The bread that you chew open in your mouth is not so much bread as it is a dry and hard dough.

Dry, unpalatable, and difficult to digest. If it weren't for the strong stomach of a combat professional, I am afraid that I would have a certain stomach discomfort as a result, and I would begin to feel weak and dizzy and want to vomit.

Ideally, a glass of hot milk or ale wine is the right and comfortable way to eat the dough by soaking it until it is soft.

Ideally, they should eat fluffy bread with fragrant soups and spirits.

On the 10th day of entering the forest, with no prey to catch, they used up the last of their regular supplies, leaving only dry hard dough as emergency reserves.

This food is no stranger to the Lamanite natives, and it has been a marching ration since the days of the classical Lamanite Empire. At that time, there was no bread, and people had not yet mastered the secrets of yeast, and they did not understand that the dough that was left overnight could make the dough rise and have a soft and delicious taste.

Most of the breads that still exist today are eaten with other foods, and they are also thinner than their ancestors, and are suitable for rolling meat and vegetables or eating sauces.

And this time, all the ancient styles they brought were thickened and not so tasty, and the reason for this was the saving of space.

Their unexpected encounter with the three earth dragons caused them to lose about thirty pack horses, and the loss of supplies carried by these horses who fled into the forest was very severe for everyone.

Although a large number of people means that they are more powerful in terms of combat effectiveness, the challenges for leaders in terms of material consumption are also more severe.

Horses are more capable of carrying than humans, but the daily consumption of more than 300 people is not a few.

Even in the case of this kind of dry hard dough bread that sacrifices taste, everyone needs at least one piece for a meal, and those strong mercenaries often need one and a half to two pieces to eat. And a rough calculation of five or six hundred pieces of bread was almost enough cargo for two pack horses to carry—unless they wanted to overload the horses and drag down the team.

And that's just a meal.

A minimum of two meals a day is needed to ensure that people have enough strength to keep going and fighting. Although the pack horses that have been drained of supplies can be slaughtered and roasted, the horses will also be damaged in battle, and they need to reserve horses for later replacement, if they lose this important means of transportation, they will not be able to get out of the forest even if they defeat the witch.

Coupled with the fact that the lack of forage for the horses in the extensive necrotic forest caused the loss of horses, in fact, the additional 300 horses carried a large amount of horse grass in addition to human food.

Before seeing the witch, the dilemma faced by just going to fight her was enough to crush most of the soldiers who were not so well-trained.

Carrying so many supplies and relying entirely on self-sufficiency is something that has almost never been done before.

Even if the Empire's regular army has a well-developed logistics, its logistics supply will always be related to the route of the march. From one post to the next, there are granaries along the way, or you can buy food from the local population.

Seasoned adventurers, on the other hand, tend to take advantage of nature's gifts. In the case of the Baao Forest, for example, there are almost no more prey and edible berries and wild vegetables that can be found in this warm southern forest, and it is enough for them to carry two to three days of food per person and rely on hunter-gatherers to march on the road.

But the widespread climate change caused by the witch has created an effect similar to that of a scorched-earth policy.

There were no living creatures along the long trail, and they had to prepare almost all the supplies for themselves, for the forest had no resources other than dead plants for fire.

The night has never been so quiet, no insects chirping, no wind heard.

There is only silence that lasts forever with the darkness.

On the morning of the eleventh day, days after Horno had revealed his relationship with the witch, deserters finally appeared in the team.

A dozen of Stephen's mercenaries slipped away quietly at night, taking with them pack horses and a considerable portion of supplies.

This was an inevitable outcome, and several people at the top of the team foresaw it. In a way, this is exactly the change that Orno wants to cause when he spreads things out.

The witch is powerful beyond the imagination of normal humans, and she is a supernatural, anti-natural being in her own right. And when facing this level of threat in person, if the heart is not strong enough, it will be taken advantage of, confused, and confused, so that the sword in his hand will be pointed at his teammates.

This was a situation that they could never have seen, and the losses were smaller than those who became deserters because of the knowledge of this fact. As long as you can make the team more and more pure, and the people who stay can rest assured that you can hand over their backs to him, then such sacrifices are still within the acceptable range.

Henry, Erica, and Orno all understood this, as did Adolphus, but his thinking as a paladin was different from that of a mercenary. And after Stephen understood the intentions of the sage and the others, although as the commander of the regiment, when those deserters under his command appeared, and the rest of his men were indignant and cursed that they were cowards, he was silent.

The absence of a loud rant about this, as if acquiescing in the presence of deserters, would have eliminated the last shred of wavering hearts and made the matter a beginning, further streamlining the existence of the ranks.

This situation for his own people is a loss of face for Stephen. But in the face of the great enemy, he understands that there is no room for carelessness in any aspect. This is not the time to care about personal emotions and face, he understands it after the bloody battle of Si Kaoti. There are a lot of lives on the shoulders of my own group of people, and if we don't solve it here, we will allow things to expand again.

If.

Let the witch escape from the sparsely populated forest of Bao to the bustling metropolis, to the place where his wife and daughter live—Stephen stopped his thoughts.

Some bad talk began to spread through the ranks, and dissidents appeared.

Those who have gone through many things understand it. A team may be extremely united and tacit when it is unanimous externally, but when there is a disagreement internally, no matter how united the team is, it will become fragmented.

Poor food and terrain took a heavy toll on morale, and the silence in the ranks lasted for days, even before they met the witch.

Adolphus looked back at the paladins under his command. Although deserters were only among the mercenaries, and the paladins who were relatively more disciplined were still full, it was only a matter of time, and when he glanced back with those wolf-sharp eyes, he could see that many of his men had lowered their heads or looked away.

Obviously, they are not all unshaken.

In terms of information related to witches, the Yetina sect, especially the department to which Adolphus belongs, should be able to be said to be quite connoisseurs, but that man is above them.

"Psychic charm. ”

The devil's whisper. ”

"It's not the witch who attacks you, it's the weakness of your own heart. ”

These strange words, which seem to be incomprehensible, seem to be playing tricks, and it is difficult to summarize one or two of the witch's abilities. The battlefield of Scotti's day was chaotic, and due to the distance, this aspect of the witch's abilities was not fully revealed.

And now the closer he got to where she was, the more he could feel the strange aura in the air.

Admittedly, the silence of the land where everything is dead is eerie, but even the wind and air here are strange.

If you want to describe it, it's like the air has a layer of texture, it no longer has such a strong fluidity, and it begins to have a viscous feeling, as if even the air is dead.

And the wind that passed through the trees seemed to be mixed with someone's whisper.

It keeps ringing in my ears.

From the thirteenth day onwards, it is common to wake up at night with auditory hallucinations.

The mercenaries, and even the paladins, began to feel sad for no reason, to feel lonely, and to miss their homeland.

The magicians tried their best to use magic to fight, but they still couldn't match the witches' abilities combined. As a result, the number of people who fled secretly during the night gradually increased, and by the fifteenth day, the number of people in the group was less than sixty percent of the number at the beginning of the departure.

The paladins were reduced to eighty, and Stephen's mercenaries were reduced to the most loyal core personnel.

The only ones who did not desert were the weakest of the magicians, and although many of the apprentices had turned pale, the study of magic required a great deal of patience and tolerance for frustration, and in the end it was they who were the most resistant to such non-existent mental influences.

There was a slight dispute among those who had fled, because it also required a lot of supplies to get out of the forest, and after the first day of the fugitives, they strengthened their guards. Fortunately, in the end, the two sides reached a certain degree of compromise without seeing blood, so that the human task force was not destroyed due to infighting before actually meeting the witch.

The boring journey, the difficult terrain and the unpalatable and monotonous food every day have made people mentally and physically depressed a lot compared to the beginning.

The mercenaries stopped chatting and laughing, and there was no singing or laughter in the team. The paladins clutched the emblem around their necks and kept chanting that this was a test given by the gods—that sooner or later someone would break down, and they knew it, but they didn't even have a way to boost their morale.

Everyone is left to their own willpower to face this drowsy environment.

It wasn't until the morning of the sixteenth day that everything finally changed again.

"Ghoul traces. As the scout spoke, the news poured cold water over everyone's heads. They had been walking for days on the trail with this as a clue, and the sight of ghouls wasn't uncommon in itself, only this time.

"It's fresh, just left over a few hours ago, and they seem to be looking for something. ”

"Maybe it's food, and those things need to be eaten as well. ”

"Your Excellency, here's something else!" a voice rang out on the other side, and the crowd gathered.

"Footprints. ”

Suddenly the wind blew, and the dead weeds shook at first, and then after a while they suddenly fell down and rolled with the wind.

"Human footprints. ”

Among the many traces of ghouls, a set of steady, small footprints stand out.

"She's nearby, everyone, be on your guard!" Adolphus shouted.

He clenched the spear in his hand.