CHAPTER 79: Adapting
“Can you see it yet?” Brittney shouted over the sound of the motorcycle. The engine was pushing hard to carry the weight of Brittney, Adam, plus their weapons and armor. Many of the bike’s parts, especially the frame, had been replaced by lighter alloys made from Testudinate metal. The tires were also replaced by the same material that Garrett had used on the soles of Adam’s metal footwear. Only Brittney’s and Adam’s bikes needed the treatment as they wore the heaviest equipment.
“Only the smoke from the fight. It shouldn’t be more than a mile or two ahead, beyond those trees,” Adam yelled back.
The extra weight they were carrying was causing them to ride lower to the ground. As Brittney’s Vitality had increased over the last two months since the invasions began, so had her recklessness. She had become the most thrill seeking of their group, and right now she was frustrated that she couldn’t push the motorcycle harder.
Even with the necessary limit on their speed, Lucas was still barely able to keep up in his own bike. They had already out distanced the suped up flatbed tow truck that carried the combat unit called the Demolition Men, or Demo Men for short, made up of Lucas’s dad and friends.
The name had come about due to how destructive they were when they came into a fight. They often smashed everything. Adam knew that those who named them were misunderstanding and demonstrating their own ignorance. When the unit showed up, they immediately tried to create every advantage they could, altering the terrain, creating barriers to hide behind, and causing obstacles for the enemies.
Adam found their tactics brilliant. He was impressed by how quickly they could identify issues and change the flow of a fight. They never shied away from the hardest fights, and often made them look easy.
Typically, they could be found following Lucas around, treating him like their commander, although they were quite capable of acting independently. Adam found them to be the most reliable of the combat force besides his own friends. Even the trained army units and free-thinking college students that had joined them couldn’t think or react as quickly as Mr. Fenton’s crew. There was plenty of contention between units, and Davian said it was good to have, but no one messed with the Demo Men.
Right now, Adam was trying to get to an invader base assault as fast as possible. 500 men were already there and fighting up Rt 40 towards South Hampton, on the outskirts of Nashville. It took days to adequately prepare for an assault. The enemy bases were currently impossible to covertly infiltrate due to the power that the former Dimension Convergence Rifts gave them.
Either Adam’s scouts would need some type of presence blocking equipment that they had no access to, or they would need to gain several Tiers in their class evolutions, at least to Tier 4. Nick had the highest stealth class and even at Tier 2 he wasn’t close to becoming fully invisible or able to hide from the base monitoring.
Dimensional Convergence Rifts that merged with the planetary reality had really crazy capabilities. To scout them without being able to hide from the base monitoring, they pretty much needed entire groups of scouts along with protectors to keep them safe. Both needed quick escape capabilities while having to stay at least a mile outside the bases. All the intel then came from direct sight.
They had tried drones, cameras with telescopic lenses, and getting physically closer, but nothing worked. It only resulted in their loss of equipment or men. They would have to visually scout different sides at the same time with multiple groups to get a basic understanding of the base, having to retreat as soon as they were found. If they hadn’t gotten enough information, then they would try to re-enter from another angle, but even that was only possible if they were able to lose their pursuers. Sometimes it felt like they were cavemen fighting in WWI.
What made this scouting even worse was that all it took was a simple visual obstruction and they would gain no intel. They knew where quite a few bases were located, but most of them had some physical defense that prevented the Sentinel Army from even seeing what the invaders in that base looked like, let alone their capabilities and levels.
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The ground under Brittney and Adam suddenly changed as they sped along the highway. It went from the black of asphalt, with railing and trees, to a black of ash. There were thick red lines flowing from the center of the street, looking like lava flows while radiating heat. Brittney growled at the unexpected temperature change, but they could now see their forces straight ahead.
Adam, Brittney, and Lucas should have been with the main forces. When the entire force had been on the way to the raid, two weeks to plan, they had received an emergency radio call. One of their exploration parties, which the Sentinel Army sent out to find humans or resources, had arrived in the small town on White Bluff. There they had found an invader hunting party attacking it. There was no invader base nearby, but the residents couldn’t hold out long against the invader raiding party, even with the support of the exploration group.
Not wanting to lose out on all their plans for the South Hampton base assault, Adam left Nick in charge of the assault, while these three and the Demo Men headed to White Bluff. Adam radioed Jackson to send a few evacuation and combat units, knowing Jackson was further from White Bluff than Adam was. Especially at the speed Adam could drive.
A short skirmish was all it took once Adam’s group arrived to kill the 20-person invader raiding group. He even made sure as many people from White Bluff leveled up using the incapacitated aliens. The crowds there had a lot less resistance to stabbing these invaders, as the people had suffered quite a few casualties before the Sentinel Army had arrived.
Adam had the Demo Men set up short term defenses in case they were found by invaders while White Bluff waited for the evacuation parties from Jackson. It hadn’t been a lengthy distraction, but it was enough to separate Adam from his raid army for longer than he liked.
Nick had been given instructions to withdraw from South Hampton if it looked daunting. Survival trumped getting more Rifts. Every death further whittled down humanity.
***
The base they were currently arriving at looked inspired by a volcano. There was a large mound in the middle, steam rising from all sides of it. The fake lava flows came out of tunnels in the mound, next to walkways that their enemies used to go in and out. The rest of the ground was devoid of vegetation, covered completely by black ash, some of which floated in the air while lighting up like burning flecks.
Adam’s forces were spread out. Archers and mages in the back, with warriors and protectors creating lines. Most of the archers weren’t holding their bows, instead running into the combat areas and pulling out the injured, taking them to where healers were working. Their agility allowed them to move in and out without taking hits themselves, but it didn’t bode well that one fifth of their force had given up on fighting. Lamar stayed in the back with a radio and was directing the archers where to go for the injured.
The enemies were short humanoids. They had dark gray skin with fire red eyes. Almost all their skin was covered by clumpy black rock armor that looked like obsidian. As Adam watched a few from the Sentinel Army, he saw that their own weapons, mostly made from the Testudinate metal, were only slightly stronger than the black rock armor the invaders wore. If they could get all those armors and have crafters reshape them, then it would allow them to restock their dwindling weapon material supplies.
Adam pointed towards Lamar for Brittney to drive to. Their forces in the back looked up scared when they heard the noise of the motorcycle, but then they calmed as they realized who it was. Brittney cut the motorcycle and hopped off as they arrived.
“Situation?” Adam asked quickly, knowing that his 500 men were not currently the match for the two thousand invaders he saw trying to surround them on the battlefield.
“Hi, Adam. Thanks for coming,” greeted Lamar, with a tag of “Hunter [30]”. “Only a handful of deaths on our side so far. Abbey’s skills [Get Up!] and [Walk it Off] are bringing out the injured before they’re fully dead, letting them make it to healers. The enemies are slow but tough. Less dangerous than the Testudinates, but nearly as hard to kill. Archers couldn’t penetrate their armor, so we’re helping the healers.
“Nick didn’t want to pull back. They have hundreds of humans in trenches being cooked alive. You can feel the air. It isn’t hot enough to kill, but it’ll make the people suffer,” said Lamar with a scowl. They had all been exposed to horrors since the [System] came, and some were adapting better than others. “Nick thinks we can win a protracted fight without significant casualties and the other unit heads agreed, so we pushed forward. Now that you’re here it’ll be an XP frenzy.”
“Thanks for the confidence there,” said Adam with a wry smile, “but I won’t always be here, or as overpowered as I’ve been.”
“The Sentinel betting pools say otherwise. The invaders are mostly level 12-15 in their first class, Tier 1, while their elites have evolved classes in Tier 2, around levels 6 through 9. We haven’t seen the leader yet.”
Adam nodded. “Brittney, Lucas, I’ll lead the way then you get our forces to drive through them with a wedge. Try to turn their attention so the ranged and support can get some kills in as well.”
“Right,” agreed Brittney grimly, while hefting her shining shield. “The usual.”