CHAPTER 135 READY STEADY
A little over twelve hours later I saw myself standing outside in preparation to go on my second mission outside the walls of the NSA. This time with a much larger group.
I stood next to Lea and Jazz as I double-checked all of the gear I had with me, making sure that I had everything where I wanted it to be. I could see Qualtin standing nearby walking from person to person checking on people and making sure everything was prepared for our departure.
[Level 624]
He was at a higher level than the bandit, but I had learned not too long ago that levels didn’t necessarily mean all that much, especially not when the level gap was only by 20 levels or so. Thankfully that shouldn’t be an issue given that there were nine other people in the group who were in the fourth tier.
Everything about this group spoke of confidence in the NSA’s ability to handle any problem that should arise. There was an arduous joining process to the NSA, you had to meet a certain level of proficiency to get in and they only took the best of the best.
Which meant every member in here was capable of pulling their own weight. Despite the fact that I didn’t get along with Jazz, I couldn’t argue that he was at least good at what he did. Not once did I have to cover for a mistake he made during our operation, and when push came to shove? He didn’t let his pride get in the way of following Lea’s orders.
It did a lot for my opinion of him after the fact.
It also did a lot for how well I thought this group would handle the upcoming fights. Even if we were outnumbered three-to-one I expected us to be able to pull through. I just couldn’t help but feel anxious. Like the walls of a building were slowly falling down around us.
“Alright!” Qualtin’s voice easily carried across the clearing causing the conversations happening in the area to cut off quickly so they could pay attention, “Listen up, I’m going to go over our travel plans from here. We’re going to break up into three groups. One group will leave through the north gate, one through the east, and the last through the south. From there we will all make our way to the same location as marked on the maps you’ve been given.
“Our goal is to surround the known entrance to the compound to prevent anyone from slipping through and also to mask our presence and the size of the group. If fifty people all leave through the same gate it’s easy to assume they’re working together, but if three groups of slightly different sizes leave through different gates it’s assumed they’re heading to different places.
“Once we all converge on the compound itself we’ll immediately begin our assault, our goal is to fully clear the base. Once we’ve removed their presence by either capturing VIPs or by killing them all our job will be done. Any questions before we begin?”
Qualtin looked around before gesturing to the two people standing closest to him, “Graws and Trili will be in charge of the other two groups heading out of the east and south gates. If your name is called by one of the leaders here then you’ll go with them, anyone whose name is not called will be with me. Team 72, you’re with me.”
With his final words, he stepped off to the side and waited as Graws and Trili stepped forward and began calling out individual names from a list. Lea picked up her supplies and started making her way over to where Qualtin was, Jazz and I both following behind her.
Qualtin nodded his head at us as we approached and gave Lea a smile, “Leathine, it’s good to see you again. It’s been… six years?”
I raised an eyebrow as Lea returned the smile, “Probably closer to seven at this point, but you’re right that it’s been a while.”
“I heard your father was not happy with your decision to back out.”
“He’s not happy about a lot of things, but playing at being a pretty princess just wasn’t for me.”
He took in her armor and, if he knew what we knew about her vicious array of weaponry stashed over her body, how she was armed to the teeth, “No. It’s definitely not.”
He then looked over to Jazz and me as we stood behind her, “Jazzosaur Belthin, we haven’t had the chance to meet personally but I have heard of your family,” Jazz just nodded his head respectfully, which garnered a slight bit of surprise from me.
Although it sounded like this guy was a big shot in the political world, or at least had standing on the same level as Lea, so it made sense that Jazz would be respectful.
Qualtin eventually settled his gaze on me that I met with interest, “You’re the only one I haven’t heard of outside of the briefing yesterday. You say Mortimer brought you in personally?”
I smiled, almost mischievously, but I did my best to keep it respectful. For Lea’s sake if nothing else, “He did.”
Qualtin nodded, “I asked Orthina for more about what you two were hinting at but she refused to give me more.”
I nodded, “That’s probably a good thing. It would only start to cause issues if more people knew about it, besides, it’s not like anyone can do anything about it right now.”
Qualtin gave me a thoughtful look before continuing, “So why exactly did Mortimer bring you in then?”
I shrugged, “It’s half related to what I was talking about with Orthina and half his personal fancy I’d assume. Realistically I don’t see any point for him to have gone out of his way to bring me here the way he did. Maybe he sees something I don’t because of the information I gave? It’s hard to say.”
He gave me a surprised look, “That’s not what you were inferring during the briefing.”
This time I did smile mischievously, Qualtin took in my expression with a stunned face before he started laughing, “Hah, you have balls of steel to bluff Orthina like that.”
I shook my head, “No, she saw straight through it I’m sure. The only reason she didn’t do anything is because she most likely agreed with me that the guy was an ass.”
“That he was, although I agree with Orthina, you should probably do better on keeping quiet in those kinds of situations. You never know when someone is going to hold a grudge.”
I shrugged, “They’re more than welcome to come after me if they want. At this point? I quite literally have nothing left to lose.”
I saw Lea frown slightly out of the corner of my eyes, but if she had anything to say she kept it to herself.
Qualtin just shook his head, but didn’t add anything to the conversation. So our group fell into silence as Graws and Trili called out the last members of their group and began meeting with them to discuss their course of action.
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The remaining members stood around for a moment before gathering their stuff and walking over to where we were standing. Qualtin cleared his throat as they approached, “Let me just briefly go over what we’re going to do. It’s fairly simple, we’ll head out of the north gate and make our way up to Lustirne, from there we’ll stay there for an hour, and maybe eat a meal. From there we will head east to Istvel. Once we get close to Istvel we will break down towards the south to the known location of the compound and reconvene with the others.
“With the way we’re going about this, we should all reach the base at roughly the same time. Any questions before we leave?”
Most of the people just grunted or shook their heads, Qualtin nodded in response to them, “Good, then let’s head out.
***
As usual, while traveling, we were limited to the speed of the slowest person in the group. I could only imagine how painfully slow we must be going to someone like Qualtin or the other fourth-tier members.
We made a short stop near Lustirne but didn’t actually go into the city, at least not directly as a group. Qualtin’s reasoning for that was quite simple. We don’t know what kind of area surveillance they have, but if he were them there’d be watches on any major city or village within a certain radius of their base.
Given that Lustirne was the closest it only made sense to have someone watching for signs of military movements.
I agreed with him, it was possible we had been made during our stop at Lustirne when we had initially been heading out to Istvel.
I desperately wanted to go into the city and get some more of those delicious meat skewers. My mouth was positively salivating at the thought, but a head shake from Lea was enough to dissuade me, so it was with a heavy heart that I was relegated to eating fruit.
I could practically hear my mom now, “You don’t need any of that, we have fruit at home, eat some of that instead!”
No! I want a greasy burger that’s going to give me heart issues exactly 33.2 seconds after eating it! Alas, this world didn’t have burgers. At least not that I’d found so far. Although I’m fairly certain that if they made burgers here they’d not only taste better but also be healthier for you. Genuinely a best-of-both-worlds situation.
Once I made an apple starting for myself, I caught the attention of several of the other people in the group. It didn’t take long for requests to come through of people wanting various fruits, some of which I couldn’t make unfortunately since I couldn’t make it off of just a description. I doubt I could even replicate off of a picture, not that I had really tried.
I needed the actual fruit in front of me, mainly because I had to eat it to know how to make it. While the ones who asked for things I couldn’t make were understandably disappointed, they happily took what I could offer them instead.
I tend to find it hard to complain about free food as well. After taking our brief rest to eat and relax we picked up and started making our way down the road again, this time heading east towards Istvel.
It was a week's walk away to get to Istvel from Lustirne. Which for me was a little over an hour of travel at max speed. Traveling at the speed of someone who didn’t have all the buffs to agility like I did, it turned into an 8-hour travel time. We left early in the morning, taking about four hours to make it to Lustirne, stopping there for an hour, and then continuing another eight hours of travel put us firmly into nighttime.
As we were running, or in some cases flying, down the dirt roads, the roads were hardly more than just a couple of cart tracks that had worn away the grass but it sufficed, I started to recognize the area. We were getting fairly close to where we had stopped on our way out here the first time and gotten ambushed.
I kept all of my minds on full alert just to make sure that nothing could sneak up on us like it had last time. While I didn’t think tier-three or below bandits would handle well against this group, I still didn’t want to risk dealing with an ambush out of nowhere.
The sun slowly fell under the horizon, casting the sky in a blazing orange glow, thankfully it was behind us. It would suck if it was in our eyes the entire way out there, it’s the little things sometimes.
By the time we reached Istvel, it was already nighttime. We didn’t plan to stop here either, we were going straight to the base and we’d meet up with the other groups that were headed out, from there we’d begin our assault on the bandits.
Once Istvel came within sight Qualtin turned south and carried us down to cut off any northward escape attempt from the bandits if they were somehow aware of our approach. I didn’t think they were, but I wasn’t against taking precautions.
It was another half hour of travel time when we finally reached the same place we had previously. Qualtin looked around but apparently didn’t spy the other groups just yet.
“Looks like we’re the first ones here. They should be here within the hour,” he glanced over to one of the other members standing next to him, “Neltor, keep an eye out for them would you?”
Neltor nodded, “Aye sir,” he said with a mock salute, his eyes glowing slightly with an unknown skill as he searched the surrounding area.
I did the same, spreading my awareness of the entire area that I could sense. I didn’t see anyone other than us in the area, however. He seemed to be keeping his attention to the west and south though, so I focused on making sure no one snuck up from the other side.
It wasn’t long before Neltor called out, “I see the south group now, fifteen minutes out.”
Fifteen minutes out? What was that absurd eyesight? That was… nearly 8 miles of sight range?
I struggled to handle a little over a mile in total! Although I guess I was getting duplicated sensory information, he was just using his eyes. So it was slightly different, but still, I couldn’t help but be impressed.
A few minutes after that, “I see the west group as well, ten minutes out.”
This one was closer than the others, maybe he could see even further; he was just struggling with circumstances to see what he was looking for. Maybe it was how dark it was, who knows.
I could replicate his eyesight with my microscopic vision technique, but I didn’t have a grasp on making it stretch as far as he could yet. At most I could do about a mile or two, and at that point, it was better and faster to just use [OWN]. Hopefully, with a bit more work I could see much further, hell I could probably even see around things if I could bend light the way I wanted to. [Electric Manipulation] was definitely an absurd ability.
As the groups got closer I couldn’t help but feel slightly anxious. Plenty of questions and “what ifs” filled my mind as we waited. Did they know we were here? Had they prepared? Did they change anything from last time? What if they abandoned this base and went somewhere else? If they did that we most certainly weren’t going to be finding them again easily.
Lea ended up noticing my behavior and placed a hand on my shoulder, “Don’t stress. Even if they know we are here it won’t matter, we’ve got them beat in the quality department so they’d need an impossible number of tier-threes to overwhelm us,” She said confidently, and then continued on addressing my worries as if she could read my mind, “And if they moved somewhere else? Then that’s fine as well, we did our job by letting them know about the threat, they’ll have stuff in place to find them if they run.”
I nodded, taking in her words. I understand that mentally, but I still just couldn’t help but feel anxious. It was the same feeling I’d had back in Elendar before we’d even left.
It wasn’t much longer after Lea’s little pep-talk that the other two groups arrived and we all closed in together in a tight group, as we did so Qualtin spoke, “We all made it then. No troubles?” He asked, looking ao the leaders of the other two groups.
They both shook their heads, “None.”
“Nothing,” They replied succinctly.
“Good. Now that we’re here I’ll quickly detail our entry plan again. Graws’ team will go in first, they have some of the hardiest members, so they’ll be able to take anything they throw at us. My team will follow in after, since we have Team 72 we’ll end up using their abilities to navigate the facility and coordinate with the other two teams. Trili’s team will anchor the ladder, and make sure we have a secure exit point in case we need to break out of here quickly.
“Our goal, to start with, is to get into the main portion of the base. From what we understand there are miles of hallways forming a labyrinth before you get into the real base, hopefully with people that have made it through here before and their ability to map out the structure, we won’t spend ten years wandering aimlessly, yeah?” His joke received a smattering of light chuckles.
“If we all understand, then we’re ready to go. Graws, whenever your team is ready.”
Graws nodded and turned back, “Jorge?” He said with a theatrical tone.
“Bust that shit down.”