The Orc turning out to be a variant was a surprise. Especially since he was so small. But maybe it was some kind of super scout like its name Farsighter indicated. But well, it now served as a reminder that hard work beats talent that doesn’t work hard. But it had expanded Max’s knowledge now that he knew that there were many kinds of variants. In retrospect, nobody ever said they were strong, just that they were different like their names indicated.
As the reduced 18 soldiers moved through the valleys they saw signs of smaller skirmishes with the fleeing forces. But what surprised Max the most was that they sometimes found survivors too. Which he found odd. It was like the Orcs were trying to speedrun the whole thing. Were they also on some kind of time limit or something? Like a counter quest from the system?
They weren’t marching now though so as not to attract attention and they were also taking steeper and narrower paths to avoid the Horde. That’s when one of their scouts came jogging back and began giving a report to the chief officer, who was now a giant of a man called Harlbear. They had picked him up on the way and he outranked everyone present.
“Halt! Rest up for a bit!” The soldiers were a bit confused as they hadn’t been marching for very long.
“I want our best mage and archer with me now!” Harlbear ordered and began jogging away. They had only two mages and one was pretty injured, so it was obvious who was going. Bu when no archer stepped out everyone started looking at Max. “What? Me?”
He was having a hard time reconciling the fact that somehow he was considered best among veterans. “Dude, I saw you take out an armored orc’s eye in the middle of a melee. Then you took out a beast clawing on an ally soldier without injuring the soldier from 20 paces away.” But they were absolute flukes! Max wanted to scream but found himself unable to. In the end, he just sighed and joined up with the team leaving.
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The Grokants were pushed back into a corner now. Janine took a deep breath and lunged, Only 3 left now. It was 4 vs 3. Thea shot a small fireball into the Grokant trying to flank Janine while Carl and Miles ganged up on the last. Well, it was actually Carl fighting with Miles acting as more of a distraction than a combatant. But he was trying.
‘Da-da da-da da-daaaa’ a trumpet sounded signifying their victory and a notification appeared on all their screens.
Group Combat stage 1 Clear. Squad - 3/10 left.
In the end the Grokant had taken down Miles before being cut down by Carl.
Calculating Grade. Grade Awarded F.
Next Grade, Clear with Squad 5/10.
Rewards - 100XP to all Squadmates.
Well, at least there was a grade this time. Usually, they all died and it just said failed. But K and the rest still pumped up their fists. “Hell! Yeah!” Cheers erupted all around. It was a pyrrhic victory and disastrous by real-world standards but they had beaten the simulation with 30 seedling Grokants without getting wiped out this time. And they were in a mood to celebrate. “Good going, Janine! No offense Miles but I think we got our forward. I am not sure the sword is doing you much good.”
Miles just grunted while Janine just smiled. “Yeah, Yeah. But I still haven’t decided to switch.” She protested but not too vehemently. She had begun with weapons and then later switched to gauntlets saying it might suit her a bit more because she took a little bit of self-defense in school for a month. Everyone knew that didn’t really affect that much but they were just happy to have another frontliner.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Don’t listen to him Miles you are improving at a very nice pace. If you want you should try for the frontline.” Carl remarked but Miles just politely shrugged with a small smile. “I think I’ll stick to being an Alchemist. Fighting is not really my strong suit.” Miles felt he was just being polite but Carl insisted. “No dude, I’m serious. You used to play right? Your reactions and stats are good it’s just that-” He paused. “I feel you will be unstoppable if you can just manage to not freeze when the fight happens.”
He was logically correct but Miles just couldn’t help closing his eyes on seeing an ugly beast charging him down. “Anyway, I’m hungry for some steak. Let’s go eat. We need to go one more round today before we sleep right?” Jackson commented and they all started to move to the kitchen. They had abandoned the vending machine in favor of Gia’s cooking. The white-haired woman was like beyond age-active grandma who loved to cook and dote on her grandkids. And apparently, despite being almost a decade older than her grandkids, they were still considered the same age group according to her. But with the food they were eating, they didn’t complain much.
They had a rocky start but it was starting to look like a real good squad now. At least in terms of emotions and interpersonal relations. In terms of fighting they were still a long way from home. But they still had time to cross that bridge.
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“Those dam shorties!” One of the Harlbear grunted as he lifted himself up on the steep incline. The mountains were divided by a steep narrow gorge. It used to have a bridge which was now broken. So they were climbing up the sidewalls to reach the top where the rocks protruded out enough on both sides to make it a long jump distance. Max was honestly dreading the jump more than the climb. Both the guys around him right now were Initiate Seekers at least.
It made little sense to him. After all, even if they had figured that there were enemies behind them. Cutting off their own retreat sounded extremely stupid even by orc standards. But he was later informed that it was actually one of the usual tactics of the horde. “To victory or to death!” But then Max remembered studying something about a similar tactic used by various leaders like Hitler and Zheng He throughout history.
The scout had reported suspicious activity in the enemy camp a little further. And this small team of 4 was supposed to check it out. As Max reached the last leg of the climb he heard a curse from Harlbear. “Shit! Damnit!” He actually found the sound of “Dammit!” quite amusing, phonetically speaking. They all were speaking a different language but somehow its meaning was clear to him.
He heaved himself up to look at what had caused the cursing. The 3 guys before him were all looking far in the distance where two pillars of red smoke rose in the distance. “The second wall has fallen!”
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The four soldiers were lying flat on the rocks looking over an extremely guarded small orc camp in a slightly larger valley. “That’s a lot of shorties!” Harlbear commented. Even Max’s uneducated eyes could tell that there was an extremely high concentration of orcs, those big variants, and a lot of patrols here. But what was odd was that this place was out of the way of any major movement routes according to their leader. Its discovery was sheer dumb luck on the scout’s part.
They all suddenly pulled back as another patrol passed nearby. “Well mage? Do you see anything special about this?”
“Oh, its definitely something special. There’s a lot of mana resonance coming from that tent.” He pointed to a big one near to the center. The only thing that differentiated it from others according to Max was its size. Which was actually smart as a different color was like painting a target on oneself. Like someone saying ‘This is important!’ Or ‘Hit here!’ He could tell the general direction of the waves but had no way to pinpoint like the mage had. But there were waves coming definitely though.
“And that’s after all the hiding spells they must have used. Because from how off this is placed and how many forces I’m seeing. This looks like something they really don’t want us to find out.” the mage gave a very meaningful look to the giant leader. “Are you saying that you think that this place is…” as the man drawled out the mage completed “Yup!”
Max cautiously looked over with only half a mind on the interesting conversation. Only to see that the patrol had long passed and off in the distance a new group was entering the camp. It was an old orc dressed in a simple white loin cloth which looked extremely weird on him accompanied by a red orc that looked like twice the size of the one Max killed surrounded by a lot of variant guards. The other Orc was also wearing a fancier kind of bone armor. “Uh..sir, I think you should see this.”
The mage and the chief officer looked up to him inquisitively and then peeked out. “Damn! I’m sure now. It’s the Traitor’s camp.”
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