The next few islands visited by Loimos and his troops were nothing of much importance, a few small populations that had not quite graduated from tribal living, except for one that had been well on its way, well united in the worship of a god that would never respond to their prayers, instead, they were introduced to the worship of death, which they had no choice but to enjoy it.
"May the time be short, for when their original deity joined the pantheon of undeath" spoke a soldier, the miasma spreading all over the island.
In the absence of the deities from high above, it appeared that many islanders had turned to the worship of much less divine beings, but that unlike the gods, deigned respond to them, but when it came to death's champion of his entourage, even those would rather keep their heads low, all places that were populated by sapient species were made theatres for the undead's to learn, those budding civilisations did not have the manpower to resist, all were burned, slaughtered and at last, given the most precious of blessings, death.
"Land" spoke one of the soldiers, prompting one of the knights to put his attention toward the direction it was pointed at, definitely the largest one since the rocky island of the winged drake, and unlike the lair of the beast, this one was bustling with vegetation that was definitely worthy of a jungle, high trees and dense bushes, a wide variety of critters, preys and predators, and for the first time, opposing intelligent forces.
Although the finer details were only known to their leader, this island was where the soldiers would truly be put to the test, the greatest denizens of this islands were a variation of the goblin kind, humanoid monsters that much like humans, always managed to find themselves in every environment and were highly adaptive, so much so, that it was common for both of those to differentiate so much in their adaptation to become distinct from their brethren.
Here, they were not small as was common, rather lanky for the most part, their skin hidden underneath a layer of bark, which naturally grew over them, muddling their features and making them less easily seen amidst the bustling greenery, although rather dense in appearance, plenty of open spaces existed within, were the various groups had settled, and those fellows were not very into friendly trade, but more into slaughter and enslavement of their enemies, it made no doubt that aggression would the first reaction to the arrival of the undeads.
"Sir Loimos, what are your orders?" asked the knight looking over the horizon, hand already upon the sheath of his sword.
Making a slight hand movement, all of his men immediately gathered to listen to his words, even though they were undeads and thus not to be compared to regular, living soldiers, Alizée and Maliah were always surprised nonetheless by how attentive and organised they were at all times, they were not pure undeads like Loimos was after all, they were deemed to not be perfect, but it was all thanks to their leader's draconian concept of training.
Loimos began explaining a few things about this particular island.
"There are multiple groups with their own distinctions living upon this land, one of them dominates all other however, that tribe alone possess more numbers than us, and knows the terrain, their ability to hide within the jungle could allow them to go unnoticed from even your senses" the ranks remained perfectly silent, the authorisation to ask questions had not yet been given.
"This shall be our last expedition before we head back to the mainland, if you succeed in this endeavour, then you shall all be made into trainers for the upcoming members of this legion, training the next Loimoisian knights and soldiers, you will need to demonstrate the capabilities and skills I taught you, and that, without utilising my fire to simply burn down the jungle, you must tread like the environment is an essential structure that must be preserved"
That was a harsh demand, but none flinched, the two knights who would inevitably be made into the leaders of this expedition, already started thinking about what would be the best course of action, they would be stepping into territory that was already in conflict, not quite a full-blown war from what they were hearing, more so that skirmishes could break out at sight of one another.
There was also the fact that unlike their glorious general, none of them could possibly hope to communicate with the goblins.
"Your objective is simple, focus on the lesser tribes, eradicate or force them to seek asylum toward the greater tribe, once all of the goblins are gathered in one place, save for perhaps a few wanderers, I and Maliah shall take care of the rest" manifesting his war scythe, all saluted instinctively, thrusting it toward the sky.
Without much further ado, all went into action, taking up what was necessary from the ship and unloading upon the shore, as per the orders of the two knights, groups of soldiers were made to surveil the edge of the jungle, this once, the ship's conductor had not rammed straight onto the shore, stopping by as was typically meant to avoid alerting the island dwellers of their arrival.
Since the jungle was a difficult environment to navigate and was the preferred domain of the local livings, the two knights decided that it was for the best to establish a camp upon the beach instead, rapidly erected spike walls using dead wood sourced directly from the mainland, this would allow for a place to gather and strategise with much less risks of being attacked.
First of all, although Loimos had not imposed a time limit upon them, they knew very well that neither precipitation, nor a snail pace was expected of them, they needed to approach the ideal speed as closely as was possible, perfection, or at least the attempt at perfection was what was wanted from them.
As such, they spent the rest of time of daylight coming up with plans and course of actions, indeed, here too a distant sun was dimmed by the king's black sun, but it was more brilliant, and further away than what they had seen before, so the day here was brighter than they had grown used to on the previous islands, who had had very dim suns, or none at all and were thus mostly drowned in darkness, only earning shine from distant places.
They waited for the true night to fall, which was a dark as the eternal night they enjoyed in their empire, scouts were sent out, not only to find out the exact positions of tribes, but also to abduct wildlife, although not specialised in this discipline, the soldiers had been furnished with spikes of bone, this tool was also part of the basic equipment.
The livings heard the unnatural cries of beasts in the dead of night.