turned, the runes along its barrel flaring as it prepared to fire, but she was faster. Her sharp eyes locked onto the opening, where the alchemical munitions were chambered, waiting to be unleashed. The dwarves had encased their machine in mithril, layered it in magic, but they had left this one vulnerability.

[Wyvern Strike]

The arrow streaked through the air, vanishing into the turret’s barrel. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, a sharp, violent burst ruptured through the seams of the machine’s upper hull. Flames spat out of the gaps in the plating as the turret was blown clean off its mount, flipping end over end before crashing into the undergrowth. The war machine shuddered under the force of its own detonation, small fires bursting from the seams where the energy had nowhere else to go. Metal groaned as heat warped the plating, the runes flickering as they struggled to contain the damage. Smoke poured from the wounds in its armour, and Minuavae could see the glow of embers inside, burning where the ammunition had ignited.

Minuavae crouched on her perch, silent and still as the war machine sputtered its last, choking on its own fire. The turret she had struck was gone, its remains scattered in the undergrowth, and the war engine itself was finished, its runes flickering weakly, its cannons silent. But those inside still suffered.

She watched, expression unreadable, as the first soldier clawed his way out of the burning wreck. His armor, once polished and gleaming, was now a blackened shell, glowing red-hot in places where the flames had licked too deep. His screams cut through the forest, raw and shrill, as he collapsed onto the scorched ground, rolling desperately, trying in vain to smother the fire that clung to him. Another followed, dragging himself through the broken plating, his gauntlets slipping against the searing metal. The heat had cooked his flesh inside his armor, the once-proud sigil of the Empire now lost beneath soot and char.

More spilled out, stumbling, shrieking, burning. Some tried to rip off their ruined gear, their hands blistering against the searing metal. Others simply fell, consumed where they stood, their bodies little more than living torches. The war machine, built to bring fire and ruin to her home, had become its own funeral pyre.

But this was only one. In the distance, she could still hear the echoes of battle, the heavy grind of treads against the earth, the deep groan of war engines pressing deeper into the woods. More monsters. More prey.

She rose, slinging her bow over her shoulder, and without another glance at the burning wreckage, leapt to the next branch, vanishing into the shadows. The hunt was not over.

There was always another beast to kill.

◦◦,`°.✽✦✽.♚.✽✦✽.°`,◦◦

Ordias exhaled sharply, folding the latest report with slow, deliberate movements. All of them. Every single war machine in the first wave, gone. Not just damaged. Not just delayed. Destroyed.

The hulking wreck before him was just one of many, dragged from the treeline like a slain beast. Its once-gleaming mithril plating was blackened and warped, smoke still curling from the seams where internal fires had burned their way out. The enchanted runes, meant to repel magic and ward against sabotage, now flickered weakly, drained, broken, useless. A dozen more machines littered the battlefield in various states of ruin. Some had been crippled from within, their turrets blown apart by well-placed shots. Others had suffered catastrophic malfunctions, their mechanisms seizing before they could do any real damage. Not a single one had made it through intact.

Ordias walked along the latest ruin, his gloved hand tracing the deep fractures in the plating. The pattern was unmistakable. The same precise, surgical strikes. The same weak points targeted with lethal efficiency. No reckless attack had done this. No wild, desperate resistance had picked apart the Empire’s might like this.

This was a hunt.

The dwarves had built these war machines to be unstoppable. Their armor was forged to withstand magic, their weapons meant to rain destruction upon the elves before they could even react. They had been designed to roll over the forest unchallenged.

And yet, they had all been brought down.

Not by a siege. Not by massed volleys or powerful spells. But by a single force. Or worse, a single individual.

His eyes narrowed as he crouched beside the remains of a sundered turret. The first strike had been perfectly placed, an arrow, driven into the exposed gap of the turning mechanism, freezing it in place. Another had landed inside the barrel of a secondary weapon just before it could fire, igniting the munitions within and blowing it apart from the inside. None of this had been done in desperation. None of it had been reckless. This was intentional. Precise. The work of a predator.

Ordias clenched his jaw. This was more than a setback. This was a problem.

A war machine lost was a delay. An entire first wave lost? A flaw in the plan.

In the long run, it would not matter. The Empire had more. Dozens more war machines were waiting in reserve, ready to roll into the forest and resume the advance. The elves could not stop them forever. The forest would still burn. But this loss had changed something.

If the elves figured out how to exploit these weaknesses, if their warriors learned from this and adapted, then this war would become far messier than it had any right to be. And that could not be allowed.

His officers stood nearby, stiff and silent, waiting for orders. The unspoken question hung between them. What now?

Ordias inhaled slowly, then exhaled through his nose. His voice, when he spoke, was cold. Unshaken.

"Reinforce the next wave. Double the escort. Defensive measures around the siege engines, rune barriers, additional turret coverage. And I want every available scout searching for the one responsible for this."

Because whoever had done this wasn’t just another soldier.

She was a predator, possibly an adventurer, a killer of monsters. Ordias grasped the warped metal of the side hatch and wrenched it open, the groaning hinges protesting against the heat-warped frame. A wave of acrid smoke spilt out, thick with the stench of scorched metal and something worse, burnt flesh.

Then, with a sickening thud, a charred body tumbled free.

It struck the ground in a heap, limbs stiff, armor fused to blackened skin. The once-proud insignia of the Empire, etched into the dwarf’s breastplate, was now nothing more than a melted ruin, unrecognisable beneath the soot and slag. What had once been a soldier was now just another piece of wreckage.

He looked back into the ruined interior, his sharp gaze tracing the melted control panels, the broken mechanisms, the scorch marks that lined the inside of the hull. This hadn’t been caused by outside fire. The flames had started from within.

Ordias let the body lie where it had fallen, his gaze shifting once more to the distant treeline. The shadowed woods beyond the wreckage felt too still.

Ordias exhaled sharply, tearing his gaze away from the charred body at his feet. This changed nothing.

The first wave was gone, but the war was far from over. The Empire’s strength did not rest on a single battalion of war machines. They had more. Hundreds were still waiting beyond the forest, ready to roll forward and resume the assault.

But this was an opportunity.

If someone had learned how to take the machines apart, then the Empire had to learn how to counter it.

He turned to the nearest officer, his voice cold and measured. "Drag the wrecks back to camp. All of them. I want the engineers to study the damage, every failure, every breach, every weakness. If nothing else, this will improve the design."

The officer hesitated for only a moment before nodding, barking orders to the labour teams. Soon, the groan of straining Hive Beasts and the clatter of chains filled the air as the ruined machines were dragged from the battlefield. They would be picked apart, every weakness analysed, every flaw reinforced. This would not happen again.

Ordias turned one last time toward the smouldering treeline, his expression unreadable. The Adventurer had proven their skill. They had dismantled his war machines like a seasoned hunter carving through prey.

But they had also revealed themselves.

And when the next wave came, the siege engines would be stronger. Their weaknesses sealed. Their defences refined. And next time…

They would not be so lucky…

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