After the enemy leader died, it was obvious that these captives now looked to Da Shi as their leader.
As soon as Da Shi pledged his allegiance, they all followed suit and swore loyalty.
Zhou Xu did not particularly care about this.
The two sides had only just finished fighting a battle. Did anyone really think these people would immediately follow him with absolute devotion? That simply wasn't realistic.
For now, Zhou Xu's demands were simple: all they had to do was work for him obediently. He wasn't asking for anything else.
"Is the camp over there far from here?"
"Not far."
If the two tribes had been far apart, the other side could not have encountered them in the morning and immediately gathered its forces to attack by noon.
In fact, their traveling speed had been rather slow. They had to coordinate with their former leader's tactical plans, and each of them had been carrying a large shield like a door panel on their back, along with skeleton remains. They had been moving under a heavy load, plain and simple.
After receiving that answer, Zhou Xu turned directly to Fei Que.
"Fei Que, take a group of people and settle them in. Dashan, bring those skeletons and come with me to their camp."
It was a simple sentence, but Fei Que immediately understood. "Settling them in" actually meant keeping an eye on the captives so they would not cause any trouble.
With that in mind, the ten men led by Dashan quickly assembled. Without wasting time, they took Da Shi and set out.
The other side's camp should have had some defensive forces as well. Under normal circumstances, bringing only ten men would not have been enough to guarantee their advantage, but Zhou Xu wasn't afraid in the slightest.
His confidence came from two sources. The first was his own strength. After obtaining the power of the true word Skeleton Control, he alone could raise more than a dozen skeletons to fight for him.
His personal combat strength was far beyond that of an ordinary single combat unit.
The other reason was Dashan.
Dashan's actual combat strength at this stage had already been fully displayed in the earlier battle.
To be honest, it had completely exceeded Zhou Xu's expectations.
At first, Zhou Xu had thought that although Dashan's growth limit in "Martial Valor" was four stars, he currently had only two. Even with the bonus from his talent, he would probably be only slightly stronger than some ordinary two-star members.
The facts had proven that he had been naive.
Dashan's performance in the previous battle had made it abundantly clear that even among two-star individuals, the gap in actual combat strength could be enormous.
This forced Zhou Xu to rethink the meaning of the star rating.
The upper limit of two stars should represent the extreme that an ordinary person without any outstanding talent could reach through sheer effort.
But in reality, the vast majority of ordinary people in this world could not even touch that limit. They merely hovered around the average, muddling through an unremarkable life until the end.
Dashan was undoubtedly above that average—and not by just a little!
Unless the enemy had someone with combat strength equal to Dashan's, ten tribal warriors led by Dashan, combined with his Skeleton Control, could take on twenty or thirty opponents without a problem!
It was worth mentioning that the true word Skeleton Control he had obtained from the other side was different from what he had initially imagined.
According to Zhou Xu's mental picture at the time, after using the true word, skeletons should have crawled straight out of the ground. Or perhaps a magic circle would open, and the skeletons would emerge from it.
That was what he had thought a spell for summoning skeletons looked like.
But the truth was different. What the other side possessed was not Skeleton Summoning, but Skeleton Control.
Those were two entirely different concepts.
The prerequisite for Skeleton Control was that skeletons had to exist before they could be "controlled."
That was also the main reason the other side had insisted on carrying skeletons on their backs when they attacked. Otherwise, their true word would have been useless.
Of course, that still could not conceal the value of this true word.
Skeleton Soldiers feared no death. Even if they were smashed to pieces, the power of the true word could pull them back together so they could continue fighting.
Even though it could not summon skeletons out of thin air, its value on the battlefield was beyond question.
On the way to their destination, Zhou Xu naturally did not sit idle. He kept asking Da Shi about the tribe's circumstances.
"You were the former leader of this tribe?"
"Yes."
From the captives' reactions at the time, it was not difficult to see what position Da Shi had originally held in the tribe.
"Then why did you choose to summon a God Chosen?"
"Our tribe was in conflict with a neighboring tribe at the time. We couldn't defeat them..."
There was no need to elaborate on what happened afterward. In essence, the God Chosen they summoned had helped them turn the situation around and win the battle.
At the same time, relying on his status as a God Chosen, he had naturally become their new leader.
"Then why did you gather your forces and come to our territory?"
"Explorers we sent out discovered a strange forest, so they returned to report it. Our former leader possessed the power of a true word that could control skeletons. For us, sending skeletons inside to explore was the safest option."
Zhou Xu approved of that line of thought.
If he had possessed those skeletons, he would also have sent them first to carry out a potentially dangerous mission, saving his own manpower and resources.
It was just that...
"Judging from the matter of 'exploration' alone, wasn't your force a little too large?"
Zhou Xu could not help letting a hint of sarcasm creep into his voice.
That left Da Shi at a loss for words.
He couldn't exactly say that their leader had been a coward, could he?
Although Da Shi had plenty of complaints about some of their leader's ways of doing things, their leader had, after all, helped them survive the crisis and brought them a better life.
Now that the leader was dead, Da Shi naturally wasn't about to badmouth him there.
Seeing Da Shi's reaction, Zhou Xu did not dwell on the matter. It was irrelevant now anyway. What concerned him more was the question that followed.
"Did that true word belong to your tribe?"
"No."
Da Shi shook his head.
"The former leader found it on the grasslands himself."
This answer had clearly gone beyond Zhou Xu's expectations.
At first, he had thought every tribe possessed a true word as a "benefit" for its God Chosen. Now it seemed that was not entirely the case.
From that brief exchange, Zhou Xu also caught a new piece of information that left him exhilarated.
"Grasslands? Are there grasslands near your camp?"
"Yes. There's a stretch of grassland near our tribal camp."
Upon hearing this, the smile on Zhou Xu's face could no longer be concealed.
Earlier, he had been troubled by the environment of the Black Forest. Coupled with his shortage of manpower, he had been unable to improve the efficiency of his exploration and had not even known where to move the tribal camp.
But now things were different. An area with an obviously better environment than theirs was gradually unfolding before him!
The update is here. Thanks to the reader "Idle Man of the World" for the tip. And finally, please vote!
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