<h4>Chapter 95: Ambush From the Night</h4>


    Trantor: EndlessFantasy Trantion Editor: EndlessFantasy Trantion


    They said they had to pack up, but they had been toeing the line of poverty for months now, so there wasn’t much of anything of value they had to bring.


    Before the sky had fully darkened, the vigers were ready to go.


    “You guys trekking through the night? Or are you staying until tomorrow?” Jom was standing guard at the vige entrance and asked the vige elder as the elder walked past.


    “We leave immediately,” the vige elder replied without hesitation, “Although the bandits most likely won’te back that soon, I am responsible for the lives of my vigers, and thus we must leave as soon as possible!”


    “What about this guy?” Jom pointed at the malnourished gray Shar-Pei sleeping near the vige entrance. “Are you not bringing him along?”


    The vige elder was silent for a moment, he shook his head. “He’s still waiting for his owner toe back, he’s not leaving this ce.”


    “But his owner...” Terry had got out before Jom elbowed him in the chest. “Some things are better left unsaid!”


    The vige elder watched the two quarrel, and turned back to look at the rest of the vige, noticing every small detail of his home, his eyes filled up with nostalgia and longing.


    From the day he was born, this vige had been his everything, every corner of this vige was filled with memories of his childhood, of his friends. He hadn’t expected to be forced to leave the ce he grew up in at such an old age, the old man was obviously devastated.


    The vige elder was quickly led away by his family.


    Under his guidance, vigers carried their belongings and bid their home onest farewell, families who reared animals even had their animals carry misceneous items on their back.


    Not longter, the vige that had just had a noisy, bustling celebration mere hours ago, was now aplete ghost town.


    With nightfall, the dead silence that hung in the air left Jom feeling a little anxious, he started to miss the other yers.


    He didn’t like noise or loud sounds, butpared to that, this silence was much worse.


    Compared to a ce like this, he suddenly realized that he really enjoyed being with his rowdy gang of friends, joking andughing their way through quests and missions.


    He had originally wanted to avoid that sort of situation, that’s why he was all the way out here.


    “They really are different.”


    Terry was the first to break the silence, with him not speaking up until now, Jom had thought he was mad at him for elbowing him earlier.


    “What’s different?”


    “If the town was under attack by enemies, I would definitely fight back, I’d never run away!” Terry replied.


    “Duh, we can revive.”


    “It’s not like that!” Terry struggled to articte his feelings. “Even if we couldn’t revive, even if we only had one life, I wouldn’t let our town get destroyed by some bad guys, I wouldn’t let them wreak such havoc!”


    “...”


    Jom gave the situation some thought, and found himself though not as determined as Terry was, he would still feel horrible about not protecting his home, he would do what he could to help—that is to say, even if there weren’t any rewards and his equipment would lose some durability, he would still die about three times to the enemy if it meant protecting their town.


    Even he didn’t expect to care so much about an ordinary little town.


    “Even so, we’re in no position to judge the decision of those vigers. A vige by definition is a settlement of humans, as long as the people are still here, the vige will continue to exist... So to protect the people, giving up the vige was the right choice.” Jom let out a sigh and tried to change Terry’s mind.


    “I get what you mean, but they just gave up their home without any hesitation... It just sucks.” Terry knew what Jom was saying, but he just couldn’t understand who would do such a thing.


    Jom was a little dejected. With Terry’s IQ, Jom all but gave up trying toe to an agreement with him.


    “Wait, Jom, do you hear anything?” Just as Jom wasing to terms with his less than bright teammate, Terry’s expression went from confused to alert in a second.


    Jom jumped a little, noticing that there was some noise closing in on them from afar.


    At first Jom had thought it was some yers, but he realized that the sound sounded nothing like yers’ footsteps, so he thought it was the vigersing back to protect their vige aftering to their senses, but after the sound got closer, he realized he waspletely wrong.


    “It’s the sound of chocobos, the mountain bandits’ second wave of attack ising!”


    When Jom went to alert Terry, his friend had already guessed they were enemy units, quickly unsheathing his long sword that never left his side.


    Compared to Terry, Jom was thinking about a lot more.


    They hadn’t let a single bandit go during their previous fight, their enemies should have beenpletely wiped out. Based on general knowledge, the rest of the mountain bandits had to notice that no one had returned, realize something had gone awry, and then send people to reconfirm.


    The whole process should have taken at least a day’s time, but the sun had just set and their enemies were already back... This meant that either the mountain bandits could remotely supervise their members’ conditions and noticed that something was wrong when their previous wave of enemies were killed, or that the mountain bandits’ hideout was extremely close to the vige!


    Regretfully, neither option was good news for Jom and Terry.


    “The ground’s still stable, there doesn’t seem to be anyrge creatures.” Jom tried to give Terry a smile. “At least their trump card hasn’te.”


    “But there’s a lot of people, from the sound of it about... thirty riders? No, it might be around fifty, that’s five times the number of people from this afternoon!” Terry was troubled, with so many enemies, it would be difficult to fight them all of.


    And their previous tactic of lowering their enemy’s guard before they struck probably wouldn’t work when their enemy came fully prepared.


    “I should’ve be a mage, AoE damage is what they’re best at...” Jom muttered, “Tsk, with so many people, we might not be able to hold them off for long, I hope those vigers can get away.”


    Just as the first chocobos entered their line of sight, an arrow whistled past Jom and Terry,nding itself squarely in front of the chocobo rider, causing the mountain bandit to instinctively pull on the chocobo’s leash to stop it in its tracks.


    Jom and Terry turned to see where the arrow hade from, finding that the vigers had returned. With Joey leading them, they wore pots and helmets and had farming equipment as weapons, each sporting a battle-ready expression.


    “If we were to let two kind and innocent children die whilst protecting our abandoned home, we would forever live our lives in guilt!” Joey nocked an arrow with practiced ease, shouting loudly, “Although we are weak, we will give everything we have to protect our vige! Everybody, charge!!!”


    “”Charge—!”