The bat is unaware of what is happening underground in that seemingly useless clearing, soon after making his rounds toward the whole settlement and finding nothing worth reporting, he comes back of the Spider Queen's lair and starts to assimilate his newly brainwashed goblins and orcs to the maddened army the five remaining pink bats has assembled.
They are drooling with blank eyes, clearly devoid of any life or will, they will be ready for action upon command, their formation is just a thick pile of goblins at the front and orcs at the back, for like the bat had said, encircling the cave of the first layer settlement of their enemy will instead give their army a nice ass beating, the main reason is that their army will be too stretched when they tried to fully surround the cave, plus the army of the enemy have the quality advantage.
Thus they will have to resort to the people ocean tactic.
_I wonder if our lady will have a better idea of dealing with the first settlement._
The bat who is currently arranging the ranks of the brainwashed humanoid monsters said so to himself, Currently, the spider queen and their lady are brainstorming ideas on how to kill the hero prospect or even incapacitate her for a little moment, well In the end, this alliance is barely qualified because of the members attacking a single person at the same time and the leaders of the races who participated have their own goals.
Thus, in the end, it is up to the two brains of the alliance to halt the growth of the hero prospect, of course They can just leave it to Bakunawa, the serpent overlord of the third layer, but the monster that they are, they have their version of greed, for example the spider queen wants to make spiders who can reanimate corpse, a power that no one on the planet have seen before and the bat wants to simply make the hero prospect know who the queen is (the usual narcissist stuff).
Thus after the queen brainwashed her fair share of goblins and orcs, she locked herself up in the meeting room that also serves as the strategists' chamber.
_Well, it's not like we will lose anyway, after all the army has us, the five pink bats._
As expected of a race that has an arrogant queen, even though they knew that the enemy had better soldiers than them, they still believed that they could win because the pink bats themselves would be present on the battlefield, after all, even though the monkeys and goblins of the settlement are named, they are not flying creatures like them and only the now deceased monkey tribe leader can make them run away by becoming a giant.
And obviously, no one out of all his children can go near the power of their father, thus who can stop them in their advance? The commander of the enemy? Isn't she just a human healer, well that's what the spider queen said, so the bats somehow mistakenly underestimated her, though Eleanor certainly can't kill the bats, so they are not technically wrong on brushing aside her battle prowess.
_And that goat should be no problem, he's a slob after all._
The pink thought, this hypothesis when The Spider Queen reported that the goat was named Ruphas, even though in the middle of the war slept through the latter half of the day the main battle happened because there were no enemies that attacked the settlement he supposed to defend, thus the size of the goat might only be the thing redeeming him, in short, that Ruphas must be another non-anti avian type monster, well it's obvious because he is a Diamond Horned Goat.
The bat then after thinking all of those things did not realize that he had already finished reassigning the cramped position of their maddened warrior.
Thus another day had passed, and the day of the battle that holds the fate of the world's greatest forest continued to inch closer.
The last of the preparation for the day the alliance has set their attack, Eleanor once again spent the whole night drawing the magic circle in the base of the funnel-shaped pit she just made using her magic, at this point, she is just abusing her healing ability to heal herself, though she cannot heal the fatigue of the mind, thus even though she is physically well, her mind is just moments before forcibly shutting down her body, she is already a little bit away from passing out, in short.
But she endured, she started to once again cover the funnel-shaped pit with soil, She already did so earlier but that was only to make the bats turn a blind eye to this very suspicious structure inside the "normal clearing that is just bigger than the others."
_Just needed some tweaks here and there..._
Eleanor then continued to revise the magic circle looking for possible errors that could surely destroy all of her plans and force her to make the whole settlement retreat, She then made the power output of the magic circle to the maximum her mana could endure, she already gave orders towards Jin, Bernardo and Ruphas and what they are supposed to do when she passed out by pouring all of her power on this circle, so she is not worried about the command system falling apart just because of her absence.
She then started to connect the funnel-shaped pit into the several pseudo pipes she made for air to properly flow from the surface through the pit.
_Phew, that should do it._
Eleanor wiped away the sweat from her forehead and went outside of the ground and then into the cave, she ordered the crafters to bring all of the corks that would serve as ear-dampening devices to all of the soldiers in her lab.
"Here are all of them, commander."
Two leanly muscular goblins said so as box after box got hauled into her lab, then said "Thank you." and then used magic on all of the boxes, sand started to crawl on the top and sides of the boxes, and the sand then started to invade the insides of the boxes going to corks after corks, after which the two lifters who are outside of the lab went inside after the call of their commander Eleanor.
"Please distribute all of these to our soldiers, as well as civilians."
Eleanor already told Sophia that the Pink Bat Queen has some plans to throw the forces of the second settlement out of whack, the time is inadequate to deliver the corks or produce a quantity that can accommodate the humungous population of the second settlement that shadows the whole first settlement with ease.
Eleanor opened a box and took two pieces of corks, it became thicker because of the sand covering its entirety.
A spider then suddenly crawls out of her shoulder.
"To your mother, deliver this."
Eleanor also commanded the spider to tell its birth giver a message containing Eleanor's request for Arachne to delay the plan of the bat queen until the signal for the start of the battle in the first layer has gone off.
The white-colored spider nodded and swallowed the pair of corks, alongside some chitters out of its mouth, and then an "I got it." from Arachne soon after those chitters were heard, the spider then went out somewhere and then disappeared in the darkest corner of the room.
At that time, the lifters already lifted all of the corks out of the lab, Sophia then took a look at a bowl of water at the table of her lab, She put mana on her fingers and then tapped it, and the water started to float and formed an orb on floating in the air, soon at that orb, a voice came out.
"Ellie, what's the matter?"
Eleanor answered.
"Good morning Lady Sophia, I want to suggest changes in your strategy."
Eleanor was quite nervous, after all... that bout of morals and her feelings were yet to subside, Sophia seemed to not know what Eleanor was feeling and just replied seemingly interested in the revisions about to be suggested by Eleanor.
"Please tell."
Eleanor nodded and started talking.
"If I may suggest, please pull out all of the soldiers, especially the like of Wokung and his daughter, and put them back in the volcano, making a giant rock clog the giant door and just let Wokung destroy it after the signal of the start of the first layer battle was set off."
Sophia on the other end got silent for a second, she then replied.
"... Oh? So you figured it out too, but still is your "signal" really that good that we can just give up the element of surprise for caution?"
Eleanor replied.
"The element of surprise won't matter because all of us will surely be surprised, Lady Sophia, I am rather worried because the volcano settlement will be fighting against the big guns of the alliance, so a little disturbance in your balance or even a slight daze will surely get detrimental."
Eleanor finished her explanation.
"You're not worried about me?"
"Well you have to finish off the Pink bat as early as possible so you have to get out of the settlement, but you can just clog your ears from inside out right?"
"That sounds like a shrewd commander would say."
"That's the second time I heard that in the past two days."
Eleanor also suggested wearing earplugs and making the two giant spiders deliver it, The amount is enough only for the soldiers of the second settlement, but a volcano has thick walls, so everything should be fine.
After this conversation, the day of the war finally started and all of the races advanced towards their targets. 7 thousand strong maddened army of goblins and orcs led by the five bats marched howling like rabid dogs while their queen and the queen of spiders flew off to prepare their things.
Ogres with large axes and hammers made out of smoothened stone set foot with heavy steps with the water Oni as their spearhead.
The mantises used their agile feet to make haste towards the volcano settlement with their leader drooling at the thought of finally cleaning up the rivalry between him and the king of monkeys (He does not know that the monkey is dead.)
And finally, Bakunawa the owner of the third layer opened her eyes and ascended out of the water.
All of the participants of the war started their preparations, but for two certain entities, this event is nothing but a mortal farce.
"Aw, too bad, I failed to manipulate her in the end~"
A divine one, sitting on an obsidian-colored throne with a single portrait at its back of a knight with a black colored armor with a skull for its head piercing the heart of a beautiful elf said so, the throne he is currently sitting on is in a huge pile of bones as if to openly declare the divinity of this venerable one.
A divinity that governs the undying race.
The god of the undead, though his face is still shrouded with thick fog looked at the shining white-colored ball of light in front of him, his tone was as if he was enjoying a conversation with a friend, but the god of the undead's friend that manifested his will inside the ball of light was not enjoying their conversation.
"You did not even try to manipulate her! Hell, you even gave her a scolding to fix her family complex right!? You gave her free reigns over your property!"
The ball of light shook violently whilst an enraged voice came out of it, clearly annoyed about what was happening in the forest of the god of the undead, however, the god that the ball just scolded laughed slightly before replying.
"Well, it's a hero's test you know? How can it be a test when there is no opponent? And I am only concerned with the undead race that is stuck in their enclosure, I do not care about those monsters whatsoever, so they can turn into shit for all I care."
The god of the undead responded.
"So that's why you let her decide the fate of your forest. That certainly is understandable (Considering it's your forest) but why did you chuck in two hero prospects of your pantheon inside that forest?"
The owner of the voice emanating in the ball of light calmed down, perhaps finding it wasteful to argue with a person who only listens to his whims.
"Oh, the serpent one? You Mean Bakunawa?"
The ball of light moved up and down two times as if to nod, the god of the undead suddenly gave out a hyena-like snicker that resonated throughout the divine realm.
"You could have guessed it already right?"
A long silence ensued, after which an unrecognizable tone came out of the lump of white light.
"For nourishment, huh?"
The ball of light muttered as the two continued to watch over the grand spectacle that was currently happening.
The bat is unaware of what is happening underground in that seemingly useless clearing, soon after making his rounds toward the whole settlement and finding nothing worth reporting, he comes back of the Spider Queen's lair and starts to assimilate his newly brainwashed goblins and orcs to the maddened army the five remaining pink bats has assembled.
They are drooling with blank eyes, clearly devoid of any life or will, they will be ready for action upon command, their formation is just a thick pile of goblins at the front and orcs at the back, for like the bat had said, encircling the cave of the first layer settlement of their enemy will instead give their army a nice ass beating, the main reason is that their army will be too stretched when they tried to fully surround the cave, plus the army of the enemy have the quality advantage.
Thus they will have to resort to the people ocean tactic.
_I wonder if our lady will have a better idea of dealing with the first settlement._
The bat who is currently arranging the ranks of the brainwashed humanoid monsters said so to himself, Currently, the spider queen and their lady are brainstorming ideas on how to kill the hero prospect or even incapacitate her for a little moment, well In the end, this alliance is barely qualified because of the members attacking a single person at the same time and the leaders of the races who participated have their own goals.
Thus, in the end, it is up to the two brains of the alliance to halt the growth of the hero prospect, of course They can just leave it to Bakunawa, the serpent overlord of the third layer, but the monster that they are, they have their version of greed, for example the spider queen wants to make spiders who can reanimate corpse, a power that no one on the planet have seen before and the bat wants to simply make the hero prospect know who the queen is (the usual narcissist stuff).
Thus after the queen brainwashed her fair share of goblins and orcs, she locked herself up in the meeting room that also serves as the strategists' chamber.
_Well, it's not like we will lose anyway, after all the army has us, the five pink bats._
As expected of a race that has an arrogant queen, even though they knew that the enemy had better soldiers than them, they still believed that they could win because the pink bats themselves would be present on the battlefield, after all, even though the monkeys and goblins of the settlement are named, they are not flying creatures like them and only the now deceased monkey tribe leader can make them run away by becoming a giant.
And obviously, no one out of all his children can go near the power of their father, thus who can stop them in their advance? The commander of the enemy? Isn't she just a human healer, well that's what the spider queen said, so the bats somehow mistakenly underestimated her, though Eleanor certainly can't kill the bats, so they are not technically wrong on brushing aside her battle prowess.
_And that goat should be no problem, he's a slob after all._
The pink thought, this hypothesis when The Spider Queen reported that the goat was named Ruphas, even though in the middle of the war slept through the latter half of the day the main battle happened because there were no enemies that attacked the settlement he supposed to defend, thus the size of the goat might only be the thing redeeming him, in short, that Ruphas must be another non-anti avian type monster, well it's obvious because he is a Diamond Horned Goat.
The bat then after thinking all of those things did not realize that he had already finished reassigning the cramped position of their maddened warrior.
Thus another day had passed, and the day of the battle that holds the fate of the world's greatest forest continued to inch closer.
The last of the preparation for the day the alliance has set their attack, Eleanor once again spent the whole night drawing the magic circle in the base of the funnel-shaped pit she just made using her magic, at this point, she is just abusing her healing ability to heal herself, though she cannot heal the fatigue of the mind, thus even though she is physically well, her mind is just moments before forcibly shutting down her body, she is already a little bit away from passing out, in short.
But she endured, she started to once again cover the funnel-shaped pit with soil, She already did so earlier but that was only to make the bats turn a blind eye to this very suspicious structure inside the "normal clearing that is just bigger than the others."
_Just needed some tweaks here and there..._
Eleanor then continued to revise the magic circle looking for possible errors that could surely destroy all of her plans and force her to make the whole settlement retreat, She then made the power output of the magic circle to the maximum her mana could endure, she already gave orders towards Jin, Bernardo and Ruphas and what they are supposed to do when she passed out by pouring all of her power on this circle, so she is not worried about the command system falling apart just because of her absence.
She then started to connect the funnel-shaped pit into the several pseudo pipes she made for air to properly flow from the surface through the pit.
_Phew, that should do it._
Eleanor wiped away the sweat from her forehead and went outside of the ground and then into the cave, she ordered the crafters to bring all of the corks that would serve as ear-dampening devices to all of the soldiers in her lab.
"Here are all of them, commander."
Two leanly muscular goblins said so as box after box got hauled into her lab, then said "Thank you." and then used magic on all of the boxes, sand started to crawl on the top and sides of the boxes, and the sand then started to invade the insides of the boxes going to corks after corks, after which the two lifters who are outside of the lab went inside after the call of their commander Eleanor.
"Please distribute all of these to our soldiers, as well as civilians."
Eleanor already told Sophia that the Pink Bat Queen has some plans to throw the forces of the second settlement out of whack, the time is inadequate to deliver the corks or produce a quantity that can accommodate the humungous population of the second settlement that shadows the whole first settlement with ease.
Eleanor opened a box and took two pieces of corks, it became thicker because of the sand covering its entirety.
A spider then suddenly crawls out of her shoulder.
"To your mother, deliver this."
Eleanor also commanded the spider to tell its birth giver a message containing Eleanor's request for Arachne to delay the plan of the bat queen until the signal for the start of the battle in the first layer has gone off.
The white-colored spider nodded and swallowed the pair of corks, alongside some chitters out of its mouth, and then an "I got it." from Arachne soon after those chitters were heard, the spider then went out somewhere and then disappeared in the darkest corner of the room.
At that time, the lifters already lifted all of the corks out of the lab, Sophia then took a look at a bowl of water at the table of her lab, She put mana on her fingers and then tapped it, and the water started to float and formed an orb on floating in the air, soon at that orb, a voice came out.
"Ellie, what's the matter?"
Eleanor answered.
"Good morning Lady Sophia, I want to suggest changes in your strategy."
Eleanor was quite nervous, after all... that bout of morals and her feelings were yet to subside, Sophia seemed to not know what Eleanor was feeling and just replied seemingly interested in the revisions about to be suggested by Eleanor.
"Please tell."
Eleanor nodded and started talking.
"If I may suggest, please pull out all of the soldiers, especially the like of Wokung and his daughter, and put them back in the volcano, making a giant rock clog the giant door and just let Wokung destroy it after the signal of the start of the first layer battle was set off."
Sophia on the other end got silent for a second, she then replied.
"... Oh? So you figured it out too, but still is your "signal" really that good that we can just give up the element of surprise for caution?"
Eleanor replied.
"The element of surprise won't matter because all of us will surely be surprised, Lady Sophia, I am rather worried because the volcano settlement will be fighting against the big guns of the alliance, so a little disturbance in your balance or even a slight daze will surely get detrimental."
Eleanor finished her explanation.
"You're not worried about me?"
"Well you have to finish off the Pink bat as early as possible so you have to get out of the settlement, but you can just clog your ears from inside out right?"
"That sounds like a shrewd commander would say."
"That's the second time I heard that in the past two days."
Eleanor also suggested wearing earplugs and making the two giant spiders deliver it, The amount is enough only for the soldiers of the second settlement, but a volcano has thick walls, so everything should be fine.
After this conversation, the day of the war finally started and all of the races advanced towards their targets. 7 thousand strong maddened army of goblins and orcs led by the five bats marched howling like rabid dogs while their queen and the queen of spiders flew off to prepare their things.
Ogres with large axes and hammers made out of smoothened stone set foot with heavy steps with the water Oni as their spearhead.
The mantises used their agile feet to make haste towards the volcano settlement with their leader drooling at the thought of finally cleaning up the rivalry between him and the king of monkeys (He does not know that the monkey is dead.)
And finally, Bakunawa the owner of the third layer opened her eyes and ascended out of the water.
All of the participants of the war started their preparations, but for two certain entities, this event is nothing but a mortal farce.
"Aw, too bad, I failed to manipulate her in the end~"
A divine one, sitting on an obsidian-colored throne with a single portrait at its back of a knight with a black colored armor with a skull for its head piercing the heart of a beautiful elf said so, the throne he is currently sitting on is in a huge pile of bones as if to openly declare the divinity of this venerable one.
A divinity that governs the undying race.
The god of the undead, though his face is still shrouded with thick fog looked at the shining white-colored ball of light in front of him, his tone was as if he was enjoying a conversation with a friend, but the god of the undead's friend that manifested his will inside the ball of light was not enjoying their conversation.
"You did not even try to manipulate her! Hell, you even gave her a scolding to fix her family complex right!? You gave her free reigns over your property!"
The ball of light shook violently whilst an enraged voice came out of it, clearly annoyed about what was happening in the forest of the god of the undead, however, the god that the ball just scolded laughed slightly before replying.
"Well, it's a hero's test you know? How can it be a test when there is no opponent? And I am only concerned with the undead race that is stuck in their enclosure, I do not care about those monsters whatsoever, so they can turn into shit for all I care."
The god of the undead responded.
"So that's why you let her decide the fate of your forest. That certainly is understandable (Considering it's your forest) but why did you chuck in two hero prospects of your pantheon inside that forest?"
The owner of the voice emanating in the ball of light calmed down, perhaps finding it wasteful to argue with a person who only listens to his whims.
"Oh, the serpent one? You Mean Bakunawa?"
The ball of light moved up and down two times as if to nod, the god of the undead suddenly gave out a hyena-like snicker that resonated throughout the divine realm.
"You could have guessed it already right?"
A long silence ensued, after which an unrecognizable tone came out of the lump of white light.
"For nourishment, huh?"
The ball of light muttered as the two continued to watch over the grand spectacle that was currently happening.
