American Isekai - Chapter 178 (Patreon)

December 9, 623

Over the next couple days, Jasmine and I were swamped with work. Despite being a Major General’s advisor, or perhaps because of that, we were pulled in every direct in an attempt to orient all the intelligence agents within the Treehouse. 

It wasn’t enough to just give the Major General some information whenever he needed it. By his order, we had to make sure that everyone below him was capable of carrying out his orders when he gave them. That meant filling all the intelligence agents in, which was an incredibly comprehensive job. 

Jasmine and I did nothing short of create a curriculum that we would need to teach every intelligence agent that had anything to do with recon and mission planning, which was a lot. We needed to give them a rundown on recent history and what our goals now were. We also needed to make sure that they understood where patrol routes went, how they shifted given the Scourge’s movements, and make sure they knew the landmarks around the base as well as what map markers meant. 

That also meant that we had to update maps and synchronize the data between the generals and various levels of intelligence agents and what was given to the infantry. To do that though we had to check in with the generals, which inevitably resulted in either more work from them to do or more information to add to our list of updates. 

After two days and an all nighter, I felt like I was going to have an aneurysm. Jasmine was from this world so she handled sleep deprivation much better than I did. I still didn’t forget that in exchange for not having dreams at all, people in this world got much better sleep, resulting in shorter necessary rest times. I, on the other hand, was in for a treat when I learnt about what it meant to keep up with an overworked Colonel. 

There was an endless list of things to do and the deadline for it all was ‘right now’. These generals wanted everything done yesterday, and since the entire intelligence force at this base was new, Jasmine and I couldn’t use them to get things done. We had to teach them so they could start picking up the slack, which took time that the generals didn’t want to give. 

Not that they had a choice though. There was only so much we could get done, even though that didn’t stop us from working ourselves to death. 

After those two days though, our saving grace finally arrived. 

I didn’t think I’d ever say it, but seeing Polly arrive was rejuvenating. Just her presence lifted a burden off my shoulders. 

Jasmine and I were there to meet her when she walked in with a thousand other soldiers. 

“Miss Polly!”

“That’s Colonel Polly to you, Major.”

“Miss Polly get hug now.”

“Hey-”

Polly stiffened a bit when I wrapped her in a hug, letting out some of my stress with my breath. 

“Can I die now?”

“Not before I get a report.”

“Dammit…”

“Alright, I know you two are probably exhausted but I need to get filled in before I can take some of the load off, so more talking and less smothering.”

She tapped my face, making us separate before the three of us walked off to headquarters. 

“So what did I miss on my way over?”

“Cooper and I are the advisors to Major General Quill. He’s in charge of recon operations, and we’re responsible for getting just about every intelligence agent in the base updated so we can start using them for missions.”

“I see. The bags under your eyes make sense then. First, I’ll meet with Quill. Once I’m in this mess I’ll be able to help out.”

We walked Polly to Major General Quill’s office.

Polly turned around. 

“Go get some sleep, Cooper.”

“Really?”

“Mm. I’ll have Jasmine fill me in today. You and I will work tomorrow.”

“No objections from me.”

I smiled and saluted, Polly returning a quick one before I skipped off. 

Bed time! My favorite time of the day!

I returned to my residence. It was a cramped room with the rest of the Pathfinders and Snow Doves. Our company was kept together in the same building, not that it afforded us better accommodations. It was still bare bones. There wasn’t even a proper bed yet. All those supplies were still on their way with no arrival date in sight. 

Instead, I got to sleep on the floor with my piles of blankets and any applicable camping gear. It was enough to at least give me some cushion, but I was starting to think that I’d need my own personal bed to carry around in my spatial device on top of everything else. 

I at least had the space for it, but there was no way I could get one anytime soon. It’s not like I expected any of this to be happening. 

Right now though, I’d sleep on the rock hard floor if it meant I could actually get some sleep. Diving into my nest, I wasted no time in getting to sleep. The one good thing about this prison cell of a room was that it at least blocked out the sounds outside. Not completely, but enough to make it relatively peaceful. 

Plus, I didn’t have to deal with the barracks like most of the others did. I was on the second floor of this building, not the first floor which was one huge wide open space with beds sprawled through it. Thanks to Jasmine I was able to grab one of these rooms so that I didn’t have to stay on the first floor. My room was right next to hers, much to the envy of all the Pathfinders down below. 

I passed out given a handful of minutes. I didn’t even set an alarm, a luxury I seemed to have seldom these days. 

……

…

Polly was quick to insert herself between Jasmine and I and the generals, just as I knew she would. Although we had the experience at this base and had the right to take the lead in the eyes of these generals, we deferred to her. That was our deal with her, and neither of us were interested in reneging just for this little bit of power. 

She took control of the things we were doing and started organizing the operation. We filled her in on everything she needed to know and then set her loose. 

The first week was spent preparing. Both the Treehouse and the Scourge were regrouping and planning. All hell would break loose only after everyone had their bearings. 

That only took a week though. Before long, we started getting reports on the Scourge ambushing incoming convoys. The ravine full of the Scourge’s army, although separated by some mountains, was still close to the route between Stronghold Charlie and the Treehouse. It wasn’t that difficult to send over some troops and utilize guerrilla tactics. 

By the middle of the second week though, the started mobilizing, as did we. Recon was first priority so dozens of those missions were drawn up with Polly, Jasmine, myself, Major General Quill, and Brigadier General Hristo at the helm. Hristo had plenty of experience running operations at the Treehouse and his knowledge of the nearby terrain was valuable. He was used just as we were. 

Despite that though, all of us were swamped with work. It was no longer about teaching intelligence agents to formulate plans. After going full force on recon operations, the objective shifted to parsing data. We would receive reports from all the intelligence agents in charge of handling those recons quads, which we would have to parse through for useful data, which we would then pass along to the Major General after presenting it in a nice and pretty way. 

Layers and layers of data, all of it culmination in our hands. If we weren’t summoners, there was no way we could get through so much. The amount of information we were going through couldn’t be analyzed by normal humans, and I meant that in a most literal fashion. Without the ability to memorize the amount we could, there would be no way to get through dozens of reports in mere hours. Each of us were parsing weeks and months of data in a day before compiling it all between us and making it comprehensible. 

After all, the Major Genral was a summoner too. He wanted details, but not the useless details, and left us to filter it. That meant that while he was going through our daily report, it was only several pages long instead of booklets long. 

It was enough for him to pick up subtleties within the bigger picture without getting bogged down by the tunnel vision of individual missions. 

We did our jobs well, but that required intensive thinking on our part, which Polly was at the helm of. 

Fortunately for me, so much thinking did a good job of draining my Psyka. That meant that I had good sleeps at night, and good sleeps were conducive to good dreams. 

In short, I was making good progress with my advancement formations despite barely studying them. 

I was probably close to a third finished, about to form the first of three clusters. Progress had been gradual, bits and pieces coming together over many days, and it was all beginning to coalesce into something greater. 

However, after the second week came to a close, my concerns briefly shifted. 

One snowy cold night, I made my way to the top of one of the walls and looked off into the distance. 

I liked to find secluded areas on these walls and spend some time thinking. It was also a good place to exercise my eyeballs since I hadn’t been getting out much, cooped up in war rooms crunching data. 

December 25th. 

What had been Christmas on Earth was now just a prelude to the end of the year on this world. New years here was both a celebration of another revolution around the sun and a celebration of the birth of Christ. 

This time, I wouldn’t be going home for it. It was rather disappointing. 

It was my second Christmas on this world, though not quite my second year. It had been 20, maybe 21 months since my arrival in this world. It had also been about 5 months since my entrance into the military. I had been working toward Authority 6 for a couple months longer than that. 

So many things had happened in such a short amount of time. I felt like a completely different person, not totally unrecognizable, but certainly far from the man I used to be. 

I had been tested, the pressure mounted onto my shoulders incomparable to anything I’d ever faced on Earth. To think that I was now in the position to both save and end lives here in the military. My judgment could mean the difference between an entire squad of people living or dying. 

And yet somehow I didn’t feel so daunted, only because my true concerns were just that much greater. 

I let out a long breath, the cold turning it foggy, snow gathering on top of my head. 

Then I looked down, feeling a chime on my Aerial. 

The Treehouse had its communications developed a bit more. Now there were clear lines not just back to Stronghold Charlie, but to the rest of the Kingdom’s Aerial network. People like my girlfriend could contact me now even out here. 

I checked her message before tapping the device and making the call. 

“Hi John.”

“Hello darlin. It’s good to hear your voice.”

I smiled a bit, Umara sighing. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it would matter that much, but they’re really not letting anyone leave. My mother couldn’t get the request approved.”

“I told you that would probably happen.”

“I know, I just thought my mother’s word would be able to bend more people than it did.”

I shrugged internally. 

Umara had been trying to get me some leave so I could be with her for Christmas. Unfortunately, this place was on lockdown. There was no way anybody was getting granted leave, let alone someone like me. I wasn’t massively important but I had a role that few could fill, not to mention that I was basically the culprit of this whole mess. 

Still, she tried, and predictably failed. Not like I blamed her. 

“It’s fine.”

“I can’t even go to you either, though I’m pretty sure that’s just my mother refusing to put in the transfer order.”

“Again, it’s alright. We’ll make it up another time. It won’t be that long before I get some vacation anyway. Hopefully things will be settled by then and there won’t be any objections.”

“Unlikely, which is why I’m fighting so hard. I want to see you.”

“I know. So do I…”

A sigh escaped as Ileaned on the wall. 

How are things at the Treehouse? Dangerous?”

“Not yet. I’m doing my best to make sure it doesn’t get to that point. How effective my work will be remains to be seen.”

“You know what to do if things get too risky though. I don’t care if you get branded a traitor, don’t let them get you killed.”

“I won’t allow myself to get put into that position. I’m doing pretty damn good already, so I’m not worried. I’m actually able to make something of a difference.”

“I’ll say. You’re the one to thank for that whole reinforcement. I’m just glad they actually did something instead of leaving you guys there to get trampled.”

I smiled a bit, knowing that this was all pretty much my doing. I didn’t expect such an impassioned response, but it was welcome. If they hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t been doing everything in nmy power to get the hell out before the Treehouse got bombarded to hell. 

Well, the cards had been shuffled and now we were playing with a new deck. More players with more money were at the table now. I just had to make sure I didn’t get drowned in the middle of their war. 

However, bigger games moved slower. The time spans just got bumped from weeks to months. Polly, Jasmine, and I were laying the groundwork for the next several months. Unless another King showed up, there would be nothing that could accelerate that timeline. I was stuck here for a while whether I liked it or not. 

With those thoughts I continued my conversation with Umara for a little longer. We were talking seldom these days, perhaps getting a call in once a week. It wasn’t rare to go a month without any communication. 

I wasn’t worried though. A bit lovesick, maybe, but not worried. It could be said that my love for her was blind, so a bit of time apart was nothing but an annoyance. 

Both of us were just that busy. Umara was fighting more and more often, while I was getting swamped with work. We just had to make do with what we could get. 

It just sucked that we would be missing out on this Christmas together. 

After some time we ended the call. Both of us needed our sleep, me more than her, and I had no intentions of staying up longer than I had to. I was always punished for not getting good hours. 

Taking one last look at the lands beyond the wire, I went down the wall and went back to my residence. 

For a while, I’d be going through the tedious part of this whole military thing. 

……

…

Christmas came and went. It was the most exciting thing that happened for a while. 

My birthday came in January, making me a whopping 24 years old. I don’t know how I managed to live this long but apparently I was doing something right. 

After that, it continued to be nothing but mind numbing work at the Treehouse. 

Battles began to escalate beyond the walls. Through the month of January, we received another 20 thousand soldiers, putting the population at nearly 50 thousand troops. It was crowded everywhere, and apparently they had started building a Rail to Stronghold Charlie. 

They were turning the Treehouse into a full fledged strondhold of its own. 

More troops meant larger battles though. Thousands would go beyond the walls every day to do battle, and entire companies were sent out just to do recon. Giving briefs to Battalion and Company Commanders was now a part of my daily workload, and reports were flowing in by the dozen. Thankfully I wasn’t only one of three to parse through them anymore. Our training in December paid off as many more intelligence agents were able to pick up the slack. 

However, because I was below the Major General and Colonels like Polly and Jasmine, but  was also above First Sergeants and even Commanders due to who I reported to, my position became curiously unique. I was basically responsible for facilitating communication between the highest ranking infantry in the base and the highest ranking intelligence agents. I would go to the infantry, most often Commanders, Chiefs, or Brigadiers, and given them their missions and assignments from above, while they would supply me with what was requested of them, most often reports. 

I was an intermediary, but most importantly, my words came from the Major General and his Colonels. 

In a way, I was a messenger, and since I had to talk to so many people, my name got around. At some point, people started calling me the Envoy. 

My words came down from above and they would mobilize thousands. I usually wasn’t one to delegate my personal tasks, so there were no other intelligence agents to deliver my words for me. The reason I often did things personally though was because I had no issues talking on equal grounds with the strongest combatants on this base and getting what I needed, whereas many summoners did. Apparently that was a major reason why I got so well known, according to Jasmine. We had the conversation before, and she said I was good at commanding attention. 

Either way, I was Major Cooper, the Major General’s Envoy, someone who sent out thousands of people every day to do battle with the Scourge. Many often died, as was normal in these battles, so perhaps my small bit of fame wasn’t as spotless as I’d initially thought it might be. Either way though, given some time I never had any issues getting the respect I needed to get things done. It was nice not having to kick people’s teeth in just to get them to listen. 

January passed. 

More recon, more information, more unease as to the Scourge’s movements, and more battles. I watched from within the walls as the Generals played their grand game of strategy. I analyzed, picking up on their tendencies, seeing the results of their orders. I did what Jasmine told me to do and didn’t step beyond my station. I did my job, did it well, and didn’t bite off any more than that. But that didn’t mean I was passive. I was learning exactly why these Generals had earned their positions. 

Many times I had questions, and I almost always kept them down, waiting to simply see the answer. I posed my own hypotheses and wondered while watching the results of battles and reaching my own conjectures on hypotheticals. 

What would happen here? How would that affect the battles there? How would this diversion affect the Scourge movements over there. What would happen afterward if this battle was a victory or defeat? How did the degrees of victory and defeat affect how each side responded, and how could that be used for and against our goals? 

Many questions, and lots of subtle answers were played out. I just had to pick up on them, and I wasn’t half bad at it. 

All the while, I continued to accumulate power. I worked on my advancement formation, which progressed by the day. After the first cluster was finished, I got the hang of it and my progress accelerated. By the end of February, I had almost completed the second cluster. While it was unfortunate that I couldn’t use it partially like I had the other advancement formations and start cultivating early, the quick progress was nice. Months of constant analysis was culminating in explosive growth. 

My power at Authority 5 wasn’t good enough. It had never been, and my friends were advancing faster than I was. I needed to keep up, so I never forgot that advancing was a higher priority than simply learning strategy or even climbing ranks. 

It wouldn’t be long before I hit Authority 6 though. I hoped to do it while I was on vacation so that I could get tempered a little with Maxwell and receive the next formation. 

Thankfully my workload went down gradually with every week that passed, and I got more time to myself. My personal progress only got faster. 

March came and went, the conflict escalating during that month as well. More battles, but more importantly, more deaths were what caught my attention. That would usually be normal considering there were far more people getting sent out. However, when I started doing investigations, I got an eerie feeling. 

The month of April came, and a new variable was introduced into the field of battle. 

In the back of my mind though, despite everything going on, there was still one question in my mind. 

Where the hell were my infiltrators?