Peace?

When the first rays of the morning rose, Anoteros was dressing back up, dusting himself and stretching.

The camp had been cleaned--Apart from some bloodstains and the marks of a previous campfire, there was nothing left behind.

Currently, Edrick was accompanied by Daklaiel and Zhujing. His newest servant had already been sent away. Her task was to create a false narrative about what had happened and to simply infiltrate the ranks of Wolf Mountain.

The little ceremony she had gone through before being granted the crest was going to come in handy for her story…

In any case, Anoteros went ahead and sent his two servants to work once again. Though it did not slip past his attention that these two were feeling jealous of the newest recruit... After all, even when she hadn’t even been marked with the crest yet, she had gotten the occasion to please the master already!

They had been marked for longer, yet hadn’t received the occasion to do anything even remotely close to that…

Edrick knew it all because servant crests. It allowed him to have full access to how they were feeling and what they were thinking--It was quite funny to see.

Such was the curse of serving Edrick when you held nothing appealing in his eyes.

As they were sent out, Anoteros could feel them already thinking about what they could do to be more to his taste…

Several more days passed as Edrick and his servants scoured the forests, hunting down and slaying many groups of disciples. Of course, they were rather easy targets since they weren’t expecting such tactics to be used against them.

They had learned about what the Underwood Elves and the native beasts were capable of, but having to deal with another disciple teaming up with an Underwood Elf? That was not something those of sane mind would prepare for.

Many inner disciples died, along with a handful of core disciples as well. All of them were dealt with using sneaky means, not leaving them any chance to actually flex their high cultivation.

Indeed, Ku Xing was correct. There was no need to be stronger than your opponent if you could just shoot them in the head from afar and be done with it.

Along it all, the noble scion gathered a few more servants for himself--One from each sect he encountered: Seclusion Underground, Cliff Side Hall, Golden Destiny Sect, and Wolf Mountain. It seemed like the other disciples were either uninterested or had been expressly told by their sects not to hunt Underwood Elves.

That was fine, however--By hunting them down, Edrick also collected the remains of quite a few Underwood Elves, which he did not have to kill himself.

As the day passed, he found fewer and fewer disciples around. This pattern continued until there seemed to be none left attempting to strike it rich. In the end, he probably only killed a small portion of the disciples that were sent by each of those sects. The main loss would be the handful of core disciples.

But with the story he had made each of his servants tell their respective sects upon returning to wherever they had set up camp, suspicions should not fall on Anoteros himself, or even onto any disciple at all.

No one would be able to analyse the crime scenes or take a look at the bodies, so their testimonies would be the only evidence--And with members of different sects saying the same thing, there would be no logical room for anyone to doubt that story.

Now, only followed by Daklaiel, Edrick hunted down beasts for a while, gathering everything his family had asked of him. He even managed to get himself a few Banana Bats, a beast that looked a lot like a bat, but had developed a camouflage ability of sorts. They used it to hide amidst the bananas grown on certain rare trees of the realm, lying in wait for something to come pick the delicious fruit before attacking.

Their fangs were not coated in venom, but they instead made the target sick, harassing them as they grew weaker until death. Edrick assumed that their fangs were covered in some sort of bacteria.

Still, he might be able to score some points with the Zhenniao clan--Such things greatly interested them.

‘Now onto the main show’

Edrick approached an Underwood alongside Daklaiel, the very same one he had first neared when following after the two Earth-Carrying Boars, which had escaped. After all, it would be much simpler to convince the elves there, mainly since they knew Daklaiel personally.

The master-servant duo approached confidently. Daklaiel led the way directly through the concealing array. It was to be said, although they lacked the expertise to add ways to also cause intruders to become lost and venture in the wrong direction, the invisibility itself was top-notch. Everything about the village was totally unseen, and with the way Underwood Elves normally behaved, it was hard to hear anything as well.

They were quiet and whispered to one another.

Anoteros got to see a village of these elves for the first time. It was rather unimpressive... As was known, they weren’t like wood or nature elves that lived closely to the forest and the environment. Their homes were built out of logs and planks. There was nothing extraordinary about their architecture.

They just lived simply. They gathered resources and hunted to sustain themselves, and all was well.

Swiftly upon entering, however, the mood shifted. The elves saw a tall figure that definitely wasn’t anything they were used to seeing. Many recognised Edrick as a human, but before all those people could turn invisible and act, Daklaiel got their attention and rapidly began explaining the situation.

One elf in particular seemed to be quite inquisitive. Judging by his garbs, Anoteros presumed that he was a chief of sorts, or at least, the leader of this village.

The noble scion wasn’t yet fluent enough to understand everything, but he got the gist of the conversation. The chief was bombarding Daklaiel with questions, and his servant was replying without hesitation every single time.

This continued until he eventually mentioned that Edrick wished to establish peaceful relations, and that to prove his goodwill, he had brought something…

Edrick brought out something from his bags, unwrapped it all, and let the objects within fall to the ground. They were the scalps of all of the disciples he had tracked and slain over the past few days. Their appearance made it clear that they truly belonged to humans, and they were all relatively fresh at that.

Daklaiel didn’t hold back and began explaining how valiantly and heroically Anoteros had felled the vicious murderers who had come to slaughter their kind.

It was hard for the chief not to be impressed…

But he had to ask- What did ‘peaceful relations’ mean here exactly?

The servant was happy to elaborate by repeating what Edrick had told him.