After we were done with all of the Bandit stuff, we decided to quickly move over. We investigated and inspected the whole mountain and its surroundings, finding no strange areas anymore. I was honestly half-expecting another chamber like the other one where another Ice Phoenix or something worse would attack us, but there was nothing else. With that out of the way, we decided to move back home while I spread out hundreds of tiny, baby snake-sized Phantom Familiars.
And not only those, but also Fly-shaped and just as small sized Phantom Familiars. My Phantom Familiars can be created in two forms now, the classic snakes and then the flies. Both can be modified to become big and all. And they can even share a few of my Skills that I assign to them. However, without wasting much Mana they are not as strong as actual Undead in terms of fighting and all, and are better at scouting, or eliminating targets stealthily.
Maybe more things can be done, but it is a hassle to explain them. I guess abusing Gorgon Eyes to inflict status effects to targets might be a nice one. Though ice golems are just immune to all the status effects I can inflict. They cannot be turned to stone, nor paralyzed, nor poisoned, nor confused… Ugh, well, I still can use them into ice giants, if we ever fight those guys.
Nonetheless, when I arrived back home, I was greeted by my family. Lucifer brought Nyx on his arms, Emeraldine and Partner looked to be sleepy, probably having spent the night doing alchemy, and even Brunhild showed up, yawning behind Lucifer, she probably just woke up to greet me.
"You guys are back!" Said Partner. "Master, did you slay the humans? Did you bring their blood?"
"Yeah, they're all frozen though, but we can just warm them up later to get you the blood." I sighed.
"Did something wrong happened? It shouldn't had been really hard to kill a few small fries." Said Lucifer.
"Well yeah, a lot happened…" I sighed. "I'll explain things to you in the castle. For now let's assess what we got and bring things to the storage houses. I cannot simply hold everything on my Inventory if someone will ever need something at hand."
"Alright. Leave it to us, you should rest a bit." Brunhild said with a gentle smile.
"Thank you." I sighed, patting Lucifer's sister head, she was nice and cute to be honest.
"Mama…! Bwah!" Nyx greeted me, stretching her tiny claws at me.
"You want mommy to hold you baby? Alright, mommy will spoil you lots and lots today, okay?" I quickly stole Nyx from Lucifer's arms as I kissed the little treasure's forehead.
"Oh right, we were preparing lunch. Let's talk about everything while having a meal." Said Lucifer.
"Would be nice, alright…"
Like that we all moved back to the castle.
The Undead just went back to their former positions and the Goblins and Rabbit kin squadrons went back to their respective houses for the most part. They were all tired so I didn't wanted to force them to do anything for now. Some of them were killing humans for the first time so they got a bit shocked and need some time to rearrange their minds and thoughts.
However, the Goblin chief quickly went back to his daughter Gofumin and Syllis with his little sister. I guess this was an opportunity for everyone to both level up and also learn more about killing, although it might be better if we never engage in any sort of war, you never know what this crazy world as prepared for you.
And as we began eating lunch and I relaxed after taking a warm bath, we decided to finally begin speaking about what happened. I quickly explained the whole bandit accessories thingy, the ice golems, and that ice phoenix golem.
And above all, I also summoned a soul of the bandit boss I brought with myself here. He had memories of what happened, so I quickly extracted them out of his mind before l left him inside a zombie body that walked away quickly after to not bother our meal. He's lucky I decided to not shatter his soul.
"According to what this guy's mind says, this one masked vampire woman came to their hideout some time ago, offered them money, resources, and these magical accessories." I said, putting the ring over the table. "After that, she told them to attack our village after a week of preparing. It was a good thing we slain them before it were to be too late. This was also probably the only group of bandits here, which was just a single gigantic group split into many."
"Interesting…" Said Lucifer. "If I get this straight, not only the Vampires are trying to kill us indirectly, but this magic accessory and the golems, they're all made by this mysterious "Frost Queen", right?"
"Yeah, Veredorr told me everything he knew about her, I've been looking for more info in the Iceland Kingdom, but they have little knowledge about the Ice Giant Tribe apparently, and nobody knows where they live either. Another shot would be at the dwarves but I honestly doubt they know much either." I sighed.
"I see… So we are completely in the blue about this." Lucifer said. "Can't we find her?"
"Without clues, in this snow-covered landscape? I don't think so… I've already sent a hundred familiars EVERYWHERE." I said. "Maybe they'll find something, or maybe not."
"Sigh…" Lucifer seemed slightly dispirited. "At least now that those bandits are gone, at least there'll be some time before we get threatened by something else."
"I hope so." I said, drinking some wine.
"I guess the Vampires really found our weakness, this village. And just want to exploit it and make us worried all the time that something will pop up out of the blue." Said Emeraldine.
"Well, there's still something we could do." I said, quickly thinking of an idea.