New Archdruid’s POV
“So, there is a high likelihood he is gone.” I hear directly from the head of our scouting department. As curtailed as their efforts are, they are far from useless. I glance upward as he continues, taking in my office’s ceiling built beside the central safe zone.
“We don’t have direct observation of most of the places we would need to confirm our hypothesis, but the statistical outliers are pretty convincing. He probably brought everyone back from near the goblin invasion point and then he disappeared. But this isn’t the first time he has been completely absent. I don’t want to speculate too much, but the system must have taken him somewhere.”
His words bounce on my mind. As much as the Old Archdruid’s cowardly warnings aren’t helpful, simply hurting the morale and engendering paranoid thoughts in our lower level troops, he isn’t completely wrong.
These humans are dangerous outliers.
And statistics don’t lie, at most, the analysts will have misinterpreted it.
Maybe we are shy of where I would like to be, but assuming their analysis is correct, the balance of power will invert landing squarely on our side.
Each day that passes, however, we only risk them pulling another surprise, Nash’s return or even something like them spontaneously closing the holes in their defense. Knowing that if I’m wrong I could be further doming our side, but consigned to the gamble, I speak:
“Ok, we will go ahead.”
“I thought that you might say that, so I brought... What? You gave the go ahead without…?”
“I’m no timid leader like the last one. We need to take risks to succeed and you made a good case. Are you in any way uncertain in your conclusions? If so tell me now before we make a colossal mistake.”
“No, no, it just surprised me. If you want, I have a lot more arguments and data.” I shake my head so he asks the obvious next question. “How long till we leave?”
I only think for a few seconds. Any decision will have to balance a thousand conflicting priorities. Just deciding something is probably the best answer. Leaving my mind fresh to work around a concrete timeline is more useful than burning myself out looking for the perfect one. I will just pick something reasonable.
“Two days. We will leave at noon at the maximum sustainable pace for long distances.”
“That’s… yes sir. I will see to it.”
“We all will. Now be on your way.”
I turn my head upwards once again in deep thought, trying to think of how to counter the human’s advantages in the remaining time as thoroughly as possible considering they likely won’t have their Aether wielder’s help.
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Pando’s and Charlie’s Cities Command Center. Russel’s POV
I watch everyone sitting around our round table. Simplicity in form and function with a hint of beauty in the oiled wood. But neither its presence and nor that of the decorations call for our attention. Our purpose and discussion are what sit in the center and our weekly meeting moves predictably.
“Nash isn’t back yet?”
“No, his trial must have taken longer than we thought. At least we can probably expect a higher reward, right?”
“I don’t know, he usually has to scrape by his own merits, my impression is that the system is growing even more reluctant to give him any advantages. But he may be able to get something interesting by pulling his shenanigans.”
“I don’t know, he seems plenty integrated with the system. He got multipliers for days to get to his stats and stuff very high.”
Sensing the discussion between the other members has started to pick up steam, I interrupt and bring it on point.
“That’s all beside the point. We know the enemy is up to something, we just have no idea what. Now is probably the worst time to encounter a new major threat, but we need to learn to walk on our own feet without Nash to pull us out of the fire.”
“Come on, we aren’t children.”
“Yes, we are… As much as I like to say otherwise,” I say. “Every misstep we make, he comes in and saves our asses. He is singlehandedly responsible for more than a third of the most important developments on Earth if we count the research made by the people he brought back from the instance. Hell, in the simple attacks we have been running, our casualties have shot through the roof without his healing. And decent sections of our fighters have to spend days or weeks meditating to recover after any big battle. Casualties are still way lower than anything we could hope for early system users, but you all know how much of that is based on Pando and the seeds and knowledge, most of which are the results of his meddling. Pando wouldn’t be alive today, without him going above and beyond. I even hear people talking about hunkering down if this threat is too much and waiting for our ‘savior’ to come back… in our own village. I’m not gonna lie and say that I’m certain that won’t be necessary, but it’s the very last step after we fail in every other manner. We shouldn’t keep crying for him to save us every time someone stubs their toe.”
Everyone reacts, tightening their jaws in attention and straightening their spines. They know the implications if people start to take talk like that seriously. A few wanted to object and I make note of those with the propensity to such thoughts. It will be good to know who I can count on when things get tough.
“Don’t get me wrong, nothing wrong with taking the advantages he gave us and running with them, but we need to add to it as fast as possible, especially now. Don’t think for a second that our prominent position as Pando’s village in the world is simply hard work. Without Nash at our back, the reassembling US army would have started to pull their crap and we would be reabsorbed in a split second. We need to take the breathing room he gave us and prove we can stand on our own.”
A hint of seriousness is reflected not only on the surface of their faces, but rooted in their thoughts. Seriousness I had seen snap in place anytime action was required, for better or worse they are some of the best people out there. But we need a little more of this mentality. This seriousness needs to flow out in the city. The willingness to snap into action instead of endlessly arguing.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The meeting proceeds smoothly until we finish the strict business. A few minutes of silence build as we start sending messages implementing what we discussed.
Then someone breaks the silence.
“Why did you give the cheesiest speech possible?” Asks my counterpart from Charlie’s village officially marking the end of our discussion.
“Oh, this is nowhere near as cheesy as I can make it.” I play along.
As we get ready to leave and put the world to order the holographic map in the table shifts. Everyone’s faces is drawn to it. The yellow tab for the elves just switched to orange and everyone knows what that means.
Levity is gone. The time is now.
Even before I can speak about their preparations as reports start arriving, it again shifts to a red icon a rapidly rising number which takes only a split second to go from 3 to 5 digits and rapidly rising.
“The enemy plan is in motion,” I say.
A scout in the corner of the room, as connected to the direct feed as possible and able to speak with much more precision about what the map attempts to represent.
“Varying sized groups are leaving the Elf’s city. All in different directions. On the way out they are grabbing what we thought were formations to protect their city.”
“How many?” someone asks, though I can see the counter already at 5 million just as clearly as everyone else.
“It seems almost all of them is on the way out. If my impression is correct, 70 million. That leaves about 10 to defend their city, but that’s plenty with deep in their territory.”
As the map shifts to focus on their moving groups, I can see a couple of million Elves coming straight for our fort, but for some reason, I doubt they are gonna try to crack this particular nut. Drilled responses start from around that forward outpost and teams start to take off in the sky in the flying busses, each with many lesser flying vehicles of its own so they can spread out after arriving in a region. They wouldn’t be quite as fast as faux inner world powered ones, but they are a lot more effective at running down after thousands of small groups if the enemy chooses that path.
In the past, we came close to them in running speed, but they started to abuse their wind runners more and more revealing their actual capabilities. Now even groups in the range of 100 with a quartet of Windrunners are too fast to hit without overwhelming numbers and expert maneuvering.
A few of our more talented mages could act similarly to wind runners, but like Nash’s attempts, it required a lot of willpower and mana while yielding an inferior result. Worse yet, larger groups aren’t much faster than small ones without techniques. We still can’t replicate the kinetic lines that help spread the load.
Luckily, even basic flying vehicles are enough to catch up even to their fastest group. If only I knew what they are up to. So we could wait for them to come ot us instead of pursuing them.
They roughly know our capabilities. The incremental improvements of both our sides were well documented. A similar strategy didn’t work the last time they tried it, but something is different now. They aren’t just testing the waters. They must have something significant up their sleeves.
Teams of mages gather around in the adjoining rooms, analyzing the new formations they are grabbing on the way out.
Sure, nobody is as well suited to diving into the enemy’s head and deciphering engraving as Nash, but out of hundreds of thousands of talented mages around the world, we will discover something. This, like the thousands of formations of the enemy had been deemed a low priority project, but it should have been given at least a few research teams given it is one of the most common formations in the enemy city.
This just strikes me as getting comfortable while hiding under Nash’s umbrella.
Ohhh, we don’t need to build a roof; this umbrella covers everything. It will never rain inside our homes.
The low hanging fruit is that it is probably some type of offensive ‘talisman’. But the specifics are too vague, nor can we rely on this insight. Not even the lower rank Archdruid Elf on our side who knew a bit of rune work could decipher its purpose, never having properly learned the art of engraving. Sure, it’s only a small impediment to us now, but letting their very troops live in ignorance for centuries or millennia, just sounds wrong.
Only dedicated crafters and higher level Archdruids learned how to go beyond copying runic design templates. This way of organizing is just a small piece of a huge machinery of control of their people, making them dependent on the empire’s goodwill. Though I can’t say the strategy doesn’t have any other advantages. The Elves can engrave something they don’t understand. If the average crafter knew nothing about engraving, they would have to develop different methods from us.
If we just carve the shapes without at least a passing understanding of each rune’s function, it just fizzles out, but somehow the enemy doesn’t face that problem.
Then the time for discovery arrives, as a group thousands strong comes across one of the smallest enemy groups with about 500 elves.
With no room left for maneuvering, they start to fight with most of their strength. But they don’t even move to touch the little piece of engraved wood or copper they carry.
They went to all this trouble only to let it go to waste, though this might not be a place or a situation where its effect is useful.
No, they are hiding its effects for a little longer.
After a few minutes fighting we round off the last of them. One casualty on our side, an unlucky sod that made the wrong move stepping outside the shield’s protection.
Only a dozen elves surrender. Even without Nash, they manage to transition everyone still alive to a section of the faux inner world in a few large cells. A minute later, the patch of dirt the fight happening is scoured clean and they take off for another elf group while licking their wounds.
Similar scenes rise all over the place as dozens of groups get cornered, and though it will take a while for us to manage to kill or capture every single one amongst the enemy, their defeat at this pace is inevitable.
Hours pass after the enemy simply ignored all our major installations. There is always the risk they might try to hit the small outposts, but we made sure to create good hiding places shielded from every form of detection they have available.
Thousands of orders and small maneuvers were thought up and discussed in small groups in our command center. Then the moment we had been waiting for comes.
A small group that had been going faster than most of the others, arrives at a section we hadn’t explored but probably contained a mine of something of the sort. The system always pushes Pando’s roots out from those spaces and most people couldn’t even step more than a kilometer inside without peeing their pants and fleeing. The Elves ran some 1700 kilometers to get here and they enter as if they own the place.
Almost instantly, as if timed with the precision of a digital clock, a hundred nearby groups simultaneously switch directions. And given they still don’t seem to have communication ‘tech’ that works at this range, this had always been the plan.
“So, you figured out this location beforehand.”
The enemy steps out from our network, now with the only thing we can do to watch visually with the help of a nearby drone in a hidden cache set up remotely specifically for this area.
The small basic flying camera struggles to keep itself in the air so near to the flight restricted zone, constructed entirely of wood from thousands of miles away by either Nash or more likely one of his seeds.
My mind starts to spin, even as a few minutes later I see the enemy emptying bags of holding similar to what we acquired from the instance. Nowhere near as useful as Nash’s faux inner worlds, but way better than nothing and not quite as limited of a resource. But it is still expensive and our own versions were acquired from the instance and limited given the cost and small number of unlocked shops.
“So, this time, it’s not only food and replacement equipment. It must be fortifications. They intend to hold ground.” I say in thought and a few of the heads around start nodding.
I order a few more of the nearby flying vehicles in that direction. The aura of fear will hinder us, but even if the Elves are better at dealing with it, it will affect them. Still better than fighting inside their territory.
Then my gut stops mid motion leaving me in a state of uncertainty. The enemy wouldn’t have committed so many of their number if they weren’t sure.
What will we discover when the enemy finally faces us?