In the end, Zaos decided to attack. He didn't owe anything to the people that tried to screw with him, after all. So, for all that he could care, they could die while he attacks, and Zaos won't lose a single night of sleep over their deaths.

  After making his decision, Zaos moved around the tent a little bit because he couldn't make a scene. He had to be fast and effective in taking down those guards. So, after the guards were almost on a line in front of him, he enchanted the spear with wind magic and then stabbed the air. Every time he did that, a powerful burst of wind flew toward that group. The first one got hit in the neck, and then it snapped. As for the next four, Zaos hit them on the sides. Still, while they didn't die, he could tell that he damaged their ribcage quite a lot, and they were agonizing on the ground every time their heartbeat. However, the spear ran out of mana before Zaos could finish the last one… Fyran.

  Fyran looked to the side and saw Zaos running toward him, and then he tried to escape after firing Fire Spears toward Zaos. The kid knew that he couldn't defeat Zaos in a direct fight, after all. Zaos prepared to enhance his arm and then throw the spear toward the enemy, but he gave up on it in the end. He didn't want to kill someone who was younger than him with a weapon of the only person of that region that he respected and only wished to have peace on his last days.

"When did I become this sentimental?" Zaos said and then shook his head while he entered the tent.

  After looking for a while, Zaos found some boxes, and his gear was stored in there. He quickly equipped everything, but he still didn't let go of the dark cloak. He would need that in order not to be recognized in the future… even though the dark cloak will only make him look more suspicious. Before leaving the tent, Zaos found a map on a table of the region, it was a really rough map, but it seemed more detailed than the ones he saw on the northern base.

"I guess this will be useful," Zaos nodded to himself. "I will have to find a route in which neither of them will be able to follow me, after all."

  Zaos grabbed it and then stored it in his backpack, and then he left the tent. In the distance, he already could see the soldiers fighting at the summit of the main path. That was weird, though. After all, he couldn't see them invading in any other direction…

"This is no longer my problem… I am worried about Nyana and the others, but… they will survive this," Zaos said, and then he began to run to the northern side of the mountain.

  In order not to be seen by anyone, Zaos will have to follow the longest route. Without a horse, he will waste several days while taking a roundabout route back to the kingdom. Still, again… he didn't have any other options.

----- -----

"You have got to be kidding me… what is going on now?" Cohnal asked, annoyed when he saw hundreds of zombies trying to attack them from behind.

"It seems the followers of the demon god finally decided to stop pulling back their punches," Melisse said. "Archers! Fire arrows on the zombies!"

  Fortunately, they have been saving the archers of the unit to attack once they cross the secret passage since it would be too much to expect that they would hit anything in that darkness. The archers turned around and then began to fire their flame arrows toward the zombies, and they slowly began to burn. To obtain some extra time, Nyana and mages also used fired magic on them. Their attacks worked a bit faster, but even so, it didn't take long before the zombies finally reached them.

  Cohnal stepped forward and then began to swing his sword with his full horizontal attacks, and the zombies were split in half every time he did that. But he was forced to stop for a while when he recognized that they were the soldiers of the other three special units that had joined them for that expedition.

  Since they focused on the zombies, the followers of the demon god were free to attack with their magic, and so they did that. Using the same weird tactics as before, they began to attack.

"This is no good… Retreat! Retreat!" Cohnal shouted.

  Being attacked from two sides was one of the worst things that could happen on the battlefield, so Cohnal gave that order before they could suffer too many casualties. Since the frontline focused on defense and the mages and archers focused on offense, they managed to stop the casualties and slowly but surely began to kill the enemies that were pursuing them.

  After a couple of hours, they were back at the camp, and the Bloody Knights noticed that they hadn't been the only ones who were forced to retreat. The three special units had been completely decimated and turned into zombies. The other two made some progress, but the zombies surrounded them before they could do anything with it. The soldiers of that region had already fought against zombies sometimes, but never against so many… thanks to their better gear, had they managed to fight on equal foot, even though the enemies' power had increased. However, unlike them, the enemy sides could gain new soldiers. They just had to use the fallen soldiers.

  When Vitalar found the Captains in front of his tent, he bit his lips in exasperation. According to the reports, they had four thousand soldiers, and the enemy had lost three thousand… but now they had an army of five thousand zombies. He captured some followers of the demon god. Still, it wasn't nearly enough to declare that the expedition ended with any decent result. Without any other option, Vitalar declared:

"Let's retreat," Vitalar said.