Chapter 11

Matt stalked quietly through the woods at the edge of the base. CAMIEN had predicted the enemy would take this route if they were planning to play dirty. Matt wasn’t about to let them sneak up uncontested. He wanted to deal with this quickly so they could move off and start clearing the enemy out of the nearby cities and towns.

He’d have to be careful not to overextend though. None of his men had passed the level 5 threshold yet, so they’d have to deal with that. He himself was at level 8, so he’d have to be careful about hitting level 10 soon. Supposedly the impulse wouldn’t be as strong the second time around, but it’d still affect him, and he’d still get a quest. An extra free level wasn’t bad, especially if he was careful about who he partnered with. He could potentially give someone without the system a level, or someone of a much higher level an extra boost.

Unfortunately that second option wouldn’t likely present itself. There weren’t any returnees anywhere in a 200 mile radius, and even if there were, they likely wouldn’t be interested in pairing with him after the whole Kyle incident.

Matt crept up behind a large tree and waited. He thought he’d seen movement out of the corner of his eye. He was still getting used to his greatly enhanced senses, and he hadn’t heard anything, but he’d decided to trust his gut.

Another flash had him glancing around, before conducting a SLLS, or Stop, Look, Listen, Smell. When he opened his eyes, there were several small figures in a semi circle around him. Some seemed semi transparent, while others had beady red eyes and greenish skin. A short figure wearing a red knit cap, likely the group’s leader, stepped forward.

“Greetings Captain Williams. We’ve been hoping to draw you out for a few days now. We didn’t realize you were away until you returned on that small ‘helicopter’ yesterday. Our cold queen will surely reward me for bringing your head.”

You have successfully resisted [unknown ability] with [Mental Fortitude] and [Hardened Soul]

Matt’s highly tuned senses seemed confused for a moment, but he shook the feeling off, suddenly realizing he’d almost been affected by some kind of system ability or spell. Instantly on guard, Matt checked that his rifle was clear and had a round chambered before replying.

“It seems you’ve got me at a disadvantage. I’m not sure who you are. Have we met? I assume you aren’t exactly human?”

The small creature laughed, an utterly disturbing sound almost like nails on a chalkboard, before responding. “Indeed. Well done resisting [Disorienting Presence] by the way. I doubt your inferior human voice can pronounce my name. I lead the Frozen Queen’s 6th combat recon force. Our forces' first attack on your base was really just a distraction to buy my forces time. It is unfortunate that we lost one of the queen’s daughters, but it was deemed a necessary sacrifice. I’m telling you this so that you can know how futile your attempts are. The Frozen Queen sees everything.”

An ugly sneer contorted Matt’s face. “Does she now? Somehow I doubt that.” he replied.

The creature let out a long sigh. “It seems, like most, you bore me. We’ll kill you here and now. Soon our advance forces will overrun your base while the rest of your unit is busy fighting shades and illusions. Your kind will be our slaves, as our Queen has foreseen.”

Matt had heard enough. No one and nothing would stop him from keeping his men and women safe. Given the extremely close range, Matt opted to go full hands on, disconnecting his rifle from his sling and dropping it in one smooth motion. How hard could it be to kill a bunch of creatures roughly the size of 5 year olds?

The answer was apparently ‘really hard’.

Matt had some experience, at least in a training environment, with hand to hand fighting, but being swarmed by multiple opponents was a whole different experience. He grabbed the closest two creatures as they rushed him, but one of them turned out not to be fully corporeal, and his hand slid right through the darn thing as it suddenly quadrupled in size and howled in his face.

He was able to grab the other creature by the arm, and shaking it violently seemed to be effective enough at keeping it too disoriented to do much, but the other creatures swarmed around him, grabbing his legs and trying to pull him down. Several of the other translucent figures ballooned in size as well, howling with glee.

This wasn’t going as Matt had expected. He was forced to use the small green skinned creature as a make shift bat, knocking the other creatures off, but not without suffering some cuts and bruises. These things had fucking sharp teeth. The leader with the red cap pulled a scythe from somewhere behind it’s back. Or that wasn’t quite right. It was like the creature that Matt could now identify as a redcap had pulled the weapon from thin air by putting it’s hand behind it’s back. The system certainly allowed some interesting things. Matt briefly wondered if the weapon had been in the creature’s [Soul Storage] but that didn’t seem quite right.

The situation was getting a bit dire, but all the little creatures were finally in range. Matt mentally prodded his chest, the same place he’d gone during his experience with Kyle. Multiple possibilities entered his mind, each like a shadow overlayed on reality in front of him.

[Reap the Harvest] he muttered subconsciously. The world went momentary gray. Matt could feel some kind of energy escaping him, and the Yellow stamina meter in his vision dipped by about a third. Odd gray shadows pulled toward him from each of the corporal creatures. The ghostly entities were effected in an entirely different way. They simply exploded in puffs of black mist.

As the world returned to color, a system notification popped into Matt’s view, ignoring the settings he’d tried to set up earlier to avoid messages during combat.

You’ve used an AOE ability for the first time!

Congratulations!

You’ve killed (14) enemy combatants, earning 1400 EXP.

A different bar, this one golden and representing Matt’s progress toward his next level flashed across the top of his vision for a moment, before going back to being almost completely invisible. The portion of gold was a tiny fraction of the bar, likely less than 1/50th of the full value Matt would need.

Somewhat re-assured that he wouldn’t have to worry about hitting level 10 for a while, Matt reached toward the corpse of the redcap. He’d been meaning to make sure the thing was dead, since he hadn’t been sure how many creatures were attacking. Instead he got another system prompt.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Would you like to loot (14) bodies?

Note, some sentient races may not look kindly at the bodies of their fallen being looted, resulting in a loss of karma between you and members of that race.

[Yes / No]

Matt remembered something he’d read about looting in the system book he’d been reading. There'd also been some kind of notes from command while he’d been training about looting and passing anything he found on to supply. He mentally selected [Yes]. A new box, this one organized a bit more like a spreadsheet table, or shoe lockers popped up.

[Redcap's Berets]

[Ice goblin ears] x5

[Grave Dust] x5

[Ring of Leadership]

[Sharp Teeth] x8

[Incorporeal goo] x2

[$20 USC]

[Gold filling]

The standard system box appeared below that with a Yes/No prompt to loot everything. Matt selected Yes. A sudden sense of fullness entered his awareness, something similar to having enjoyed a full meal, but in a more metaphysical sense rather than a feeling in his stomach.

Instantly Matt knew the items were somehow in his [Soul Storage], even though that shouldn’t really be possible. Unfortunately there wasn’t too much time to consider what the various feelings and inspirations meant, and Matt hurried back to his rifle, intent on finding whatever other recon groups or enemy reinforcements might be sneaking up.

*******

Lyndis stood with the rest of Savage company leadership on a slight rise overlooking what would have been gate 5 and the surrounding fenced in areas. The concrete and asphalt that’d previously been slightly damaged from the last attack had now been utterly destroyed. The ground had been churned like a million tiny ant hills had been made and then torn down, a testament to how much .50 caliber ammo the company had expended.

The first two machine-gun placements that'd been firing from the start were somewhat literally surrounded by an actual mountain of brass casings. The barrel of almost every gun was glowing red hot. Soon rounds would start cooking off in rifle chambers, causing even worse overheating issues.

The corpses of the enemy’s dead were in various states of destruction. The vast majority had been subjected to the same churning effect as the rest of the ground, resulting in an utterly gristly display of torn chunks of flesh and bone peaking out of the dirt.

In spite of all the ammo that’d been expended, the enemy kept coming, sending wave after wave of elves to a wasteful death. Something didn’t seem quite right though. Seemingly in spite of all the destruction and carnage, most of the company hadn’t even leveled once.

The men and women of Savage company should have received orders of magnitude more experience than they had during the first invasion. The fact that the system didn’t provide exp notifications for kills made with non-system equipment didn’t make things any easier, but she herself should have credit for at least a few thousand kills at this point. It couldn’t take that much more experience to advance from level 2 to level 3, especially if command was worried about people getting to level 5.

If things kept going like this, there were going to be problems larger than just their current position being overrun. If the enemy really had enough personnel that they could just throw bodies at a problem, the whole world would be in trouble.

“Savage 6, this is Savage 6 Actual, how copy? Over.” Lyndis’ built in radio crackled

“Savage 6 Actual, it’s good to hear from you. I copy loud and clear. Over.” she responded.

“I’ve got a bit of critical intel. Somehow the enemy has you fighting illusions over there. I’m not sure how, but there’s got to be someone or something controlling that. If you can take them out, you should be able to clean up the mess over there quickly. We’re going to need to reposition the company to this side of the base. The first attack was just a distraction, and the enemy has been building a fairly detailed intel profile on us. There’s a much larger force approaching from this side, and we can’t miss anyone or anything slipping through the cracks.”

Captain William’s voice provided an immediate sense of relief, and something in Lyndis mind suddenly clicked, the actions of the enemy now seeming like a really bad looping image. She immediately began scanning for anything that wasn’t part of the looping illusions.

“I can’t go into too much detail, but you should know that the enemy force is made up of more than just elves. I’m not sure how your fairytale lore is, but I just encountered a group of Bogies and goblins lead by a redcap. Keep a sharp eye out for anything small that doesn’t seem quite human. Savage 6 Actual Over and Out.” the captain finished.

Lyndis keyed up a channel between herself, First Sargent Cabral, and Garrow back at the CCC, before relaying the captain’s information. All the while she kept her eyes scanning the fields and road in front of her.

She would have liked to order a cease fire, since they were riding a fine line on damaging their weapon systems, but doing so would tip their hand, and she couldn’t say how the enemy force would react.

There, she finally found the one figure who’s movements weren’t quite in sync with the rest. She hosed the area with 40mm high explosive grenades from the MK-19 automatic launcher attached to the left arm of her exo-mecha.

The response was almost instantaneous. The waves of incoming troops, as well as most of the corpses and carnage seemed to evaporate into colored mists, disbursed by some unseen breeze.

The bodies of the enemy casters lay horribly disfigured in a semicircle around the area she’d sprayed. The troops looked around, somewhat confused by the sudden change. The sudden silence was deafening.

“Listen up Savage Company!” Cabral shouted through the exo-mecha external broadcast speaker on his suit.

“The enemy has been using some kind of spell or ability to convince us there were more attackers than there actually are. The drop ships are long gone, but we’ve got a company size or larger element moving through the forest on the other side of base, looking to assault through after crossing the river. We need to get issued some new weapons and get our butts into defensive positions on the other side of the base ASAP. First and second platoons, move to supply for gear issue. Third Platoon will stay here with me and police the area for loot before joining you. First Lieutenant Lyndis will head directly to the new defense staging area and start assigning positions. We just wasted a few hours and quite a bit of ammo literally chasing shadows, so let's stay sharp this time around.”

The company reacted like a well trained, combat ready unit should. Third Platoon members quickly ran out into the field, cautiously poking at any bodies that were still on the field, while the other two platoons began loading what equipment they could onto the supply trucks, leaving anything too hot to be collected later.

Leaving weapons on the battlefield went against how they’d been trained, but the system was a new thing, and ultimately most of these weapon systems would be useless in a few weeks. Besides, there were plenty of other people on post who could be tasked with cleaning up.

Lyndis hurried away, looking to rush some quick maintenance before anyone else beat her to the other side of the base. She was in desperate need of an ammo resupply, and she’d burned through more of the expendable fuel than would have been expected.

The enemy deserved a bit of grudging respect, Lyndis admitted. Also, she and the other leaders of the SRG’s lacked intel. How could the enemy attack the civilian population with the system’s supposed protection. There would be a lot of questions to find answers for once this was over.