Chương 519: Chapter 521: Let the Die be Cast

"I'm sure many of you have already realized this, but this cannot continue," said Veritum. His resonant voice spread through the clearing like a wave, nearly causing my ears to rattle. Over the past few months of leading the settlement, Veritum's ability to project his voice had certainly improved.

"In two months, we have lost fifty people. Two thirds of them were children, and one third of them were adults trying to protect us from the monsters that inhabit this island with us. In that time, seven children had their adulthood ceremonies, and two new children were born. The new adults are also weaker than they used to be. During our time as nomads and wanderers, there was never a shortage of monsters that children could take part in hunting. This made it easy for children to train their Sparks and grow.

Now, instead, our levels are concentrated in the hands of a few individuals, and it's exceedingly difficult to spread those levels out, given how narrow our margin for error already is. If this continues, I estimate that if this continues, within a few months, we will reach a critical shortage of adult laborers and combatants. Within a year, we will have almost no ability to fight back against the fog monsters. Within two years, there might not be any surviving members of our settlement."

Veritum's gaze flickered towards the craftsmen of the settlement.

"Our Craftsmen have worked hard to find a solution, and through trade with the fog pillar, we have tried to find another solution. Sadly, both our trading ally and our own village have not been able to find a true solution to our predicament."

"So what's our plan?" I asked. By now, I had more than enough reputation in the village to participate in these meetings as something of a minor leader in the village, and I also knew that Veritum wouldn't gather us all here without any kind of plan in mind. I just hoped he had a good idea for how to fix things.

"Through trade with the fog pillar, we have not discovered an easy way to resolve our problem, but that doesn't mean we're entirely out of options," said Veritum.

"We have learned one thing from the fog pillar's own explorations of this island over the years." I blinked in surprise. The fog pillar's exploration of the island? Was I missing something? That thing had looked completely immobile last time I saw it. In a strange way, the lack of mobility from the fog pillar might be one of the reasons why coexistence was so easy. The fog pillar had little interest in seizing more land for itself, because it literally couldn't move.

What would it use land for outside of its own domain? I shook my head. Regardless of how the fog pillar had explored the island, it didn't really matter much to us at the moment. Perhaps its 'children' had scouted the island for it, or perhaps it had some way of sending magic vision spells everywhere. In any case, we had more important things to focus on.

"The fog pillar has noted that while none of its explorations have ever let it see exactly what the reason is, there is a huge mass of fog banks that exists near the western rim of this island, about a day of travel to the west of our settlement." I thought about Veritum's words. A huge cluster of fog banks could mean a wide variety of things.

It could be that they had some kind of favored food source there - after all, we had determined that they somehow digested things if they sat in a fog bank for long enough through observing them. A large cluster of fog banks could also mean there was something important there, or even that they had some kind of settlement there. We were now pretty sure the fog banks could communicate with each other, though they still seemed just as alien and vicious as any other monster.

I still wasn't really sure what to make of their species, but since every single one we had seen so far was trying to murder us, I had little qualms about killing them instead. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"What if the cluster of fog banks doesn't give us some way to drive them back or weaken them?" asked Felix.

"Then we accept our inevitable deaths," said Veritum.

"Or make a desperate attempt to find another island, even though I'm fairly certain that every nearby island is worse than this one. This world has much higher mana density than our last, which should mean that the monsters here are much stronger. Finding an island that we can survive on should be essentially impossible. This island has monsters that are at least possible to fight, even if they have a lot of annoying tricks to deal with. I doubt other nearby islands will be quite so forgiving."

Felix sighed, but sat back down. It was obvious that he agreed with Veritum's assessment, even if he didn't like it.

"So we're staking our survival on a last ditch attempt to overturn the situation?" I asked.

"Yup. Even worse, we have no idea whether our last ditch effort has any kind of payoff at all. We could just as easily hit a total dud, or run face-first into a wall of iron. If all those fog banks are protecting some kind of high power fog bank or something, chances are they might group up to finish us off in one go. If that happens… then we just never had a chance to begin with," said Veritum. I sighed. Veritum's plan was risky, but I honestly didn't have a better idea.

We were already in a terrible position, even with all of the minor breakthroughs we had made in ways to defend ourselves and weaken the fog banks. It was this or roll over and wait to die.

"Got it," I said. Veritum spent the next several minutes addressing other questions from the surviving townsfolk. What the odds of success were, what other options we had, and whether this would work even if we succeeded. Unfortunately, while most of the answers were 'I don't know,' after several minutes of brainstorming, most people ended up with the same conclusion Veritum had: this was a long shot, but we had no other options. Veritum himself seemed just as disappointed as I was by this conclusion.

Evidently, he had been hoping someone else would come up with a better way to prevent the eventual extinction of our settlement - a safety, more reliable way. Sadly, nobody had a good way to fend off the fog monsters that hadn't already been tried.

"Since no one has any objections, I believe it's time to start," said Veritum.

"Let's get everyone who wields a soul-damaging sword together, along with Miria and Anise, since their Gifts and magic have proven more than capable of harming the fog monsters and aiding us in battle. Then, let's begin this raid and hope for the best." He eyed the Anise and I, along with all the swordsmen who had been equipped with the soul-damaging weapons.

"I know our odds are bad. We're walking into an unpredictable vortex that we might not return from. But let's try to secure a future for the children of our dead comrades. If we fail, there will be nothing left."

"Are you coming with us?" I asked. Veritum wasn't very good with swords, so he hadn't been equipped with one of the soul-damaging swords. After all, it would have taken more wood to make a good-sized greataxe, which was Veritum's weapon of choice.

"I might not have the same tools you do, but what kind of leader would I be if I sent all of you on a mission I wasn't willing to join in myself?" Veritum laughed, although I could detect a faint edge of anxiety in his booming laughter.

"We'll succeed or fail as one." I wasn't sure if that was really a wise decision, but at the very least I could respect the man. There were plenty of leaders that wouldn't be willing to take the risk of dying just to improve morale. The village meeting adjourned, while the wielders of soul-severing blades, Anise, Veritum, and I all met up at the westernmost side of the village.

Sallia was also part of the group, since she had become one of the strongest swordsmen of the village, while Felix stayed behind, since he had little to directly offer to this excursion. We took a few hours to get gear together, just to make sure we had everything, and then we set out. I just hoped that this expedition wasn't about to blow up in our faces and ring the final death knell for our settlement.