Clash
After the repulsion of the enemy at the fort, reinforcements steadily came.
Due to the path that headed straight towards the coast leading to the fight being blocked by geographical barriers in the form of mountain ranges, the first reinforcements to arrive were those who used flying mounts of the dragon variant as they had more speed and could fly above the mass of mountains. For the ground troops who didn't have access to this type of transport, they had to go around the geographical barrier to avoid any losses from incidents like monster attacks or accidents from the journey.
The aerial troops that arrived shortly after the heroes repelled the attackers at Fort Treadlog began to retake the invaded territory.
In two weeks, three fourths of the territory had been taken back with no major losses with the heroes leading at the vanguard.
The home room heroes were not all together at this time as they had been divided into groups to be assigned strategically to different areas.
The ‘royals’ were at the fore frontal area with two other groups; a group of four and a group of six.
The two groups that was with them was the group of four that had each member who were proficient with the four elements: fire, water, air, earth. The other group was what was called, ‘Yumi’s harem’. It was a reverse harem that consisted of one girl; Yumi and 5 boys.
Yumi was a protagonist of her own story, is what some would say, similar to one in a shoujo reverse harem manga. She was an archetype plain girl with glasses and twin braids but like stories, with her gentleness and caring attitude, she somehow ended up with this harem of bishounens (Good looking boys).
The rest of the homeroom class were divided between middle guard who was to stay just behind the vanguard in retaken territories as back up and the support who stayed at the base.
The royals group were leading a battalion of 100 through a grassland that touched the central settlements of Windcoast.
The other two groups who each had reinforcements with them numbering 50 each, they were leading, were assigned to the two adjacent settlements so that the vampires couldn’t flank the advancing battalions the royals were leading.
On top of his gryphon, Hachiro began talking.
“HQ. We're about to reach the enemy territory.” (Hachiro)
He spoke into thin air as he eyed the thatched houses that were on the edge of the horizon. He wasn't talking to the rest of the royals who were flying on their own gryphons adjacent to each other. Also, because of the speed they were flying, it was impossible to converse with each other.
What he was doing was not talking to an imaginary person but reporting to a real person.
The person Hachiro reported to was Yuzuki, who was presently at fort treadlog made into the headquarters for the counter attack. Her class was Hero Game Master (GM), a unique class that had archetype game option functions as skills.
This enabled Hachiro to communicate with her using her GM skill ‘call’. This GM class allowed only the heroes to be made as a ‘friend’ that would then enable communications. If one was made into a ‘friend’, like in a game they would get a panel show up in front of their eyes with a requests to be a ‘friend’. If one becomes a ‘friend’, they could also send a friend requests to other heroes who was invited by Yuzuki to become their ‘friend’. It was like adding a mutual friend to enable communications with each other.
Of course, all of the homeroom group except Kenshin, were all ‘friends’. This wasn’t because of discrimination but because Yuzuki wasn’t able to send a requests to Kenshin because he wasn’t a ‘hero’.
Back to Hachiro.
In his mind, a voice resounded.
“Received. Inform me when the enemy has been sighted okay?” (Yuzuki)
“Yeah. Were just about to descend into a settlement there. It’s a river village. I’m going to contact you like you said if there are enemies here.”(Hachiro)
As he had cut off Yuzuki, from the houses that edged on the horizon, multiple discharge's of lightning that seemed to originate and centre above the houses.
As soon as this was seen by Hachiro, a horizontal forward direction moving lightning leader manifested, before it branched into multiple twigs of high voltage lightning hitting the four heroes and the battalion behind.
‘Krag-Kraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagg!’
The accompanying phenomenon of thunder resounding for seconds was heard.
----
At the south most flank of the frontline vanguard (Hachiro's group) battalion, a group of four hero mages were tending to their flying mounts feeding them water and also grooming them. Similar to this scene was the surroundings that were also doing similar things to their aerial mounts, airborne dragons, one of the variants of dragons with a speed that could only just barely catch up to the speed of gryphons.
The four mages that were busy grooming their aerial mounts were Tamiko, the fire mage, Umeko, the water mage, Shou, the earth mage and lastly Ryo, the air mage. They represented the four classic elements and was sometimes dubbed ‘klassiker’ German for classic.
The four were best friends now and even before being transported from their home world. Some could say they were counterparts of the ‘royals’ but with more moderate looks and they were also not elites.
They wore mage clothing that seemed to be made of high class materials and closely resembled each other but with different colouring and sizing.
As they were grooming the gryphons, a familiar face stood before the group. Clad in knight armour was Mark, a Master sergeant. He was the commander appointed to lead this battalion to secure this area.
With a serious expression that was different from the time at the dungeon, he asked the group who turned around to his voice.
“Any word from HQ guys?” (Mark)
The representative of the four, Tamiko replied back to the commanding officer.
“No. Last communication with HQ was that Yumi’s group like us didn’t encounter any soldiers and has secured their area. Also, the frontline vanguard battalion is reaching their allotted area.” (Tamiko)
With an ‘I see’ from mark, his expression loosened up in a relaxed state.
“Alright. We are going to stay here until we get the go ahead from command. It might take a day or two as usual until we receive orders to advance again. So you guys can rest for a bit.” (Mark)
The four gave a 'woohoo' when they heard that they get to rest. They immediately started setting up their sleeping beds on the floor.
They did journey for hour’s non-stop after all and they were still kids even though in the human continent they would be adults legally as they are 16 plus old. Normally, compared to the time of earth’s middle ages, the age of 11 was already considered an adult ready to become parents because of the need to reproduce early as the counter measure against being wiped out from diseases and dying by food deficiency.
But that was due to lack of access to medical treatments, medical treatments that something this world has in both the form of magic and medicine. So, in this world, the four heroes weren’t completely considered as adults, Mark thinks that they aren’t adults yet as his expression began to turn sour.
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He thought that they were still too young to be fighting wars after being summoned, and that they had their futures stolen by them, so he thought that he himself was also responsible.
Seeing his facial expression, one of the students was about to ask if he was okay but was too late as Mark questioned the four quicker than her.
“Umm…. Do you feel that your situation is unreasonable? About being taken to fight I mean. If you are, then, in behalf of us, I am truly sorry.” (Mark)
Different from his usual jokey attitude, he expressed his apology towards the group with a bitter expression.
Hearing the cause of his unusual behaviour, the group laughed that made him direct a questioning gaze towards them.
“Mark-san, were grateful that your worried about us about that, but, even though we were distraught at first, I mean we were suddenly summoned to another world so of course we were, but seeing that we were needed by the thousands of people here, I, no every one of us feel that we must save the people here even if that means we have to bloody our hand. It’s not because we were forced to do so. It’s our own choice, so please Mark-san, be at peace.” (Tamiko)
The others were nodding at what she said with resolute expressions giving Mark a peace of mind.
“I’m glad, that you feel that way, truly glad.” (Mark)
He gave them a sincere and content expression making the group give wry smiles and scratched their cheeks in embarrassment.
Suddenly,
‘Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw!’
The sound of birds was heard from the tree line on the south of the camp site. When they turned to face the origin of the sound, birds were flying away from the area where the sound originated inside the forest.
All of the battalion soldiers soon swivelled their head towards that direction.
They had the same thing in mind.
'Enemy!?'
It was said that it was secured their earlier by the scouts so they were baffled. They were quick to take out their weapons, something expected of high ranking soldiers.
Seeing that their riders were all alert towards the direction of the forest, the dragons and gryphons too prepared themselves.
Mark and a squad of soldiers were slowly approaching towards the origin of the sound with weapons in ready.
Mark at the centre of two heavy armour soldiers and three ranged weapon soldiers and one gryphon that came from the group of heroes entered the forest.
From the perspective of the rest of the soldiers, the shadows of the trees looked like it swallowed the squad.
All of them were ready to attack anything that moved inside the forest. Their breaths were not frantic nor calm either. They have been in this type of scenario before mostly during monster or bandit subjugation. It was very unlikely it was bandits, as this area was known to have good security before and wasn’t known for having any bandit activity. Maybe it could have been monsters but the records show that only small and extremely low ranking monsters were home to this territory and that they were treated as prey of the birds that left earlier meaning that something stronger appeared.
This fact made the squad nervous as they kept on searching for the cause of the ruckus for thirty minutes. Eventually, after searching almost all of the forest, they decided to head back.
Without incident, they returned to the start of the forest line where they were met with the figures of Tamiko and her team.
The four were sporting questioning gazes, something that Mark replied to with a ‘false alarm’ relieving the young heroes.
“You guys, head back and rest. We have to save our energy for any orders we receive, especially you four, if we need you for something we will get you. I’m going to stay here for a bit” (Mark)
The group of four and the soldiers that was with Mark to scout headed back for the campgrounds without Mark who stayed near the tree line.
Walking to the side of a tree and sitting down with a sigh, he took off his armour and weapons to set them aside.
He took out a pen and paper and began writing down logs for the battalion.
After he finished writing, he took out a whistle and used it making a high pitch noise.
From the direction of the tents came a messenger hawk who flew in front of Mark.
Mark then put the documents on the hawk and it flew towards the direction of the headquarters.
Even though they could use the heroes to communicate with the base through Yuzuki, they had to use this type of communications so ‘game master’ Yuzuki wouldn’t be overburdened.
Preparing to head back, Mark stood back up and looked at his equipment. As he was about to reach for his chest armour,
“Mark-san, we need to talk quickly.” (?)
'!!' (Mark)
Due to the shock, his eyes became wide open to the point that it looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets.
His heart stopped for a bit as he became stiff.
That was because he didn’t hear anyone coming.
The voice didn’t come from the direction of the tents but from inside the forest, meaning it wasn't likely to be a soldier.
The voice originated just approximately 2 meters from him.
Though it did not show through his behaviour, Mark was a competent warrior who would sense anything in radius of 5 meters be it ally or enemy without sight.
Mark dispelled the thoughts of how and began to ready himself to fight at a moment’s breath.
With fast movement, he turned his eyes to the direction of the voice as he moved his body to grab his sword on the ground but............................ he stopped when he saw the voices owner.
Something that shocked him more than the first time when he heard the voice, that now he even let his mouth open.
The person who stood there was a figure in a black cloak, and a face who he had not seen for quite some time.
Mark was motionless for quite some time as he sorted out his mind of all the mixed emotions of confusion and relief that flooded his mind.
Finally, he did a big sigh as he relaxed his body, he said in relief.
“You bastard. You gave me quite a fright. You could have at least said hi to my sister and the others when you got out you know.” (Mark)
He scolded Ken as he reminded him about Jen and the staybehind group.
“It’s good to see you again Ken.” (Mark)
He said with a kind smile that showed how at ease he was.
But Kenshin who remained expressionless said,
“The enemy has infiltrated your ranks Mark-san” (Kenshin)
Cold water doused him with the unexpected news.