Birds die for food and people die for riches

Getting closer to the ruins Arran realized he would have great chances to find essence crystals and increase both his affinity with magic and with his shadow blade. And then he realized he all but forgot about the shadow metal armor he picked up in the shadow realm. It had remained dormant in his ring for years now without him having the opportunity to use it.

The Wolfsblood army divided into cohorts of 500 soldiers to increase the area they could search while preserving their safety from any possible dangers. Arran ran fast through the ruins while relying on his shadow weapon's sense to locate treasure but their sheer size proved a challenge even for him.

After a few hours, he had managed to find a few starmetal swords and even a few essence crystals of high purity. He decided to give the weapons to Kaleesh to share with his rangers and used the crystals to further improve his bond with the sword. The soldiers had a hard time finding anything of worth despite their numbers because they could only rely on their eyes to spot treasure and the ruins had been searched by countless others before them. The second day Arran managed to find a living shadow sword and a few starmetal armors while the army found some shadow metal coins and a few weapons though their search was interrupted when a group of a few dozen Blightspawn lead by three Reavers came into sight.

After a short battle, the Blightspawn were defeated and the search resumed with not much success. On the 3rd day, Arran managed to find two more shadow swords, a few starmetal weapons, and 2 dozen essence crystals while the army found a few starmetal weapons and armors. This continued for another week with Arran finding almost one hundred essence crystals and thousands of shadow metal coins and many starmetal weapons and armors while the army had a few finds here and there but not too much.

Then the next day Arran felt what he knew was a warlock but by the time he managed to kill it, almost eighty soldiers had died. While its power was greatly suppressed by the Desolation its power was of a strong Master or even a Grandmaster. After this episode, Kaleesh decided to end the search and head south to safer places. He blamed himself for the death of his soldiers but knew he had to maintain high morale for the sake of the army.

They all knew the dangers they would be facing in the Desolation and were willing to take the risk anyway to gain both freedom and riches. While walking south the number of Blightspawn groups and numbers decreased but after a month into the Desolation, the number of Blightspawn killed was well over a thousand with 56 Reavers and one Warlock. In all this time Arran trained on improving his control over his Destruction essence but also sparred with Kaleesh and the Rangers.

Barric manager to finally take his first step into enlightenment and Kaleesh was not far behind. The constant life and death battles proving to be beneficial because sparring while effective has its limitations.

Another month went by in similar fashion, with sporadic battles against the Blightspawn and Kaleesh decided it was time to start returning to Sacrifice. The journey there would take a few weeks if nothing happened on the way and their food supplies were only enough for a bit over a month now.

Slowly but surely the Wolfsblood army traveled back while fighting small groups of Blightspawn and Reavers but by now they proved to be far easier to defeat than when they first entered the Desolation.

Three weeks of travel and Sacrifice came in sight with both sentiments of relief and dread at its sight. While it brought protection from the Blightspawn its inner politics and strife were much more dangerous and harder to anticipate than any Blightspawn.

A few days later and Arran found himself in front of the Paladins guarding the entrance to the tunnels that led to Sacrifice. The Paladin told Arran that Archon Roshan wanted to see him and then allowed them to enter the tunnels. A few hours later they found themselves again in Sacrifice and in need of accommodations. Kaleesh and Arran decided to get something better this time around because they could now spend the shadow metal coins in Arran's possession without raising any suspicion.

No one could possibly know how much treasure they found in the ruins but just to make sure Kaleesh decided to sell a few hundred Blightspawn amulets and sent Barric and Arjun to the task while striving for the best price and to confuse their enemies on their wealth.