The moment the "sun" fell, all was silent.
Every sound seemed to vanish.
A faint ringing filled everything. Only after a long while did sound return, yet it all blended into incomprehensible noise.
But amid the dizziness and blurred vision, that noise gradually became steady and uniform.
Even New Star's body began to tremble along with it.
"Rumble, rumble—"
The tremors were far stronger and heavier than a troll's footsteps.
Something much larger had to be slowly approaching from his direction.
He slapped his muddled head, trying to force himself awake—
At the instant the sea of fire erupted and flames swept across the ground.
Realizing he was about to be burned to ashes, New Star used his last remaining spell slot.
Using Misty Step, he transformed into a thin cloud of silvery-white smoke, nearly blending into the forest's layers of illusionary mist.
In the blink of an eye, he drifted beside a tent thirty feet away without even being touched by a spark.
But the flames ignited the Blazing Fire Glue by the campfire, along with every other flammable object.
The chain of explosions, combined with the roar of the Fireball, still assaulted his eardrums.
Now that he had barely regained his senses, only one thought remained in his mind—
Run!
For a Spellcaster, entering the realm of the Third Ring meant a qualitative transformation in status and standing.
The meteor-like Fireball had come without warning, leaving almost none of the mercenaries time to react.
With flames scorching their faces and their red-hot armor searing their flesh, most could only howl amid the blaze, losing all ability to fight.
Those who had narrowly escaped the flames fled from the inferno without regard for anything else.
A single spell had instantly reduced the mercenaries, who had been fighting so bravely moments ago, into a shattered rout.
Spellcasters were simply that unreasonable.
And the trembling drew closer and closer.
Within the re-forming mist, a towering silhouette gradually emerged.
Because it was so enormous, and so slow.
Its true form could not yet be seen.
All they could hear from afar was the thunderous drumming advancing alongside that silhouette, along with roaring battle cries:
"Ho! Ha!"
"Ho! Ha!"
"Ho! Ha!"
Whatever was hidden within that shadow was something New Star had never encountered and had no power to resist.
As he desperately turned and fled toward his own tent, Explosive Wolf's terrified shout rang in his ears:
"It's Beastfolk! It's a fucking Beastfolk tribe!
Everyone, retreat! Fall back into the woods!
How the hell did they end up in this godforsaken place?!"
The Lord Alliance was a loose treaty combining trade, diplomacy, and strategic cooperation among the independent city-states along the eastern coast of the Forgotten Continent.
And the reason they could maintain that fragile agreement was not because the various lords were particularly noble and unwilling to seize one another's lands.
It was solely because of the southern front—
Throughout the thousand years of lost history, war had never ceased upon the continent.
It was not merely a struggle of shifting power, but also one steeped in racial hatred.
The Beastfolk, those green skins as ugly as boars, as vicious as wolves, and as fierce as tigers, had never ceased craving conquest and slaughter.
They abducted women of every race and forced them to bear new warriors for them, strengthening their tribes during their nomadic existence before turning everything into an ocean of slaughter and blood—
By their values, violence and killing were their "aesthetics."
Most races could not accept that.
The Lord Alliance's foremost clause was to keep them beyond the Great Wall's border at any cost, in exchange for peace within.
And Explosive Wolf was a Warrior who had truly fought in the southern defensive war—
Naturally, for the generous pay.
Even though the mercenaries beside him were no longer the brothers from those days.
His fear of the Beastfolk had never eased, not for even a moment:
"How could they possibly cross the Great Wall and migrate all the way to Twilight Forest, thousands of miles away?!"
Their appearance was enough to explain the vanguard force made up of Goblins and trolls.
Only the Beastfolk could enslave them and use them as expendable troops.
But that proved this was a complete tribe, not scattered deserters.
Unless the great southern cities had been crushed into ruins and the Druid tribes of the woods had been slaughtered to the last, they had no reason to appear in this forest!
They could not even tell direction in the forest.
So why had they run into this returning caravan while they were lost?
Explosive Wolf finally understood how several of his brothers had vanished.
The truth could not be explained by common sense.
But there was no time to think.
In his haste, Explosive Wolf grabbed the caravan master and servants who had fled out of terror at the Fireball's roar. Glaring into Melard's eyes, he ordered:
"Use that eye on your shoulder to lead us back!"
"Mercenary, watch your—"
Hus stepped forward, but before he could finish, Explosive Wolf sent him flying to the ground with a punch.
"Don't make me fucking repeat myself a second fucking time!"
Melard was frightened out of his wits as well.
He was only an ordinary noble. He had thought this would be a safe vacation, no different from previous years.
The fact that he had not pissed himself already was a show of courage:
"Y-yes, yes— The town, the town... it's over there!"
He patted the bottled eyeball on his shoulder and waited for it to circle into the air, flying toward the woods on the left—
Affected by the mist, that was not the "way back" they remembered, but Explosive Wolf would not question a construct.
He called for the brothers who could still move.
As for the badly wounded...
May they have luck:
"And New Star... fuck, where is he? Forget it. Everyone, follow me!"
The giant shadow in the mist moved slowly, and only the Beastfolk war cries were drawing near. That meant they still had a chance to escape.
As for the missing New Star he had mentioned, he had not fled in blind panic.
The young mage was now urgently rushing back to his private tent to retrieve his Dimensional Bag—
It contained food, materials, and all of his research into magic.
It even contained a Third Ring spell, the key to his future advancement.
He was a scholar. Knowledge was his most precious possession, and he could not lose it like this.
That tent had deliberately been pitched far from the others. As long as he concealed himself properly, with the mist covering him, there would definitely still be time...
This was not wishful thinking. New Star had estimated the tribe's marching speed and made a judgment based on the resources and mobility at his disposal.
Like a neatly structured formula.
The answer was "retrieve the Dimensional Bag and leave safely."
List every known variable before him, analyze them, and naturally a perfect result matching the answer would emerge.
Unless.
Some factor he had overlooked appeared—
When New Star rushed into the tent and saw his belongings neatly stacked.
Realizing that the two prisoners seemed to have been hiding from the Fireball and had not yet reached the tent, he first let out a sigh of relief.
Then, not daring to delay, he hurried to pick up the Dimensional Bag in the corner, along with that rare curved blade.
But then he realized:
"The blade is gone?"
That meant someone had already entered the tent...
"Not good!"
He cried out and turned to flee.
"Pfft—"
A pitch-black curved blade abruptly pierced through his chest.
"Human, destroy!"
A Kobold's vicious, furious roar echoed beside his ear.
"My treasure!"
Spellcasters had always been fragile once someone got close to them.
Especially a Spellcaster whose spell slots had been exhausted.
New Star fell to the ground as weakness flooded his entire body.
He realized death was approaching, and fear made him tremble uncontrollably.
Once, he had also imagined his own death.
He had imagined writing legends during his adventures and dying with composure.
He had imagined being worn down by the years on the path of study, dying old and frail.
But he had never imagined he would die at the hands of a Kobold—
They were so weak.
Even their scales should have been ground into powder, becoming insignificant spellcasting materials in his hands.
More ridiculous still, he could not even remember when he had destroyed this Kobold's treasure.
In his eyes, treasure was treasure.
It was a wonder, magic, knowledge.
Not a stick.
Just as Kuru could not understand why the treasure it cherished so dearly was worthless in other people's eyes.
New Star would likewise never understand why a Kobold considered this worthless staff so important.
Because he did not understand, he did not care.
And so, when the outcome went wrong, this learned tactician.
The New Star in the eyes of adventurers.
Could not even realize the key factor he had overlooked...
And it was fatal.
The young mage stared blankly with eyes that perhaps would never close.
His breath faded amid incomprehension, until, filled with unwillingness, he reached the end of his life.
The Kobold cautiously slashed at the corpse. After confirming he was truly dead, it reached for the Dimensional Bag and prepared to leave.
But an argument suddenly broke out outside the tent—