Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!-Chapter 601: The Oceanic Sands

Past the nameless city lays a tract of sandy lands that stretches into the horizon and then some more. Its tall dunes crash against each other like the choppy waves of the hellish ocean, and to traverse the land without being buried, the same ships from the ocean had to be built with slight modifications.

Row boats or any smaller vessel was of no use as the dunes rose higher than the tallest churches known to man. The enemies, on the other hand, remained unaffected and being highly adaptive as horrors, they used the very plains as their playground for torture. A total of two hundred men and women have already succumbed to the monsters, but at last, their sacrifice helped the rest of the crew better themselves.

And now with Raven–the hero at the helm of the vanguard ship, the crew had finally arrived near the gated city within which the lesser demon general had holed himself up. Dark walls as tall as the skies emerged from the ground and covered the entire thing in a dome similar in shape to that of a spider's back. Arche had tried to crack the surface of the dome with all her power, but even in her colossal form, the thick coat of darkness–a living horror, in fact–refused to even dent.

"S-sir…" Hearing a hushed voice calling out to him, Raven slowly turned to find a demi-human harpy standing behind him with visible angst. She was scared, that much was obvious, but with her companions still fighting off giant sandworms, salamanders and even undead horrors in the background, she knew that she couldn't afford to hesitate now. "Sir, we're running out of rations, and the horrors are overwhelming us. We need you to do something, or else we won't survive until morning!"

Folding his hands, Raven looked at the girl. His expression blank as it usually was these days, however, not because he didn't care, but for some other reasons entirely.

"S-sir?"

"If I do all the hard work, what are you people going to learn?" To his words, her eyes widened. Unfolding his hands, Raven raised his right hand and conjured a shield made of living dark flesh. "I've said this countless times already: the harder things are now, the easier they will become."

"I know but–"

The shrieking voice of a skeletal undead cut the girl's words, but with his shield already in place, Raven glanced sideways at the monster trying to board their ship with a blade already swinging at them.

"Tck…" Slamming the shield into the horror, Raven shattered every bone in its body as if it was made of hardened clay. But before the crumbs fell to the floor, countless hands emerged from the shield and absorbed the horrors' corruption to fuel the warlord's strength. "This is the easiest training that you're gonna get! In the heart of the enemy's hold!"

Letting go of the shield, Raven reached forward and grabbed the girl by her collar. Pulling her close, he screamed into her already terrified face.

"What did I tell you?! DON'T SHOW THEM MERCY! AND DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME TALKING TO ME! WE JUST NEED TO HOLD THIS PLACE TILL THE MORNING, SO GO BACK AND JOIN YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN FIGHT!"

Shoving her away, Raven quickly turned back to the front. His eyes lingered on the dark dome's only entrance. In the background, he could hear the girl sniffling, but he's already learned much from his mistakes, and the last time he hesitated and tried to make things easier for the rest, about a hundred soldiers lost their lives to carelessness.

'They rely on me too much…' Still, the image of the overjoyed soldiers flashes in his eyes. They were clapping to his display of strength, but that's when the horror managed to sneak behind them and sever their heads before anything could be done.

"No wonder Helga was a monster, no wonder every general acts like an asshole…" Staring at the massive gates of the dome, his mind continued to wander. Helga, Markus and even Regalia had taught him much about leading an army, and at first, he could never understand why they all shared one thing in common.

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'Your soldiers should fear you more than the enemy; otherwise, your orders would mean nothing.' An advice he got from all three of the generals and something he learned the value of far too late in his own opinion.

"Raven? Raven? You there?" Hearing Amedith's voice from his necklace, Raven was pulled out of his mental trance. Fetching the necklace from inside his shirt, he brought it in front of his mouth.

"Yeah, how's everything inside the dome?"

"As planned, but the poison had no effect on the general. We're gonna be moving on to plan B in an hour instead."

"Expected as much to be honest, just make sure to follow Monty's advice–that boy still has better instinct for trouble than you or Liliya–"

"Don't move too much, I have to put the makeup on still!" As Liliyana's voice crept in through the necklace, Raven's eyes furrowed on their own. A bit confused, he decided to listen to what was happening there.

"Can't you wait? I'm still talking to him!"

"Ugh ~ Fine!"

A moment of silence lingered, but Amedith's voice returned not too long after.

"Keep guarding the gates in case he tries to escape–we can't afford to let him slip through our hands."

"I have no intentions to fight his horrors for six more months. Don't worry; we're keeping good watch of the gate." The shrieking sounds of horrors in the background pulled Raven out of the conversation for a moment. Turning around, he watched the ten vessels and the soldiers on them still struggling to fight off the creatures of terror. "Connect the link again if there's any update. I need to get back and keep up the farce that we're still fighting."

"Will do…" And with that, Amedith cut the link between his ring and Raven's necklace.

Left to his own devices, warlord watched the soldiers for a good few seconds more. If needed, he could get rid of the enemy all on his own, but since the flow of monsters was constant and the lesser general's horrors weren't quite as fierce as even some of the keepers, he felt no need to help and simply allowed the soldiers to train themselves.

"But I can't have them dying from exhaustion either," he muttered to himself and shifted into his dark fae form. Splitting his body in multiple of the same strength by using the strength of the absorbed horrors, Raven stretched one hand forward, and the clones went charging towards the horrors.

'Capture them, I'll make better use of these slaves than their current master.' Nodding instinctively to their originator's orders, the clones did as asked–and in just a matter of a few minutes, the stream of horrors returned to a manageable normal for the soldiers.