Chapter 1924 Demise of the High Elves Expeditionary Force
"You said that you wanted them to be alive so the Night Foxes could follow them back to their kingdom. What happened to that plan?" Jin asked as he sat at his Dungeon Maker instance questioning Kraft. It was pretty obvious that the plan to follow the High Elves back to their kingdom would never happen due to the fact that the Night Foxes had tried out too many variations of poisons into the food.
Some of the High Elves had so much diarrhoea that they lost a lot of water content and had difficulty eating. In fact, eating the rations made them even worse off and they got sicker. And to add on with the fact that those foods had diseases from Jin's world. The flu virus got into their immune system quickly, especially with the lack of ...proper food and nutrition in them. nOvelB1n
With so many sick, the High Commander had to make an abrupt change to the expeditionary force's return trip and head to the nearest town. However, in order to not let the Goblin World to experience a possible epidemic due to the Night Foxes' and Kraft's mischief, Jin had already gone ahead to get the fellow Orcs and Goblins to create a 'natural' roadblock to stop them from moving forward.
He knew that if they were so beaten up by the number of sick people, there was no way they were going to get their soldiers to remove the heaps of broken trees and rocks from a 'landslide'. Of course, Jin did not discount the fact that there was a possibility the High Commander and some other magic users would merely use their magic to remove the obstacles.
But given how massive the landslide was, it would still take a considerable amount of effort to do that which the System had deduced that the possibility for them to take the 'brute force' method to clear the landslide would be close to a mere 4% chance.
And their gamble paid off as the High Commander had decided to go for a detour instead. Despite some having said that the detour would cause more casualties, many who were not familiar with managing environmental disasters would rather be on the side of caution and not to err when it comes to the responsibility that lies on their shoulders. However, that detour eventually became the end of the expeditionary force.
More of them had gotten sick as they had no idea how to stop the flu from spreading. There were no hygiene practices as that was unheard of in their era. They assumed that if it was a cough, most of them would just tough it out and seek the medics for some soothing herbal drink to get along for the day. Never did they expect that one by one, the soldiers were down with fever, muscle cramps, and extreme fatigue.
He died. Brutally.
His head was displaced for everyone to see and as for the rest, they managed to retrieve the portal stone that would allow them to return to the Kingdom. There was just one minor problem. In the midst of their rebellion, the High Commander had already cursed the portal stone with all his might, knowing that such a situation could happen.
Thus, upon activating the portal stone, it not only did not open a portal but the stone also unleashed waves of curse magic that sickened the population even further. This was how much the High Elves could be. To the High Commander who initially believed that the soldiers would be understanding and honourable people as dictated by their teachings, he saw such an ugly side of them.
He had always assumed that the soldiers were only doing it against other races and never their own race but that was because their race had never suffered at all. Always living in luxury and in their own perceived world of understanding, he never expected his troops to act this way. One or two perhaps that's still acceptable but almost every single High Elf under his command thought the same way as his section commanders, it shook him.
If he was going to be thrown under the bus for doing such an honourable thing, then he shall pull all of them down with him too. After all, he was going to die and if the soldiers ever manage to return to the kingdom with such a state of sickness, the Kingdom might go into rapid decline. So, for the betterment of his people and his kingdom, the High Commander decided to do such a selfish thing to curse every single one in his expeditionary force and make them suffer with him.
So that even if he dies, he knows that the rest would not last any longer as well.
And that was true. More tried to run away and they were met with the same fate as those who tried to escape earlier. Eventually, the camp was filled with only Elves who were so sick that they could not move or healers who did not give up on them.
Yet, as time passed, every single one of them dropped to the ground and the Devil Fox picked all of them up. Their time was not exactly up yet since they had to go for the same ritual routine as the rest who had come earlier.
The only people he gave a lighter ritual programme were the healers who did whatever they could to help the severely ill.