Chapter 135 - Not Alone (Patreon)

<---Chapter 134 - Life Under Siege| Table of Contents | Chapter 136 - Swarm--->

Two weeks later...

Enveloping darkness wrapped around the bombed-out battlefield. Miles and miles of depression, ditches, and makeshift graves littering what was once a grand ancient forest teeming with life. Here lay no man's land, ground and land for which hundreds of soldiers had sacrificed their lives and blood, each inch of ground paid for in sweat and tears in the day. At night, only the dead and the scavengers reigned supreme, save for a few Raktor patrols sent out to ensure no Versian got out, as well as a few workers who hauled the dead back for marking and reclaiming equipment.

Yet despite the solemn atmosphere of the trenches, two Raktor workers were unusually excited, more so than they would have been for their usual routine of stripping and cleaning bodies onto a rickety cart they lugged behind. They wore tight helmets with a long cloth tucked beneath that wrapped around their faces and drooped down to their shoulders, protecting them from the incessant buzzing of flies and other insects swarming the decaying flesh littered around them. Their body was covered from head to toe in garments that ensured their skin was not exposed, save for their eyes, which peeked out from the wrappings of cloth.

The job was terrible, having to face the horrors of the dead by separating them from their equipment. However, their enthusiasm was unnatural, as if they took great pride and joy in reclaiming bodies for the Raktor army. One of them scoured a trench, pushing apart lifeless corpses and prying them away from the soggy, muddy walls, his gloved hand pressing against the soil and listening for a sound. "Should be here, should be here somewhere..." He muttered to himself as he continued to search.

"Hurry it up. Ain't got long before others get nosy." His partner warned him from above the trench, his eyes clearly concentrating on where the first worker was prodding the wall instead of the blood-soaked limbs in his arms. As the first worker moved along the trench, his partner grunted while shifting the cart filled with bodies and equipment separated into two piles. He positioned the cart to try and block other pairs of workers from seeing them, the bodies and rifles rattling and jostling on the thin wooden base.

"They told me it was going to be here, dammit!" The first worker was equally frustrated, his movements anxious and picking up in speed, his hands moving much faster this time.

"Keep it down idiot, you want everyone else to hear?" His partner whispered angrily over when suddenly the both of them heard a little thud, the sound of a box being hit. Both their faces immediately lit up as they sprang into action. With one swift motion, the partner quickly hauled the cart to block for the first worker while the first worker went to town in the trench walls, digging furiously and excavating out a hefty jewelry box the size of a shoebox.

A single note was attached to the top of the box, the first worker squinting in the dark and trying to use the ambient light to read it, his eyes scanning from left to right. "Shit, we have to move. The pickup is soon!"

"Okay, go, go, go!" His partner urged, bending down over the top of the trench, offering a hand to the first worker and pulling him out. They stuffed the jewelry box between the bodies, masking under the stench of moldy flesh and swarming flies that continuously made futile attempts to get beneath their clothes. Moving with a light jog, the pair made their way back through the cratered ground, avoiding potholes and ditches expertly before finally seeing a row of lights in the distance, marking the Raktor's forward base walls.

The camp had expanded far beyond its original iteration from months ago, now far more protected and entrenched. Within the walls itself were rows upon rows of trenches as well, designed to fortify themselves against any sudden counterattacks. Makeshift wooden towers mounted arctech repeaters that continuously swept the perimeter, and the security has been far heightened ever since the last time half of their supplies were burnt by intruders.

As such, the pair were forced to endure a lengthy queue, waiting at one of the three entrances into the camp while each entrant was searched thoroughly from head to toe. The first worker cursed under his breath as he tried to restrain himself from scratching a growing rash on his neck, worsened by the suffocating cloth that had been only washed a week ago. Still, neither he nor his partner dared to flout the rules. Not when a dozen Raktor soldiers and a squad of arctech knights were overseeing the queue with eagle-like eyes, ready to shoot at the first moment of danger. Other carts and people in front of them were other workers sent out by the army, either to forage or collect firewood from the nearby forest, or supply wagons coming in from Raktor.

Finally, it came to their turn; the two workers positioned themselves nearer to the pile of bodies on the left rather than the weapons on the right of their cart. Two Raktor soldiers inspected it, but none of them dared to get close to the rancid stench emitted from the bodies, only focusing on the weapons. One of them pointed his rifle at the workers, motioning for them to raise their hands. They complied and were searched by the soldiers while the other gingerly flipped through the pile of broken weapons, muddy clothes, and grimy equipment recovered from the field. "Alright, you're clear. But you're going to have to leave the weapons here and dump the bodies outside."

"Yea, yea, we know the drill." The first worker and his partner unloaded the weapons, placing them on the ground near the soldiers before pushing off the cart again with the bodies, circling around the perimeter of the wall towards the back of the camp away from Ocra. Even along the rim of the fortifications were patrolling Raktor soldiers, each of them continuously checking them. Some of the more daring ones even prodded the bodies, causing the two workers' hearts to escalate in fear each time they saw a soldier get close to where the box was hidden.

Thankfully, no one really dug deep into the corpses - nobody wanted to. Soon they were clear of the camp, the mass graves far beyond and deeper into the Keru Forest, the same enveloping darkness surrounding them once more. They trudged along half broken stumps, remnants of trees stripped bare for use in war. But instead of heading south to the mass graves, they suddenly changed course towards the northeast, going off the beaten track and into the dense undergrowth, further and further.

The pair kept as quiet as possible, letting the cacophony of crickets chirping and leaves rustling to mask their movements. The glint of a Raktor patrol spotlight swept past them while they ducked, keeping their figures small, pausing every now and then when the patrols were too close for comfort. It took nearly an hour before they were finally beyond the reach of the Raktor patrols, allowing them to pick up speed. It wasn't long before they finally found their destination, a simple mark on the trees that was barely recognizable in the ambient light between the shadows cast by the canopy. "What are we looking for?" His partner asked as they came to a halt at the foot of the tree.

The first worker looked around warily. "Note said they were going to be here by now..." Still, the dim spots of patrol lanterns and spotlights could be seen far off in the distance, some getting a little closer to them and making them jittery. He stuffed his hand into the rotting pile of bodies, digging about and pulling the jewelry box from within.

"What are you doing? What if they come over her-" His partner hissed angrily, but he couldn't continue when he saw the first worker pry open the lid of the box, revealing a dazzling array of precious gems, diamonds, and jewels of a dizzying assortment, enough to decorate the walls of a room with and still have leftovers. Many of them were clearly badly kept and damaged with scratches, lowering their value marginally. "By Yual...."

Neither of them could even find the words to express their astonishment at the sheer wealth being delivered here, but suddenly, a loud rustling from the bushes and the branches above them shocked them, causing the first worker to nearly drop the box. From beyond the foilage came five Ghosts, immediately surrounding the two workers with rifles brought to bear. "Drop the box and step away with the cart."

The workers complied with the order, hurriedly placing the box on the floor and taking three steps back to the cart. Still, they didn't leave yet, waiting for one of the Ghosts who walked forward and inspected the box. A tense moment passed before the Ghost nodded to his comrades, prompting them to hand a sack over to the workers.

No more words were exchanged, and the two parties went on in their separate ways. As the pair returned back to the mass graves to complete their original task, they couldn't stop grinning, especially the first worker's partner, who kept checking the contents of the sack. "We're going to be rich, filthy rich, if we can keep this up. There are close to five hundred vials in here!"

"Even richer." The first worker had a knowing smile on his face as he fished out of his pocket a chain of ruby jewels, nicked from the box before the Ghosts spotted them.

Are you crazy?! What if they find out we stole from them?

How would they even know? They wouldnt even have a clue how many jewels would be in that box to begin with none of them would even notice this missing.

Instead of continuing to berate him, his partner became far more elated as realization dawned on him slapped him heartily on the back as they pushed the cart together.

"Once we pawn that off to the merchant, we can hitch a ride back to Raktor, out from this damn contract, maybe even get a hillside farm of my own in Kregol..." His partner began to dream out loud, his eyes hardly focused on where he was even going as he fantasized about his future homestead.

"Kregol isn't that nice - but Perlis? That's way better. Fewer inclines, you know?" The worker joked with a chortle as they continued towards the mass graves, though, to his surprise, his partner did not respond even with a laugh. "Hey, what's the matte-"

"Drop the sack and the ruby to the side, now!" His partner whispered urgently, his eyes motioning ahead along the path. The first worker turned to see a surprise patrol blocking the road ahead in the distance, already checking other workers who were also dumping bodies. Five soldiers had spotted them long ago and were moving towards them with the clear intent of searching them.

Shit! The first worker hesitated for a moment before taking his partner's advice, hauling the sack and the chain of rubies off to the side into a nearby bush. However, it was already far too late, the approaching soldiers having seen the first worker clearly. "You there! What are you doing?"

"Fuck!" His partner panicked, the fear driving him to immediately drop the cart of bodies and sprint off towards where the first worker had thrown the goods away, while the first worker was frozen to the spot. He could only watch as a soldier aimed his rifle at his fleeing partner, who hurriedly clutched the chain of rubies, running off into the distance.

A series of pellets raced through the night, ripping his partner from behind, who collapsed onto the floor in a tumble. The first worker barely had time to react when two soldiers raced towards him. "GET DOWN! GET DOWN NOW!" They forced him onto his knees while the other soldiers searched the bushes and the cart for other goods.

"Sir, hundreds of vials in this sack!" A Raktor soldier hoisted up the sack to his patrol squad leader, who checked it with a shocked face.

The patrol leader stormed up to the first worker, grabbing his face tightly. "Who gave you the damn vials? Speak, and maybe your punishment might be lenient."

"I... I don't know! I was just told to pick this up! I swear!" The first worker shook his head, flustered. "I swear I don't know anything! Please don't kill me!"

"Fine, we'll do it the hard way." The patrol leader had his men haul the first worker to his feet, dragging him back to the camp. To the first worker's surprise, he was hardly the only one being captured - there were nine others like him all charged with the same crime. The others too were equally confused, wondering how did everyone get involved in the same stint.

They languished in separate cells for a day, suffering under the heat and lack of rations, their stomachs growling as the first worker could only replay the scene of his partner being gunned down, himself in a daze fueled by malnutrition and dehydration. In the midst of his trance, he was rudely shaken by a guard, who hauled him up and out of the makeshift cells nested along the walls of the camp, dragging him in chains to the central command tent. The first worker's heart plummeted, knowing what was to come.

His feet dragged along the floor as he was thrown unceremoniously onto the ground, looking up to see Count Leon glaring down at him, along with a row of generals and a heavily armored man wielding a staff. The other nine too were hauled over in sequence, their names and professions read out one by one by other Raktor soldiers. All of them were not military personnel, but rather 'support' workers that helped with the daily maintenance of the camp.

"All of them have been caught with selling and transferring goods with the enemy." A general explained the crime, Count Leon's gaze furious as ever.

"And have we not nailed down who is facilitating the transfer?" Count Leon muttered through gritted teeth. "Your report tells me that they have been caught with jewelry and other luxury items that should have come from within Ocra. How are they getting them?!"

"The workers here must have sold something of value to them." The general answered straightforwardly.

"Are you implying that our current missing supplies and wagons are because of that?"

"Yes, sir. This is but one piece of the puzzle."

Count Leon clenched his armored fist tightly, rage building up within. "Call an emergency meeting now. I want all generals here within ten minutes."

"But sir, what about the trial-"

"Mage Oliver will handle it. I trust you have recovered enough?" Count Leon cocked his eyebrow at the heavily armored mage behind him.

Without speaking a word, the mage slammed the base of the staff onto the ground, ten tendrils of ice shooting forward along the surface of the ground and lancing out toward the workers. The workers tried to move, but the moment the tendril touched them, they could feel a cold snap envelop their entire body, first from their limbs, before the freezing chill seeped into their chest, freezing them entirely on the spot. Their blood ran blue, and their skin began to discolor as they keeled over, frozen to death.

Count Leon barely gave the frozen corpses a second look, marching off back towards a meeting room with his generals and mage in tow, where a central conference table was laid out with maps and specific battle plans. He took his seat at the head of the table, waiting for the rest to sit down. The moment everyone was in the room, and the door was closed, Count Leon burst forward with an unparalleled rage: "Two months. Two months we have been blockading Ocra - they should have been starving and pleading for surrender now! Instead, we have workers selling our own supplies to the enemy, and we cannot figure out HOW! I should have all of you tried for treason and incompetence!" He yelled at the generals. "You have five minutes to explain what you useless idiots have been doing for the past two weeks!"

A general hastily tried to explain. "Sir, it is difficult to collect information along the entire perimeter of Ocra. As tight as we would like to encircle the city, it is nearly impossible to-"

"I don't want to hear excuses or problems!" Count Leon snapped at the general. "I want solutions! How are we going to get Ocra under us?! Every day we wait, the Versian field army is building back stronger, and for some reason the city is doing better than ever!"

The generals looked at each other, exchanging nervous glances once more before the same general gave his opinion. "Sir, based on the location where most of the workers are caught, it is very likely that Desham is involved in this."

"Desham...? Desham is a backwater agricultural city, with nothing of note the last time I visited." Count Leon waved his hand dismissively, leaning back into his chair.

"Still, our scouts have barely managed to penetrate the Keru Forest in its entirety. Until we have full control over the Forest, it will be impossible to ensure this doesn't happen again." The general continued explaining.

Count Leon pondered for a bit, looking at the map of Versia where Ocra and Desham were marked out, the Keru Forest between them and stretching beyond into Perlis. "How soon can we deploy more men into the Forest?"

"We can't afford to dispatch a division towards Desham, not when we're trying to threaten Ocra. If the Versian field army finds out that our troops are being divided up, they will begin to defeat us separately. Until Ocra falls, we are locked here."

"And when can we force a breakthrough into Ocra?"

"Well... we were hoping for the supplies to be starved out... but it is becoming clear that it would take much longer than expected."

"I've been hearing this phrase a lot recently." Count Leon snarled. "Looks like there will be no Ocra until Desham is handled."

The general replied frantically: "Sir, we can't divide up our forces, not now when the Versian field army is on the verge of returning!"

Count Leon motioned for a messenger, a small smile on his face. "We're not the only players in this game."

In Desham...

The industrial factory's main floor was a frenzy of activity, as countless refugees-turned-technicians scrambled about, led by veteran factory workers through training and learning of the various equipment. Along the main floor were tonnes of equipment and rows upon rows of supplies already stored in armored coffins, the drop pods waiting to be loaded into the newly refurbished plane. It had been previously damaged during Kyle's and Hayden's heist from the airfield, and the other three planes were installed along the length of the floor in far worse conditions. A shimmering haze coated its underside, seemingly reflecting the ceiling of the factory despite facing the completely other way.

"Looks like the optical illusion engravings are working perfectly." Hayden nodded with approval as she bent down to inspect any damage to it. They had been performing supply drops in Ocra for close to two weeks now, doing one pass at noon every day of the week. Beside her, technicians donned heavy-duty gloves and carefully slid out a steaming hot black metal cylinder from within the cargo hold, the entire surface covered in poor arcia crystals that were completely spent.

"Only from below." Kyle clarified, having been the one who installed it. The optical illusion engravings were not as good as they sounded - high consumption and low efficiency plagued their usage. Still, it served the job well enough, preventing the plane from being spotted from afar when it flew overhead.

The concept was exceedingly simple, copied from how stealth in space was performed. All it does is replicate what it sees on one side onto the other, masking its light signal. Stealthcrafts would calculate the background radiation coming in from one end and repeat it on the other towards where it thinks the enemy radar or sensors are. A proper sensor would still be able to spot the discrepancy between the processing cycles and the radiation view being distorted. Thankfully, Kyle was dealing with human eyes here instead, so it still worked to a great extent. A simple light-capturer engraving at the top of the plane was connected to the various optical illusions, replicating what the light-capturer saw to a good enough degree from afar, though it did not pass close inspection within a hundred meters.

Unfortunately, the consumption was far too taxing, limiting them to one pass a day. They could only do it in the morning when the artillery barrage would mask the sound of the plane, and the light from the local star would blind anyone looking directly overhead. It's completely obvious from the sides and the front, though I doubt anyone would be looking from there.

With a limited supply of arcia crystals, Kyle needed to continuously have the plane return to Desham for refueling. Already trial mechanical arcia regenerators were being set up out in the fields, Kyle attempting to create miniature wind turbines to accelerate the recharging rate of the crystals.

Just as Hayden continued to inspect any potential damage from wind erosion or other stray pellets against the illusion engravings, a loud bang erupted from the group of technicians holding the black cylinder of crystals, one of the crystals shattering apart in a brilliant shower of pieces. The two technicians that had been holding it dropped the cylinder; Kyle immediately lunged forward to grab it before it hit the ground and saved it. He was hardly fazed by the burning hot surface of the cylinder, his 229-A-X allowing him extreme resistance against temperature differentials. "Don't drop this, if you do, it might destroy the whole factory," Kyle warned them sternly, handing it back to them.

The technicians hurriedly took it off his hands, far too flabbergasted to see the stark difference between them having to use gloves and Kyle nonchalantly wiping the sweat off his unmarked hands and returning back to Hayden's side. Hayden hardly cared if Kyle was injured; instead far more concerned with the crystal exploding. "We're going to be running out of them soon enough. Any ideas of replacing them?"

"It's too dangerous to return to the dungeon for now - Nest might have found it already." Kyle had already blocked off the tunnel by collapsing in while posting scouts to ensure no one else made it through the way he escaped Tenar with Sasha. However, this also meant he could not hunt or harvest rock spiders for their arcia crystal - they would need to find an alternative source. Until then, the plane could only fly for half an hour at best, hardly enough to even traverse the entirety of Versia, much less to Raktor.

The plane was now designed to run on poor arcia crystals instead of basic arcia crystals, Kyle reserving the better ones for railguns that were being produced regularly now for standard troops. He also reserved his own set of basic crystals for his own Version 0 exosuit, though the shattering of the poor arcia crystal was also a symptom of another problem. The crystals do not have infinite charging cycles - just like a battery. Over time, a poor arcia crystal will degrade and break apart from overuse.

Kyle didn't have a solution to the problem for now - he did not know of another source of arcia crystals, nor did anyone around him, especially the locals. Even Drake and Jaden had no clue where he had gotten them from, leaving Kyle alone in trying to solve it. Let's focus on fixing the other plane first.

They had salvaged the remains of the other downed planes when Kyle left the airfield, totaling two wreckages and one heavily damaged plane that they were still unable to repair in its entirety. "The body of the plane needs to be a lighter aluminum alloy, not the usual weapon steel that we're making now. Not to mention that we should really get a fresh supply source of iron and coal." Hayden pointed out as the two of them walked towards the heavily damaged plane.

Kyle knew he also needed to solve the issue of metal shortage. Wood was in great abundance thanks to the Keru Forest, along with food and water, but if he wanted to truly make it into a proper industrial hub, he needed a source of metal. Back in Raktor, the Culdao Peaks were his main source, but it would be ludicrous to expect the plane in its current state to fly all the way back. From my calculations, I would need at least at least a hundred more of those black cylinders in each plane. The plane now could only hold three of the cylinders, each cylinder made out of a hundred poor arcia crystals that were slowly dwindling.

Leaving the factory proper, he soon had the local leaders gathered together in the former council building, holding a meeting to discuss a solution. He called for Diya, Drake, Jaden, Hayden, Sasha, and Feldon into the old governor's office, which had been long taken over by Diya's fascination with purple colors, the accent embellished in nearly every corner of the room.

Already, some of them had ideas on how to solve the problem. "Why not raid Harrison's convoys? They are still transporting metal out from Ulut into Tenar's industries, surely we can just siphon it instead of trying to find our own." Diya proposed. "We are trying to take down Harrison, right?"

"That's crazy, the convoys are more than five hundred kilometers away. We're already struggling as it is to keep Ocra supplied at two hundred kilometers. How are we going to transport the goods back and make them stable enough to keep production going?" Hayden countered. "If you're talking about raiding something, then we should be raiding Count Leon's supply lines. Grab the armor and weapons - skip the whole production part. At least that's what we used to do back in my day."

Feldon and Kyle shared a knowing glance, Feldon struggling not to break out into laughter at the sheer irony. Both of them knew that the contents of the wagon would be their very own weapons produced by the Aspis Weapons Factory. Kyle didn't really care, especially when he had blown up half of Count Leon's supplies - the weapons were sold as part of a contract and were not contingent on delivery to the frontline at all.

Still, Kyle wasn't too fond of the idea. "We're pushing him hard enough for now. Anymore and we might draw his ire, and Desham right now cannot handle a frontal conflict with his forces." The Ghosts now could fill up the ranks of a single division at best, though only maybe half of the thousand-strong division was considered trained, the rest still fledglings and fresh recruits from the pool of refugees. Pitting them in a head-on battle against Count Leon's twenty divisions would be a disaster no matter how hard Kyle fought.

"Then we're stuck." Diya sighed. "Maybe we should try trading with a few black market dealers who can ferry them over from Tenar...."

"If there's really no choice, we could try the sloping hills deeper in the forest, there are iron ore deposits there, though Drake would clearly protest against it." Hayden proposed, her eyes already rolling over to the flustered Drake, shaking his head vigorously in denial.

"No, definitely not." Drake shook his head vigorously against the suggestion. "I've seen the creatures swarming out from them, you don't want to mess with them!"

"You keep saying that, but I've never seen anything big or strong come from there. What could be worse than the mammoth hogs we're hunting now?" Jaden let out an exasperated sigh. "You're just going off on some folk tales, I bet you actually never seen the creatures before."

"No, no, no. No one makes it back from the hills. Not even mammoth hogs. And when the animals avoid an area, it's a clear sign that nothing good can ever come from it. Even if it has a mountain of iron, it's not worth it! Monsters live there! Even if you manage to extract the iron, they will chase you to the ends of the earth!" Drake asserted.

Kyle's brows perked up at the mention of the mammoth hogs avoiding the area. Drake had told him before of creatures eating iron ore deposits, but he had yet to see them for himself. A creature that lives on metal... either it is a slovesa, or something that could solve our current problems. "Interesting...."

Drake felt a shudder run down his spine as he saw Kyle and Sasha exchange a look with each other, knowing all too well what was about to happen. "Are you serious?! I might have only seen the creatures once, but even at first glance, I knew that they were far more dangerous than even an entire herd of mammoth hogs. Just because you could kill a mammoth hog doesn't mean you can kill them! Are you all even listening to me?!"

"I am." Kyle nodded as he prepared to leave the office. "Feldon, you heard him?"

Feldon had a cheeky grin on his face. "Loud and clear, sir. I'll assemble six Ghosts right away for an expedition."

"Good. Sasha, Jaden, gear up. Drake, you'll be our guide. We'll leave tomorrow at dawn."

<---Chapter 134 - Life Under Siege| Table of Contents | Chapter 136 - Swarm--->