Sudden Assault

It had been a few days after the last celebration for having stormed the enemy's temporary base, after its second day of celebration in particular. And right now, it was close to the morning, while Ciemnosc slept on his personal bedroom's little bed.

After the initial days of the first week and 4th month since the start of the war, there were announcements going on about the future armament, weaponry and armory as well as vehicles of course, of the base, which would be getting change and those changes taking place over the course of this month and the next one. In which, at the end of the 5th month, more or less, the few selected ones with their thousands of troops would have their very own people completely given armored cars to have everyone joined in one for future obvious purposes.

The ones who Ciemnosc ended up selecting, which was with the ‘advice’ of the leading students’ individual personal point of view and with his teammates’ thoughts and ideas; but that also didn’t differ barely from his initial few chosen ones as choosing wrongly now would be stupid considering the experience in seeing what the base is looking for…

Was the leading student who first and foremost volunteered him and his forces for the task, and ended up being the one leading the entire thing to the enemy’s gates, then destroying them and all else from that enemy’s temporary base. As well as another 3 from which one of them was a female, who was the oldest among the 4 of them and despite not being taken as ‘the best’ for the merit done to the base currently, she was seen as the eldest sibling-relationship with all 4 of them.

In any case the material for getting steel, or steel itself wasn’t difficult to find in the world, and only if they wanted to build a mechanical-like city would the base not be able to afford it, which was of course not the case with what Ciemnosc wanted at all.

Right now, even as the 2nd week was starting many could already see a couple hundred armored vehicles done and built not only successfully by the Craftsmaking division of the base, which were literally eye-shaking and heart-shocking for the plebs who are all of the students could only look at the commanding vehicle whenever Ciemnosc gave it a little maintenance every week and did it in the open outside both the large and the main tent.

But that was just one of the many batches that the Craftsmaking division had been working on and finished up, even finished making the Synergized Equatrend Mobilizers’ structures except for the inscription of the necessary arrays, which was Ciemnosc’s job. And it was just yesterday that Ciemnosc finished up the last, recent batch of armored cars, letting them all become what they are supposed to and working at their best.

Of course, not all of them had a cannon and it was even somewhat of a tenth-ratio for one with a cannon, while it was not a small number, it couldn’t compare that much with the thousands that were to be done and even more so for the future as more and more people would be coming from the academy and joining their base, then get brainwashed and the rest was past history.

But for starters, the armored vehicles, enough for those 4 selected leading students, were ready to be given by the end of the month, once little practices were made more within the students’ training, not giving anyone nor anything special treatment and just letting everyone and all progress more or less in the same way.

There was no doubt that there were a lot who just were too compatible with the training of a certain thing or another. In the case of being quite a ‘genius’ for the driving or even commanding, just making use of armored cars, those who were not under the leading students who were selected wanted to change leaders - but that was literally another act that would be taken as insubordination, and the punishment was severe.

Only a few would be able to change that, and the only one responsible for those changes between students who want to be under another leading student was Ciemnosc himself, of course. The road to tyranny was just that simple. But it wasn’t that bad, especially considering how there is practically not a single leading student who dares to take advantage of their status and position, much less try to deceive the Chief in Command himself - too many examples for those who did already.

And for those leading students who either didn’t do ‘enough’ or didn’t even dare go back to fight, the shame from doing so was apparent in the eyes of their subordinates and deep in their hearts. There was also the regret from not being able to give those who presented themselves to be particularly ‘gifted’ with the armored cars’ tactics and driving what they deserve, which was to start using their very first and own armored car.

Who knew, maybe they would’ve even gotten a cannon from the lots of armored cars that would be given to the end of the month if their decision wasn’t so ‘safe’.

But Ciemnosc never punished such ‘cowardly’ leading students, instead, he silently let them know the actual difference between cultivators fighting on their own, on foot and those in the armored cars. Which could easily be seen by how the rest of the students basically, almost; venerated the other students under said selected few leading students.

It was all about learning, in the end, but there was bound to be more opportunities, for sure…

“...” Ciemnosc was lying on his bed, naked and alone, when he opened his eyes and furrowed his eyebrows before standing up from his bed. As he walked towards the little study desk, he dressed with one piece of his set of clothes at a time, while his left hand took a panel from his Covert Space bags and threw it at the little study desk.

Immediately, on its screen, Ciemnosc was seeing 3 different images from all around the base as he finished dressing up. There were 3 totally different directions, more or less, from where he could see intruders try to get into their territory. All Ciemnosc had to think of and to comment on was that this time, the major organizations were rather to act, and to show their stance.

Already having known of the base’s location and not having any idea of the armored cars’ fabrication within the base, much less knowing of the Powerful Stones’ mines that were both operated and worked by cultivators, and with them thinking that the base was taking away resources from the Rocaloi Academy, the enemy was rushing at them with cannon-less armored cars on land but with a whole multitude of such.

They were having trouble moving through the snow, but those who were starting to become slightly trapped, stuck or immobile in the snow were ‘pushed’ either from the back or from their rear to be back on track and so on. The images Ciemnosc could see were all mostly black and white, while the range of the arrays and some devices placed within those detection array formations was so large that not even the major organizations could see it coming.

Sending his Spirit Sense onto his communications device, not needing to press it with his hand or fingers, Ciemnosc quickly spoke to his teammates who were either resting or silently relaxing, also probably cultivating. “Get ready for receiving the enemy, arriving in 12 minutes, several armored cars with around 10,000 enemy troops for our west and our northwest.”

Immediately, Ciemnosc heard rustling sounds from the personal bedrooms of the others in the very same large tent, a couple even taking a few seconds to relax their bodies as they stopped cultivating before standing up and hurrying to their feet just like the rest.

Ciemnosc stepped out of the large tent, and waited there for 3 seconds before the other 4 came out as well, Missa flashing her breasts to him as she lowered her uniform shirt while her uniform jacket was already on her body. The rest came just a tad slower than her and presented themselves in front of Ciemnosc, awaiting his first commands.

“We have 210,000 active and in the base, wake them all up to receive those 2 sides, they are to start defending only when the enemy cannons from the east stop shooting at the base.” Ciemnosc rapidly said, his shoulders slightly moving up and down as he made a few steps left and right, still facing them all the time.

“The east?” Gallah asked, dubious, didn’t Genius Ciemnosc just say that the enemy was coming from the overall west? But Ciemnosc wasn’t trying to make dramatic pauses, as he took the panel from before with black and white but really clear images out of his modern uniform and showed it to them. On that screen, one of the 3 images enlarged as soon as they set their eyes on the whole panel, revealing a total of 3 ships already anchored somewhere near a shore.

“!!” If their guesses were correct, which deducing by the way their faces fell and their eyes widened, that shore was one that the base had when going in a straight line towards the Little Lake, with a little forest in-between whose very tree was at least 13 meters high. Enough to hide the far away ships’ with their tall mast.and their incredible length of 80 meters.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“They are fat,” Fatima said as she looked at the ships, who were indeed ‘fat, as their 40 meters width wasn’t just a joke, and it was a wonder Ciemnosc was able to pull such a thing off in his first attempt at creating a ship.

In the panels, the ships had already been anchored for what looked for a while already and 2 out of the 3 of them were with people around the cannons already starting to all basically aim towards one sole direction; it wasn’t needed to be intuitive to know they were aiming at the base. And what was worse, each of the 3 ships had 10 cannons installed on them, with the last remaining ship that also seemed to be the last one to anchor still had only 8 out of 10 cannons ready.

“Prepare 40,000 to defend, the rest is to surround the enemy, don’t let them even come near to take a look at the dirt and snow of our base’s ground!” Ciemnosc recuperated the 4’s mentality as soon as he began speaking again, relaying his commands again. “You know the signal then, and-”

… … … …pum, pum… … …pum… … … …pum…

Tiny sounds of cannons firing from so far away could be heard at this very moment with Ciemnosc talking, he was interrupted by them as the 5 of them turned to look in the direction of the Little Lake towards the east. The faces of Ciemnosc’s teammates were not panicky, only worried, while Ciemnosc himself looked up by barely moving his head, tilting it upwards.

As his eyes went upturned, looking at the clear blue sky with just a couple of clouds around, the whistling yet silent sounds of the little glowing dots in the distance coming closer and closer and becoming slightly bigger by the second. The other teammates were looking as well, while the students nearest to the main and large tent were also turning their heads around and up to see the sky, where they could barely see some flashes of… pure energy?

Boom boom boom boom boom…

Finally, the shells of pure energy fell towards the base from far away, but when they were just a few kilometers away from the large and main tent, and more than 100 meters up into the sky, they were suddenly stopped and exploded in ‘midair’ but it was more as if they had hit something that directly stopped them.

Just as the rest of pure energy shells fell one after another, exploding at majorly the same point than the first few pure energy shells, a transparent light green projection appeared in time to show a ‘border’ of a barrier that the pure energy shells just couldn’t get through and directly went off when coming into contact with it.

At the same time and as if having planned it, both Ciemnosc and his team and the students nearby lowered their heads, with some of the latter turning to look with severity on their facial expressions towards the large and main tents.

Looking down at the panel, Ciemnosc and his team could see that there were still only 8 out of 10 cannons ready on the last ship, and that the 3 ships were now shaking intensely, with some semi large parts of their structures directly flying away as if splinters after wood was being knocked away.

Ciemnosc couldn’t help shaking his head seeing this scene, for not only did the major organizations just built ships with barely some arrays for it to move around, they also placed 10 cannons without making any preparation for the recoil of 10 whole cannons shooting at the same time. And what’s more, with the ships that had such installed so close to each other, ending up harming each other’s structure as soon as the first shooting was made.

And the ‘sailors’ all around who were seemingly asking one single cultivator at the helm about something before starting to do their job, the shooters and that cultivator in question were shaken, completely sent into distraught for they obviously didn’t expect their strong and formidable ships to suddenly start breaking apart, was the enemy around?

But after looking around, and with the 2 remaining cannons’ teams getting angry and yelling all around, the ‘sailors’ finally realized what happened, and began making a few changes to their anchoring ships as well as simply going ‘fuck it’ and started taking aim once again. This time they seemed to want to wait for the other 2 teams, but they started firing again after a few more seconds.

“Let the mines know, to get ready for scouting and to directly enter into a defensive stance, stop all mining operations and get the students there to prepare for battle. The simple procedures to follow are enough, not need for them to come over to the base, it’s not ‘that’ problematic.”

“Make sure to not let any of them get away, there are some others around who are waiting to see if there is any news or vital information from the enemy to relay it to their bosses, so do well and make them understand what the meaning of ‘not going back’ is.” Ciemnosc said, slowly turning to face the east and walking towards it.

“But- who will be in charg-” Missa asked at this time, seeing Ciemnosc move towards the east, asking the obvious. Ciemnosc interrupted her with a fling of his right hand from up to below, before speaking, “I will.”

“Let me come with you.” Missa directly said back, not waiting for another second as she placed her forearms behind her bum, standing firm on her spot. But Ciemnosc looked back at them before setting his eyes on her, calmly saying. “I can go unnoticed, and they won’t expect just one person to come, I can go there fast and approach them while they try to take down the protective array formation.”

“Bu-” Missa wanted to speak, once again, and once again Ciemnosc interrupted her and stopped her. Walking quickly towards her, standing in front of her, he slowly and seductively charmed his words. “You 4 stay here and protect this place, but also try to gain some experience from this. You know what to do and how to react, but you don’t know what is giving life and death orders. You need that.”

“... mn.” Ciemnosc heard Missa agree and nod her head a little towards him, subserviently but also more like a little girl listening to his huge, older and hunk boyfriend that just wanted to use her but was beginning to feel something for her. Anyway, she looked delicate and provocative at the same time as Ciemnosc nodded at her while breathing in and then expelling it through his nostrils.

“Get to it, the barrier can take at most 30 minutes of those 30 cannons, 20 at worst. And those armored cars, even if they are thoroughly made a mess out of by the students, they can be repaired still so don’t worry about it.” Ciemnosc said, he then turned around and walked back to where he was going to before, onwards to the east.

Taking out his commanding vehicle, the 4 teammates of his looked at him a bit more before looking at each other once the commanding vehicle finally made its way out of the protective barrier in a matter of less than a minute and was already becoming a small dot that was slowly going to disappear into the little forest.

Stpe, step step step step.

“...” - “...” - “...” - “...” Nodding at each other, they then began to altogether move towards the rest of the base, some students around looked at them as they made their way towards 4 different respective points: north, east, west and south.

While the 4 of them walked towards such, the students could only see the 4 ‘big bosses’ talk to their communication devices but not hearing anything from their own. Only after half a minute or so, did the students finally receive something from their own communication device. While still looking at the 4 big bosses in veneration and well earned respect, for they had been their training ‘leaders’ all this while, each student from all 4 cardinal points and sides of the base received their own set of commands to follow.

Meanwhile, the south and the east sides of the base were rapidly moving, all towards the same direction, which was everyone to the west of the base. While the western side of the base had everyone move towards the other extreme of the base, the southern only had to ‘walk a little more’ forwards and didn’t really have an extensive scene of tens of thousands just moving in the same direction.

Ciemnosc had already disappeared into the little forests, the very distant, so far away ‘pum pums’ were still ongoing and the base was being attacked from all angles on the eastern side of the barrier while all more than 200,000 students got to form up in front of the base’s perimeter and with the smallish dots far away to the west and northwest closing in to their base.

“The major organizations have sent their forces against our base!” Missa was the one to speak in everyone’s ears now, the leading students under each big boss and the students under said leading students having already given the ‘to do list’ but the stand by orders both at the same time.

“There are more than 700 armored cars coming at us, but none of them have a single cannon, they plan on taking our base down or are even looking forward to taking it from us.” Missa had a serious face, more than ever in previous training regiments. “Our Chief in Command is strong, some of you have already seen that, and right now he has gone alone in order to stop those explosion noises from destroying our protective barrier.”

“The one he built for the protection of this base!!” Missa yelled, very loudly, and choked gasps could be heard from all around the students, especially the new ones who didn’t have a chance to go fight in the most recent mission. Missa continued, however, “As you know him, Chief in Command will make those sounds stop, and when they do, you will run as fast as you can and make a mess out of those armored cars coming right into our noses, you heard me?!”

“RAARGRR!” - “We hear you!” - “WE HEAR!!”

“Hmph,” Missa snorted, along with a little grin, before resuming her damn serious face and voice. “You have been training for this, but not training to become immortal. This is the first time you come to fight together, joining each other, even if it isn’t every single one of us here right now to defend this little home that our Chief in Command has built, using our hands and cultivation to let us have a place to defend.”

“Prepare yourselves to say goodbye to a few of you, to never see each other again, for this is war!” Missa walked a bit to her sides, her hands behind her back as he gripped them tightly, also slightly tremblingly. Gallah half stepped forth and held both her palms with his left hand, which she looked back at him right then and he nodded with tranquility at her.

Turning her head around to face the couple hundred thousand students plus, she opened her mouth wide and yelled to the top of her lungs. “Every blood that they draw from our bodies, and every limb they cut off from our hearts, we will deafen them with the roars of our victory!!”

And the troops didn’t disappoint her, yelling to the top of their lungs in return. “Of our victory!”

“Victory!” - “Victory!” - “Victory!!”

…