Zectas Volume IV: The Salubrious City of Centzo (32 page)

Incitant rushed over to him and yelled. "Sortis Revoco!"
His Bleeding Status was removed, but his Decay Aura was still active and began reducing Incitant's life bar by 100 HP per second.
"Whoa! What is that?" asked an alarmed Incitant as he was being attacked by the curse.
"Just heal me and we'll be fine," ordered Smoke impatiently.
A white casting circle immediately appeared below them, and both of them were healed by small balls of white light.
Despite being healed, Smoke worried about the imminent danger, as he could see the onslaught of the specially trained Cavalry Knights. Dozens of Avendre Mercenaries were thrown up in the air as they forcibly made their way towards Macher.
Smoke got out of the casting circle as soon as his life bar reached 50%. "Everyone, just get out of their way!" he yelled as he desperately started running out to help his army, who were blocking Macher's path.
'Killing Macher isn't worth the lives of all those Zectians,' Smoke thought to himself.
Fortunately, Adder heard his voice and began ordering everyone to step away from the Cavalry Knights' path. The Condortlian Warrior expected a similar scenario when they defeated the northern Brandal army.
As Adder disseminated Smoke's orders, the rest of his core members complied without question.
However, a group of Avendre Mercenaries, led by Jeter, did not receive this important information. They remained where they stood, and fought off against a few surviving bandits and numerous Cavalry Knights.
Although outnumbered, the Mercenaries were inspired to fight by the Vigilantez. Also, their increase in several levels from the previous battle made them stronger and allowed them to hold their own against the well trained Cavalry Knights.
Macher, who was looking to inflict a heavy blow on Smoke's army, pointed towards Jeter's group of Avendre Mercenaries. He signaled the Commander of the Silny Division to crush them from both sides.
The Cavalry Knights on acinonyx cheetahs and Macher's surviving army clashed against Jeter's legion of Mercenaries.
Yet, even with ten more levels, the Avendre Mercenaries could still have not survive such a gruesome encounter. Attacked from both directions, Jeter ordered his men to retreat.
They were already having a hard time against one force of Cavalry Knights. Yet, before Jeter's troops could pull out, most of them were already impaled on glaives and long-spears.
Macher, recognizing the uniform of an Avendre Commander, personally went after Jeter. He took one of the long-spears sticking out of a dead Mercenary and used his Illusionary Strike on Jeter.
The Avendre Commander was pierced in eight critical locations, and Macher's final attack sent him flying to the destroyed wall. He was cruelly impaled against it, his feet departed from the ground, as he remained suspended in the air by the spear.
Macher then led all the Cavalry Knights out of Centzo. Jinggu and Sharur's boulders came hurtling down on them, but most of them easily destroyed the fiery rocks with their glaives and long-spears.
The Vigilantez's Therianthropes and Tikbalangs made sure to hold onto at least one of the Knights, but they only numbered less than three-hundred.
Stuck behind the Cavalry Knights stragglers Macher left behind, Smoke furiously watched him escape. He saw that his core members were still struggling against them, and couldn't risk any one of them dying here.
Macher escaped with more than eleven-thousand men, while Smoke, Incitant and Prosjak only looked on from inside the broken walls of Centzo. All of their factions remained to finish off the last members of the invading forces.
 

* * * * * * 

An hour passed since Macher's escape. The remaining Brandals and Cavalry Knights had all been wiped out. Smoke sat down on the rubble of the city's broken wall, and stared blankly at Jeter's kite shield and saber.
Meanwhile, Sierra had the Shamans and Acolytes prepare the meal for the residents of Centzo. They used the food brought by the Avendre Mercenaries and the food supplies they looted from the Brandals.
Sierra had the food imbued with healing properties to further enhance the effect of their meal. She then had her Therianthrope forces, in their human form, serve the residents.
Adder and Ledur joined their empathetic leader.
"Jeter fought bravely. He died an honorable death," said Adder and patted Smoke's shoulder.
"Did you know that I was planning on recruiting him to our private army," said Smoke with a heavy heart. "I was going to payoff his debts with the Avendre after this battle was over."
"Well, I heard from Jeter's men that it was his dream to fight alongside us, and especially under your leadership," added Adder. "So, I think he went to Mictlan without any regrets."
Ledur remained quiet, as he struggled to keep his vow of silence. As his sign of encouragement, the winged Tikbalang simply ruffled Smoke's long white hair with his hooves. He then proceeded to fix the destroyed portion of the western wall with his Earth Manipulation.
"Thank you. I think I get what you're saying," said Smoke somberly. "We better start securing the city. We don't know if Macher and his forces might come back."
Smoke joined Ledur in fixing the torn-down western wall. Whereas, Adder went out to find Espion. The two of them were assigned to be liaison officers for the Vigilantez and Centzo factions.
Apparently, Espion had long started to coordinate with Prosjak and Duke Jeune about future relations with Verbrannt and Centzo.
While fixing the wall, Smoke saw the twin OrkElves work on the catapults left in front of the western side. The OrkElves' forces began gathering the siege weapons left behind by Macher and his invading army.
Still suffering from the loss of Jeter, Smoke then realized that he had not thanked his core members properly. 
"I'll be right back, Ledur," he said to the winged Tikbalang and flew off.
He glided down swiftly to them. Sharur and Jinggu immediately stopped tinkering with the siege weapons when they saw him.
"Listen, I know that I haven't worked closely together with the two of you lately, and I'm sorry for that. But I want you to know that the two of you played an important role in this victory," explained Smoke earnestly.
He wanted to thank them properly in case he would miss the chance like he did with Jeter.
"Don't worry about it," said Sharur. "Sierra's been covering your absence, and we know that whatever it is you're doing, it will always be for the good of someone else."
"I feel exactly the same way," said Jinggu and grinned. "Besides, you haven't really been neglecting us. You still talk to us once in awhile."
"Still, we should remedy that soon," said Smoke and lightly punched Jinggu's shoulder. "Hopefully, Sierra can work her magic with the food, and feed everyone in the city for a proper victory celebration."
"Knowing Sierra, I'm sure she'll be able to do it," replied Sharur.
After Smoke left, the twin OrkElves gathered two trebuchets and seventy catapults together. Smoke told them to improve their mobility as he planned to take them back with them to Verbrannt.
Smoke then spotted Thyrsus, Vijaya, Ichaival and Sharanga waiting on top of the southern wall. Apparently, they organized sentry groups to survey the entire capital. Their falcons flew on intervals and all reported to Vijaya.
All of the Hunters were still waiting for their falcons' return. Smoke saw Ichaival retelling one of their fights, while Thyrsus and Vijaya were laughing. Only Sharanga remained unfazed and kept a stern expression.
When he got closer, Smoke realized that the story Ichaival was saying was about Sharanga's traps accidentally capturing one of the Avendre Mercenaries.
Smoke called out to them. "Hey, Guys, I wanted to thank you for your nice work out there."
"We could have done better, but at least all of us made out okay," bluntly stated Vijaya.
"I couldn't agree more," said Sharanga.
"Overall, I think we did more than okay," interjected Ichaival. "Don't get me wrong. I know that there's still plenty of room for improvement, but we survived and got stronger."
"Speaking about improvement," interjected Sharanga. "I came up with some idea for my traps after I saw that Elementalist summoning the water elemental."
"That's great, Sharanga!" exclaimed Ichaival and fervently praised her. "Only you, would find inspiration from the enemy."
"Not now, Ichaival!" said an irritated Sharanga, and turned to Smoke. "I was hoping I can ask for some of your elemental stones."
"Sure, alright. Which elemental stone?" asked Smoke curiously.
"Maybe a stone from each of the elements you have on you," said Sharanga.
Without delay, he reached into his backpack and gave her a clay, ember, electro and a dew stone. "Here, I hope they'll be very useful to you."
After giving Sharanga the elemental stones, Smoke noticed Vijaya staring at the battle-filled clearing surrounding the capital.
Vijaya stared at the barren land. "How long do you think it will take this place to recover?"
"As long as the people of Centzo are alive, I'm sure this region will be back on its feet in no time," answered Thyrsus out of the blue.
"Alright, I'll let all of you get back to it, I'm going to go see what everyone else is doing," said Smoke and bade farewell to the Hunters.
Next, Smoke searched for the three Lioumereans. He heard from Espion that they volunteered to help find lost family members.
From above, he spotted Laernea, Gandiva and Guro sitting behind a desk, getting information from residents who were looking for their family.
He never expected to see such a civilized scene from the three Lioumereans. All of them were always on the go and had trouble staying in one place for too long.
Smoke landed softly next to their table. "What are you three up to?" he asked and startled Laernea.
"Isn't it obvious?" stated Guro flatly. "We are connecting lost family members. If you want to help, feel free to pull up a chair."
"Yeah, there are four more centers similar to this one all over the city," explained Gandiva briskly. "What we need to do afterwards is collate the data and hopefully we'll all find the missing people."
"What made you volunteer for this?" asked Smoke curiously.
"Did you forget? The two of us were orphans. We wouldn't want such a misfortune happen to another child," said a hurt Laernea.
"I simply don't want people to feel lost," added Guro.
Smoke remembered how Guro was imprisoned inside the labyrinth for years. He realized that these three Lioumereans naturally suppress their mischievous and fierce personalities whenever the need to help others arose.
"Well, let me get a copy of your gathered information, and I'll deliver them to the other centers," said Smoke proudly.
Laernea handed him a stack of paper, and he placed them neatly inside his backpack. He then flew off to the other centers.
While delivering the papers, he spotted Adelige, Rasant, Stark and Weise. All four Maneators stayed away from the Centzo residents.
He heard from Weise about how other people outside Verbrannt react when they see their faces. It appears that they still cringe in fear whenever they see Maneators.
Smoke surmised that this was Weise's attempt to stay away from Centzo's residents. He then also noticed that the Maneators had the Tikbalangs join them.
After he delivered the Lioumereans' gathered information on the lost residents, Smoke returned to help Ledur in fixing the wall. A few minutes into his work, he spotted Incitant walking over towards him.
"Smoke, just the DarkElf I wanted to see," said Incitant cordially.
"What can I do for you?" answered Smoke with an unwelcoming tone.
"I just wanted to make sure that you've got no problem with the villages that we're going to get in the awarding ceremonies," explained the Archbishop.
"I know that you've done more than we did in this battle, but please don't try to steal the reward that was already agreed upon," pleaded Incitant calmly.
"Of course, you don't have to worry about anything like that," replied Smoke.
"Thank you, Smoke, you really are an honorable person," said Incitant and offered his hand to Smoke.
Smoke shook it to be civilized. He just wanted Incitant to walk away so he could resume his work on the wall, and forget about losing Jeter and the other Zectians fallen in battle.
Six more hours passed and they had finished most of the essential repairs on the city. There were still several buildings that needed to be torn down as they were already unsafe to be fixed. However, there was no longer a single crack in the capital's wall. Not only that, they also had round-the-clock watchers posted on all sides of the wall.
Since the awarding ceremony wasn't until tomorrow, Smoke decided that he was going to log out for a while. He walked over to where Sierra was. She was still busy cooking food for the thousands of Centzo citizens.
"I think I'm gonna get some shut eye," Smoke said to Sierra. "Can you take a break from feeding them for a while?"
"Of course," replied Sierra and asked Phen and Rear, who were in their human form, serve the starving citizens.
"You're not planning on running away somewhere now, are you?" asked Sierra worriedly.
"No, nothing like that. I really just want to get some sleep," said Smoke defensively.
Sierra smiled at him and pulled him in for a tight hug. He hugged her back and easily wrapped his arms around her. A feat he was never able to do when Sierra was in her cursed Werebear form.
"We'll get stronger," he whispered in her ear. "Strong enough to make this pain go away."
"I know," replied Sierra wholeheartedly.
Smoke released Sierra's hug and logged out of Zectas.