As we stepped off of the train, I noticed that we were right next to several other workers bustling about. It looked like they were unloading the materials the train had shipped to the forts. many of the soldiers who had traveled with us were stretching and taking breaks. We had stopped right next to one of the forts. I frowned.
"Why did we stop here? I can see that the train tracks still go on for a while," I asked, as we joined the soldiers.
"I heard that the Zelyrian abominations blew up the tracks again," said one of the nearest soldiers. "Real pain in the neck. Means we need to take some supplies walk the rest of the way. Should be a one hour march."
Worldstriders blowing up the train tracks was a variable I hadn't anticipated.
"Are we going to carry over all of the supplies by ourselves?" I looked at the train carriages. There was far more luggage than we could carry, even if we took several trips.
The soldier snorted. "We're not going to carry over all of the supplies. We're going to carry over weapons and medicine. We're also going to carry over messages to coordinate the reconstruction of the railroad. I'm sure it'll get blown up again sooner or later, but..." the soldier shrugged. "Better to have it sometimes repaired than never repaired, I guess. You should take the opportunity to stretch and get ready. Commander said that we're leaving in fifteen minutes."
I glanced at Anise and Felix, who both looked exhausted at the thought of a one-hour jog. I sighed.
The three of us took several minutes to stretch, warm up our muscles, and get ready for our journey while we eyed the skies. I also took the opportunity to douse all three of us with a cup of water, in case I needed to apply some healing in a hurry. Right as we were getting ready to leave, I saw a few other soldiers from the fort we had stopped near exit the fort and come out to meet us.
"Are they coming with us?" I asked the soldier.
"Yeah, they're supposed to help if we actually get attacked. There are quite a few more of them than I expected," he said. I counted the number of soldiers who were joining us, and nodded. Five hundred troops had left the fort to jog with us. Combined with the troops from the train, we numbered nearly a thousand. It was a sizable number of people to move from one fort to another. One of the people from the fort walked to the front of the group, and I noticed that he had several shiny stars pinned to his uniform. He gave everyone a brief scan, before he grunted.
“All right everyone, I'll be in charge for the next hour or two. Until we reach the forts in the second line of defense, you listen to me. Got it?” I saw a few soldiers nod, while several more said 'yes sir!' I followed the rest of the crowd, and the commander at the front grinned in satisfaction.
"Good! Now, those inky bastards have a high chance of attacking us while we try to move to the other base. So we're going to keep an eye out for them. Those of you from fort 3-16, I expect you to be ready for a fight. Those of you with the supply team... help if you can, but stay safe. Everyone, keep up a good pace. Let's try to get our supplies and messages to the forts in the second line before the little monsters kill us. Let's go!" with that, the man turned towards the forts in the distance and began moving forward.
The first forty minutes of marching were nothing special. Thanks to our physical abilities all being at Grade 6 or higher, we had no difficulty keeping up with the march of the soldiers. The only thing that made me wary was the distant battles between humans and worldstriders. Although they were distant, I could see constant battles in the distance. It seemed like forts were almost always reinforcing their neighbors or under attack. The front lines were far more chaotic and dangerous than I had expected.
The trouble came during the last stretch of our march. Right before we reached the forts, a group of worldstriders descended from the sky like a malevolent sheet of darkness. I heard a few curses, before the soldiers who had been traveling with us pulled out swords and shields and stepped forward. I readied a few extinguishes as the commander started barking orders at the troops. I did a quick count of the worldstriders. There were eight hundred of them. Since we had about a thousand troops, we outnumbered them - but most of our troops weren't effective combatants. I tried not to feel uneasy as the troops prepared to fight. Then I realized a problem.
“How are the humans going to attack?” I asked. “The enemy is in the air, and the soldiers have swords. Unless the worldstriders descend and let the soldiers stab them?”
A moment later, several soldiers with swords flew into the air. The worldstriders started firing at flying humans while I blinked in shock.
Flying ability potions. No wonder the humans were using swords.
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The worldstriders started to fly back towards the clouds as the human swordsmen approached them. However, the human soldiers were faster than the worldstriders. The distance between the two groups rapidly narrowed. However, it wasn’t without cost. Several of the fliers got killed by gunshots or black projectiles as they advanced. Nearly half of the flying soldiers died as they pursued the enemy. I started trying to deflect some of the attacks using my portals, but I had no way to handle the sheer number of projectiles. I felt my heart tighten as I watched the human soldiers drop out of the sky.
That was when the human forces gave me a second surprise. A group of worldstriders dropped dead as a volley of grey and purple projectiles ripped through them. I looked back at the ground, and saw thirty human soldiers aiming their palms at the worldstriders. They were ability users, and it looked like their ability was specially designed to hurt the extradimensional inky blobs.
I resisted the urge to grin.
“Looks like we didn’t give the continent quite enough credit,” I said. “They've adapted far more than I thought they had.”
The worldstriders turned much of their attention towards the ability users. The flying soldiers started to take fewer casualties as the worldstriders split their attacks.
In well-rehearsed movements, the soldiers near the projectile-ability wielders formed a shield wall. The attacks of the worldstriders bounced off of their shields. More surprisingly, the shields also deflected bullets. I felt my grin grow wider. There were still only 130 soldiers on our side that could actually hurt the worldstriders. However, the human forces had found ways to adapt and improve. With these shields, even the non-ability users could help a great deal with the battle.
"I see a few targets," said Anise. She smiled, and pointed at a few worldstriders, and a few ripples of manifestation essence exited her body. Then, four worldstriders near the edge of their formation were torn apart. The worldstriders seemed to think that the attacks had originated from the ability users, and didn't pay us any mind. However, a few soldiers from the shield wall fell to the next wave of attacks. I frowned.
The shield wall still had flaws in it. It was very good at handling the worldstrider attacks... but it wasn't perfect. I started using my portals to interfere with the worldstrider volleys. I didn't dare to reflect the attacks back at their attackers, since that might give away Anise's identity as a Zelyrian mage. But I subtly adjusted the angles of attacks with smaller portals, to keep the other soldiers healthy. I also teleported a few cups of water onto the shield wall, and then started healing soldiers up.
A few seconds later, the human fliers finally reached the worldstriders. They dove into the enemy like a flock of predatory birds. Their blades started to tear into Worldstrider flesh, as the worldstriders tried to duck out of the way. The eerie black blades proved effective against the worldstriders, and several of them fell. The worldstriders had a much harder time dealing with the human fliers now - they were too close for the worldstriders to aim carefully.
As the worldstriders struggled to dislodge the human fliers, I started sprinkling in a few extinguishes. With how distracted the worldstriders were, they probably wouldn't notice a few of them dropping dead. I concentrated on worldstriders that were fighting back too effectively.
Within a few minutes, the fort we were supposed to deliver supplies to also sent soldiers to reinforce us. The worldstriders seemed to realize things were getting dangerous, so they started flying upwards. The fliers harassing them, but disengaged once the worldstriders got out of range of the ability users. If they were surrounded by worldstriders with no ranged support, they would probably all die. Thus, the skirmish outside of the fort ended.I frowned as I started to count the casualties of both sides.
“Nearly 140 dead humans, about half of which are shieldbearers. Seven dead projectile ability users, sixty three dead fliers. In contrast, it looks like we only killed 200 Worldstriders,” I said, grimacing. “Not a good fight when their effective combatants outnumber ours by so much.”
“I’m actually more surprised that the human armies are this effective,” said Felix. “In this kind of fight, I expected the humans to fare much worse. 130 effective combatants against 800 is nearly impossible odds. Even with you, Anise, and the shieldbearers helping out." Then, Felix frowned. "I need to think more carefully about our prosthetic limbs, too. Ranged attacks just seem too important to the war situation right now. But projectiles run into the problem of affixing every piece of ammunition... damn." Felix looked like he had chewed on a mouthful of sawdust as he looked at his prosthetic limb.
Meanwhile, I was distracted by a System notification popping up.
Influence: Make a [Minor] Contribution to the Continental-Worldstrider war
Note: Since the conflict is still ongoing, the impact your actions have had on the war have yet to be determined. Please wait until the conflict ends to receive payment.
Achievement +???
With my new reward, I now had 3 different [Minor] influence rewards waiting for me. The war between the humans and worldstriders hadn't ended yet, but I was looking forward to getting my Achievement.
As we regrouped, and I started healing soldiers who were injured but not dead, the reinforcements from the fort finally reached us.
“Are you the supply troop that was supposed to come today? For Forts 2-73 through 2-76?” asked one of the soldiers.
The leader of our group smiled. “Yes.”
"Did the damn inky blobs blow up the train tracks again? Damn it." The soldier from the reinforcements glared at the skies. "Bloody creatures have an excellent vantage point. Makes it very hard to hide supply lines from them. Worse, we can't hit them in the skies, so they always have a safe retreat line. It's so frustrating..." the soldier kneaded his forehead with his palm, before he sighed. "Well, let's get inside the fort. We can sort the rest of this mess out in private."
We finished making our way into the fort, before many of the soldiers dropped to the ground, exhausted after the 1-hour march and the fight. The three of us were more excited by the fact that we had reached the second defensive line. We had reached Markus's fort.