Rivers of blood and ash flow through the battlefield.
Even after we knocked down their walls, they wait for us to come to them. So we slowly approach and soon the slow and expensive fireballs from turrets and teams of mages are no longer the most effective form we have to harm the dwindling numbers of the enemy. Our solid spear walls counter all manner of melee weapons that the enemy wields, though most of them in their main line use the sword.
Through the ground, I start to leverage my higher stats and encase hundreds of combatants in roots. But while brute-forcing the issue with my several advantages is possible, the Arch Druid joins with quite a few of his magic users forcing me to spend a good amount of my attention on keeping the immobilized Elves out of the fight. The fact that the seeds and Pando are having trouble controlling the native plant matter in this island just limits their use, but they can still reinforce my own will.
This battle devolves from the looser state we were accustomed to into a binary. We have to either kill or debilitate the enemy permanently taking them out of the fight otherwise they retreat to be healed.
Still, with just a couple of healers on their side, they can’t completely ignore injuries. So we press forward as fast as we can without overextending ourselves. The line going back to the healers grows enough that they are forced to prioritize only the more serious injuries.
A glacial pace ensues, something alien to all our previous encounters as their numbers prove insufficient. Though that impression is not from their different skills but the very way they behave. This is much more in line with what historical battles had been like. Assaulting a fortified position even if we did knock down most of their defenses would take hours or even days. Especially given that the enemy wanted to live preserving as much of their forces as long as possible. Being more ‘timid’ is the strategy to go.
Still, with the system’s stats, we barely take any pauses, and while the command structure magically established allows for quick changes of pace that hasten out fights, it’s unlikely that fights will take days.
Gone were the days when dealing with hundreds or even thousands of goblins took minutes. Though I have no idea how battels will change at higher levels.
Luckily, stamina isn’t something I’m lack and half an hour drags to a full hour.
Even with all our preparations, fatalities are impossible to totally eliminate against an opponent even close to your level. Each crushed skull or pointy metal implement piercing a femoral artery feels like it has come to me. Coordination that couldn’t have developed in just a month before the system keeps us from breaking and even avoids many injuries from turning fatal. Teams of people open the way allowing the injured to reach me in record time as roots encase them.
Even when my attention is somewhere else, the seeds help to take care of the injured, occasionally administering health potions and liberally applying healing salves while sewing the torn flesh and setting bones in place. And then comes another unlucky sod that only has a chance with my help.
A hint of my attention is split to deal with him and I send a stream of Life even before taking a proper look. But the tiniest of lulls in battle, barely 2 tenths of a second in which the Arch Druid will be gathering his for something and I look down with perception field.
My attention draws back entirely during this brief lull in battle and time seems to slow down even further with the help of my superhuman perception. He got here less than 20 seconds after his injury and the heart of the fighter with torn plate armor and two deep gashes threatens to give up.
He still has enough blood, but the shock makes his body react differently from the pre system medical dogma and I go with the flow.
I take in his form, painting a vivid picture of each tendon, muscle and facia covering his skeleton. All his organs and the skin that was supposed to cover it all. It seems to me that a simple split in half of my stream should be enough if the roots manage to restart his heart.
As I’m almost ready to turn my attention back to the fight, a mass with a hundred magic wielders will batter against the roots holding well over three hundred elves. A decent portion perfectly positioned as elven shields giving us a little us tactical advantage.
“He..”
In an instinct, I drop everything else, even if I know that it might cost lives because if they free the already incapacitate fighters, they won’t cause just one or two fatal injuries, but real havoc in our ranks. My concern shifts from the five people before me, to the entire army.
I’m marshall everything to hold on control of the roots and not allow him to use my moment of distraction and kick me out of the roots even for a moment. That grows difficult as they concentrate on the plant mass that didn’t come from Pando but from themselves.
But then slowly for my current pace, but still orders of magnitude faster than any plant had the right to be, Pando takes full control of the space. He feels my desperation and his will in a slow wave and assumes complete and utter control of nature across the battlefield. He even manages to cross his attention into the city, past the powerful runic defenses that the very system seems to be maintaining.
Everything becomes part of him.
“Hell yeah, go Pando.”
Then I’m no longer fighting uphill on the enemy’s territory but on home ground. A normally slow process that took minutes or even hours and should have been impossible ordinarily in the middle of the battle simply happens in a few seconds. Then the seeds are no longer only able to reinforce my attention or act in a limited sense on the roots and branches that we grew from my inner world, they can spare a lot more attention elsewhere.
A scream of rage screeches from the Arch Druid, but I just keep up with momentum not giving an inch.
Glowing runes pop into my view with streams of mana from the enemy. The same ones that weren't altered even after I knocked down the walls. Unfamiliar shapes and a sense of wrongness, as a field of strangely attuned mana, hit the roots inside the city. It uses up an enormous amount of mana to affect them, but they are no longer part of Pando, which has lost most of the winds from his sails.
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So, this is what was pushing me out. They are claiming the roots, similar to how Pando can do.
The math of how much mana would be needed if a thousand points or so covered only the equivalent of a few bushes seems to favor us as long as we can add enough new growth.
Even if it’s permanent, the entire city would take tens if not hundreds of millions of mana to be affected by the same effect.
That feels like a ‘higher’ application of mana, something similar to higher skill levels and not something that I could come close to replicating any time soon, though in this particular case, letting Pando claim a territory and plant matter was equivalent to this mana intensive exercise.
Less than ten seconds later, I’m no longer holding for dear life with my fingernails, but back into the seat well strapped and secure. I’m pretty sure that I have control of the battlefield outside the village so my attention goes back to the injured people with the help of my seeds to maintain the roots in our control. Already done with the quick diagnosis for all of them, I form 6 streams of Life for the 5 people, with the worst injured one getting two entwining streams. Then I thicken them up slightly to overcome any complication that my interruption might have caused.
Taking a snapshot of their state, I realize that if my break had taken another ten seconds, it would likely have been a fatal interruption for the two of them.
After taking care of them and 2 new injured people, my attention is forced back to the battle.
We aren’t making gains across the nature plane of the fight, but even if I solved the problem of defense against the Arch Druid and his retinue of magical users, there is a lot more than one man can keep track of. So, once again I split a few of the seeds to pay attention to various aspects of the fight even where they can’t affect any real change and this time try to actually split my mind in two to pay attention to multiple things at once.
The enemy's numbers slowly dwindle, even as our side sees fresh troops periodically moving from the back lines.
With a numerical advantage that started at roughly three to one, we grind them down. From a little over 3000 they go down to 2000 and then 1000 which is when even with all of their training they break.
Rushing into their central building, it takes less than a minute until there isn’t a single exposed elf.
Then everything replays in my mind and the nagging doubt about their hasty retreat along with the tiny pulse of mana that their commander sent out convince me that it wasn’t quite as frantic as they played it out to be.
Still no matter how many drills and ingrained their actions were, a full rout is chaos and their retreat still costs them after they turn their backs to our blades.
Something is going on, but after the long fight, our troops are happy for the breather and moments later orders come down the pipe while I take in the situation and use the opportunity to let my mind decompress.
“Let them hide in their cathedral. We have the advantage and they can’t escape, not unless they want to leave the single place that seems to protect them. Everyone recover, eat and care for your gear.”
A few people start to sit down right where they are but another voice, this time from the engraver instead of the commander of this battle, bellows out:
“The rallying point is two hundred meters back.”
The few more tired people look around seeing that a decent portion of the army was already orderly streaming back, follow them.
They aren’t quite at Richard’s tier and though no significant missteps happened during the battle, at least now we have started to acquire much needed experience. Battle is chaos incarnate and leaving orders up in the air is dangerous. The groups start to form, retreating with shield walls not to give the enemy any chance at our flanks or backs.
Seeing that everything is in order, I cast a fog and illusory wall out to help cover our retreat even though they have life detectors which limit the usefulness of my magic. Then I drag the hundreds of combatants that we immobilized, which had a constant stream of the strongest chemical sleep serum I could mass produce.
After the long battle and without conditions to take out their armor or more thoroughly rest, everyone does their best to get back into fighting shape and rest as much as possible. Luckily, with a little regen and a few select touches of my own ‘healing magic’ their pools are in good shape soon after.
The physical tiredness they might have felt after this long battle is dealt with by the system. The battle is all but over, now we just need to avoid more fatal errors.
19 fatalities
Some 200 were severely injured, though most of them would be back in the fight after a few days of rest while a decent number were already back on the lines.
Half of our 10 thousand troops move around with scratches, bumps and bruises, but none of that meaningfully hampers them.
While the enemy went from a full 3000 to less than 1000 in the fight, we are just as strong as before, if not more with a slight skill increase and more experience.
It would be a long way to get to veteran status, but they could no longer be called green. A small but meaningful step to getting a core of early defenders of Earth.
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Arch Druid’s POV
“Curse the tree that spawned these humans.”
“They aren’t from the forest. I think their biology tends to…” A single glance from me stops my overeager assistant as a thousand things fight for dominance in my head.
“I read the briefing just as you have, I’m well aware of their circumstances. I just want to curse my heart out.”
He lowers his head in acquiescence, but I manage to restrain my voice enough that still keeps his wits. He would be useless if he became catatonic in fear.
“The natives were not supposed to be nearly this strong.” I muse.
“We did see quite a few nearing level 200 oi the last confrontation. That is why you had us basically cooped up here for this last month.” Says the commander of our remaining forces.
“Yes, but that one taking control of our roots is only level 100 and I’m certain he doesn’t have a single skill above the first threshold. How he can do that and how that cursed tree came back to life with such strength are what I’ want to know. And though I can’t sense Aether myself, I’m certain that he can at the very least feel the flows. Hell, he might be the Aether wielder of this race, but then… how, why did he come back early….”
What are we to do?
“Hunker down. I really didn’t want to rely fully on the system’s protections, especially because we are going to slowly lose territory if we stay in the middle of our village, but it is our only option after this many losses.”
Everyone’s grim faces echo other. And then my assistant gathers his courage to say something:
“If they don’t find a way to overcome the system’s defenses.”
And that phrase strikes a cord of fear deep in my mind and a chorus of waves wash throughout my body.
“Why did you have to say that?”
Everyone’s faces seem to echo my words and meekly, ignoring proper etiquette or the small minutia of command he slinks away.
That cursed spawn of the void made even me afraid. I’m not of common stock.
I’m Satomi of the Bright leaves, a young tactical genius of incomparable skill throughout this galaxy and ruler of nature. Yet he came to my doors step STOLE control that is rightfully mine using the restrictions of the system on my skill level and his absurd stats to pervert the natural order. We may fall if he cheats the system somehow as Aether wielders do, but the worse they hurt us now, the worse would be their downfall because we will not stand for that.
I WILL NOT STAND FOR THAT.
Still, too much is different from most early integration planet invasions. I never heard of level 200 people with good classes and amazing control in the first month. It might be something that never happened.
Putting my fears out of my mind, I start to write my report to be relayed even in the case of my death. I can’t underestimate him and I have to relay everything that we learned to command about this invasion. It is still too early to tell, but even if our only recourse was to survive hidden under the system’s protection, any attack on their part would be costly, VERY costly.
I almost hope they take the bait.