Reivyn strode through the field with his other officers. The soldiers of the company were finishing off the last remnants of the enemies from the camp they had been harassing for a while while the other soldiers from the battalion focused on their assigned fields.
They had gotten luckier than they had realized when Reivyn had lured their attention away for the quick strike force when they chased them into the desolate sands. They had apparently foolishly sent the last of their Mages after Reivyn's platoon, thinking they would be easy pickings. The result was that Reivyn and his ambushing second platoon had killed the last of their Mages.
After several skirmishes trying to tease out another response, the officers noticed an odd behavior from the enemy. Instead of immediately sending out soldiers to pursue the agitators, the enemy forces pulled into themselves and hunkered down, refusing to chase after anyone. After several probes, it was found that they had zero Mage support remaining, and Kefira had ordered the Mage Corps to bombard them with their heavy magic.
It had been a massacre.
Once the Spells started to land with zero defense, other than their own shared shields, the enemy realized they would just be pummelled to death if they didn't do anything. The Mage Corps had been separated into different groups, spread around the enemy, and when they sallied forth in order to try and reach the groups of Mages, the melee soldiers had sprung the final trap.
The enemy had already been heavily damaged from the bombardment, and getting flanked while taking heavy Spell fire from the front was the final straw. It was the first time Reivyn had seen them flee in the face of danger. They had tried to take some captive when they fled, but they would still fight to the death if they had no way out, and if they were subdued, they would try to commit suicide.
Reivyn paused to watch the refugees he had accepted into his ranks at Kefira and Dobrik's consent. Instead of incorporating them into his standing platoons, he kept them to themselves as their own unit, and he even appointed Gauis as their squad leader. It wasn't a large enough unit to designate them as their own platoon, and they didn't receive any formal ranks, though Dobrik had agreed to pay them as such.
Gauis was a competent leader, and all of the others listened to him easily. Reivyn simply used them as a specialist, reserve unit like he would the fifth squads of each platoon, but they were not attached to a larger platoon like the others. Gauis would walk alongside Reivyn, awaiting any orders, and Reivyn would simply give him a mission to accomplish when needed and give him free rein to figure out how to do it.
It had worked very well so far, and Reivyn was seriously considering expanding the smaller unit tactics across his company. The flexibility it allowed when put into the hands of a smart leader was very much worth investing in. The nature of how combat worked meant that they would still have to have large, cohesive forces as the central means, but there was no reason they had to keep all of their units in a strict formation at all times.
Reivyn paused to watch the fire dance that Rayha performed. Not only did her lithe body move in a mesmerizing way, but the fire element that she called forth also undulated in an intoxicating manner. Her movements, paired with her sword, were deadly to the enemy and inspiring to her comrades.
Reivyn didn't receive a notification of getting a buff, but he was sure that had something to do with the fact that he wasn't technically in her unit and/or Party. Those fighting alongside her were definitely displaying increased competency as compared to their sparring practices.
Reivyn nodded his head and continued moving along the lines, inspecting the work of his platoons. The enemy was already a broken force, incapable of putting up much of a resistance, but it was still imperative to keep a watchful eye, just in case. Just because the battle was won didn't mean there couldn't be more surprises that could cost the lives of his men.
Don't be complacent. Don't be complacent, Reivyn subconsciously chanted in his mind.
A squad of his men detached themselves from their platoon and chased after several fleeing enemy soldiers.
"Stop!" Reivyn Commanded. The soldiers came to a halt and turned to face him. "There's no reason to chase after them. They'll kill themselves before surrendering, and they're likely to die alone in the desert anyway. Even if they manage to make it to another army, the few who do won't make a difference. Don't let our forces get spread out for no good reason. Just let them go."
"Yes, sir!" The squad leader saluted and returned to the formation with his troops.
They had achieved great success. It had taken over a month of carefully planned skirmishes and ambushes to wipe out an entire enemy army, and it wouldn't have been possible without disabling their Magical capabilities, but they had done it.
Just goes to show the importance of balance, Reivyn thought. If we had had cavalry available to us in the beginning, we most likely wouldn't have suffered such a devastating defeat. We might have even been able to succeed in our initial purpose of rescuing the captives that day with the speed and mobility the horsemen could provide.
Only fifteen or so more armies of equivalent size and power to go. Reivyn ruefully chuckled.
"Lieutenant Jek," Reivyn called out to the First Platoon commander. Jek jogged over and offered a salute. "The battle is won. Have the platoon sergeants take charge, inform Gauis to stick with Senior Sergeant Jekle for now, and gather the other officers. All of you meet me at the battalion command with Major Dobrik and Lady Fira for debriefing."
"Yes, sir!" Jek ran off to do as ordered.
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Kefira sat up straight in her chair, listening to the Major discuss the plans for future engagement with the other officers present. They had finished off an entire enemy army unit, and morale among the soldiers was as high as it had ever been. They had gone full circle from being summarily defeated in open combat to annihilating an equivalent force through their own hit-and-run tactics.
It had been a brutal lesson that many people hadn't survived to learn, but it had shown them the importance of developing a doctrine to fight against humans instead of just mindless monsters. The arrogance of expecting to simply overpower a superior number of foes through a higher quality had been squashed. The truth of quality over quantity had still been established, as the enemy soldiers had mostly been Tier 2 or low Tier 3 with hardly any equipment, but it had also engraved the truth of sufficient quantity having quality on its own.
Reivyn wasn't the only officer to come up with effective tactics and strategies, but he had been one of the first. The variety of tactics he had come up with had also been quite diverse, and, coupled with their own experiences, many of the other officers had put down their pride to learn from him. Reivyn had shown an understanding of the politics involved with command officers, too, and he had guided them in a way that they could largely figure things out on their own, and they had proved that, for the most part, they weren't just paper tigers.
Even Captain Sanjin, after getting his head screwed back on straight, had progressed in his abilities as an officer. With the absence of the two sons of the Count and Colonel, and the end of his carousing with the enlisted troops, he had finally been able to observe and emulate the other officers. Kefira still didn't trust him in a command position, but he no longer put on airs as a future genius general, and the advice he gave from his perspective and the execution of his orders from the Major was much more tempered and sane.
"The other armies have converged much too close to each other by this point, and I'm afraid that any encampment we attack will be able to receive support from two fronts," one of the staff officers said.
"That gives additional opportunities to set ambushes for those supporting units, though," another officer added. "We would just have to split our forces into three, and that could give rise to its own dangers."
"That's all well and good, but I think the right course of action is to wait for more information on the Runic Spell," one of the captains joined the conversation. "We don't know what's going to happen, and you staff officers aren't the ones that are going to be risking your lives attacking the enemy. We might need all of our forces for what's to come very soon."
"We can do both," Captain Sanjin offered his opinion. "Executing one or two raids should be relatively safe before they wise up to what we're doing. They all converged toward the center of the desolate sands, too, so it wouldn't take long for us to relocate to another location to perform another attack. Everything we've seen so far has shown that the armies don't really communicate very well with each other, so we should be able to catch more than one front off guard, and if they do communicate with each other, then we just need to maintain our vigilance and be ready to abandon the attack at any time."
"That... is the best idea I've ever heard from you," Kefira said. "I think that's feasible. Major Dobrik, draw up some plans and contingencies to move forward with that course of action. We also..."
Kefira froze mid-sentence as she felt a pulse of Mana come from within her breast pocket. She reached in and pulled out the communication device that she had on her person at all times but had been inert since leaving the capital. The council of officers stopped talking and focused their attention on Kefira as she placed the device on the table and sent a matching frequency Mana pulse into the magic item.
An image sprung up above the table. It was the upper half of a young man. He appeared to be in his early twenties, but with how aging worked, that could mean a range from 15 to 50. Kefira knew that this young man in question, though, was 27 years old.
He had a serious expression on his handsome face, with a square jaw and impeccable complexion. His hair was short, and his eyes shown with a topaz glint. Below his face, he was adorned in a military uniform with the insignia of a general, and the token of the imperial family was attached to a chain hanging off of his shoulder. As one of the siblings that weren't in the line of succession, he had dedicated his life to military service, and he was one of the highest Level members of the immediate family.
With the way ruling an empire worked, the emperor and empress were typically some of the lowest Leveled members of the royalty. Kefira's parents were Tier 5, but their own siblings and older generation were still around, and their power and loyalty were what protected the family.
"Brother!" Kefira smiled widely at the appearance of the projection. The man on the other end of the communication magic item was Kayzor, her third brother.
The young man's stern expression softened at the sight of his sister. He eyed her up and down, and a smirk made its way onto his lips.
"Sister! I would say you're looking good, but you know me, I'm not one for dishonesty. You look like trash."
"Thanks, brother," Kefira rolled her eyes as her brother laughed. "Way to undermine my authority in front of my subordinates."
Her brother's laughter cut off, though he still had a mirthful smile on his face.
"Oh, are you in council right now?" He asked. "Sorry about that. I thought you would make contact with me when you were alone."
"We just got done with a battle, and we were discussing the next steps to take in the war effort," Kefira explained. "Since we're able to connect like this, I assume you're close by? I didn't expect you to arrive for another couple of weeks."
"Yeah, we should be close," her brother nodded. "We found the traces of one of the enemy armies marching into the sands, and according to the map, we're only a couple of days away from the center. We arrived ahead of schedule because I didn't wait for the forces from Drallo to convene before Marching ahead with my own troops. I brought 50,000 soldiers from the Imperial Army."
"Good. Are you coming from the direction of Kirlon?"
"Yes, we're approaching from the southeast."
"Ok. We're positioned to the northwest, opposite you guys. We just wiped out one of their armies, after over a month of hit-and-run ambush tactics, but they still have fifteen or so armies surrounding the center of the desert."
"Oh, good. I was afraid you would have finished mopping up the enemy before we arrived," Kayzor chuckled.
"I'm not that powerful," Kefira guffawed. "Besides, they have way more soldiers than we had thought possible. If it had just been the one army, then, yeah, we would have won by now, as evidenced by our victory over one of their armies.
"But these armies filled with weaker rabble aren't the only forces out here. We ran into an extremely powerful commander, and her personal troops are higher Level with high-quality gear."
Kayzor's expression once more turned serious at the news.
"So some old fogey finally showed himself and took personal command of the armies?"
"Not exactly," Kefira said. "From what we could tell, she's a young woman not much older than us."
"Us? Who's 'us?'" Kayzor's eyes narrowed.
"Nothing, nothing. I just meant, umm, me and some of the other volunteers around my age."
Sweat began to run down Kefira's back. Ahh, a slip of the tongue! Now's not an ideal situation to reveal my relationship with Reivyn, especially considering he's technically a subordinate. Oh no, is my decision to help him force his Tier 3 Class transition going to bite me in the butt?! It's not going to look good.
"Does it have anything to do with this Reivyn character that you got special admission to the Magic Academy for?" Kayzor quirked an eyebrow.
"How do you..." Kefira started before snapping her mouth shut.
"Kefira, you've never been able to keep secrets from me and don't forget, my relationship with Sophia is the best among our other siblings. She didn't tell anyone else about the message you sent the long way around, but I was with her when she got it. What's your relationship with this Reivyn?"
Kefira kept her lips together in a line, staring her brother in the eyes. She refused to say anything about it at this time, especially not in front of all of her subordinates. Her brother knew that she was in council, so he was obviously trying to pressure her to come clean, probably assuming that none of her subordinates knew about her relationship.
That wasn't the case, though, as Kefira and Reivyn hadn't hidden anything from the very beginning. It had helped that they had established their relationship in everyone's mind before Kefira had revealed her status.
"Very well, we'll talk about this later, when we meet up in person. I'll keep this secret from our parents... for now."
"Thank you," Kefira said in a clipped tone. "Let's keep the discussion to the matters at hand, though."
"Alright. You said you were in council to determine what to do moving forward. I'm listening."
"We were just coming up with a plan to split our forces into three to try and lure some soldiers into some ambushes. Each army encampment is close enough together that they can receive support from the armies on either side of them, and we were going to goad them into sending troops with a false attack on one of them. If soldiers from the neighboring armies get sent out, we'll ambush them with our split forces, but if they don't send any out, we would be able to bring those split forces together to flank any troops we lured out.
"We were just beginning to develop the appropriate tactics for the strategy when you pinged my communication device."
"Hmm," Kayzor stroked his chin as he thought about the strategy. "That seems like it could work a couple of times on different fronts, but now that I'm here, it probably won't be necessary. How about instead of doing that, you meet up with me to the east? I'll act as the main attack force instead of making a false attack to lure troops out, and you can split your forces in two to watch our flanks.
"If they send support from either side, and it's not too much, you can intercept them. If they send a larger force than you're comfortable engaging, you can warn us in time to retreat. If we're lucky and fast enough, we can employ this strategy several times in multiple locations, and by the time we've done it three or four times, the other reinforcements from Drallo should be here to help us finish them off."
Kefira looked up at the officers who had been sitting patiently in silence, and they all nodded their heads in agreement. Kefira looked back to her brother after seeing the confirmation from her officers.
"That sounds like a plan, but the enemy commander, from what we know, is in one of the armies to the east. I'm sure you're stronger than she is, but with her might and the combination of her sturdier troops, it might bog us down more than we want to at the beginning of the strategy, so I think we should meet up to the west, instead."
"That's fine. Either way is good for me."
"Alright, then..."
Suddenly, the transmission cut off as Kefira sensed the ambient Mana go haywire. It created enough interference that her connection was severed, and a growing sense of dread grew in Kefira's core. Reivyn shot to his feet as he looked all around, and then the earth began to shake.
The earthquake started as a simple vibration, but it quickly increased in intensity until the ground was literally shaking from left to right. A tremendous roar accompanied the quake as the ground rubbed against each other. The sound drowned out everything else, and many of the officers were thrown from their seats and the interior of the tent was tossed about.
Reivyn crouched low to the ground to maintain his balance, and he rushed over to help Kefira maintain her balance and protect her from flying debris.
The earthquake lasted a couple of minutes before it settled down, but there were still occasional tremors that could be felt in the ground. The ambient Mana, though, was still going haywire, and the amount in the air was continuing to rise exponentially.
"Come on," Reivyn said, grasping her hand.
He rushed out of the tent, dragging Kefira behind him, and Serilla quickly followed. The other officers saw them depart, and they began to file out of the tent after regaining their feet.
They stepped out into the open air. It was still some little time before dusk, and the ambient Mana had already grown so dense that it created a visible spectacle, even when Kefira wasn't using her Mana Sight Skill. The other officers stepped out and exclaimed in shock as they stared at the sky.
There were long, undulating lines of Mana dancing in the sky. It resembled a phenomenon that Kefira had heard about but never seen from the higher Tier Regions, but this was anything but a natural spectacle.
On the horizon, in all directions, a line of interlocking hexagons of bright yellow Mana started to build up into the sky. It moved at an astonishing pace, and it quickly formed a dome, centered over the center of the desolate sands. All of the enemy forces and their battalion were inside the dome, and it quickly sealed off the entire area.
Four separate structures began to form at the top of the dome in the four cardinal directions, and the hexagons that formed the dome started to get sucked up into the forming structures. The Mana wasn't forming a barrier to seal them off from the rest of the world, it was just the form that the Mana took to build the unidentified structures up in the sky.
Just as quickly as the dome had formed, it was no more. The four strange structures floated in the sky, giving off a blinding light, almost turning the night into day in the local area.
Kefira watched as the Mana continued to accumulate until it reached a breaking point, and then chains of Mana shot down into the ground at lightning speed. The chains remained attached to the structures floating in the sky, and they stabbed into the earth in the very center of the desert. Another tremendous roar soon followed the chains launching into the ground.
This roar was obviously different from the earthquake. There was an undertone of a screech accompanying the loud roar. The chains had obviously attached to the Spider Matriarch, and she was not happy about it.
"Well, it seems like we know what the purpose of the Runic Spell is," Reivyn said beside her, not taking his eyes off of the Mana chains. "It looks like they're trying to enslave the Spider Matriarch. If they were trying to kill it, why would they use chains?
"I think we should abandon our plans of whittling down their army. We need to get to the center of the desolate sands to find out what they're going to do with it."
"I agree," Kefira said, also not looking away from the chains. "My brother would also come to the same conclusion, though he probably doesn't know much about what's in the center of the Runic Spell as we do. If we want to meet up with him, getting to the center is the best choice."
"How strong is your brother? Do you have confidence that his involvement will help?"
"No. He's still young, only 27. He's mid-Tier 4 with an Epic Class, but that wouldn't be enough to fight against a possible Tier 7 monster. That being said, he should have several Tier 5 bodyguards accompanying him. His personal head bodyguard is almost Tier 6. That's still not enough to handle the beast, but with an army at their back, if the spider goes on a rampage, we should at least be able to secure a pyrrhic victory against it.
"We would most likely have to stall the enemy army to keep it from interfering in that situation, which will be just as dangerous in the long run as going up against the Spider Matriarch directly.
"We don't know if that's what they're going to be doing, though, and the fact that Aeriella said she wasn't interested in taking the lives of the local populace makes me think that's not what's going on."
Kefira turned back to the other officers, finally taking her eyes off of the spectacle in the distance.
"Major Dobrik! Change of plans. Get the troops mobilized. We're going to punch through the location the destroyed army was occupying and head to the center. We won't engage the enemy right away, though. We'll wait for my brother to get here. With the change in circumstances, I'm sure he'll rush his troops to get here faster, and he'll probably send some cavalry ahead."
"Yes, My Lady," Major Dobrik replied.
He gave her an appraising look filled with even more respect than he had before. The officers weren't dumb. They had seen the imperial insignia her brother wore and how they addressed each other in such a familiar way. Putting two and two together, it wasn't hard for them to realize that she wasn't just some viscount's daughter.
"I need to get back to my company," Reivyn said. He leaned down and gave her a quick kiss before straightening back up. "Let's go see what the finale of this desert tour has in store for us."
"Yeah," Kefira replied.
And hopefully, we'll be able to make it out on the other side.