An Owl's Rise

Having cut the fleeing brass jackals off, Evelyn simply watched and waited as Bylur, Rehni, and the burrowing owl squad fished them off.

They were certainly tenacious and held on until the end, but they did not have a chance against a force that was nearly three times their numbers.

It was over within just a couple minutes and all across the area were the corpses of the brass jackals.

The battle had come to an end in completely favor of Evelyn and her allies. They had not lost a single member of their attack force and every single one of the brass jackals was dead.

Surely it was brutal and in no way could they be considered the good guys. But still, they had reaped an incredible reward by slaughtering all of the brass jackals.

"Good work everyone. We managed to get off a flawless victory." Evelyn said, praising her allies who had done all of the fighting.

"No, we were only able to do so well thanks to your help and strategy. Without you having used poison to weaken them, it would have taken the entire force of us burrowing owls to even have a chance at winning. And then we would have incurred devastating losses." Po, the leader of the burrowing owl squad said. Heaping a large amount of praise onto Evelyn.

Bylur, Rehni, and the other burrowing owls joined in, and showered Evelyn with compliments. In their eyes the victory was achieved almost entirely through their efforts. All they had done was clean up after she had set the stage for them.

With an awkward smile on her face Evelyn took the admiration, since she knew trying to play it down would not work.

Eventually things calmed down and it was time to collect their rewards.

They had not only wiped out the power that held the magic crystal deposit but would be able to take the materials from their dead foes.

Unfortunately, when Po began heading towards the leader of the brass jackals to remove is core and present it to Evelyn, she stopped him.

"We need to make sure that no one touches the bodies of those that were killed by the poison I released. It may no longer be permeating the air, but it will still be in their blood. They will need to be cleansed with my flame. It is unfortunate, but only the six guards that were outside and remained unpoised have any materials we can take. Even the cores of those that are poisoned will have been corrupted. In a way, this is a price to pay for using the poison that I did." Evelyn explained.

This dampened the mood quite a bit, as now only materials from six of the brass jackals could be gathered.

For the others, Evelyn flew a few feet above them and wreathed them in fire until their bodies were nothing but ash.

'That is all the ones outside. Now I have to go back into the den and cleanse it as well.' Evelyn thought with a grimace on her face.

The sight of the dead bodies of the brass jackals that were outside were already in terrible conditions after being ravaged by the poison, and Evelyn could only imagine what sort of horror awaited her inside the den.

Still, she was the only one that could safely cleanse the poison thanks to her heavenly flame, so she had to go in alone.

'Better take my best antidote in advance and keep a wind barrier around me at all times. The poison should have dissipated at this point, but there is no need not take every precaution I can.' Evelyn thought as she entered the den.

For the first few dozen meters she did not come across anything, but soon enough she found the bodies of several brass jackals.

It was quite apparent that these were members of the force that was being led by the leader but had become overwhelmed by the poison before they could even exit the den.

With a few bursts of flame, she turned them all into ash and continued heading into the den.

What she found next was the younger brass jackals that had not made it to the awakened rank yet.

All of them had ended up even worse than any of the other jackals Evelyn had seen and looked almost like piles of sludge with how deformed their bodies were.

This nearly made Evelyn sick despite how much of a tolerance for violence and horrific things she had developed since being reborn as an owl.

'At least they probably did not suffer for too long.' Evelyn thought as she turned them all to ash.

One by one she incinerated all of the remains of every brass jackal within the den.

Not a single one had survived the poison and all of them were in terrible shape.

Nevertheless, despite how awful the scene before her was, the walls of the den were filled with the treasure she had caused this slaughter for.

There were easily enough magical crystals in this one deposit to last her and her friends for a fairly long time.

Among the magical crystals were even a few purple ones which were normally not obtainable to anyone but powerful peak wakened rank beasts or tyrant rank beasts. Plus, a single silver one that was closer to the territory of a calamity rank beast.

These magic crystals were undoubtedly a powerful resource that Evelyn could use to help further her advancement and get closer to her goal.

'Reaching the peak of the awakened rank should go fairly smoothly now. We have all of these magic crystals to use to increase our magical energy, and the magic spring to help us advance with greater speed and ease. Now all we need to do is gather some specialized mining equipment to gather the magic crystals and we can put them to far better use at the Roost than simply allowing them to stay here.'