Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage Chapter 785: Convoy’s Reversal

CH785 Convoy’s Reversal

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Alex wanted to deny it, but he couldn’t. After all, Eleanore had helped him develop almost all of the different formation scrolls he used, making her, alongside himself, the person most familiar with their capabilities.

He definitely had scroll types capable of accomplishing the task.

"You are a domain lord now, and the domain currently needs your presence. You can’t keep going around freely and putting yourself in danger like you used to. You have an entire domain of subordinates and aides under you—use them." Eleanore admonished.

Udara also nodded solemnly in agreement.

"I agree with the madams, Leader." Saul said. "It makes us uncomfortable as your retainers and subordinates when you insist on doing everything yourself instead of relying on us.

"It could be misunderstood as you not trusting us... or our abilities."

Alex’s lips twitched. Saul had truly cornered him there.

"Fine, fine... I’ll prepare the formation. The three of you can decide the rest of the operation’s details." Alex said to Udara, Saul and Kavakan.

"We won’t let you down, Leader." Saul smiled.

Alex shook his head.

"I’ll need your help with the formation scrolls." He said to Eleanore. "Because of the formation’s complexity, I’m going to need something with a much larger capacity."

"Understood." Eleanore replied after pondering for a moment. "I should be able to put something together."

"Sorry to trouble you." He said with a smile. "It would have been easier if Sugud were here to assist you."

"Where is Sugud anyway?" He asked.

"He’s still surveying and prospecting the nearby mountain ranges, as you requested." Udara replied.

"Alright." Alex nodded.

With that, he and Eleanore left the room to prepare the required formation scrolls, leaving Udara, Saul and Kavakan to work out the operational details.

A few days later, with Eleanore’s assistance, Alex completed a box of formation scrolls.

Once everything was ready, Udara took to the skies on Senu’s back to carry out the next phase of the operation, leaving Alex speechless as he rolled his eyes.

First, Udara, Eleanore and Saul had ganged up on him, insisting that he leave such work to his subordinates. Yet here was Udara personally taking part in the operation when she could have sent one of her own subordinates instead.

Her argument was that her subordinates were already occupied with other important assignments, and this operation was too important to entrust to just anyone—earning an eye roll from Alex.

As for why he was speechless, it was because he had spent time coming up with and rehearsing a speech to convince Senu to airlift Udara, only to discover it wasn’t needed.

The moment the queen eagle realised who he wanted her to carry, she readily agreed.

In fact, she agreed a little readily, making Alex suspicious.

’First it was Fen and Zora, now it’s Senu and Udara?’ Alex thought to himself.

He glanced at Dread standing beside him.

’You won’t leave me too, right?’

Whether the nightmare horse understood the look or not was unclear, but Dread merely flared his nostrils before turning his head away.

’Ah!’ Alex felt his world crumble around him. ’The betrayal...’

Watching the exchange from the side, Eleanore barely stopped herself from holding her head.

’How can someone so brilliant also be so...?’ She sighed inwardly, unable to finish the thought, before accepting once again that she had already decided to spend the rest of her life with him.

Alex suddenly turned towards her as though neither the interaction with Dread nor his internal drama had ever happened.

"Please let me know when Sugud returns and hands you the domain survey report. I need to know his findings as soon as possible, and I’d also like to speak with him."

Seeing his usual composed—and somewhat serious—demeanour return, she nodded, both to him and inwardly to herself.

’Yeah... this is the side I fell for.’

Senu flew Udara to four locations in the wilderness between the convoy’s current position and the valley entrance.

Rather than joining the convoy, she instead set up the assigned formation scrolls at the designated locations.

She had not actually been wrong when she told Alex she was needed for the operation. Several of the scrolls had to be placed in positions that could only be reached efficiently using her [Shadow Dash] movement technique.

No one else currently within the domain could have reached those locations as effortlessly as she did. They would have needed to expend considerably more effort and, more importantly, would likely have disturbed the local fauna—something they wanted to avoid as much as possible considering what they were trying to accomplish.

It took roughly three hours to deploy the formation scrolls across all four locations.

There were no immediate signs that anything had changed after each formation was activated.

Once she had finished deploying the final set of scrolls, Udara quietly departed.

Udara didn’t join the convoy. Instead, she flew back to the domain.

Everything had already been set in motion, and there was nothing else she needed to do.

She would have loved to watch the show unfold from the skies. However, work awaited her back in the domain. If she hadn’t genuinely believed she was the best person for this assignment, she would never have come in the first place.

The Fortuna convoy rolled through the wilderness of the Empire’s far north-east.

The original two-thousand-strong convoy had swollen to more than seven thousand people—perhaps even approaching ten thousand by now.

It now stretched for nearly ten kilometres, divided into a vanguard, a security force, three civilian groups, a livestock and supply wagon group, and a rear guard.

Viewed from above, the convoy resembled a gigantic serpent stretching across the wilderness, slithering through the sea of green.

"It’s done. Head to Position A."

The words sounded over the comms in Dalton’s ears as he rode with the vanguard.

The vanguard was primarily responsible for clearing the route ahead of the convoy. Along with the rear guard, they saw the most action, regularly dealing with beasts, bandits, noble troops, and other threats that appeared before or behind the convoy.

Upon receiving the transmission, Dalton led the vanguard towards a gloomy forest lying ahead.

Ordinarily, such a forest would be a sign of dangerous beasts, and the convoy had done its utmost to avoid places like it so as not to endanger the civilian groups.

This time, however, the vanguard headed directly towards the supposed danger.

They eliminated the beasts lingering along the approach, making the route safe for the convoy before reaching the forest first.

Their arrival triggered something within it.

A pulse swept through the forest, repelling the nearby beasts away from a narrow path that cut through the trees.

The vanguard quickly secured the route as the rest of the convoy gradually caught up.

At the head of the civilian column was the group of wagons carrying the original peasant families, slaves, and troops they had brought with them from the Wildlands.

Surprisingly, Sinia personally led this group.

Before now, she had usually travelled near the centre of the convoy, allowing her to respond flexibly to incidents anywhere along its serpentine length. This time, however, she had moved to the front to personally lead the convoy towards the gloomy forest ahead.

***