Chapter 96 – Raids
Jack walked down the road with the rest of the soldiers, making idle chat and trying to ignore the person staring a hole in the back of his head. He glanced behind him to see Sarah staring at him. She quickly looked away. Jack grinned and slowed his pace, falling further back behind the group, closer to her.
The U.F.E. was in full-time siege mode, trying to take over the capital city. Everything had gone smoothly for a grand total of one day before the Crowen sent a not-so-subtle reminder that they have an active teleportation networking running through the kingdom. While the U.F.E. did closely monitor several of the portals that they knew about, they couldn’t keep track of them all. In addition, there was the issue of Crowen just sending a battalion of fully armored troops through the portals to kill whoever was monitoring on the other side.
In addition, there wasn’t an easy way to destroy the portals. Apparently, this was technology that predated the Crowen empire. The only instance of someone managing to destroy a portal was in the Lilux Empire. They had been neutral, but trending towards working with the Crowen due to the fact that the Crowen had keys to the kingdom in the form of a portal leading to the heart of their city. It wasn’t until some adventurers got a quest to kill an elite monster who gave unique reagents that allowed the Lilux alchemist to create a bomb capable of destroying a portal.
Their immediate first move was to join sides with the U.F.E. and assist with destroying the Crowen empire. With them, they brought a powerful cabal of mages and several wizened alchemists. Their job was to try to break through the enchanted walls of the Crowen capitol. As far as Jack could tell, they were just slinging spells and seeing what stuck.
Jack couldn’t be further from any of this, though. With everything happening on the front lines, Jack was deep in what he had dubbed the country, running around like a maniac trying to hunt down Crowen raiding parties. The first problem was that for every one raiding party he found and wiped out, two more would pop through various portals scattered across the continent and cause even more trouble.
Jack was opposed to anything that would send him away from the base camp and away from Sarah, but when he heard reports of the raiding parties and what they were doing, he felt like he had to help. Not because he was a helpful guy, but because the tactics stank of Rodeo.
The raiding parties weren’t normal. Best guess was they had all been heavily drugged and brainwashed. No amount of talking, cajoling, persuading could convince them to surrender. They all knew they were on a suicide mission, and it appeared their only real goal was to cause as much damage as humanly possible. Fighting against opponents who don’t care about their well-being or safety can be tough, and the raiders managed to put a decent dent in the U.F.E.
That was until Jack and Gideon got involved.
The two of them had formed parties of their own and had essentially become the back lines defense for the U.F.E., running across the country in pursuit of any raiding parties. Fights were fast, and often devastating to both sides, and Jack and Gideon couldn’t catch them all because there were simply too many portals to account for. Jack had expected the siege of the capitol to be one sided, but the Crowen were putting up a devastating defense with their back line raids. Even worse, several of the U.F.E. members were simply giving up and moving on to the next floor. Then there was the issue of bad faith actors among the U.F.E. who secretly sympathized with the Crowen kingdom and were responsible for several sabotages of their own.
The Crowen knew that they didn’t have to win, they just had to outlast, and with Rodeo and his perverse tactics, things weren’t looking good.
Jack grimaced at the thought of Rodeo. He felt partially responsible for all of this, which is why he had agreed to hunt down raiding parties. He was the one who let Rodeo get away, after all.
He pulled out a bottle from his void sack and put it to his lips, taking a long pull from the fiery liquid inside.
Water slammed into the side of his head and knocked the bottle loose, shattering on the ground.
Jack spun around angrily only to be met with Sarah, who had a had a look of chastisement on her face.
“What-“
“If you think I’m going to sit back and let you get drunk on the mission, you’re wrong, buddy.” She said matter of fact, fixing him with an icy stare.
Jack just smiled at her.
Something had happened. He had no idea what that something was, but for some reason, Sarah had decided to join his group and help out with the missions. She had been constantly avoiding him, and even kept her distance as the group made their way across Crowen territory, but she was close, and for now, that was enough.
She didn’t say anything more, but she didn’t move back to her spot. Instead, the two walked side by side down the dirt path. Jack glanced forward to see Hannah and Sam. Sam had been staring at them and flashed Jack a thumbs up before turning back around and continuing his conversation with Hannah.
He had initially been against Sarah joining the group. The raiders they were fighting against were no joke. They fought with reckless abandon and often managed to kill several of Jack’s party before he could do anything about it. He quickly realized he was an idiot.
Saying Sarah was talented with magic would be the understatement of the century. She seemed to intuit it on a level he couldn’t comprehend. Apparently, she had managed to raise her Willpower to the mastery level of Journeyman. That was large in part due to the careful training of Gideon, but even he had to admit reaching that mastery level was a genius level accomplishment on the first floor.
Jack had thought she was only capable of healing, but more often than not, she was on the front lines, slinging devastating spells with the rest of the soldiers. If anything, she was the one protecting Jack. Making sure he was constantly healed up and ready for combat.
“Do you believe in soulmates?” Sarah asked out of the blue.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
The question caught Jack so off guard that he tripped over his foot and fell to the ground.
“Walk much?” She asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.
“I saw something interesting down here and wanted a closer look.” Jack lied, pushing himself up off the ground.
“Right. Answer the question. Do you believe in soulmates?” She asked again, her eyes perfectly sincere.
Jack chewed on his tongue for a long moment, unsure of what kind of answer she was looking for.
“Fuck if I know.” He said after a long moment. “If you asked me before we came to the Tower, I would have told you no. It’s mostly bullshit. But now? I’ve received numerous lectures on the existence of the Soul. I’ve met gods. Who’s to say? Maybe?” He offered.
Sarah nodded along, an uncertain look on her face.
“What about you?” Jack asked.
“I have it on good authority that they exist.” Sarah said matter of fact.
“You don’t sound too happy about that.”
“What would you do if your soulmate wasn’t the person you wanted it to be?” she asked again.
Jack felt his heart sink a little. He didn’t like where this conversation was going.
“Is Gideon waxing poetics about dumb shit only ancient dragons are supposed to know? I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, by the way. He’s what, at least ten thousand years old? Do you have a grampa fetish-“
“Just answer the question, Jack.” Sarah said with an exasperated sigh.
“I don’t know. What even is a soulmate? The person you're destined to be with? That person for me is you, but the universe doesn’t seem to agree with me on that front, so what the fuck do I know?”
Sarah was quiet for a long moment after that, and the two walked in silence.
“So, what did Rodeo do to you?”
Again, Jack had to stop himself from tripping at the out of left field question.
“Uhh. What do you mean?”
“I mean, we all hate Rodeo; everyone here has some sort of story about what the man has done, the horrors they’ve witnessed. You seemed really angry when he got away, like crazy angry. What did he do to you?”
That brought Jack up short, and he was just now realizing that Sarah likely had no idea what his connection was with Rodeo. He honestly wasn’t sure what he was supposed to tell her. If he told her that Rodeo, the evil psychopath who was causing them unparalleled amounts of trouble, was also the guy who raised and trained him, that might increase the rift between him and Sarah.
But Jack wasn’t sure he could keep lying to Sarah, either.
“Rodeo was…”
“Hold!” someone shouted from up front, bringing the group to a stop. “Found em! You're up Jack.” shouted one of the soldiers from up front. Jack stared ahead and then turned back to Sarah. She was looking at him expectantly.
“Rodeo was the guy who raised and trained me,” he finally said, “everything I know I learned from him.”
Sarah just stared at him, a confused look on her face. Jack pushed towards the front of the group.
They had stopped just before an abandoned town. He scanned the outer walls and front gate. It reeked of “this is definitely booby trapped”.
Jack glanced back at Sarah, who was staring at him with an undecipherable look. He turned back around and walked towards the town.
“Maybe this time they’ll peacefully surrender.” He mused to himself.
An arrow sailed over the wall and hit him right in the thigh. He heard Hannah bark out a laugh from somewhere behind him. Jack grimaced as he ripped the arrow out and quickly felt a splash of water hit him in the back, trickling down towards his arrow wound and healing him.
“I come on behalf of the U.F.E.” Jack started as he approached the closed gate. “Surrender peacefully and come out with your hands up.” He finished in a practiced monotone of someone who knew he was about to get assaulted by half a dozen magical attacks.
Spells rained down from the walls, and Jack jumped back as they all slammed into his former position.
“Negotiations failed. Permission to breach?” Jack asked with a lazy smile, turning back towards the group. Normally he wouldn’t have bothered with “proper protocol”, but Sarah was here, and she was a stickler for the rules.
“Permission granted.” One of the U.F.E. captains said.
Jack turned back to the thick wooden gate and focused on one of his mana drops. They could easily scale the walls, but everyone seemed to enjoy this way so much more. Jack had to agree.
Jack leveled his hand and the gate and cast [Chain Lightning].
He grimaced in pain as the drop of mana tore through his channels and released the spell. A bolt of lightning twice the size of a tree trunk exploded from his hand and blasted through the gate, blinding everyone who was dumb enough to stare. Anyone unlucky enough to be standing on the other side would be disintegrated, and Jack watched as five kill notifications filled his vision. The spell was uncommon, and his mastery level sucked, so it only chained to five different people.
Jack stepped through the blasted gate and took stock of the enemies inside. There were at least thirty people left with weapons drawn and a manic look in their eyes. None of them seemed even the slightest bit perturbed that Jack had just evaporated five of their soldiers in front of them. Their eyes were wild, and some were even frothing at the mouth. They were adventurers, all of them. It was theorized that Rodeo could more easily brainwash adventurers over the Crowen soldiers.
They all let loose bloodthirsty cries and charged at Jack. He had his daggers out and was ripping through them before they could take three steps forward. U.F.E. soldiers spilled through the broken gate and joined Jack in combat.
That’s when several of the surrounding building began to explode.
Jack had been close to one of the buildings, and the blast sent him flying across the battlefield. His body cried out in pain and there was a loud ringing in his ears as he pushed himself off the ground. He looked over to see soldiers on both sides screaming in pain, some missing limbs, others laying dead. He grimaced as more soldiers showed up, various pots strapped to their bodies as they threw themselves into the chaos, shattering the makeshift explosives strapped to their bodies and killing whoever was unlucky enough to be caught in their radius.
This is how most of the fighting against the raiders went. The U.F.E. almost always won, but it never seemed to be about winning with the Crowen. They just wanted to cause as much pain and suffering as they could. Each time they clashed with a raiding party, their tactics only grew worse. This time it was suicide bombers.
Jack felt the rain begin to pour down on the battlefield and he watched as Sarah walked through the gate, three giant orbs of water floating above her head. They fired blasts of water like a cannon at anything that dared to approach her. Jack fished his daggers from the ground and joined back in the fight, moving like lightning as he struck through the heads of any approaching Crowen soldier.
The fight came to a close quickly thereafter. They had lost a lot of soldiers to the initial surprise attack, but they had won, just as they always did. Jack looked over at Sarah, who was staring at him with wide eyes.
Jack’s heart clenched and his stomach dropped as he made eye contact with Sarah. He stood there, surrounded by dozens of corpses of his own making. But he knew it wasn’t that she was staring at. When he was with Sarah, he had tried to suppress his urge to kill and bury it deep down inside. In the Tower, he let it run free, and even made peace with himself about it.
Jack felt it first, standing there covered in blood. He was smiling ear to ear.
Sarah looked terrified of him.