CHAPTER 154: Lucas Leads
“I’m sorry, Battlemaster, but I don’t think it’s possible until the Rift Menu returns all its functionality.”
Lucas frowned at Garrett Starf’s words. The frown wasn’t the full expression of what he was feeling either. His stance, body language, and inflection all communicated his concern. Still, what escaped him was only a fraction of what he felt inside. He knew things were going to get bad. The atmosphere around him was enough that even Garrett squirmed and began trying to explain further.
“It’s just that I’m not sure what else to try,” stammered Garrett nervously as Lucas stared at him. “I’ll speak with the others to find some ideas. We just can’t get enough of a sustained heat to shape the metal. An arc welder or plasma cutter might allow us to cut it, but as soon as the metal is outside of the focused heat it hardens again. There isn't even enough time for the melted metal to drip.
“Even if we used those tools to shape the metal into vague bullet shapes, the weight is too much to get an accurate shot, based on my estimates. Plus, the crude shape the bullets would end up in wouldn’t allow it to fly straight. Without more precision than our current tools would allow, it just wouldn’t work right without a lot of testing.”
“Which we don’t have time for,” interrupted Lucas. Garrett nodded in agreement.
“It would probably make more sense to use the metal as the chamber and barrel of the stationary guns. That would allow us to increase the propulsion without fear of the guns falling apart. Though that means we still need more suitable materials for the bullets, otherwise the increased charge would damage the bullets before they even left the chamber. We would need sturdier and a lighter weight.”
“Can you do that with what you have?” questioned Lucas.
“Again, sorry. We need the Rift Menu features to do the shaping for us. The elemental resistance plus weight and density are too much for our technical know-how. Even the Leputi have no knowledge that would help.”
Lucas sighed heavily. It had been quite the ordeal and use of manpower to get even a part of the Scyrric’s armor here. The shield had required a crane to get it to Garrett’s smithy, and then twenty people, including Brittney and Lucas, to move it to where Garrett could run tests on it. That had taken an entire day, and a lot of their hopes to win the next battle had been riding on making weapons from this.
“Let me know if you come up with anything. If you can't, then use the plasma cutter to make a few knives. We might need them to get through more of that type of Scyrric armor.”
“It’ll be crude, and small to make it handleable with this weight, but I can have a few people work on it. We’ll sharpen the edge as much as possible with our tools. It won’t be precise, but whatever edge we manage should hold quite well.”
Lucas nodded and then left the workshop, Brittney right beside him.
“What’s with everyone calling me Battlemaster?” Lucas asked the girl. She laughed at his question.
“It is your class after all,” she answered with a giggle.
“Yeah, but only the General’s Guard calls us by our classes. Did Tom start this?”
“No. Tom wanted people to call you ‘The Dark Overlord.’ He was disappointed it didn’t catch on.”
“I dodged a bullet with that,” Lucas said with a forced smile.
“Just take the Battlemaster thing as good. It means they accept you as an authority and are more willing to follow your orders. You oversee these battles after all.”
***
After a quick lunch, Lucas went around the base checking on their defenses and how the various groups were preparing. Everyone was on edge. The tension was causing people to make more mistakes, so Colonel Davian had assigned non-combatants to double-check everyone’s work, from preparing supplies to making sure everyone was where they should be.
Davian also had the various units and troops run drills, some of which he directed in person and others through popping up Rift windows. They practiced rotations, retreats, and relocations heavily.
Last time the Scyrric only attacked one of their gates, and even now the Scyrric forces were gathering at the edge of their territory in the same spot. It seemed that their enemies were forcing the point of attack instead of seeking weak points in their defenses. Lucas wasn’t sure if this was normal strategy for the other races when fighting with classes and skills, or just arrogance on the Scyrric's part. Either way, it forced the humans to be prepared for defending all points of the wall, while creating a way to reinforce the area directly under attack.
The most frustrating part of being viewed as a leader was putting up with General Carmichael’s forces. They tried intimidation, talking over his head, and making duplicitous bargains to get more access to the base controls. Lucas had a hard time keeping his cool, but he knew that it would be too problematic to conflict with them at this moment. Besides, Adam had brought them here.
It had been challenging talking around Adam’s lack of presence, and in the end, he had left them with a threat. They would help during the next attack, or they would be out. Much like Adam had said.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Jordan had warned him that their Tier 3 scout had watched the previous battle, which explained the numerous questions about where Adam was. The way they spoke about him, Adam’s absence gave them more justification that he was working with the invaders. Colonel Davian, still looked at by them as a traitor, helped him keep his temper while not answering their questions.
Next time, Lucas would send Tom. Delegating was an important part of leading, right? Let them try talking their way around him.
***
Two days passed. Lucas didn’t feel like he was really contributing much, but it seemed like just having him loom over people as they expressed their issues, with a word here or a grunt there, was enough to keep people moving. Adam had once told him what Mr. Rhodes had said, that people didn’t actually want his advice. His job was to be the menacing powerhouse that would handle things when they got too dangerous. Now Lucas was in that role, with the believable excuse that Adam was already fighting the invaders before they reached the base.
As much time as Lucas spent preparing and reassuring the base, it ended all too abruptly as the base alarm sounded. An attack was incoming.
Before he even turned towards the gate, a window popped up.
“Big news, commander,” said Jordan with a shiver, “and I mean BIG!”
Then Lucas felt a tremor in the ground. The window of Jordan changed and switched to where thousands of Scyrric were waiting at the edge of their territory. The numbers had increased over the days. The army of nearly 500 had ballooned to three thousand. For every 200 Scyrric, there was a Tier 3 leading them. All types of classes were represented.
The Scyrric army wasn’t what caught his attention though. It was the 14 figures walking through the distance towards their base. 14 giants. They had blue skin, no hair and one squinting eye. Plus, they were massive, both in height and width. Their muscles were at body builder levels and the Scyrric making way for them didn’t even reach their waists. They were probably 20 feet tall, only slightly shorter than the wall.
Except for one.
The one that came into view last had yellow skin and was a full head taller than the rest. He was enormous. Lucas forgot what he should be doing and just watched the giants move into their territory and slowly walk towards them.
“Commander?” asked Jordan, the fear easy to hear. “How do we handle those?”
Lucas snapped out of his daze. Both hands gripped the hilts of the swords on his belt. The strength of his hands tightening on the woven leather grips brought him back to reality. He felt the tactile roughness of it and the straining of his muscles.
Then he breathed in, held it, and released the air slowly.
“Get everyone into position. I’ll be at the wall shortly. Are all the invaders still gathering at the west gate?”
“Yes, commander,” answered Jordan, a little steadier now that Lucas was responding.
“You’ll be able to find infiltrators?”
“As far as I know. Lashtam said it isn’t as simple as them needing skills or equipment to evade the Rift sensors. They will need to be Tier 5 to go unseen.”
“Good,” said Lucas, moving at a sprint. “Bring all but the minimal soldiers from the other locations to the west gate. Notify Carmichael that they are on call. We might need their high-level help.”
***
Emily fumed inside Adam’s condo. It wasn’t anger that she was fuming in, but guilt and self-recrimination. She had levelled up a lot with Adam’s friends, hitting numerous dungeons before something had happened that got them concerned. They didn’t say what it was, but it had resulted in them rushing back to base where they found the other general’s forces causing trouble.
Now they were being attacked. The base was being attacked. It was do or die. Yet the levels she had gained weren’t enough. She still wasn’t close to as strong as Adam's friends.
That’s where the anger came from. She was now pissed at all the time she had wasted trying to get back at Adam. So many levels she could have gotten if she hadn’t been so busy trying to piss off her brother. Now he wasn’t even here, wasn’t even safe, and she knew that what she had been mad at didn’t even matter.
Adam had known yet hadn’t responded. He cared about her so much that he kept her focused on being angry at him to keep her away from the fighting. That was what she had wished for, right? To not have to fight? She had been so angry at him for the violence, for taking away her right to choose, and in the end both her behavior and his acceptance were holding her back now.
No one would let her fight anymore. She wasn’t allowed near the walls. Instead, she was left in Adam’s condo to wait…and sulk.
All that anger she had lashed out towards Adam with was now internalized. Now that she wanted to be out there helping, to be out there protecting everything that her brother had created, she couldn’t. She was too low level. Too inexperienced. A capture or kill target, not just for the invaders but the other army of humans currently in the base. This building was currently the safest place in the base for her.
Even Adam’s girlfriends had been adamant that she stayed here. Of course, her parents wouldn’t even entertain her going to where the battle would be.
So she sat here all alone. No friends to party with, not that she felt like partying, not even Fido could keep her company since he had gone with Alissa to fight. He had grown both in level and size, though he didn’t become huge like they described the other Carthraga. He was large enough for a person smaller than Lucas to ride on, yet still sleek, like a combination of a Doberman and a greyhound…if they had three heads.
Emily tried putting on a movie but couldn’t pay attention to it. She tried to eat some food, but the flavor was missing as her anxiety was ratcheted up. A conversation with herself didn’t calm her either, no matter how much she could understand everyone else’s reasons.
Then the tremors began. The Rift was magical. Everything in it could ignore the rules of physics. There should be no way for her to feel the ground shaking, especially 10 stories up.
She walked out onto the balcony and looked at the distant wall. It was miles away and hard to see with all the buildings in the way. There were some blue things moving towards it from outside.
Squinting harder she tried her best to make them out, but they were just indistinct dots among the movement of more dots. She wondered where Adam kept binoculars, then realized he would just use the Rift Menu to view it from up close. So much had been missed as she wallowed in self-pity and threw her tantrums. Emily clicked her tongue.
“Screw this!” she declared.
They hadn’t locked her in here, since that required Adam’s control of the Rift. They had just told her to stay, while giving her very logical reasons. Like logic would ever work on a teenager.
Standing from the sofa, Emily walked to his storage room. Inside there was spare equipment for the other girls. She rummaged through it looking for appropriate pieces. She took Abbey’s robe, since it covered more than Andrea’s even if the fit was a bit worse. Then she put on the greaves and gloves from Brittney’s armor, leggings from Andrea’s, and the skirt from Alissa’s. The final touch was a jacket that had a deep hood on it to hide her face.
Finally, she grabbed a durable bag of Adam’s, made from Tier 3 hides. Inside she found snack bars, a water skin, and a few other items that might be useful. With a satisfied nod she left the penthouse. It was easy enough for her to take the hidden tunnels they had added, leading to a warehouse and then weaving her way through the streets.
Soon enough she would get to the wall.