This young master truly has the ambition of a hero.

Any killings that occur within the forest will become offerings to the Deer-Headed God.

It's worth mentioning that the group of deer-headed spirits wandering around the outer edge of the forest were indeed reinforcements attracted by the "divine power" of the deer-headed god. However, these reinforcements were not very bright and would still attack any higher intelligent creatures that entered the forest territory indiscriminately, following their original demonic habits.

The only safe zone inside the entire forest is the camp around the altar. The stag-headed spirit will not attack humans inside. Furthermore, Karem, the high priest, and those "messengers" who have received gifts from the stag-headed spirit will not be attacked by the stag-headed spirit even if they enter the forest.

After waiting for five whole days, Karem was frustrated to find that those "lackeys of the noble lords" just wouldn't come into the woods, instead acting as if they were going to build a castle on the riverbank.

This put the Deer Head Gang in a difficult position, because they couldn't afford to drag things out any longer than the attackers.

Late winter is a time when winter food supplies are almost depleted. The bandits who had endured a long winter in the mountains were not much better off than ordinary people.

The Deer Head Gang previously numbered only two hundred people. With their stored grain and the food they foraged for in the mountains, they were perfectly capable of surviving until autumn when the sheep below the mountain were fattened up.

However, in order to counter the governor's aggressive encirclement and suppression, they adopted a strategy of rapidly expanding their army by recruiting wild people, increasing their strength to nearly a thousand men. The cost was an accelerated depletion of food supplies. Although they managed to seize some food while raiding the wild people, it was still insufficient to cover their expenses.

On the other hand, the governor's office, where Dick had just taken office last year, was frantically stockpiling grain, trying to exchange all the gold and silver treasures confiscated from people's homes for food before the heavy snow blocked the mountains.

He also used the pretext of suppressing bandits to seize control of the local grain merchants' inventory with just a few IOUs, shattering the dreams of these unscrupulous merchants who were planning to make a fortune during the spring grain price surge.

This is the source of Dick's confidence to maintain his private army's training during the winter and launch a siege operation at the end of the winter!

The food supplies he had were enough for these 1,500 to 1,600 people to do nothing and sustain themselves for two months, but whether the Deer Head Gang could last even a week was still an unknown.

This put Karem in a very awkward position. Because of the destruction of the Vulture Gang and the Blood Wolf Gang, he mistakenly believed that the Governor would also choose a swift and decisive battle against them, which is why he had the idea of ​​taking a gamble. As a result, the enemy sent a large army to the outskirts of the forest, but then refused to advance any further.

Seeing that no matter how much they cut back on food, their reserves were about to run out, some of his trusted subordinates privately suggested to Karem that they should sacrifice some of the weak cannon fodder. However, Karem immediately rejected this seemingly "reasonable" suggestion.

The hundreds of savages who were coerced and most of the members of the Deer Head Gang were unaware of Karem's insane plot; otherwise, they wouldn't have stayed obediently in the camp.

The sacrifices Karem had previously carried out were small-scale sacrifices of ten people at a time, and those who were captured were the tough guys who refused to cooperate with them.

If the scale of the sacrifices expands, it's hard to guarantee that it won't cause panic among the cannon fodder.

After much thought, Karem quickly came up with a plan that seemed feasible to him.

"We'll take the initiative!"

Karem's idea of ​​taking the initiative was not to rush out of the forest and fight the governor to the death.

Instead, they took their cannon fodder to the edge of the forest, set up a battle formation in front of the governor to provoke him, and then lured him into the forest to fight.

Karem was somewhat self-aware; he knew that his disadvantages were not only in terms of troop strength, but also in terms of equipment.

Not to mention the regular soldiers of those private armies, even the militia temporarily recruited at least had an iron spear, while nearly half of the wild people on his side only had wooden sticks.

Therefore, Karem never expected these cannon fodder to be able to fight against the governor's army. Their role was to be sent to their deaths. Even if it was a ten-for-one exchange, he wouldn't feel it was a loss.

In order for this group of cannon fodder to safely cross the forest and reach the edge, he also had to send people to lure away the deer-headed spirits that were wandering around.

And so, Karem led almost his entire army out, with the bandits of the Deer Head Gang acting as the supervisors, and the eight hundred or so cannon fodder as the main force, and left the camp in a grand procession.

The cannon fodder all behaved very obediently, and some were even eager to try!

Most of the wild people are poor people who have fled into the deep mountains because they cannot afford to pay taxes. Because the mountains are isolated from news, many people do not even know who the current governor of Lagug is. They rely entirely on their preconceived notions and believe that the governor must not be a good person, which is why they were tricked into joining Karem.

In addition, Karem and others repeatedly performed "miracles" in front of the cannon fodder, and in the process sacrificed a lot of unruly troublemakers. Many cannon fodder who believed in the evil actually thought that they had a great advantage!

However, the cannon fodder marching through the forest were unaware that a pair of eyes, hidden in the shadows, were watching them from the tree trunks above their heads.

Ayane secretly observed the rabble below and immediately spotted Karem, who was dressed the most flamboyantly. She subconsciously gripped the katana at her waist, but then let go.

Although Ayane harbored some resentment towards her master's assignment to use the female ninjas as "surveillance cameras," she knew that the matter was of great importance and that she could not disrupt the battle plan because of her momentary impulse.

Karem below seemed to sense that someone was watching him strangely, and subconsciously looked up and around, but found nothing in the end.

Not long after the Deer Head Gang's "army" set off, Ayane's falcon delivered the news to Dick, who was lying in ambush on the other side of the forest.

An elite squad of fewer than thirty people set off immediately, heading straight for the Deer Head Gang's stronghold.

The team consisted of Dick himself, his senior master Behemoth, three elites including Black and White Gunner and Rita, and the rest were all skilled martial artists trained in private armies.

Such an elite squad is more than capable of dealing with the personnel left behind near the altar.

Although the team did not ride horses, with the help of the magic "Windwalk," they moved swiftly through the forest, easily avoiding the wandering stag-headed spirits, and stormed into the camp, catching the remaining personnel off guard.

Thanks to the elite troops, the battle ended swiftly and decisively. Dick and Behemoth didn't even have to lift a finger. Rita, wielding her scythe like a dancer of death, single-handedly took down more than a third of the enemies and dealt with a group of grunts as easily as if she were in a Musou attack.

At this moment, Hongye and Lingyin escorted a dejected guy to Dick. The guy looked young, but his body hair was excessively thick. Brown hair covered the back of his hands and neck, while his protruding jaw and cheekbones indicated that he had beastman blood.

"My lord, this man is the priest who stayed behind."

Looking at the silent orc priest, Dick guessed that he must be related to Karem, who was also an orc, by blood, either as a son or a relative.

So he gestured for Momiji and Ayane to escort him to the altar in the center of the camp. Behemoth was studying the inscriptions carved on it when Dick saw this and asked a question.

"Senior Uncle, are you confident?"

"It's not a big problem."

"Then let's get started quickly."

Under the young priest's questioning gaze, he was pulled onto the altar. Then he saw Behemoth whisper a few words in Dick's ear before stepping outside the altar, gripping his staff tightly, and beginning to chant incantations in a low voice.

Dick walked up to the bewildered young priest, took out a bottle of potion that could temporarily enhance mental power and forced it into the priest's mouth. Then, he stared at Behemoth and chanted a spell. The high-level magic stone held in Behemoth's palm was quickly drained of its magic power and turned into a handful of white sand that drifted away with the wind.

The old mage chanted softly for a full three minutes, then closed his eyes and fell silent. Seeing that Behemoth was "ready," Dick turned around, used a knife to cut the young priest's palm, and then pressed it hard onto the skull of the magical artifact.

"Now, summon your god."

As Dick spoke, he channeled magic into the altar.

The summoning rituals of the gods are actually just a few conventional patterns. Behemoth studied the arrangement of this black stone altar for a while and figured out how to use it.

The most common and widely used method by cults is the "Blood Summoning Ritual." The altar itself acts like a signal tower, capable of sending signals to the evil god whose true form is hiding in the demon realm. Depending on the signal sent, it can be a telepathic communication, a phantom appearance, or even the true form descending.

Unfortunately, before setting off, Kareem had already arranged everything on the altar, which was the highest ritual to summon the true form of the evil god.

This highest level of ritual requires the use of a large number of high-quality offerings.

It's like the "appearance fee" that mortals pay to invite an evil god to descend. The more you pay, the longer the evil god can stay in the real world. That's why Karem always wants to do something big!

But Dick doesn't need the evil god to show up for too long. As long as the deer-headed god opens the passage after receiving the message and stretches out its noble head, Behemoth, who is already prepared on this side of the door, is confident that he can give him a "big surprise".

This is Behemoth's plan, a "magical honey trap" prepared specifically for the evil god!

The author says:

Author's note: I had a bit of writer's block, but it's okay.

Chapter 050: Drink More Boiled Water

From beginning to end, what Dick feared was never the Deer Head Gang, but the evil god they worshipped, because such beings had the ability to cause large-scale destruction to some extent, and once they descended into the world, it would be a bloodbath.

When local nobles or lords encounter cult activities on their land, most of the wise ones would choose to seek help from the church that has the expertise to assist them.

However, the church is, after all, an organization made up of people, and with people comes both good and bad.

Good people are conscientious and responsible.

Bad people neglect their duties.

Unfortunately, because Laguge was a poor and remote place, there was little to no income and the winters were freezing cold. As a result, there were no permanent church personnel in the area. The nearest branch church was in the Marquisate of Ulun, south of the Central Mountains.

Perhaps influenced by the thriving local business activities, the head of the local church organization was a very business-minded guy who treated the church's responsibility of exorcising demons and protecting the faith as a paid service.

Dick wasn't sure if the gods loved people or not, but this guy definitely didn't love poor people!

When Dick discovered that there was a cult among the local bandits in Laguge, he wrote a letter to the head of the Ulun branch church, requesting that they send an inquisitor to assist in suppressing the bandits. As for the "consultation fee" for hiring professionals to come to his door, that was negotiable.

The reply indicated that the priest could only be sent in the spring of the following year, and they also raised the price on the spot, making many unreasonable demands on Dick.

Dick couldn't accept the other party's exorbitant demands, so the negotiations fell through.

Fortunately, Dick was always lucky and happened to run into his mentor Behemoth, who would come to Lagug every year to take a look in order to study the extreme winter.

The old magician, with his extensive experience, offered Dick a seemingly outlandish idea.

Instead of focusing on cult members and worrying about incomplete crackdowns or the possibility of some escaping and causing future trouble, why not change our approach and directly target the evil gods behind them?

Ordinary people, or even normal people, wouldn't think of such a method, mainly because their strength wouldn't allow it. Even if an evil god is a false god, it's still not something that can be fought against by ordinary force.

Behemoth was a peak Saint-level being who had one foot in the realm of a demigod. His full-force attack was fully capable of harming a false god, and under certain conditions, it could even severely injure the opponent, rendering this deer-headed god unable to enter the mortal realm for one or two hundred years. Naturally, he would then be unable to care about his followers.

After listening to Behemoth's account, Dick was immediately impressed and devised a corresponding battle plan based on this idea.

Dick first gathered 1,500 men and marched in a grand manner toward the western mountains. He then deliberately set up camp outside the Black Forest, but did not go into the forest.

Karem is short of food and cannot afford to delay. In order to lure them into the forest to start a war, they will most likely take the initiative to attack, which will give Dick an opportunity to take advantage of the situation.

After the altar was activated, it emitted a sinister blood-red light. Immediately afterward, Dick noticed that the space in front of him suddenly began to tremble, and a crack appeared out of thin air, widening and growing larger in front of him.

Seeing that the ritual had been successfully initiated and the evil god was about to appear, Dick immediately called for Momiji and Ayane to retreat outside the altar, while the young priest was left behind. With the ritual underway, he was essentially fused with the altar and completely unable to move.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Karem, who had led his army to the edge of the forest, suddenly felt a tremor in his heart. He looked back in astonishment. Even across the vast forest, he could still sense the approaching evil god, but this was not what he had originally planned!

"Damn it! How did the ceremony get started ahead of schedule?"

Realizing something was wrong, Karem was too late to come back and help.

Inside the camp at the rear, as the spatial gate leading to the Demon Realm was opened, everyone present was immediately met with an extremely unsettling and malevolent aura.

At this moment, Dick noticed that the corpses of the bandits killed in the previous battle were strangely disintegrating, turning into streams of viscous blood that floated towards the gate. In the blink of an eye, all thirty-odd corpses vanished without a trace, followed by a very dissatisfied roar coming from inside the gate, as if the evil god was throwing a tantrum because the offerings prepared for his believers were insufficient.

Soon, from inside the gates of the Demon Realm, a pair of enormous deer antlers emerged first, followed by a monstrous head with a ferocious face covered in hard bone plates. Its shape was very similar to that of the Deer-Headed Demon, but it was larger and more terrifying.

Seeing this terrifying monster, Dick thought to himself that this thing was really not something he could deal with with his current strength. Even his subordinate, Black and White Gunner, who was the strongest fighter in his army, couldn't help but look solemn at this moment.

If this thing were to actually descend to the mortal realm, even if it could only last for a few minutes, it could still destroy a city!

However, the seemingly powerful evil god is currently in a vulnerable and unprepared state. It's like someone who's woken up in the middle of the night by the urge to urinate, still half asleep and in their pajamas, heading out to the toilet, completely unaware that someone is hiding behind the door, ready to smash him over the head with a sledgehammer!

And the attacker wielding the hammer was none other than Behemoth, who was holding back his ultimate attack.

Taking advantage of the evil god's inattention, Behemoth swiftly stepped forward and, with lightning speed, shoved his staff into the evil god's gaping maw, unleashing a forbidden-level oral attack right into its throat!

"The blazing sun burns the sky!"

With a furious roar from Behemoth, it was as if a small sun had been stuffed into the mouth of the evil god. One of the top-tier area-of-effect spells of the fire element was used by Behemoth as a single-target attack, directly giving the deer-headed god a "drink more water" treatment to kill bacteria in its internal organs.

The attacked evil god let out a shrill roar, fleeing back into the gate as if escaping, and immediately closed the spatial portal. Upon seeing this, Dick and his men cheered wildly, while the captured Deer Head Gang members were utterly devastated. After all, they had witnessed their god being brutally attacked by a human mage with a deep throat, causing many to lose their faith on the spot.

On the altar, Behemoth, who had just finished casting the forbidden spell, was leaning on his staff and taking deep breaths. Dick quickly went over to help him down to rest, then took out a signal flare from his spatial bracelet and handed it to Red Leaf, asking her to fire it from a high place to notify the main force waiting on the outskirts of the forest that they could begin the final cleanup work.

As the orange-red signal flare soared into the sky and exploded into a dazzling firework that was conspicuous even in daylight, the large force, which had been prepared for battle, immediately opened the tent gates and marched into the forest in a mighty procession, heading straight for the rabble of the Deer Head Gang.

They held an absolute advantage in terms of numbers, equipment, and the quality of their troops, while Karem and his group had already lost their greatest and only support due to the severe damage inflicted by the evil god.

Watching the guardian deity beside him transform back into a human at a visible speed, and feeling as if his internet connection had been cut off, Karem suddenly lost all sense of the Deer-Headed God's presence and had no idea what was happening behind him. He was plunged into unprecedented panic.

Just then, the sound of hooves came from the woods on both sides of them. It was the governor's cavalry carrying out an encirclement operation. Ahead, a military formation appeared, slowly but powerfully approaching them.

Seeing the overwhelming presence of the Governor's regular army, the already disorganized mob, which had been forcibly brought together, inevitably felt intense panic.

Many cannon fodder, forced to be at the forefront, looked at the extremely crude, sharpened wooden sticks in their hands, and then at the private army soldiers who were getting closer and closer, marching in formation at the head of the army. Anyone who wasn't blind or stupid could tell how big the difference in combat power was between the two sides!

Inevitably, some of those already demoralized collapsed first, abandoning their weapons and fleeing in all directions. Their escape immediately triggered a chain reaction; no matter how much the supervising team shouted and threatened them, they could not stop the rout, which was like a dam bursting. Even some members of the Deer Head Gang began to waver.

Karem never expected that the "army of a thousand" he had painstakingly built would collapse before the battle even began, and the god on whom he had placed his hopes would suddenly disappear at this crucial moment, even taking back the power he had bestowed upon them without a word.

Why? Why!

Karem glanced back instinctively. He couldn't see the fireworks above the forest and didn't know what was happening at the camp, but his usually accurate intuition was now constantly reminding him what to do.

Without saying a word, Karem, one of the very few people present with a horse, shouted, "Fight them!" and then, to everyone's bewilderment, launched a counter-charge. Only after Karem had disappeared from sight did the others realize that their leader had run away.

Hearing the shouts of battle behind him, Karem didn't even turn his head, focusing solely on galloping away on his horse.

Thanks to the forest environment and the limited number of cavalry in the governor's mansion, the panicked Karem actually managed to break out of the encirclement in a daze.

However, just when he thought he had escaped and was about to breathe a sigh of relief, a clump of bushes under the shade of a tree in front of him suddenly stood up, revealing a stag-headed spirit crouching on the ground with its back to Karem.

Caught off guard, Karem was suddenly thrown from his horse by the startled horse's abrupt stop, tumbling down the slope and landing in front of the stag-headed spirit.

Karem was so stunned by the fall that he saw stars. Just as he was about to get up, he smelled a pungent stench of blood in front of him. Then he saw, less than half a meter away, the mangled corpse of a human, which had been dismembered by the Leshen. It was the messenger he had sent to lure the Leshen.

With the Deer-Headed God losing contact and withdrawing his divine power, these divine messengers also lost their protection and were no longer regarded as "one of their own" by the Deer-Headed Spirit.

The stag-headed spirit in front of them had now turned to look at Karem...