Chapter 324: Returning to Town and Finding the Militia

"Jier! You're awake! Lads, look, Jier is up. I told you, he didn't look like he suffered any injuries at the time; see, he only slept for half a day and he's awake." A young Hunter was the first to spot Jier walking over and immediately shouted loudly.

Jier stroked his face and arms, indeed finding no palpable wounds or burns or anything of the sort.

"Sit here, let me see your condition now." An old Hunter shifted, clearing a section of a tree trunk placed near the campfire. Everyone was sitting on these logs arranged in a circle, and at this moment, they were all looking at Jier as he walked over.

Jier scratched his golden-brown hair, smiled, and came over to sit down.

"Which of you saw my armor? I didn't see it when I got up." Jier stretched out his bare feet, moving them closer to the campfire to warm them.

A young Hunter whom Jier had saved before pointed to the side of the tent Jier had emerged from: "We found a crate; after we saved you from the Magic Beast's body, your things were all put inside. By the way, that axe of yours is really eerie. Aside from the Knight, no one else can even hold it. It would even jump out of a tightly gripped hand on its own."

When this matter was brought up, all the Hunters wore curious expressions. When they were checking on the unconscious Jier earlier, someone had gripped the axe, and as a result, the axe suddenly broke free from that Hunter's hand. The others were startled, but after observing it for a while, they found the weapon did not harm people, so they all boldly tried it themselves. As it turned out, only the incredibly strong Knight Ranisha could forcibly keep the axe gripped in her hand; the others couldn't even hold it, let alone use that axe to fight.

Jier was also surprised to hear this. He had never encountered such a situation when using the axe himself, and the axe was very easy to use. Previously, when dealing with the evil Goblin-worshipped Stone Statue, he had relied on it to defeat the very bizarre statue.

Combining this with the story told by the blacksmith who gave him the weapon, he guessed that this axe was extraordinary, but he hadn't expected it to have such peculiar behavior while he was unconscious.

Smiling, Jier looked at the Hunters gazing at him, and while warming himself by the fire, he began to talk about how he had obtained this weapon, as well as the extraordinary past experiences of the weapon's former owner.

At some point, Knight Ranisha also sat by the campfire. She took off her Steel Helmet, untied the braid coiled behind her head, and combed her hair with a small silver comb.

Jier finished telling the short story, and Knight Ranisha stopped combing her hair and said: "Good eloquence. You not only have impressive skills and good luck, but you also have a knack for storytelling."

Jier placed his hand on his chest and bowed, smiling as he acknowledged the Knight's praise.

But as he lowered his head, he saw that on the right hand he had placed against his chest, one of the fingers was actually wearing a plain-looking metal ring.

For a moment, his breathing and even his heartbeat stopped. But then he thought, the story of the female Elf he had dreamed of after falling unconscious only appeared when he was wearing this ring, or when the ring was nearby while he slept.

He remembered burying this ring under the soil of the camp outside the Elf Ruins, and the forest they were currently in should be at least a hundred kilometers away from that Elf Ancient Ruins.

How could it suddenly appear on his finger?

Could it be.

Thinking of this, Jier stroked the skin on the back of his hand and his arm. Everything was healthy, firm, and elastic; the intense pain caused by the erosion of the glowing mist seemed as if it had never occurred at all.

It seemed that after he was near death and unconscious, this Elf Ring had appeared somehow and saved his life.

Jier pondered, could it be because he hadn't yet experienced all of the female Elf's life in his dreams? Before dreaming it all, he couldn't die?

This absurd reason suddenly popped into Jier's mind and instantly occupied all his thoughts.

"Jier. Jier? Jier!" Knight Ranisha called Jier's name loudly.

Only then did Jier react. He raised his head and looked blankly at the Knight across the campfire: "Sir Knight, what is it?"

"Sigh, I called your name and you didn't respond. It seems your spirit is still not recovered; you should rest more later. The arduous battle is over, and we will have to return to Kendall City afterward. Hmm, calculating the time, it seems it's almost time for the Militia to set out to clear out the Bandits.

Here is the plan: the Magic Beast's corpse must be brought back, but no matter how you look at it, we don't have enough manpower. Later, I will stay here with a few people, and you others will go directly out from here to find the Militia near Bingxun Pass. Please bring the leading Knight Kela and the Baron Heir to bring people over. Relying on those numerous Militia, we can get this big guy back to the city. This is a great achievement worthy of being recorded in the town's records." The two rescued women knelt half-way behind the female Knight, helping her wipe her hair with clean snow, then braiding her long hair back up.

The Hunters who received Knight Ranisha's arrangements all agreed, and Jier nodded along as well. It was only right; such a huge Magic Beast had been successfully subjugated, and no matter what, it had to be transported back to the city to be displayed. No matter how one thought about it, this was a huge achievement.

Knight Ranisha stood up and walked over. After getting close to Jier, she scrutinized him carefully, but the expression on her face was not relaxed.

Jier did not know that while he looked the same as before to himself and others, in the eyes of Knight Ranisha, he was vastly different.

Jier's entire body looked normal to the naked eye, but once observed through Magic Perception, his whole person was slowly emitting a magical radiance invisible to the naked eye.

These Magic Powers were all gathered on the surface of Jier's skin, clustering into small lumps, making Jier look like the patterns on a jungle leopard.

Squinting her eyes, the female Knight asked in a relaxed tone: "By the way, Jier, can you tell everyone what happened after you were recklessly trapped inside the Magic Beast's body?"

As soon as this was mentioned, the other Hunters burst into laughter. They had been told by the Knight at the time that the Magic Beast had gathered a large amount of Magic Power to do something, most likely a self-detonation before death.

Therefore, they had all hidden far away and laid low. As a result, they and the Knight waited and waited, but after a long while, the Magic Beast had simply cooled down on its own.

After cautiously waiting for half a day, they had boldly approached, and Knight Ranisha had broken the Hardened Mucus of the Magic Beast's Abdominal Sac, where they found the unconscious Jier in the center of the Magic Beast's huge body.

Jier scratched his head and detailed what he had done before losing consciousness. He had indeed been a bit reckless before, thinking he could be like Sun Wukong, entering the monster's belly and being able to manipulate it. He hadn't expected it to almost cost him his life.

After listening, Knight Ranisha pointed to a snow pile specially heaped up on the open ground not far away, inside which was the Magic Beast's main Magic Organ—the one that had fallen off after Jier cut the Blood Vessel at the last moment: "It seems you successfully stopped the Magic Beast's final action at the time, which is why you managed to preserve that precious thing."

She tapped Jier on the shoulder with her fist: "Ha, count it as your contribution. After returning to the city, Kendall Baron will reward you."

For the next half day, Jier sat by the campfire eating and drinking to recover his fatigue and appetite, then followed the Hunters to collect all the items on the entire battlefield.

Because they had to return with the rescued female civilians, it was difficult to bring back the many Bandit spoils they had obtained, so they dug a pit right next to the Magic Beast's huge corpse and hid various things inside.

Jier, along with three old Hunters and three young Hunters, pulled the previous handcart, which carried food and the corpse of one dead young Hunter. With three horses obtained from the Bandits, carrying six female civilians, they prepared to set off from the edge of the forest to bypass any potential Bandit Group, walk out of this forest where the Bandits gathered for the winter, and head east to find the Militia team.

The Long Spear that Knight Ranisha had borrowed from Jier was also found in the Magic Beast's abdomen, following the wound. Of course, by now, Jier didn't care much about this single weapon; all his thoughts were now focused on ending all this, then taking the large amount of metal weapons seized from the Bandits, melting them into Metal Ingots in a workshop, and starting to forge his all-metal armor.

Not only that, Jier felt more and more that his transport capacity in the wild was insufficient. The handcart that relied on human pushing now seemed increasingly unusable; if he wanted to transport the large amount of supplies he had obtained, it would be impossible without a horse-drawn or donkey-drawn cart.

Therefore, Jier set his sights on the three horses seized from the Bandits. These three horses were kept in fairly healthy condition by the Bandits; just looking at their usual active appearance, one could tell how robust they were. And it was estimated that since the Bandits' horses required multiple people to take turns using them, these seized horses would not resist whoever rode them.

Even with women who had never ridden a horse before, they carried them obediently and carefully, not letting the humans riding them fall off.

It was a pity that during the previous Bandit melee and the subsequent Magic Beast attack on the Bandits, many horses were either killed by the Bandits or killed by the Magic Beast. Or they had escaped into the forest on their own, or were taken away by the Bandits who finally escaped.

These were all things Knight Ranisha had said; at the time, they were either far away or trapped in the White Mist, unable to see anything.

It was just a pity.

Horses were considered very valuable commodities in Kendall County, because the vast majority of horses in the county were supplied to the Imperial Knight Order on the northern border, so the use of horses by the people of Kendall County was very rare and infrequent.

Most used donkeys as substitutes for horses.

Jier felt that he might be able to exchange the reward Knight Ranisha mentioned for one or two docile horses, so that he would have higher mobility and transport capacity in the future.

Whenever he thought of this, he envied the spatial storage equipment that every protagonist in the novels he had read before possessed. And in this world with Magic and other magical powers, it seemed that in the stories he heard, there were similar things, but none of them were items the current Jier could afford.

The group of people returning bypassed the forest all the way, traveling along the small patches of ground between the forest and the high mountains. As for exactly how to get out, they had already obtained the accurate route by interrogating the captured scout Bandits. Jier even relied on paper and pen to draw a rough map of the surroundings.

Two copies of the map were made; Knight Ranisha kept one, and the other was handed to the most experienced old Hunter in Jier's team.

Jier knew that although he had made a very important contribution in the previous operation to subjugate the Magic Beast, to Knight Ranisha, the old Hunter she knew and was familiar with was still more trusted.

This was something that couldn't be helped.

As a newcomer, Jier believed that through his actions, he would make the Knight and the Hunters trust him more.

After their group bypassed the forest where the Bandits wintered, they headed toward the mountains in the southeast. The terrain here was complex, but fortunately, as it was the time for the Militia's annual routine clearing of Bandits, no matter how bold the Bandit Group was, they would all be huddled in their hiding spots at this time, not daring to come out to rob or plunder at all.

So even though the mountain forest area was complex and difficult to walk, Jier and the others did not encounter a single Bandit who dared to block their way.

Moreover, the recent weather was also relatively good. Since the first heavy snow of the previous winter, for the following few days, there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. Jier knew that this was a weather phenomenon after the cold air mass from the north arrived.

However, once this cold air mass moves south, or if its strength is insufficient and the warm, humid air mass from the south moves north again, this place will once again experience a new, complex weather pattern.

Most likely, it will be an even larger snowstorm.

The clear weather also brought another trouble; many people in the group experienced significant eye pain, and Jier was no exception. At first, he thought it was a side effect of taking the Red-eye Mushroom Sugar Pill, but upon seeing that other female civilians in the group were the same, he realized it was because the snow in the Forest reflected a large amount of sunlight, and prolonged exposure caused them—who did not know how to protect their eyes after winter snowfall—to suffer from snow blindness.

The Hunters who had been Hunting in the wild during winter for years were much smarter; they would find autumn leaves that had not yet rotted in the snow, poke a few small holes in them to look through, and then hang this thing on their faces to block the area of their eyes.

Jier immediately stuffed the same thing into his Helmet as a means to prevent snow blindness. Others immediately learned this as well, putting the easily startled female civilians at ease, so they would no longer be afraid that it was a Curse cast by some Monster in the mountain Forest.

During their journey, Jier also noticed that they were walking within the territory near the Thieves of Luodai Cave Bandit Group.

He immediately thought of the civilians he had previously rescued from the lair of the Thieves of Luodai Cave; if they had been waiting in Bingxun Pass for this winter's Militia clearing operation, they would certainly be leading a large number of Militia toward the Bandit lair to attack at this time.

This was something everyone had agreed upon before Jier left; at the time, Jier had even said that he would join in when the time came to contribute to the clearing of the Thieves of Luodai Cave.

Thinking of this, Jier called a halt to the group and briefly explained what had happened between him, Bingxun Pass, and the Bandits.

"Are you saying that we don't need to head directly to Bingxun Pass, but instead walk a bit toward the northeast to find a large group of Militia currently attacking that Bandit lair?" an old Hunter in the group asked, holding the map Jier had drawn.

Jier looked at the people around him and nodded, pointing to a spot on the map in the old man's hand: "This is our current location, and a bit further north-northeast is the location of that Bandit lair. I speculate that by now, with the rescued civilians leading as a Local Guide, the Militia must be focusing their main force on clearing this Bandit Group, while other smaller groups are casting a net to clear smaller Bandit gangs. We just need to head straight there."

The old Hunters gathered to discuss it, while the other young Hunters in the group did not express their opinions; being less experienced, they rarely voiced their foolish opinions in the presence of the old Hunters.

Jier was different; he had always acted alone previously, and his way of doing things was very different from the Hunters, so his autonomy was very high, and when faced with potential situations, he liked to state his plans for everyone to hear.

After discussion, the old Hunters felt that although Jier's plan to change course was bold and dangerous, it was not impossible; after all, the danger came from the possibility that the Militia had not yet arrived to attack the Bandit lair, and the area around the Bandit lair might still be full of Bandits patrolling.

Once discovered by these Bandits, it would not be easy for them to escape.

But the Hunters felt it was actually nothing; compared to the Bandits who were familiar with the environment, these guys who spent their days crawling and struggling in the Forest were even more in their element. They would certainly discover others before the Bandits discovered them, whether they were Bandits or Militia.

Therefore, Jier and his people decided to change course and head toward the direction of the Thieves of Luodai Cave lair, striving to encounter the main force of the Militia as soon as possible, meet Knight Kela who was leading the Militia, and have him send people to the deeper mountain Forest in the rear to transport the huge Magic Beast that had been successfully hunted, as well as the entire group of Bandits from the winter Forest.

They did not just walk over brazenly with people and horses; instead, they split their already small group into two, with the young and strong Jier and a young Hunter acting as a vanguard reconnaissance team, walking two hours ahead of the others.

Relying on the young Hunter's excellent observational skills for finding prey and Jier's powerful close-combat ability, they could ensure they were foolproof while conducting reconnaissance.

Soon, within a day of choosing this advance plan, Jier and a Hunter named Pengbutuoto discovered a small-scale battle in a clearing in the woods ahead of them.

The two sides fighting were naturally the two groups most likely to appear nearby; one side was a small patrol of Thieves of Luodai Cave who had been operating locally for several years, and the other was a ten-man squad of Melee Militia.

Jier and Pengbutuoto lay in the snow on a high ground not far away, digging only two observation holes in the snow to watch the battle below.

If the Militia were fighting at a disadvantage, they would help. If the Militia had the upper hand, they would come out afterward. At this moment, the two sides were in the middle of a battle, and if they appeared rashly, it was very likely that both sides would think the two of them were the other's men.

If both sides came to attack the two of them, that would not be very good.