Casualties

The night was without disturbances. The one who chose the location of their night rest was a veteran expert in this area, and he seemed to be pretty talented.

Other than Tower, the group contained two other novice adventurers. This mission seemed to be their first monster clearing mission and they were fairly anxious as they kept watch during the night. But as time passed, they relaxed quite a bit and started making small talk with each other.

Tower was disinclined to join them at first, after all he was the 'Supreme Ruler' of this world and had to maintain the bearing of one, but when he 'unintentionally' eves-dropped on their conversation and found that they were discussing about mind Cultivators, Tower forced himself to join the conversation.(even though it was unbefitting of a supreme character like him.)

"Hmm! You know a Mind Cultivator?" Tower, who looked 21 in his original body, eyed the novice adventurer on his right skeptically.

Mint was this adventurer's name, and he was the one who bought up the topic of mind Cultivators.

Mint was a 24 year old adventurer. To become an adventurer approved by the Association, one would need a basic cultivation of Minor Solidification Realm of the Body Strengthening, but this realm was too far out of reach to many people.

A country in which, out of a million, one being able to reach Minor Solidification Realm, can be considered a prosperous country. And Mint achieved something that was impossible to millions within 24 years.

He was naturally proud about this. In fact he had the qualifications to be proud. After all, he was still fairly young considering the fact that the average age of the novice adventurers in the Association was 38.

This also meant that Mint was quite talented even in those that were able to reach Minor Solidification Realm.

But looking at Tower who seemed younger than him, Mint did not show jealousy. He simply nodded indicating that he knew Mind Cultivators.

"Oh! Is that real? Do you have any proof?" Tower continued to ask, still looking skeptical.

"I would not lie about this!" Mint said in a calm tone. "He is my distant cousin. I was also able to get a spot in this High rewarding mission because he spoke a few words in my stead!"

Tower lightly nodded his head as if accepting Mint's words, but seeing Mint looking back intently at him, he put up an innocent expression thus hiding his thoughts to avoid letting Mint guess his intentions towards the question.

"So, how did a newbie like you get a spot?" The other novice adventurer intervened, trying not to be left out of the conversation. Unlike these two who were still young, he was already an old man and even his spot for the mission was earned through connections.

Still it wasn't easy for him as everyone in the Association had these connections! Luckily, his connections were strong enough to beat most others!

He had survived in the Association until now because of his connections and he did not plan on changing his behaviour in future. Tower and Mint were still young with unlimited future potential and both of them looked naive. This made them easy to fool into owing him a few favors.

"This..." Tower scratched the back of his head, acting embarrassed to reply.

"I got lucky, and just brought wine for a retired adventurer. He seemed to have some influence in the Association."

The old adventurer nodded. He understood that Tower did not want to talk about his backing in the Association. Otherwise, why would he give such a lousy explanation.

'Buying wine, bah! Do you think this old man is an idiot?! It should be more than just buying right? Like buying him some sexy fox-girls! Under their fluffiness the retired man should have given into all of your wishes!'

The old man often used this tactic and thus had this ridiculous conjecture. But in the world of adventurers this was quite common. Madness was in air, and their thoughts followed.

Tower did not show interest in mind Cultivators anymore and made some other small talk. They were of similar strength and were connected through the Association, they would meet often so there was no need to rush things and get busted.

The group woke up early, and though the other two novice adventurers looked sleepy, they did not complain and packed things to move.

An hour after the move, one of the three silver ranked adventurer gave them an order to stop. He seemed to have received some kind of unfavorable information from the scouts and his brows were tightly locked.

Orders passed down the line and a bronze ranked adventurer cautioned Tower and the two others to be on guard.

This was the first time they had been cautioned during the mission. The two novice adventurers warily looked around their surrounds, having thoughts of hiding safely at moment's notice.

Suddenly a commotion broke out in the three squads before them. Weapons flew around crazily and the third squad which familiarized in unarmed combat seemed to have some causalities.

The silver ranked adventurers leading the group took action at the same time against this unknown enemy and released a strong counterattack which rose the morale of the group.

The two novice adventurers were busy passing spare weapons around to replace the damaged ones and thus stayed near stronger bronze adventurers to protect themselves from the enemy.

They were smart, and seemed prepared.

As for Tower, he had advanced perception from the chained Devil Cultivator and took cover as soon as the enemy attacked. He was probably at the safest location in the group.

One minute into the battle, Tower was finally able to find out who their enemy was! From his hidden location, Tower saw a vague outline of monsters that seemed to be burrowing into the forest ground and randomly popping out of the ground to attack.

"A rabbit hybrid?" Tower guessed. A normal rabbit would often need 2 to 5 minutes to borrow fully into the ground but these hybrids could do it instantly.

'Hmm! Should I catch one? It would help me if I had to run or hide!'

The Round Table had 10 chairs. Other than the main chair which belonged to him, six of these chairs were currently empty, the other three chairs contained a sealed Henock, the hunter, and the outlaw.

Tower kept a Henock as it was easy for Tower to fly away if faced with a dangerous situation. But borrowing into earth seemed to have its own advantages.

As he decided, Tower took action immediately. He cautiously climbed down from the tree he was hiding, thus exposing his location, and vigilantly used his perception to handle the upcoming events.

As Tower had guessed, the rabbit monsters seemed to be using the ground as a medium to sense the adventurers, and they locked down on his location the moment his feet touched the ground.

Half a minute later, Tower felt vague movement in the ground to his right and a smile crept up on his face. The monster had taken bait.

The following actions were quite simple. The rabbit monster thought it was stealthily attacking Tower while Tower could sense it as clear as a day. It emerged silently behind Tower's back only to find a modern looking baseball bat coming down on its head. By the way Tower borrowed the bat from the spare weapons.

Tower did not use his complete strength in this blow as he still needed the monster alive and the monster's hard skull further helped protecting it from a fatal injury. But this wasn't a good thing to the monster as black color chains dragged it into Tower's sea of consciousness without any opposition!

Tower did not get over his head because of this as he was already the Supreme Ruler and immediately found a safe tree to hide away.

The battle between two sides lasted two hours. In fact the rabbit monsters were not strong excluding their hiding ability and the adventurers could have cleared them up in half an hour, but to their discomfort, they had to reduce the expenditure, which meant they had to be careful not to damage the weapons and thus it took four times longer.

Tower could only shake his head at this behaviour. They were lucky that they had not come over other monster packs while dealing with the rabbits, otherwise there might have been a few casualties.

As an action thriller author in his previous life, Tower had rich experience in often considering various situations, particularly dangerous situations that ran a chill in one's spine, but that was under the pretext that the character could survive.

And he often researched things to make the storyline as clear as possible. After all, half based storylines often met with biased and unbiased criticism.

Because of this, and his survival experience in the underworld, Tower clearly understood the ethics behind survival.

But then he might be wrong! Maybe the adventurers knew that the other monster packs would not come across them during their battle!

Tower was open to all thoughts, a basic requirement to an expert author.

....

There were no serious casualties in this battle and the medicine they carried on them was enough to deal with the light injuries the group had. This let the group able to move with just a short rest.

But today seemed to be an unlucky day for the group. One of the scouts had unintentionally stepped into the home ground of a large flock of crow monsters.

Having been noticed by the monster's high perception, he ran back to the group at his maximum speed. But before he could reach the group to seek help, the three silver ranked adventurers gave the scout an order from afar to run in the opposite direction! Which was basically saying him to suicide!

The scout was baffled but he understood his superior's orders. If he continued towards their group, though he could be saved, they would ultimately have a few casualties in a direct battle with these group of flying monsters. The superior was sending one subordinate to death instead of 10.

But who would want to give up on their life. The scout cared about his life as if it was his wife and ignored his orders. He still ran towards the group!

The three silver ranked adventurers looked coldly at him, but they did not act against him. They only shook their heads and ordered their group to get ready to face the onslaught of the crow monsters.

As soon as the battle erupted between the two sides, Tower found a spot out of human eye and transformed into the rabbit. He then borrowed into the ground.

The crow monsters had high Perception but that was related to their eyesight. They could not see through the ground to perceive Tower's location.

The battle lasted half an hour and ended up in adventurer's victory. The three silver ranked adventurers crazily slaughtered the crows without holding back and massacred 90% of the initial wave. Unlike before they did not hold back in using their equipment to the limits and fought with their everything. This ultimately damaged the equipment but they were able to avoid more casualties.

But even then, causalities did occur. The group lost three unarmed bronze ranked adventurers and had another 11 seriously injured.

Ironically, the scout was safe as a bird in a cage.

Tower once again found a human-less spot to transform back, before joining the group during the confusion.

His two fellow novice adventurers were heavily injured but still alive. Apparently Mint had used a treasure to protect himself, while a silver ranked adventurer protected the older novice adventurer. The silver ranked adventurer seemed to be owing a favor to this old guy.