Spring- Day 2 -Starlight Palace- Lunama Kingdom (This is prior to the events of last chapter)
Maxim P.O.V
The chatter among the other countries' delegations grew louder and louder from what they had heard Maxim say.
Most countries here had utilised the maximum amount of land that they could and abandoned the ones that couldn’t be used. The reason was because of either damage generally caused by magic weapons, which tended to burn down greenery and sometimes leave shallow craters from their battles, or they were infested with monsters.
Monsters, the term used for anything that was not considered a humanoid with advanced intelligence, was what plagued most countries that had military operations outside of their own countries. They were just as large a threat as any invading army or bandit operations, the F - D rank being considered pests that destroy large amounts of property and anything above D rank was considered a serious threat that needed the mobilisation of an army.
An S rank hadn’t been fought in around 5 years, whilst S rank adventurers had completely gone off the grid around the same time. However, sightings of various S ranks had happened but they were generally somewhere that wasn’t inhabited by people at all. God forbid an S or S+ rank attack one of the kingdoms.
Heavy magic weapons tended to cause large explosions which was quite hard to avoid if you were entrenched or weighed down by armor. These things could range from mobile magical contraptions to staff’s.
As the general was attempting to contact the adventurers guild, king Morkath looked at Maxim curiously.
“Sergeant Maxim, I hope this isn’t too intrusive but do you even have enough space for all these adventurers to move in? The number of adventurers that come and go through smaller adventurers guilds are a few hundred to a thousand but… from what the guild has asked us, they want to build a Central Adventurers Guild, which hosts anywhere from 3000-5000 adventurers.”
Maxim wasn’t really concerned since they had enough rooms and they had the necessary machinery to build more if necessary. However, such a large population would be quite difficult to be monitored and policed in case of crime, so he needed to find a compromise.
“We should be fine for now, we have enough space to house one or two thousand but we need support for the food and buildings.”
As the king was going to reply, Jeanne stepped back in
“The adventurers guild general guild master would like to have a word with you.”
She motioned towards Maxim while handing him the crystal which was now glowing, meaning that the communications line was connected.
“Hello?”
Simon almost facepalmed as both James and Ben were trying to hold their laughter.
“Is this the leader of the country that wants to host one of our Central Adventurers guilds?”
“Yes that’s me”
“We would like to wholeheartedly welcome you! It has been a long time since another country has accepted our proposal. The other adventurer’s guilds have been mobbed with adventurers; we have nearly no new higher rank adventurers since they can’t take their quests to rank up. We have been forced to give out lower rewards as well.”
Maxim nodded, it made sense that if there was a sudden increase of people wanting to do a certain job, they gave the job to the people that were the hardest to replace and left the easier and lower paying one’s to newbies. That’s just business
I knew high school economics was good for something!
“I want to bring up a few issues, we can in fact house a lot of people but there are very few places for entertainment or to spend their earned money. Also, we have a food problem since we currently don’t have a way of domestically growing food.”
“ Is that it? Don’t worry, the people coming over won’t only be adventurers. We have connections with the merchants guild as well as other labor guilds that can provide the proper materials and workers for buildings. As for food the merchants guild should be able to provide it for the first few months and we’ll pay for all of it! We just need results of advancing adventurers and we get a part of the monster materials that adventurers bring in. The profit will be much greater than what we will spend to build it.”
Maxim looked at the general,
“How influential are these guys? They sound like they have enough money to run a kingdom themselves!”
The general nodded slightly,
“The adventurers' guilds exist in every single kingdom, when combined their power is equivalent to two or more kingdoms. However, to maintain international locations and their production of monster products they must continuously employ countries to create more adventurers guilds since the career is growing more and more popular”
Maxim didn’t really see a downside to this. With their own limited population, they had a lot more room for people and the more people that knew how to fight the more they could defend the Fort and the city.
“We’ll be waiting for you then, you know where our country is right?”
“We have been informed of the coordinates. We shall meet you there tomorrow, we’ll be telling our current guilds to send the adventurers that need the opportunity the most over to your country as the first arrivals after a week”
As soon as he finished talking, the line was cut.
Maxim looked back to his group,
“Well, I guess we should get back now. We have many soldiers for us and are probably hungry, James take the humvee back with you.”
“What!?”
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Spring- Day 3 -New Fort Bragg
After Maxim got back the day before, James had arrived a bit later bringing an oversized wasp’s corpse and two armed teenagers back.
Maxim was too tired to care at that point.
“Sarge!”
Maxim looked out from his barracks which he was just exiting to see Ben running towards him at full speed, waving his hand in the air
“Sarge! There were a few more of those wasps that turned up at the Fort’s walls again!”
Ah shit
“How many?”
“Around five of them. They were all taken down, also we found out a shot to the head would instantly kill it, it’s the least armored there”
Maxim sighed with relief. After learning the fact that it’s hard shell could take a shot or two he was afraid that a soldier would get stabbed for underestimating it.
“SIR!!”
Both of them turned towards the private that was running towards them just like what Ben had done, but unlike Ben who had looked relatively calm this soldier looked a bit flustered.
The soldier panted before saluting.
“50 Giant Wasps to the North sir! They’re coming out of the forest! We think that the first five were just a diversion, they’re heading towards the civilians.”
“Shit! Ben get on the humvee, If they get there faster than we can then it’s going to be a massacre!”
They were about to run off before Maxim turned around again to face the private.
“Get everybody you can, I don’t think the soldiers there can hold them all off. Only around 10 of them were posted there for night patrol!”
Maxim got in the driver’s seat while Ben got in the seat next to him before they stepped on the gas.
Holy shit, Eddie you better not be dead by the time I get there!
This was a completely unexpected assault. Maxim hadn’t considered a big attack happening anytime soon since the previous few days they hadn’t even seen any monsters.
As Maxim stepped on the gas while Ben got on the roof to man the .50 BMG turret, he was panicking.
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He was actually full on panicking, unlike what had happened before. The people of Fayetteville were under his protection, if they died it would be all his fault. He can’t let this happen
Fuck! I let my guard down for one day and this is what happens!
“Get that machine gun over here!”
“Aim for the head. No! THE HEAD!”
“BZZZZZZ!”
BANG! BANG!
TATATATATA!
Maxim stepped on the brakes, making the humvee screech to a halt. He looked at the chaos unfolding in front of him in shock.
The ten soldiers were furiously fighting against the wasps, swarms of them coming out of the forest. Their bright yellow bodies and black stingers streaked past the plains and towards where the soldiers had set up sandbags and a M249 light machine gun had been set up on a bipod, dropping bugs from the sky and sending them crashing into the ground.
“Christ! This is way more than 50 of them!”
The previously reported 50 had grown exponentially, they numbered in the hundreds now.
“Ben, get your ass firing the turret!”
Maxim swerved past the soldier's sandbag barrier while Ben was holding down the trigger for the turret gun, firing massive .50 BMG rounds that instantly splattered any wasp that it came into contact with, leaving behind parts of its shell and its stinger.
TAKATAKATAKA!
Maxim looked out the window to see something very strange. There was a much larger wasp at the center of the swarm, flanked by four wasps with much larger pincers than a normal one. It sat on the ground while the four wasps circled around it, seemingly protecting it.
Suddenly, Maxim saw it turn its head towards the humvee
“BZZZZZZ!”
The wasps that were heading towards Fayetteville suddenly changed direction, aiming straight for the humvee in an angry swarm.
Could this day get any worse!
Maxim had successfully diverted the wasps attention away from the city, the problem was their attention was on him instead!
Maxim swerved the humvee left and right as the wasps lunged for the car, making many of them miss and plunge into the dirt below.
Suddenly, Maxim heard the sound of scratching on the windows. One of the wasps had managed to hold onto the back window and was crawling closer and closer to Maxim despite the wind from the speed pushing it back.
Maxim grabbed his m18 from his holster and stuck his head out the window. Big mistake.
The moment the wasp saw his head it did a Hail Mary and lunged straight for it, determined to use it’s pincers to pull his head from his body.
BANG!
CRRTCH!
The wasp fell back onto the ground after a well placed shot from Maxim nailed it right in the eye, making it fall underneath the humvee and promptly get crushed under the car’s weight. Maxim had a moment of temporary relief before remembering about Ben.
“Hey Ben, you good!?”
“More or less, I got scratched by one of it’s stingers thoughhhhh”
THUMP
“Ben!”
Ben fell down face-first onto the top of the car, making a loud thumping noise.
Maxim looked at the rearview mirror to find that the wasps had all turned around again, he stepped on the brakes before grabbing him and pulling him down from the turret and onto the seats.
“Whoaaa, sergeant Maxim I can’t...I can’t feel my upper body”
Maxim gritted his teeth as he drove off towards Fayetteville again, it had only been two or three minutes so it was unlikely that the reinforcements had arrived yet.
“Don’t worry kid, you aren’t gonna die!”
They quickly reapproached the wasps that were attacking the soldiers again. They were only meant for patrol so they only had a limited amount of ammo. He saw a M67 grenade go flying into the swarm, letting out a large BOOM! as it disintegrated a crowd of the wasps, shrapnel burying itself into their bodies.
That bastard is commanding them!
By now Maxim had figured out that the wasps were following the command of the largest one, the one that was doing nothing except looking towards their targets.
Maxim parked the humvee next to the soldiers who were reloading the M249, getting out of the car and next to the soldier who was reloading his M4.
“What’s the situation!?”
The soldier shook his head.
“Not good sir, we’re running out of ammo and there’s still a few dozen left.”
With a grimace, Maxim tugged his M4 out of the humvee. The turret had already run out of ammo after Ben fired at the pursuing wasps.
He knelt next to the soldiers, setting the rifle on the sandbags pointing towards the largest wasp.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
The 5.56 rounds hit the wasp harmlessly on its chest and even its head. The bullet had nearly no effect, the only way to kill it was hitting it in its eyes.
“Damn it!”
It was too far away; it was a miracle that Maxim managed to pepper it with shots since it was nearly 500 meters away, while the maximum distance of the M4 was 500 meters. The only thing he managed to do was make it get pissed and stand up.
BANG!
As the wasp got up, it immediately planted into the ground and didn’t get up. A bullet had torn through its head, splattering it all over the place.
The wasps that were throwing themselves at the city turned around in shock and anger, a cloud of yellow flew towards the forest where the shot had come from.
“Was that one of ours!?”
“I don’t think so sir, nobody else is here yet.”
The soldiers and Maxim looked disbelievingly at the retreating wasps that had lost their leader. Maxim looked on as they buzzed towards the forest, where they could regroup but before they could enter Maxim saw five men step out of the forest. They were wearing uniforms similar to Maxim’s. They were carrying what looked like Light Machine guns a bit smaller than the M249, they also had peculiar metal backpacks on.
“HEY! RUN!”
Maxim desperately tried to wave for them to run as a group of around 60 wasps were flying towards them, ready to stab them with their stingers.
The men didn’t react to his words, instead, they set up their bipods on the ground and aimed at the wasps that were slowly closing in.
“Light Em up!”
FWOOOSHH!
Large columns of flames shot out of their guns, covering an immense area in the sky which the wasps flew into before they could change their course.
They came out the other side as charred, blackened corpses. Dozens of wasps dropped to the ground as they inevitably went into the wave of flames in their crazed rush, the only ones that survived were the four wasps that were initially surrounding the big one.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Four simultaneously loud shots rang out and the last of the wasps fell out of the sky in an instance. Crashing down in front of the soldiers, who were currently stomping on the nearby grass to stop the fire that the corpses brought down from spreading.
As they were doing that, five other soldiers joined them. Each of them was clutching what looked to be .50 caliber sniper rifles and wearing much darker camouflage.They had orange tinted glasses over their eyes and were seemingly much better equipped than the other’s . They met up with the soldiers that had finished putting out the fire, motioning towards the burnt bugs on the ground.
Maxim and the soldiers looked at each other confused.
“Sarge, who the fuck are they?”
“Why in the world would I know?”
He was very certain that none of the U.S branches actively used flamethrowers, which would have ended this whole thing much faster.
“Wait, look at their patches!”
Each of them had a patch on the sides of their shoulders with a flag, just like the U.S army, except theirs had a completely red flag with four yellow stars surrounding a large, yellow star on the top left side of the flag.
Maxim looked at the soldiers to the left and right of him before hearing a loud scraping of dirt as five humvees arrived at the scene with James and Simon stepping out along with dozens of soldiers.
“Holy shit Sarge, what the hell happened here?”
James surveyed the burnt and exploded corpses of hundreds of wasps covering the field until he set his eyes on the men who were still discussing something by the edge of the woods.
“Sergeant are they…”
“Yeah, by the looks of it they’re Chinese soldiers.”
James looked at Maxim
“So what do we do?”
Maxim sighed before slinging his M4 over his shoulder on a rifle sling
“I guess we go greet them”
Simon and James flanked Maxim on both sides as they walked towards the men. They were packing up the flamethrowers and sniper before they noticed Maxim heading towards them.
“Wait guys, stop. Their commander is coming towards us, salute!”
The soldiers stopped what they were doing and saluted as Maxim and his group did the same. They kept their hands off of their weapons since they saw that the Chinese soldiers had just disassembled their weapons to take back, so they were unarmed for the time being”
Maxim held his hand forward for a handshake, which one of the soldiers in the dark uniforms took. Maxim noticed that they too were composed of younger soldiers and privates, when the man who shook his hand opened his mouth.
“You understand what I’m saying right?”
To Maxim, it sounded like English, but he knew that it was probably Mandarin that he was speaking. However, both James and Simon nodded as well to what he said, meaning that…
“Sorry, but who are you guys?”
“I’m Captain Zhang Dehua of the Snow Leopard Commando unit, the guys in the lighter green uniforms are part of the 11th Motorized infantry division.”
“I’m Sergeant Maxim of the 82nd airborne of the U.S army, did you guys come to this world the same way we did?”
“If you mean getting teleported instantly and have some weird girl tell me to fight a war, then yes. She got too close and I pulled out my knife from under my pillow and she decided to teleport me right there.”
“....Well, I guess we’re in the same situation. I don’t want to be suspicious, but do you think your government could have…”
“Your government is just as likely to make a deal with a immortal to teleport us to an entirely different world”
Zhang stated this very curtly as his men behind him felt a bit uneasy with this tension. This made one of the Snow Leopard Commando’s step in.
“Captain, there’s no use fighting now. We’re all in the same situation so we should just work together, cmon.”
Maxim pursed his lips, he had said something stupid. He would have reacted the same way if they had accused their government, probably even worse.
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. However, I think we should work together if we want to get out of this situation. We have around 2000 soldiers in our base, how many do you guys have?”
The captain stared at him for a while, before the same commando motioned for him to talk.
“We have 5000 soldiers”
They had over double the number of troops that New Fort Bragg had. It was also clear that they were armed with heavier weapons than the 82nd airborne possesed.
The captain motioned for his men to pack up, as he did this three green humvee looking vehicles burst out from the deep forest.
These men all had what looked to be bullpup rifles slung over their chest. They helped load the sniper and flamethrowers back into their appropriate cases, before putting them into the vehicle.
Before stepping into the vehicle, the captain looked back at them.
“How about you join us at Zhurihe, we can discuss further afterwords”
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And there’s a new main character again! Exciting huh?
Just to fill you guys in, the Chinese Snow Leopard Commandos are an anti-terrorist group that train in multiple environments, with operators chosen from the Chinese Armed Police. Their ages are generally around 22 and each soldier is much better equipped than an average soldier. That means NODS and Infrared among other things.
I based this character off of Zhang TaoFang, a Chinese sniper in the Korean war that had a kill-count of 214 achieved in just 32 days with an old Mosin. He was nicknamed “The Coldest Shot” from his deadly accuracy and extensive time hiding on or under snow as he looked for his target.
The other person that he was based off of is Peng Dehuai, one of the greatest generals of all modern time in the PRC. He was an extremely decorated general during the Chinese Civil War and is still admired and remembered to this day.
Zhurihe is the largest military base in China, located in inner Mongolia.
And there’s that, I hope you guys are excited for the next chapter.
Man combat scenes are hard to write!
W.O.V