Since we were done eating, we left the village the next morning. We made it in time for a sneak attack on our village. That was pretty low of them. They probably thought that we would be an easier target than the village that did not give in. Now we were here to defend our own village. They only had a squad of 6. We had to be whittling them down. I had Darrien hold back on account of his wounds. Liam and Knat got the lion's share of the kills. The pair got 4 kills. That brought him up to 12. We got the other 2. I was not too concerned with the milestones. I just wanted to get stronger. Rolling around in the ground, fighting for our very lives, was a pretty bad time. Darrien was not going to last much longer with this constant onslaught of enemies. I had no clue why all of these people wanted to fuck with this valley so much. I asked Darrien about it when he was getting ready for bed. He winced as he sat down. Apparently there, was a major treasure that was buried here by an exiled king. People wanted it because it will make them rich. However, this was a settled land. No village will let them have it.
Although they had that outward stance, they were ambivalent at best about the treasure. The villagers were not even sure if those rumors were even true. In any case, it did not matter to them. They were not going to dig a ton of large holes in their homes. Doing so would make things ugly and interfere with their crops and training fields. I saw that the fields were extremely important to them. Obviously, they were not going to let the outsiders ruin their homes. This meant that they were being attacked by various treasure seekers. Mercenaries and bandits raiding were the norm. The villages put just enough resistance to get them to not genocide the valley. This mercenary band was evil. They destroyed the first village. They were going to to rule of them and kill all those that resisted. Now that we killed so many of them, they had to leave the area. They were a mercenary band, they made money fighting for pay. If they were just getting killed with no profit to it, they would need to leave the area. It was not like they could recruit the villagers that they were occupying. So they all left the valley wounded.
We were blade spirits. Being hailed as guardians of the valley was something to marvel at. When our chosen champions were walking with us, they bowed respectfully. I wondered if we would soon become worshiped as the patron gods of the valley. The other 2 villages that were still standing were jealous. They wanted us to help them as well. They knew that they probably would not have been occupied and pillaged if we were there to stop them. I agreed with that sentiment. There was nothing that we could do about it however. None of our champion were going to just give us up. Only a week in-game later, a squad of 6 treasure hunters came to look for the exile king's lost booty. Our village sent Liam and Darrien to repel them. They were given healing potions from the village doctor, so they were in peak condition. The champions told them to leave. They refused. This started a fight. I wanted to advance, so I took 4 of them out along with Darrien. Knat handled the other 2 while we were busy. 2 days later another group came looking for them. We just sent them away. Ace and Deuce killed them.
