Sylas gripped the branch beneath him with the balls of his feet. He was slowly getting used to walking everywhere barefoot, though it took him more time than he would like to admit climbing up here. It was hard climbing a tree that was so thick when the first branches were at least five meters up.
He ended up using some clothes he borrowed from Olivia and wrapping it around the trunk. Then he walked up the side of it.
Shifting the cloth up had been a bit dicey, but he managed.
Olivia's scouting Skill was truly impressive. The gnolls had been more than a hundred meters away, a distance, in this thick forest, that might as well have been ten times that.
Even so, her information was spot on, and from high above, knowing what to look for, Sylas could just barely sense their movement. As he focused, he seemed to feel his vision sharpen and zoom in.
It was an odd feeling, and he didn't know what was causing it, but he also didn't fight against it.
That was when he saw them. Truly grotesque creatures in every sense of the word.
They had the faces of hyenas, but the rest of their bodies were mostly humanoid aside from below their knees where they had clear digitigrade feet. Their furs alternated between a sickly yellow and a faded grey, their teeth in an almost permanently bared position.
Their legs were overall quite slender while their torsos were beefier. Each one held a bone-forged ax, with torn pants and loose straps holding rocks and various other trinkets acting as their only articles of clothing.
Sylas' eyes narrowed. This was bad. Very bad.
The problem was with the last gnoll he had scanned. When he left, Olivia made no attempt to warn him about scanning, which meant that she likely didn't know a gnoll could even have Mental that high.
Even Morgan's Mental, which was 29, was weaker than Vorak's. If any one of them attempted to scan this group from afar, Vorak would be immediately alerted, and they'd be exposed.
But Sylas also had no easy way to inform everyone about this.
The gnolls were clearly far more wary and intelligent than they had given them credit for. However, under normal circumstances, Olivia would have retreated. It was only because of Sylas that she decided they had a shot at this.
Although it wasn't his fault since he did, indeed, have a method, he still felt some responsibility for a situation that was very obviously about to go left, and quick.
Sylas' eyes narrowed, his mind churning.
His original plan was simple. To his side, there were two daggers embedded in the ground. These were Olivia's secondary weapons. Sylas couldn't touch them with his hands, but what he could do was use his telekinesis to lift them.
[Makes applied Strength doubly as Effective]
He planned to launch a sudden attack on the gnolls from a distance, injuring two of them.
The range of his telekinesis was only about 20 meters from his tests, but so long as the gnolls passed by near him, which they were already on track to do, he would be able to at least cripple one of them, ideally two. And, because he could use telekinesis, he could pull the daggers back before the gnolls got the chance to use it to track him or Olivia with their sense of smell.
If he managed to stay hidden after the first volley, he would try again until they were forced into conflict or the encirclement the others had planned.
But if things continued , the gnolls would be tipped off and then the hunt would begin.
He had questioned the Madness Key a little about these spawned villages and what to look out for. What he had learned was more than a little concerning.
Cassandra was right about the spawn rate becoming faster. The speed would increase until one of these villages appeared somewhere around her Rudimentary Village at least once a week, and very soon they wouldn't be Rudimentary Villages anymore.
At this size, around 20 to 30 warriors were normal, and they never had any normal civilians. There were three elites and one head, and this Vorak was definitely one of those three elites.
If he took action, it could only be at the order of the head of Gnoll Village 019, which meant that whoever they were might already be prepared to take action.
To make matters worse, they weren't that far from the village either, half a kilometer at most. If they slipped up, they could quickly find themselves surrounded by an entire small troop.
'I need to act before Vorak is alerted. Or…'
The group of five slowly got into range. Sylas was ahead, but he felt it likely wouldn't be long before Olivia and the others spotted them as well. The timer was ticking already.
Sylas' Comprehension flourished. At the same time, one of the daggers was ripped out of the bark by his ear, whipping forward. It streaked through the air, whistling with a harsh melody.
The reaction was immediate. The gnolls were almost feral creatures to begin with and their eyes went red, their dirty fur bristling and growls leaving their lips.
Their will to do battle skyrocketed and one of them suddenly lashed out at another, smashing a bone ax against their chest.
Vorak roared, grabbing Snarl's wrist and looking down at the injured Nala with a snarl on his face. Enraged, he broke the wrist of the attacking gnoll.