Forests Don't Support Idle Goblins

"You just gave her the sword like that?" Agatha stared at the phoenix egg on the platform, then glanced back at Charles. "In my memory, you're not such a kind person. You won't stop until you get enough benefits from the other party."

"No, I'm actually a very kind person," Charles shrugged. "Of course, I had my own reasons for doing this. Consider it as taking on a good deed. After all, I've taken down a vice commander, and now the Holy Army isn't coming anymore. This way, I can have some peaceful time to develop my own strength."

"Hmm." Agatha continued to stare at Ciel without saying anything. A few seconds later, Ciel gave an awkward smile.

"Of course, I also received some 'gifts'." As he spoke, he took a feather out of his clothes.

The feathers are pure white, appearing flawless, and have golden patterns on them. If you look closely, you can see that the golden patterns seem to be alive, slowly flowing.

"What is this?" Agatha raised an eyebrow.

Charles placed the feather in front of Agatha and said with a smile, "An angel's feather, or rather, a feather of a high angel."

"That sounds really impressive."

"Yes, I asked Marshall. The old man told me this is a good thing, a top-notch magical material, very difficult to obtain." Marshall nodded confidently. "This thing contains a lot of magical energy and can be embedded in weapons and equipment. If embedded in equipment, it can provide immunity to mind magic. However, because it is a magical item, it cannot work for a long time. If the divine power on it is exhausted, the angel's feather will wither and turn black, eventually turning into ashes."

"So that means it's very useful."

"Yes," Charles smiled and pointed to the leather coat he was wearing, "I plan to have the old man modify this invisibility coat to see if he can inlay angel feathers on it. That way, if I encounter a magician, I can become invisible directly and won't be controlled by their area-of-effect mind magic."

“But,” Agatha reached out and picked up the feather, holding it up to her eyes to examine it closely, “this single feather doesn’t seem to compare to that longsword. You said before that longsword was very useful; you relied on it to break through the hard hides of those magical beasts.”

"Uh," Charles pursed his lips, and after a few seconds said, "I've collected almost 50 feathers like these."

"50 feathers? Are you planning to make a feather sweater?"

"There was nothing we could do. Back then, that so-called President was being repeatedly whipped around by Zunesha. Every time she hit the ground, a few feathers would fall off. Once she gave up and stopped fighting, I immediately had the goblins collect the feathers."

"She didn't say anything?" Agatha asked, puzzled.

"She watched the goblins' movements, her lips moved as if she wanted to say something, but in the end she didn't stop me. Later I asked her and found out that this thing is not easy to obtain," Charles sighed. "It is a product of the magical abilities of high-ranking paladins. It carries energy. If they cast the Angelic Appearance spell again, it will be greatly affected and it will take a long time to recover. Therefore, high-ranking paladins will not waste these angelic feathers. If they want to quickly restore their wing feathers, they must bathe in the blessing of the God of War."

"So she didn't stop you from collecting these feathers, as a way of exchanging them for the longsword?" Agatha twirled the feathers in her hand, her eyes fixed on the flowing gold patterns on them. "Almost 50 feathers, so you should still have gotten a good deal."

"I suppose so," Charles shrugged. "Even if I hadn't agreed to give her the longsword, she probably would have tried every means to get it. According to her, it was Captain Shamrach's sword, and also a part of his soul. I don't think she would have given it up. It would have been fine if she had offered something in exchange, but I was afraid she would go back on her word and bring the entire Crusader army to 'visit' me. I didn't have that many 'hostages' at that time."

"Speaking of Captain Shamrah, you're referring to the questions I asked, aren't you?" Agatha placed the feather in front of Charles and looked up at him.

"I guess so. I'm curious myself. After all, nobody knows what's in the Astral Plane." Charles nodded with a smile. Very few people know about this. You could say that nobody on the entire continent can tell you. And there are almost no channels to acquire this knowledge.

"Thank you." Agatha sighed. "I only mentioned it briefly, but you remembered it."

"We're partners, aren't we?" Ciel waved his hand dismissively, then quickly reached out and retrieved the angel's feather from the platform.

Agatha saw his action, and a smirk appeared on her face. "Hmm, partner."

After saying that, she shook her head slightly. "I didn't expect that someone had already successfully crossed the boundary wall before my ancestors went to the Astral Plane. But that's not surprising, since there are many capable people in this world. But why don't they want their descendants to do the same?"

"It's dangerous," Charles said after thinking for a moment. "That's the only answer I can think of."

"But," Agatha hesitated for a moment, "my ancestors, the people on the 'Flying Fat Lady,' also returned successfully, and they are all alive and well."

"I don't know about that, but at least the 'Toucan' pirate ship failed. Their captain, who was some kind of pirate swordsman, died despite his skills." Charles put away his smile and said seriously.

"I know you're trying to persuade me," Agatha sighed. "I'll think about it some more and won't risk crossing the wall."

"If only Lupus could talk," Charles said, but as soon as he finished speaking, he saw Agatha glare at him. He knew that she was blaming him for taking away the Astral Hound and even wanting to develop an Astral Hound breeding industry.

"You know that's not what I meant," Charles chuckled, avoiding eye contact with his old classmate and glancing casually around.

"Hmph." Agatha snorted irritably, then her words were interrupted by Charles.

"I think I just saw that thing move." Charles frowned and pointed to the phoenix egg on the platform.

Agatha followed Charles's finger and turned to look at the phoenix egg on the side of the table. She had placed the egg in the corner of the experimental workbench and would observe it whenever she had free time, but she didn't know how to hatch it, so she could only leave it there for now. Fortunately, phoenixes are very resilient and can survive even ordinary eggs.

"Did it move?" Agatha leaned closer for a better look. "No, I don't think so."

"It does look like it was moved just now," Charles said, leaning closer. There was a ring of padding under the phoenix egg to stabilize its oval shape. He examined the "egg tray" closely. "There are some dust marks on it. Did you move it before?"

"No." Agatha shook her head firmly.

"So it seems this thing did move." Charles raised an eyebrow. "Why did it move? What just happened?"

"We were just chatting casually, talking about the Holy Crusade commander-in-chief," Agatha recalled, slowly counting on her long, slender fingers, "and then we got to the longsword."

"Angel's Feather?" Charles asked.

"Yes, Angel's Feather," Agatha exclaimed. "That's the only change that's happened since you put it on the table and I picked it up again. That's probably the only change."

Thinking of this, Charles immediately took out the high angel's feather again and placed it next to the phoenix egg.

The two of them stared wide-eyed at the meter-tall "giant egg".

Ten seconds.

Thirty seconds.

One minute.

Two minutes.

"Are your eyes dry?" Charles asked.

"Yes, a little." Agatha nodded.

"Could it be my imagination?" Charles was somewhat doubtful of his experience just now. "But looking at the marks on the 'egg tray,' there does seem to be something wrong."

"What else did you just do?" he asked Agatha, turning to look at her with a puzzled expression.

"Me?" Agatha thought for a moment, "I just looked at the angel's feather on the table, then I picked it up, and then..."

She twirled the angel's feather again, and with the movement, the golden patterns on the feather seemed to begin to flow once more.

"It moved." Charles exclaimed, his eyes wide.

Agatha also saw that the phoenix egg was indeed swaying slightly, although the movement was very small, it was definitely moving.

"How could this be?" she exclaimed in surprise, rubbing her feathers.

"Could it be that the fledglings inside sensed the call of the feathers?" Charles suddenly asked.

"These are angel feathers, not phoenix feathers," Agatha retorted irritably.

"Could it be that the feathers moved, creating magical fluctuations, which the chick inside the eggshell sensed and that's why it moved? After all," Charles thought for a moment, then continued, "this thing is huddled inside the eggshell and can't see what its phoenix parents look like; it can only rely on temperature or some other sense."

"Is that possible?" Agatha frowned; she thought Charles's words were far-fetched.

"Give it a try. I'll go get all those high angel feathers right away. You just walk around here one by one until the phoenix baby can't take it anymore and comes out of the egg on its own."

"Do you think I'm a hen incubating eggs? Or a fully automatic one?" Agatha pouted, annoyed.

"A phoenix! A mythical creature!" Charles exclaimed immediately. "Many high-level mages would never have the chance to get one, and you've just acquired one like this. With it by your side, which mage wouldn't be envious?"

"This..." Agatha thought for a moment, and it was indeed the case. If she could have a phoenix by her side, let Lupus be close to Charles if he wanted. Anyway, she could summon the Celestial Hound to her side, even though it always seemed rather listless.

"I'll go get the feather. You wait here and don't wander off." With that, Charles turned around, humming "I'm gazing up at the moon..." and strode toward the portal.

"What a strange tune?" Agatha frowned and complained.

…………

"President, we have dragged you down this time." Several paladins lowered their heads, not daring to look at Diana in front of them, and said in a guilty tone.

"No, it's not entirely your fault." Diana sighed softly. "I also bear some responsibility. My personal matters kept me away from the base. If I had been there, things wouldn't have turned out this way."

"What about Vice Commander Lingard?" one of the paladins asked in a low voice.

"Once we get to Giraffe Town, we'll immediately go to the Adventurers' Guild and post a request, asking the adventurers to search in the forest," Diana said, glancing at the depths of the forest. "When I was in Giraffe Town, I noticed that the adventurers seemed to have nothing to do all day."

"Since that goblin got so many benefits, I won't let him off easy. I'll find him something to do."

"Aren't we going to go look for it?" the paladin asked.

Diana glanced at the other person, shook her head, and said, "After all, we have all sworn a blood oath to the gods that we will not reveal the situation of the goblin tribe. But if we go to find it ourselves, we will need to go back to our base to reapply for armor and weapons, which will require us to deal with the church's logistics department."

"But we did lose those equipment," the paladin beside him said.

"It's just normal consumption. We'll replenish it from the logistics department slowly over the next few months. They'll just treat our intermittent requests as normal replacements." Diana sighed. "I'll take responsibility for any problems that arise."

Upon hearing this, the other paladins all lowered their heads. Although they could choose not to tell the church's higher-ups what had happened, they knew that if the higher-ups used their methods, they would eventually find out everything.

Failure is not terrible, but it is a huge joke that the mighty Crusaders were defeated by a bunch of goblins.

Even if the entire church were to wipe out all of Sharl's goblins, it would still not wash away this shame.

You can't go out and be pointed at and talked about behind your back, like, "It was them who lost to those goblins who only know how to dig holes, catch rats, and eat insects."

For the honor of the Crusades, for the Church, and for the great God of battle and glory, they had to bury this crushing defeat in their hearts.

If one day the higher-ups find out about this, then Diana, as the president, will be the one to take the blame, just as she said before, "I will take full responsibility."

What consequences would they face? The paladins didn't know, but at the very least, they would be expelled from the Crusader army.

If Diana is kicked out of the Crusader, all her magical abilities will be completely stripped away, and she will become an ordinary person, even weaker than an ordinary person because her spirit has been cleansed.

"Will we find it?" a paladin murmured.

The others remained silent as well; finding someone in the Nightmare Forest would probably be harder than climbing to heaven.

"Let's see how it goes. Hopefully, the great God of War will bless us," Diana said, glancing at her subordinates.

"We're almost at Gieshorn," Captain Byron's voice came from outside the cabin.

His voice was filled with joy.