Jass adjusted her grip on the glaive, planting her back foot into the dirt as the bamboo in front of them swayed with sudden tension; however, that could have just been their nerves being set on edge after what happened less than three seconds ago.
They tensed from a sudden thud a couple of meters beside them, but eased as what had caused it was the beheaded man's head that had hit the ground.
Nothing moved for a few seconds after that, with the only noise around them being the wind cutting low and slow through the tall grass around them, the slight swaying of the bamboo, and the faint hum of Esmerelda's magic circles still spinning above her hands.
"I always hated the silence that comes after an attack like that," Jass mumbled to herself.
Then, from the shadows between the massive green stalks, came the sound of feet stomping through underbrush like they had no concern for being heard.
And figures began to become visible to them from the sea of bamboo.
There were more of them, more of the ones wearing the same type of armor and similarly designed weapons. Some wielded twin axes, others spears that were lined with barbed teeth, and short straight swords.
Jass let out a slow breath through her nose, angling her glaive toward the first to break into the clearing.
"Still Level 0," she said, eyes narrowing.
Esmerelda didn't answer, not immediately at least, her focus locked on the many figures emerging from the sea of bamboo and keeping her spells stable and at the ready. "They look like Vikings of old," Esmerelda muttered as she got a good look at the men and women who were rushing out of the sea of bamboo.
The first viking-lookalike let out a bark to his people before charging straight at them with his weapons raised and charged. Jass shot forward, making herself the frontline for everyone to focus on rather than on Esmerelda, and met him halfway. Her glaive swept low in a fluid half-circle, cleaving through the man's ankle. He toppled with a scream, but before he could hit the ground, Jass had already pivoted and driven the blade through his throat.
Another came in on her right, but she barely paid the female viking-lookalike a glance as Esmerelda's left-hand magic circle that was programmed to be on a loop, released a concentrated barrage of manabolts that sent the female viking-lookalike careening backwards into the bamboo with a snapping crunch and letting out multiple small bursts of blood into the air.
"That's three of them," Jass muttered, tracking the kills under her breath. "Only 10 more to go."
Jass didn't have the luxury to question why the next guy that rushed her sliced open his cheek and licked it seconds afterwards, because the moment his axe came down toward her shoulder, the impact nearly staggered her backward.
Her boots slid half an inch across the dirt as she parried the strike, gritting her teeth as the clang of metal-on-metal echoed too close to her ear.
The guy is strong.
Way more than a Level 0 should be, as that strike was enough to make her wrists ache from parrying it. His Strength stat is more than my own, Jass noted to herself with furrowed eyes before deciding to fully utilize her stats.
She twisted, let his momentum carry him forward, then planted her glaive deep into his gut and pushed him off with a solid kick to the chest, making his body collide with a couple of others that were directly behind him.
That was four.
A fifth one came from the left, shouting something in a language that Jass didn't understand, and honestly didn't care to, she only recognized a bit of similarity to a couple of the Euro dialects she'd been taught back in the academy.
She sidestepped the lunge and let the end of her glaive smash the back of his head in, before snapping it in a circular motion and having the blade of her glaive slice through his neck.
Five.
She glanced at Esmerelda between movements, and saw that she was looking at them with a curious expression, causing her to stop her attack and stare at their attackers.
The viking-lookalikes weren't just charging at them anymore, they were hesitating, and shouting to each other – looking incredibly panicked.
Every single one of them kept darting looks toward Esmerelda's magic circles like they were staring at the boogeyman.
"They're scared of you," Jass said, swinging her glaive around again and slicing open the throat of one of the viking-lookalikes who seemingly got over her fear of Esmerelda's magic and charged at her. "I think they're scared of the spells you're casting."
Esmerelda didn't respond right away, her eyes flickering with recognition, or was it realization, Jass wasn't sure, as her fingers twitched subtly in the air, adjusting the basis of the spells within the magic circles to be centered around spiraling manabolts.
"I'm not sure," she finally said, her voice low, meeting Jass's eyes for a second. "Maybe they've never seen magic before and are wary of it, because I don't sense any mana within them."
Jass didn't get the chance to press her on it, because two more of the viking-lookalikes surged forward with uncertain battle cries and made various gestures across their hearts.
The one on the left came in wildly, chopping in a downward motion with a short sword that looked to be made out of some type of bone, probably a femur bone, Jass mused.
Jass met the blade with the flat of her glaive, letting the momentum slide off as she stepped inside his range and jammed the blunt end of her weapon into his throat. He choked once, then crumpled to the ground, to which she stomped on his throat, killing him not a moment later.
The second got closer than she liked, the female viking-lookalike got close enough to where she had to use her elbow to crack into her jaw before planting her foot into her stomach and sending her staggering back just in time for Esmerelda's right-hand circle to unleash a spiraling manabolt that tore through her torso, with little to no resistance.
"That makes... eight?" Jass murmured, glancing at the number of bodies littering the bamboo-cleared dirt. Her breath came quicker now, though not from exhaustion. Just alertness, honed sharp like a blade against a whetstone.
She didn't like how quiet the others had gotten.
The remaining two were standing near the bamboo line, gripping their weapons tightly, and looked at each other for a moment before immediately diving back into the sea of bamboo and rushing back to where they had come from.
Jass and Esmerelda gave each other a look before nodding and rushing after them, letting them lead them to their base of operations or where their backup was.
Jass led the charge after the two viking-lookalikes, her boots thudding across the uneven, thick, and grassy mud, with Esmerelda just a few steps behind her as Jass was purposefully running slower to allow the viking lookalikes to lead them and for Esmerelda to keep up.
"They're just like those cannibals we saw in the cave two days ago," Jass said, weaving past a hanging vine and slicing away a loose stalk with the blade of her glaive. "Ugh, where's Deacon? With him, we should have been able to find their base without having them lead us to where it is and risk jumping into a setup trap."
"They're leading us to their people," Esmerelda replied. "I saw them arrive on boats onto the island, and they were carrying something on them."
Jass didn't slow down. "What kind of something?"
"Cages… filled with people. At least two cages, possibly three," Esmerelda said, breath sharp from running. "I was drawn to them due to the horns they were blaring, and before I got jumped by them, I saw them land on the northwest shoreline."
Jass's brows furrowed, and she didn't ask why Esmerelda hadn't immediately told her so they could have scouted out together.
"They're Level 0s like them?"
"Yes. All of them," Esmerelda confirmed.
"And they jumped you?" Jass asked, not as a dig, more curious than anything. "How?"
Esmerelda's expression faltered slightly. "I wasn't paying attention," she admitted, voice dropping low. "While I was spying on them, I hadn't thought that maybe a scouting boat arrived before them, and I got jumped by two of them."
"Thanks to the bracelet, I was protected from being captured and well…" Esmerelda said as she flashed Jass the Bracelet of Reflexive Warding that both Deacon and Jass told her to keep on at all times.
"We're killing all of them," Jass grunted, her expression hardening into a scowl at what could have happened to her friend.
Esmerelda nodded, still a bit somewhat shaken at how easily things could have gone horribly wrong if she hadn't had the Bracelet of Reflexive Warding.
The sea of bamboo thinned out just as the ground began to slope downward, giving way to the edges of the island's northern cliffs.
Jass slowed when she smelled salt, eyes narrowing, before her free hand shot towards her back pouch and flung two throwing knives at the back of the heads of the viking-lookalikes and turned away from them just as they collapsed to the floor, and she received a System Notification informing her of their deaths.
She gestured to Esmerelda to duck low as she crept up to the ridge's edge, moving just enough to peek through the foliage.
What she saw made her eyes narrow.
"...Shit."
Down below, tucked along a flat stretch of shoreline just beneath the cliffside, sat three longboats, dragged halfway onto the sand and held in place with thick, oil-dark ropes.
Each boat had a cage lashed to its frame, thick bars made from wood and vine, lashed together crudely but solid enough to hold people. And they were filled. At least ten, maybe fifteen in total, packed tightly. A few were conscious, hunched over, and looking around with glassy eyes, but not shouting or crying.
She counted at least two dozen of the viking-lookalikes, scattered across the beach, patrolling it while arguing with one another. Several had their weapons unbelted, waving them lazily in the air or slung over their shoulders.
"This is gonna be a pain to deal with," Esmerelda whispered from beside her, crouched low, her magic circles dimmed and shrunk to idle rings around her wrists.
Jass didn't respond at first, her eyes tracking one of the larger men, a tall brute with a wild beard wearing the exact same type of armor as the scouts, fur leggings and boots, while having nothing atop his upper body.
He was waving a long, unrolled scroll in one hand, the other snapping forward with a smack against another man's chest as he barked at him.
"They're fighting," she muttered. "Something's wrong. That guy's trying to keep order, but…"
She paused, watching as one of the others spat in the sand and turned away, only to be yanked back by the scruff of his neck and slammed down onto one knee. The leader shouted again, jabbing his finger toward the cages, then toward the jungle.
A shout suddenly erupted near the boats; one of the prisoners had made a break for it, or tried to. A small boy, no older than thirteen, had wriggled his arms out from the cage bars and made a break for the water, only to be tackled by two of the Viking-lookalikes before he could even make it five steps away from the cage.
The kid screamed as he was dragged back, kicking the whole time, before being silenced by a punch to his face that knocked him out cold.
Jass's jaw tightened.
"Alright," she said, straightening up and rolling her shoulders once. "That's enough."
Esmerelda stood too, already raising her hands and beginning to cast a barrage of manabolts.
"What's the plan?" she asked.
Jass stared down at the beach, eyes locked on the lead Viking with the scroll, who had now unsheathed a massive axe from his back.
"We break their legs, then we string them up before letting those in the cages kill them," she said.