Temple Bravo Pelrith Moonshadow waited until the hunting party, including Los'en Aurorasib, was long gone before he started laying out the trail he wanted the monsters to follow. He wouldn't have dared be obvious enough to leave a trail with most monsters, but Flametooth Chargers would naturally eradicate it by following it. If he laid it over the trail the hunters took when they left, there would be nothing to show they hadn't happened on that trail and followed it to the ruin.

The early part of the plan went well. He knew where the flametooth chargers had their lair. They were more than willing to emerge in the time between snowfalls when he tossed a haunch of antlered gorehoof close enough for them to smell it. It didn't take long for them to find the next part of the antlered gorehoof, then a hunk of bloody fur from a winter spikeball.

Pelrith had the rest of the spikeball's pelt back at his hidden campsite. Spikeball fur was prized for its camouflage and incredible softness under most circumstances as well as its tendency to stiffen into spikes when struck. Winter spikeball fur was exceptionally warm, as well, and Pelrith was going to need that warmth.

That particular piece of spikeball fur was simply too damaged from the kill to be salvageable, which made it perfect bait for the flametooth chargers. They treated any of the cold-weather monsters like candy, so Pelrith wanted to prime them to look for it. Now that he had, he'd be able to lead them by the nose, fairly literally, with only a few more bits of winter spikeball to make certain they stayed interested.

The flametooth chargers followed the path even faster than Pelrith expected, and his expectations were fairly quick. It was fast enough that he snuck around behind them to examine the trail they left and confirm they'd burnt all of the evidence.

What he saw was destruction greater than he expected of first-upgrade monsters, even if there were several of them. The slow was mostly melted along the path they'd taken; along the entire trail, sourceless fires glowed. Even a close look didn't reveal their fuel; they were simply dollops of flame left behind by the flametooth chargers. Most importantly of all, Pelrith couldn't tell where he'd left the meat, even though he was pretty sure he knew where it was.

Pelrith followed the shadows created by the fires all the way to the ruin. He had to stay in the shadows even more closely than usual; if he left footprints here, his enemies might realize there was an opponent and not just happenstance. He didn't want to be hunted, but he could evade them the same way he was avoiding leaving any traces behind now; you couldn't trace the shadow of the moon.

It was far more important that they remain ignorant of him so that he would have easy targets for his thefts. It was the height of humor that the reason he could afford to spend most of his time compromising the aboveground campsite was that he spent his time watching them and could steal what he needed. In a way, they were doing most of the work of living for him while he tried to take their lives away.

Well, the lives of their leaders, anyway. Pelrith didn't care if a few of the lesser members of the various teams got away, especially the Professionals. They wouldn't survive the trip back to Izel without support and anyway, who would believe them?

Anyone who did would probably assume he was a ghost. Ghosts happened near ruins and sometimes they were vengeful. That relied on him leaving no proof behind, but this was his duty to the Broken Lord and it was one he'd performed before. He was very good at it.

Pelrith reached his hidden lookout point shortly after the flametooth chargers reached the campsite. He didn't get to see them follow their name and literally charge the palisade, but he did get to see the aftereffects. The wooden palisade was on fire around several spots where broken poles gave evidence that at least some of the flametooth chargers made it into the camp.

That was excellent. The fact that five of the horselike predators lay outside the broken palisade was not excellent. Dead monsters didn't kill living humans. Well, not most of the time. They wouldn't here, not when there was no Challenge to reanimate them.

The ruin clearly couldn't.

In a way, that made it more useful; once they defined what was allowed and what wasn't, the Hilt would be able to narrow down what he wanted to use the ruin for. Of course, that assumed there was enough left for it to be useful.

It definitely meant the ruin was less powerful than the ruins outside Mazehold. That was too bad, unless the problem was that they hadn't figured out how to use it. The fact that the Mazehold ruin would revive people who died as long as either they'd sacrificed enough enchanted items to it or it had been long enough since the last unpaid revival made it an exceptionally useful training area.

Its existence was a notable secret of the Broken Temple, but Pelrith had trained there at one point. It meant he knew how far he could push himself.

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Discovering another secret powerful ruin would surely elevate Pelrith enough that he'd be allowed to advance to the next upgrade. He'd never be an open power like the Hilt, but knives in the darkness had their place, too.

Pelrith shook off his daydream before it could distract him too badly from the scene he watched. It was hard to tell what was happening, even though he could see over the palisade. The flaming meat-eating horses were running around aimlessly, attacking anything that came near. There were also two dead flametooth chargers inside the palisade; that must have happened extremely quickly; they'd only just broken through the wall and now two were dead.

It took a solid minute for Pelrith to see what killed the flametooth chargers. It just wasn't obvious until a third one fell with no obvious wounds. Instead, it bled from its eyes, nose, and ears. Pelrith took a moment to search the area, then frowned. There were two people actively fighting the chargers, a man with a large shield and a woman with a bow. The man with the shield was the one who killed the first charger Pelrith saw; it ran into his shield, bounced back, and started bleeding far worse than he should have.

The man's shield must be like spikeball fur.That was a useful Ability, and fairly common in shield users. They were offensive weapons, as well as defences, and having an Ability to enhance that helped.

Unfortunately, despite the chaos and destruction he'd caused, his primary plan was a failure. None of his targets, other than Los'en, were on the surface. They were all hiding underground, even if they didn't know they were hiding. The shield-using man and the archer were both from Lan'ti's team, but they were the only ones on the surface.

He'd expected this attack to draw someone out, but instead it seemed to have sent the noncombatants running for shelter and the duo seemed to be doing fine, killing fiery horse after fiery horse. One of them did manage to ram the archer, sending her flying and clearly burning and injuring her despite her shield taking the brunt of the attack, but the shieldman was there a moment later. The archer drank something, probably a temporary healing concoction, then resumed her attack.

The other flametooth chargers fell without accomplishing anything other than destruction. Pelrith was going to have to remember that; destruction like this would be a good cover for more thefts. More importantly, though, his secondary plan was working. It was slow, but the injury the archer took was significant.

Pelrith knew that with that kind of injury, she'd be out of the fight for weeks with the kind of healing they had available unless she used another alchemical like the one that got her back on her feet to kill the chargers. Aurora Clan was rich and had likely sent some magical healing supplements, but those would only patch you up for a bit or boost your normal healing. You needed a real healer for more than that, and none of the people Lan'ti took with him was a true healer.

Pelrith didn't know nearly as much about his target's team, but he did know that they were a mage, a swordsman, and another Aurora who carried a bow. That meant they didn't have a healer, and that meant that attrition attacks like this could work well. He was just going to have to keep trying.

This wasn't the first set of monsters Pelrith had driven over the upper camp, even if it was the largest. It also wasn't the first time he'd seen that duo handle them. As far as he could tell, there were three pairs that responded when there was an attack, and none of them included any of the people he was interested in other than Los'en, who responded to every attack when he wasn't out hunting. Unfortunately, all of the second upgrade monsters Pelrith had found were loners, so he'd given up on attacking while Los'en was there.

Pelrith hadn't found a way to sneak into the underground encampment. He'd tried, and while he did manage to sneak past the sentry, it was only his paranoid level of caution that made him see the enchantment on the stairs. Really, who used enchantments against infiltrators out in the wilderness? Who could afford them? For that matter, where did they find an enchanter willing to come this far out?

It was frustrating, but at least he was able to steal their hunting periodically. All he had to do was make it look like animals did it. There was no shortage of animals in the area, despite the weather. If he could find more monsters to drive or lure towards them, he should be able to steal even more. That would help; while he'd set up his own sheltered camp in a former monster's den after sending the monster to attack the ruins camp, there were a lot of things they had that would make him more comfortable.

He might as well make the attacks serve more than one purpose.

Pelrith stayed in his blind and watched as his enemies killed the last of his catspaws. The very end of the attack had an unanticipated benefit: while none of the chargers managed to destroy any of the stone walls, since they seemed to avoid those, they did manage to make part of the sheltering roof the builders had added in the past two tendays collapse. Pelrith was certain it would be replaced, but for now he could see everything that wasn't actually inside the building and some of what was, since the door was open.

The shieldman escorted the archer to the stairs. Neither one emerged again, so they were probably on their way to the lower camp. A few minutes later, the workers emerged along with a woman carrying a staff that Pelrith recognized as a mage-type he'd seen fight off one of the smaller attacks. She wasn't part of Lan'ti's team so Pelrith knew relatively little about her, but he knew how she fought: with lightning that came from her staff.

Clearly, they were aware that scavengers might be drawn to the site of the fight against the chargers. Pelrith was certain he could defeat the woman, but that wouldn't achieve his objectives and it would let his targets know he was out there. No, it was better to watch and wait.

The hunting party came back several hours later. It was clear they had no idea there was a problem until they saw the damage, which confirmed Pelrith's suspicions; if they could call them back, they would have. That gave him a time frame to work with.

He didn't sneak away from the camp until after dark. He needed to find more monsters, but for now this seemed like a good way to wear down his enemies and weaken them. He needed that; while he could handle Los'en on his own, Los'en was not alone and he was not Pelrith's only target. The entire expedition had to disappear if he was to present the ruins to the Hilt.

Maybe he should also come up with an alternative plan. He was going to run out of nearby monsters eventually.

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