Transmigrated as a Ghost

"Five hours. It took us five hours to finally take this thing down." Mrazivý said in between gasping for air.

She was sending a glare Marcus' way and letting him know about her irritation. After they had rescued the caravan members it had eaten, they could have left it alone. While the possibility it would come back was not zero, most likely it would have stayed away to recover in the depths of the forest. Their attacks had left it wounded and on the run after all.

"Sorry, Mraz. I didn't think it would take this much effort to kill it after how much damage you, Roxene, Blitz, and Aurelia did to it."

The Cauldron Bloom had proven to be a slipperier foe than expected.

Its attacks were not particularly potent other than its ability to warp creatures directly into its stomach, but its spatial barrier and its ability to teleport away whenever it was about to be damaged made it a nightmare to fight.

Every time they got close to hitting it with another substantial attack, it would just run away or deflect it back at them.

Still, after chasing the monster around for five hours, it eventually started to run low on mana and they were able to kill it.

"I hope that this was worth it. I'm beyond exhausted now, plus there's no telling what everyone waiting at the caravan is thinking. At this point it wouldn't be a surprise if they thought we were dead." Mrazivý complained.

"I'm not going to lie and say this wasn't more of a hassle than expected, but you'll see that it was well worth the effort soon enough. Monsters with the power to manipulate space are rare. With its core and parts of tis body, I'll be able to make some extremely useful items for all of us."

After storing what remained of the Cauldron Bloom's body into his item box, Marcus asked Mrazivý to lead the way back to the Caravan. Eirwen, who was her beast companion, was still with them, so she was able to easily detect where they were through their connection.

Thankfully it did not take more than twenty minutes for all of them to return to the caravan by flying in a straight line all the way back.

When they arrived, they found that pretty much everyone looked tense and that a foreboding had taken hold.

"Boy am I glad to see you guys. Every moment since you left it seemed like a panic was only a moment away from breaking out." Miguel said once Marcus, Mrazivý, Roxene, Blitz, and Aurelia had landed.

Naturally the members of the caravan were spooked to learn about the allusive and legendary reaper of the forest attacking them. Many of them had thought that it was only a matter of time before they all disappeared without a trace.

Lilia arriving back with Zareen in an exhausted state had also not done any good with helping to alleviate the growing fear among people. To them, it was all but certain that Marcus, Mrazivý, Roxene, Blitz, and Aurelia were dead.

"Your back! And you brought the missing people with you! What exactly happened?!"

Louis came rushing over faster than anyone would think his short legs could carry him and began barraging Marcus with a multitude of questions. As the leader of this caravan, he felt he needed to be apprised of the situation.

"Yes, it took longer than expected to deal with the forest's reaper, but we managed to rescue the people it took and drive it off and back into the depths of the woods. I don't believe that it will come and attack us again." Marcus said, making sure to leave out that they had actually killed the monster.

There was a possibility that the leadership of Houten might try to confiscate it from them upon their arrival in Houten, so he figured that it would be better that no one other than his companions knew about what had really happened.

Louis already looked plenty surprised to hear that with just half of their party that they were able to fight off a monster said to be capable of destroying armies and never having left a single witness behind.

However, he did not have any grounds to doubt what they said. Not only had Marcus and his party members returned with the people that had been spirited away, but there were several witnesses that saw Marcus get taken as well. He would have to have escaped from the forest's reaper in order to have made it back.

"Then if you fought it, that means you must have seen the monster. You'll all be treated as heroes just for bringing back its description. Perhaps it will finally be hunted down once the type of creature is known." Louis said excitedly.

Quickly he asked for details about the monster known as the reaper of the forest, and Marcus was more than happy to oblige. It was already dead and in his item box, so he did not really care if other people went on a wild goose chase for it later.

Once things had finally settled down, the caravan began moving again. Despite the tumultuous day everyone had had, they had a schedule to keep and had already lost several hours thanks to the successive attacks.

…

The rest of the trip went by mostly uneventfully, with only minor incidents along the way that were easily solved.

"So that's Armadura. Houten's northern most city and their forward base to try and reclaim their lost capital." Marcus murmured when the large white stone walls came into view.

With a single look it was easy why it was called a fortress city. Massive ramparts encircled the place and watch towers were at close intervals on the wall. This may have been the most heavily fortified city Marcus had ever seen.

"Looks like they don't have enough room for everyone inside the city. There's practically a sea of tents set up outside the walls." Mrazivý said, enhancing her vision to get a closer look.

Just as she mentioned, for almost as far as the eye could see were tents and temporary buildings that had bene put up to accommodate the massive influx of people. The city was well over capacity and metaphorically bursting at the seams.

"I don't think we're going to be able to find a place to stay. Guess we'll be sleeping in our tents for a while longer." Lilia commented, her expression glum.

"No, it's likely they'll find space for us in the city. Do remember how desperate they were to get us to join the operation since we have mithril rank adventurers among our party. I expect them to treat us well so that we give it our best when the fighting starts." Allaric surmised.

"Well, either way, we've finally made it. In hopefully just a week or two the battle to reclaim the city will begin and we can get what we came here for." Marcus said, his gaze looking beyond Armadura.

Just a bit farther to the north was the former capital that had become a necropolis. With any luck a ghost king would be residing within, and he could obtain the last item necessary for him to evolve.