粉红的窗帘

Treiya was surrounded by everyone as she pointed at different places in the hand-drawn map which looked like a doodle of a kid with how simple it was. It had many markings on it, showing different and important landscapes like famous mountains and rivers to help them identify things more easily.

​ "So, this is where they camp?" Lydia questioned Treiya, while carefully observing and taking mental notes inside her mind listening to her words carefully.

"I don't know about their every camp, but until now, these four are the ones I was able to find after spying day and night," She thought for a minute while looking at the map.

"If you follow this path, you can easily see a pattern, all of these camps lead to the dark elf kingdom where I believe Eldora is staying," Treiya pointed at a place far away from their current position.

If Nikol's group wanted to reach that place, they had to pass many enemy camps as well as unknown areas, so without having any knowledge about the area, it was extremely dangerous to take the army in such a dangerous campaign so they had to remove that idea from their minds.

"Usha, what do you think? Should we attack camps or wait for them to respond to us?"

Everyone thought really hard about this situation. Both attacking and defending had their own advantages and disadvantages, but it all depended on how dark elves decided to act and their current power after experiencing such a defeat by elves' hands.

"Defending is our best choice with this wall, but after experiencing their last defeat, I don't think they will attack us openly," Zenda gave her opinion about this matter.

"That's right, they already know what this wall can do assuming that messenger knew about it, so I don't think they will make the same mistake again,"

"Then, how do you think they will attack?" Emily was the one to question with her curiosity taking the best of her.

"They must be waiting for us to attack, but if neither groups make any move, I don't think this war will happen anytime sooner,"

With Nikol's words, everyone went silent. None of them had any idea what to do. They already confirmed that Nym's magic stone with blessings is not the absolute defence. They had a lifetime as well as a limit on which they can absorb the curses.

"Trisha, can you detect things happening around this kingdom, especially outside the wall?"

To that question, she just showed a disappointed face, as she does her head showing it's not possible.

"Our options are limited," Not knowing how to proceed with this war, the meeting they were supposed to discuss about it came to an end with the only decision taken being keeping the army ready for deployment anytime they wanted and logistic section.

"I hope they attack us and make things easier for us,"

***

"This is a little weird," Treiya looked at the empty camp in front of them while signalling all the archers to stand down.

"What happened here?"

"All the buildings are empty, there are no cursed elves or at least kids from the elf kingdom," After spying everywhere, she said with a confused face.

"Did they get to know about our attack? Or did something happen?"

Since travelling through the forest with a big army was alarming, Nikol and Zenda decided to make a small group consisting of the best archers and assassins to attack these small camps.

Under Treiya's guidance, it wasn't hard for them to find this place but unfortunately, they couldn't find any cursed elves.

"This could be a trap, let's go back,"

Right after failing their attempt to capture that camp, they went back to the kingdom to report what they found.

"Did they go back after knowing about our attack?"

Nikol didn't feel good about this situation. He felt like something sinister was going on as it felt too good to be true. Besides, if cursed elves wanted prisoners like elves to make transformations, there's no way they would retreat back to their main kingdom.

They made an official meeting room to hold meetings, as all the representatives from the two races always came for the meeting to discuss things.

This room was in a different building which was newly built just for the sake of the alliance. Usha and Trisha tried to name that building as Nikol's building but it felt too cheesy for Nikol so, they just decided to call it the Human and Elven Alliance building.

"What do we do now? If we attack the main kingdom can we win?" Eva questioned Treiya who was just as confused by this incident.

"I don't know about that, even though our walls are not great like this one, they still had a proper defence and with their puppet monsters, I don't really think, it's a good idea to fight them in an offensive battle,"

All of them were disappointed to hear about this, but that disappointment didn't last long, as they heard a bell ring outside the kingdom.

This was the new mechanism that Nikol proposed instead of shouting which could easily damage their vocal cords and not effective enough for the people on the other end of the kingdom.

"What's happening? Are they attacking us?" Quickly getting up from their seats, everyone started running.

Usha and Zenda didn't forget to order the army to get ready with their weapons for the aerial as well as close-range enemies. There were many spear-using girls and archers stationed just in case, but as soon as they left the building what they saw was not something they expected.

"A monster? And it's dead," Without getting close to the corpse, Eva was easily able to tell by looking at the appearance of that monster.

"How did it come here?"

"There's no way, they can enter through walls, that means someone dropped this from the sky," Looking up, Tisha said with confidence. She had absolutely no doubt that heavenly was the perfect defence.

"But why? And who?"

"Wait!" Suddenly they heard Alva's voice, who was rather close to the corpse. She bravely got close to it without even telling others. Her eyes met with something strange in this corpse.

"There's something written in this,"

Hearing her voice, everyone quickly got close to her and started to see what she was talking about only to notice some letters on the dead monster's belly.

"It's a letter,"

"What does it say?" Nikol questioned with curiosity.

Even though reluctant with the help of some girls, they quickly turned the monster's body to take a good look at the letters which were carved into its skin through a sharp object.

"We- have- your kids and prisoner," Letter by letter, Alva read it while others listened to it without making a scene.

"Hand- over the- light mage and humans, or else," Now they understood from which group this type of strange object came from.

"Or else, we will kill hostages one by one, you have 24 hours to send them, every single hour you get late, we will kill hostages," The message ended there making everyone go silent.

"Damn bitches!" Usha, Eva, Zenda, Trisha, Alva and Emily plus everyone in the area who heard this message cursed them, but this time none of them were for the sake of mocking dark elves.

The anger they felt reading this, almost cause some of them to release their mana in anger making the atmosphere around this corpse to get suffocate.

"I will gut every one of them," Eva shouted in anger while attacking the floor beneath her causing a huge hole to be formed.

They took a few minutes to calm down but when they did all of them looked at each other with confusion. They had no idea what they are going to do.

"There's is a location in marked here," Emily pointed at the drawing which looked like a map on the other side of the monster.

"This is-" After observing that location, they were easily able to tell they purposefully choose an area far away from the wall and with fewer trees.

"Looks like we are facing a good brain here," Nikol felt anger but at the same time, even Nikol had to admit that cursed elves pulled up a checkmate on them right now.

"We can use archers, nature magic, if we attack them with normal magic or close combat attacks, they can easily kill our kids, this is truly a checkmate for us,"

Seeing all their war plans crumbling in front of them, Zenda and Usha felt a little pessimistic but soon, they heard Nikol suggesting an even more insane thing.

"Send me as a sacrifice to them," Everyone looked at him with strange eyes. If looks could kill someone, Nikol would have already died a few times by how intense their looks were.

"Listen now-" Seeing that they misunderstood his intentions, he started to explain his plan while others listened to it carefully.