Chapter 60
The next morning, Crimsonwood woke beneath a clear sky.
The heavens had been washed clean, and the blazing sun poured down like the Eye of the Light.
The "lesser sun" named for the God of Time hung partly veiled in shadow, as always, as if something unknown and wicked were trying to swallow it whole.
Ordinary people in Aurelia knew nothing of astronomy.
Elise, who had come from Earth, was deeply curious about this world's celestial phenomena. But she also knew her understanding of the transcendent realm was still shallow.
Matters touching the higher planes and the fundamental laws of the world lay far beyond the reach of low-ranked Awakened.
For now, Elise wanted only one thing: to raise her strength as fast as possible.
That way, when Anarias the "walking loot drop" reached Crimsonwood, he could find peace.
After completing the Church's first morning prayer, Elise stepped outside and spotted Chalmers waiting across the road at the entrance to the noble council, his team already assembled.
She walked over unhurriedly.
"Good morning, honored High Cleric Elise."
"May the Light bless you, honored High Cleric Elise."
"Good morning, Elise."
Everyone bowed to her, including Chalmers and his two younger brothers, Harkian and Lannic.
Elise answered with a slight nod, glanced at Lannic, then went over the mission details with Chalmers.
A short while later, she swung up onto the warhorse House Fris had prepared for her.
Hooves rang against the road, and the company set out for Redleaf Town.
Along the way, Elise saw just how much life had flooded into Crimsonwood.
Compared with the half-empty frontier settlement of two months ago, the city now held nearly twenty thousand people.
The Church of Light alone counted more than a hundred Awakened and over three hundred clergy—almost five hundred people in all.
Nobles, dwarves, elves, mercenaries, and other Awakened accounted for nearly three thousand more.
The remaining sixteen thousand were commoners and convicts.
With that many mouths to feed, importing grain from outside was far too expensive. The city had no choice but to develop farming towns.
And with so many people gathered here, ringing the city with towns as a first line of defense was equally necessary as the frontier pushed deeper toward the forest.
It was a military necessity and a political mandate rolled into one.
Besides, the mass of Awakened gathered here needed the empire and the Church to keep expanding. They wanted merit, titles, and resources for their training.
Elise and Chalmers led House Fris's armed company out of Crimsonwood. Their horses followed a rough road until it delivered them to a logging camp.
The camp sat about six miles from Crimsonwood, at the foot of a low hill in the Redpine Range.
The ground was low enough there to make timber transport convenient, while the flatter land near the hill could be reclaimed into fields large enough to feed ten thousand people.
The man in charge of the logging camp had already been replaced by a retainer of House Fris.
When he saw Chalmers arrive with his two younger brothers, then noticed Elise at the center of the group in her High Cleric robes, he immediately performed an impeccable Church salute.
"Honored High Cleric, welcome to Redleaf Logging Camp. I am Wes, steward of House Fris."
Whatever the occasion, greeting a Church Awakened first was always the safest move.
Besides, Wes had received Chalmers's stern warning the day before.
His conduct was nearly flawless.
"Our God watches over His children," Elise said after a brief pause.
Chalmers and the others felt their hearts clench. They lowered their heads slightly.
"Our God watches over His faithful" and "Our God watches over His children" carried two very different meanings.
The former stayed within the bounds of religion.
The latter openly proclaimed the Church's ambition to build a divine kingdom on earth.
Even so, Awakened of the Church of Light sometimes used the phrase to signal a hard stance in certain situations.
Chalmers took it as Elise testing House Fris's devotion to the God of Light, so he naturally bowed his head in submission.
Elise was satisfied.
She represented the Church here, and everyone needed to know exactly who led this mission.
For now, Chalmers—this noble teammate of hers—still seemed trustworthy.
She asked him to take her to the site at once.
Chalmers was a Grand Knight, and he knew both his strength and his status now fell far short of Elise's. By this point, not one of the little notions he'd entertained when they first met remained.
Back then, he had still dared to daydream about charming and marrying a beautiful, powerful woman of the Church.
Now he didn't even dare let his eyes linger on her.
Yesterday's news had been too shocking.
Elise had dared to tell the archbishop, in front of every Second-tier transcendent in the parish, that she would apply for a transfer to another parish.
Then the archbishop had stormed out in a fury—and still agreed to let her clear the threats around Redleaf Town.
Once Elise made her request, the whole of Crimsonwood Parish had quietly handed her the mission.
Was this an ordinary High Cleric?
No.
This was Crimsonwood Parish's little saintess.
So Chalmers had abandoned the final scrap of fantasy in his heart.
His attitude toward Elise now was simple.
Adoration.
She was the prodigy risen from their own Megalith City Parish, a future legendary powerhouse—perhaps even a saintess.
In short, House Fris needed only to obey.
Even if this mission failed, Elise could not be allowed to come to the slightest harm.
Before long, Chalmers led her to an ant nest.
Elise looked at the felled stump, then at the dense black swarm crawling over the wood. She swept the area with her spiritual energy and went quiet for a moment.
When she'd accepted the mission yesterday, she hadn't taken these so-called magical ants seriously.
To her, clearing out ants had sounded simple enough. She could borrow methods from Earth.
But after reading through the records last night, Aurelia's transcendent ecosystem had taught her a lesson.
It was not that simple.
Now, having sensed the state of the nest for herself, her head began to throb.
A single ant was weak. Even an ordinary person could crush a First-tier ant.
And the colony couldn't possibly consist entirely of First-tier ants. At most, ten or twenty percent had crossed that threshold.
But there were simply too many of them.
A mature nest held millions.
Ten or twenty percent still meant hundreds of thousands of First-tier ants.
And the Awakened couldn't afford to treat them as independent creatures. They were closer to a single bizarre transcendent collective.
Black Root-Borer Ants built their nests deep beneath the roots of great trees. The deepest chambers could reach nearly sixty-five feet underground.
Countless First-tier ants filled different roles within the colony. Faced with a devastating attack, they would scatter in every direction at once.
Hundreds of thousands of ants could flee through the soil, across the ground, and into the air simultaneously. Once they found hidden places to settle, some could transform into new queens.
And then new nests would rise.
Who could deal with that?
The only way to truly destroy a Black Root-Borer Ant nest was to kill as many tiered ants as possible, so that even the escapees couldn't sustain a new colony.
"Elise, we have enough manpower and enough patience," Chalmers said quickly when he saw her frown. "We only need your help with the large nests. We can handle the smaller ones ourselves."
"Assuming I can mark enough ants with my mana signature," Elise said with a nod.
She understood her role.
She was just about to begin her preparations when Lia stepped out of the forest.
The girl had reached Redleaf Logging Camp ahead of the rest of them. Glenrius and Telynia were with her, and all three wore grim expressions.
Then Glenrius spoke, and Elise's face changed.
"Elise, there are more nests in the forest. And..."
He hesitated.
Lia eagerly finished for him.
"I found death-aspect traces on the ants."
Death-aspect ants?
The words hung in Elise's mind.
For a moment, she simply froze.