Master of Myths

"Guaaa"

"Kreee~"

"Rawwwr!!"

"That's one too many lizards in one place"

"Phoenix is a chicken my dear Ellis"

YuJu corrected, not at all blaming the redhead for the assumption with most of the illusions so far being either dragons, titanic dinosaur like beasts, or even the Gardelos

'Chicken? Where food?'

Anput looked about restlessly in search of said chicken, the poor hound didn't have a decent bite ever since they ran out of stored food, and the odd balls of hair looked anything but appetizing

"Why lizards to begin with? Are we not stronger than them"

"We are strong because of skills and techniques, many other races are too, something that can't be replicated with an illusion, not unless you were at an extremely high level, so they resort to the toughest and most resilient beast type out there, dragons and the such"

Speaking of the flying oafs they were currently flying toward them with an angered visage, four at a time too, not to mention the other strong beasts following behind

"It will be tough for us to ignore them this time my Lord, maybe Ellis and I can hold them off while Anput's shadows do the rest?"

"Won't work, I can see that they learned not to stay unguarded or alone anymore now that we can spot them, though that makes things easier at the same time"

Turning to Ika he gestured for her to follow, vanishing together and leaving the incoming wave to the rest

"I feel bad for them"

"The Aura beasts?"

"Yes, her fire burns like hell"

Recalling the time she accidentally dove into the burning embers belonging to one of Ika's skills Ellis shivered slightly, the place still stung even though it had been a couple of weeks now

"Perhaps that phoenix could prove to be just as endangering"

"You jest, it's just a roasted chicken"

'Checkin where!?'

Blasting from her place Ellis sent the first dragon she met staggering to the side so she could directly come into contact with the flaming bird

"Kreee!"

From its wings feathers of fire shot with scattered precision, a few landed on Ellis with the rest scattered about

"That's it?"

She mocked, slashing the thing's head off with her aura covered weapon, effectively neutralizing it fr a bit

The other three dragons came at her from behind, each preparing their own breath attack

"Gu!?"

One suddenly got pulled down, the frighteningly strong Zero had grabbed it by the tail and started swinging it like a baseball, scoring hits on its two comrades before sending it for a home run

Taking the chance Ellis came to finish off the injured ones, something everyone let her do when they had the chance since her aura seemed to give the resurrection of these things a buffer time, not that YuJu quite understood why yet

The man himself was not idle though, with a faint trail of blood behind coming from the self incurred wound he led the hidden Ika toward a scattered bunch of mini dragons

Once he was where he felt many gazes he stopped the trail and let a drip fall into the ground, then left the immediate area

Fuwaah!

Flames of gray lit the entire grounds upon which his blood drip lay, vaporizing it along with every misfortunate hairball inside, even the ones at the periphery of it were badly wounded or disabled

'She's getting better at casting Flame Feild, shouldn't take long for her to reach intermediate'

That would save a lot of Sp so she could focus on upgrading high rank skills

'Now for the next area'

He took a moment to sense the gazes looking upon the burning place, and since he was close enough he found many scanning or alarmed eyes, a lot of which were bunched up

'Good, glad they took it upon themselves to group up for a quick ending'

Choosing the biggest and closest group he once more had her follow to finish things quickly

Thre large groups in and the little fellows started to scatter at which point he had Anput send in her shadows to reap the secluded individuals

Ellis and Zero then started helping when the enemy became too weak due to losing a lot of energy support, eventually tidying the place up with a neat three hours

"Hnnn~ wish we could get a break"

Ika stretched stiffly, burning with energy as she may be the woman still liked to rest a bit, even if she couldn't sleep with her vampire blood she would have loved to do anything but fight

"Cant, every day that passes is another day these creatures evolve their use of aura and illusion, if you haven't noticed they already grew a few folds more powerful, with some tactics and more numbers I am afraid we won't be able to push through into their territory"

That was true, this time they grouped up next time the will do something new, though hopefully another something to help them fish up quicker like this time

With nothing to say Ika could only speed forward, hoping to finish the mission before getting burned out

.......

"How is the situation with the human borders then?"

"They retreated and kept their distance, the new world's residents also seem reluctant to engage them for some reason"

"Hmm, did they take any noteworthy action toward them to achieve this?"

"Yes, a masked man with white hair who we assume is named Pride went in with the mysterious trader Ephai as well as two followers, they have yet to come out"

"Perhaps they are the reason for scaring the beasts, have you any news of this trader"

"I asked around but no one seems to know anything about him, I never saw him before the battle either, his presence never got detected by any of my drones which I placed all over humans lands but all of them seem to have known who he was as he taught them the words of welcome"

"A mysterious masked man and an unknown entity which majors in stealth…."

Aminta contemplated the news while her generals did the same, though only her, Latvia, and Verbrand only paid attention to the latter as they knew the masked person was actually YuJu

"It may be a bold assumption but could we think of that trader as our own black leader guard? The way you described him relates the two too well"

Gen suggested seeing as everyone seemed to avoid the matter, it puzzled him as to why that was

"The masked man also resembles him, can't say its an obvious option"

The rattan gave his own theory, at least he did so on the surface

'That mysterious trader is definitely that man, I must steer away suspicion from him lest the spies pin something on him, wouldn't want to get his races involved in this mess as well'

"I think YuJu and Pride are very different, YuJu commands blood and is good at stealth while Pride commands darkness and is very good at close quarter combat"

Latvia quickly tried to put out the idea of YuJu being the masked man, since she knew he was indeed that person

'The trader must take the blame for now, at least his intentions are unknown and wouldn't instantly attract Genus Insania into taking hidden actions against the human race'

After the shadow raid caused by them she didn't want his race to be further dragged into conflict, those people needed a breather time to grow 

"Come now, it's fairly obvious the masked man is the one who resembles him the most"

"CLearly not, if anyone could bypass my security that much it must ve YuJu"

A heated argument followed as the two debated and gave excuses to seemingly expose one of the two personas while actually trying to guard YuJu's identity, every note and detail made those present believe that the similarity was indeed very striking to the point Gremm couldn't help but interject and speak up

"Maybe he is both of them"

The doubtful theory received a glare from both forcing Gremm to shrink in his tail, but being the brave cat- lion he was, Gremm spoke up with more conviction

"Both of you prove to be quite convincing and the two people you described are indeed very similar to that sneaky guy, so why couldn't he be both of them at the same time"

"Because they were both seen together?"

Latvia questioned rhetorically, expecting the cat to quit playing around

"Who says he can't use a shadow to speak for him?"

"Latvia would have seen through that, unless you expect him to control shadows, blood, have close combat capability, and can sneak into any place without detection, all at once"

The rattan's answer did indeed make Gremm's words sound impossible, even Basu who started to suspect the two to be one person given that they knew YuJu had some sort of shadow mastery threw the notion away, that was one too many talents for one creature to master