Tribal Sign-In: Immortal At The Start

Once Bael killed all the shadows, he walked towards Jareb and Henry, and, seeing that they were still frozen with a lost look on their faces, he grabbed Jareb’s shoulder and shook him, but he didn’t wake up.

A frown found its way to his lips, and he muttered, "How am I supposed to wake them up?"

He stepped behind them and channeled his aura into Jareb.

The golden wisps of his aura coursed through Jareb’s body, and the result stayed the same.

"Is it not possible?" he mumbled darkly as he stepped away from them and looked at the pieces of armour and corpses littered all around them.

"There has to be some way," he whispered as he checked on the bodies of the soldiers with his Zone but found nothing wrong with them.

After a few minutes, he clenched his fist and thought, ’Why are they not moving if their bodies aren’t poisoned?’

As he pondered about it, he realised something, ’Wait... Is it because the poison isn’t physical?’

Because of his dive into the aura, he knew that everything existed in three layers: physical, spiritual, and raw.

Looking back, the shadows seemed to exist between physical and spiritual layers, making them part of neither, so was it really that strange or unprecedented that the poison they used was also similar to them? Bael didn’t think so.

’I only have two skills that can affect people at a spiritual level, illusion zone and honored one. I am using illusion zone to disguise myself, so if it could heal them, it already would’ve,’ he remarked inwardly.

After finishing his thoughts, he walked to the center of all the remaining soldiers and mumbled, "Intent Veil.’

Just as he disabled Intent Veil, Honored One showed its effect, and one by one the frozen soldiers groaned and took deep breaths.

Many of them fell to their knees and stared at the ground with a horrified look as they murmured under their breath, "Darkness... Utter Darkness..."

Bael reactivated Intent Veil as he placed his hands on Jareb and Henry’s shoulders and asked with a worried expression, "Are you fine?"`

His voice pulled them out of their fear and dread, and they looked around themselves in expectation of the shadows.

But as they looked around, they saw that there were no shadows and their armour was on the ground.

"Where did they go?" Henry asked while staring at the remains of comrades, and Bael answered, "They are dead."

Henry, Jareb, and the knights looked at him with surprise, and before all of them could mistakenly come to the right conclusion, he muttered while pointing at the sky, "It’s the sun. They can’t survive staying in sunlight for too long."

"What should we do?" Jareb asked Bael while biting his lower lip.

Bael looked at him with a faint smile and said, "We should return with the armour and the bodies of the soldiers."

The other soldiers also came to their senses and nodded grimly while staring at the corpses of people they had been talking to an hour ago. All of them felt a strange weight settle on their hearts, and Bael, who could’ve saved them, felt his heart ache.

’You have to stay calm, Rion. You aren’t some hero...’

He walked towards one of the dead bodies, filled its wound with its own clothes, and said while hoisting it up on his shoulder, "Let’s go, young masters."

Others did the same, and one by one, they lifted all of the twelve bodies and armor sets. Then they walked back to the camp.

Their way back was silent and full of tension, different from before, and Bael’s mind was fixed on what those shadows were and how the duke got his hands on them.

For now, though, all he could do was take guesses.

An hour later, they returned to the camp and, seeing them carrying the bodies of the soldiers, others’ expressions turned grim, and they murmured between themselves,

"W-What is this?"

"Did they kill their own platoon members?"

"Maybe they were attacked by the duke’s forces?"

"Those armours! Their capes have the dukedom’s insignia!!"

None of Bael’s platoon members stopped to answer them, and a few minutes later, they laid the bodies and the armours before the commander’s tent.

"Should we be doing it like this?" Henry asked with a troubled expression.

Bael nodded. "We need them to understand the weight of the situation."

"I see..." Henry whispered.

A few minutes later, the tent flapped, and William, who had led the soldiers, stepped out with a dark expression.

He glanced at the bodies, then at the two noble children, and asked, "What is this?"

Jareb and Henry stepped forward and said, "We wish to report something very important."

Hearing them, William pressed his lips into a thin line before he nodded, turned around, and said, "Follow me."

As they walked, they turned their heads towards Bael and said, "Come."

William furrowed his brows and asked, "I don’t think there’s any need for a guard within the commander’s tent."

The two looked at him and said, "He knows the most about what we are here to report."

William glanced at Bael and nodded as he walked back into the commander’s tent.

Bael and the two noble boys also walked inside the tent, and their gaze fell on the burly man sitting on a chair with his eyes fixed on the table before them.

William stopped a few steps away from the table and spoke while saluting the figure, "I’ve brought them in, sir."

The commander finally lifted his gaze from the table and looked at the three figures before him, which he didn’t have to because he could make use of his Zone.

’We finally meet,’ Bael thought, and the commander introduced himself,

"My name is David Seraph, the commander overseeing this warcamp... so what do you wish to report to me?"

Jareb stepped forward and saluted the commander as he spoke, "We wish to report about the creatures we saw while patrolling the surrounding forest."