Invasion: Chapter 14

Dan stopped doing situps and pulled himself to his feet as soon as Bill sounded the alarm. Raoul was on lookout duty in a tree overlooking a game trail that Rose had found a few suspicious boot prints in. If he spotted anything more menacing than a game animal, he was to radio Bill, who would alert the rest of the camp.

Dan stood up and briefly wiped the sweat from his face with a towel made from a scrap of someone’s uniform. They had been lucky for the week or so after the disastrous battle. It only rained twice, and other than that the weather had been fairly mild. The squad only managed to build a handful of lean-tos covered in leaves to ward off the rain, which led to several modestly-wet and entirely sleepless nights.

Other than the two people assigned to be lookouts on nearby spots where Abe suspected that the Tellask were traveling, everyone else devoted their time to training. Most of the others had ranked up to 2 with Jennifer and Abe approaching Rank 3. Dan was a little upset at how slow his spirit had grown despite the number of monsters he killed. He suspected that level of spirit took more mana to level up. It made a kind of sense. Without some sort of diminishing returns on collecting mana, the galaxy would be absolutely overrun with archmages. That didn’t mean that it wasn’t frustrating.

As he quickly shrugged on his chainmail, Dan checked his stats.

He had finally managed to raise his sword skill by a level. Objectively, given his increased speed and strength, he was more or less assured gold in Olympic Fencing if he bothered to try out. Of course, that’s only if someone didn’t decide that runescript was performance-enhancing.

Perhaps more importantly, he had finally gotten a chance to tinker with his new spell, forcebolt. It was still quite rough around the edges, firing a fist-sized ball of force that hit with about the same strength as a baseball bat.

Right now, the spell was more unpleasant and painful than actually fatal, sure it could break a bone if it hit right, but only a blow to the head presented a mortal threat to an opponent. On the other hand, it delivered more kinetic energy than any other spell (or firearm) Dan and the rest of the party had. Most of his battle plans for it at the moment involved using it in conjunction with a forcebubble placed at knee level to knock opponents over.

He also suspected that the increased kinetic force would be useful in draining energy from spellshields. The force fields had been unpleasantly effective against firearms to date because they more or less ignored the penetrating quality of the bullet, instead bleeding mana to absorb the kinetic energy of the blow.

Rifles still hit hard enough that a spellshield wouldn’t last under sustained fire, but most of their bullets’ stopping power was their small size and high speed. Larger-caliber weapons such as fifty-calibers and recoilless rifles would tear the forcefields apart fairly quickly, but the problem was elves’ speed. Outside of heavy machine gun turrets, most of the army’s heavier weapons weren’t designed to hit something that moved as fast as a motorcycle, but with the grace of a dancer.

As Dan finished putting his scabbard back on, Abe, Rose, and Bill walked over to his small lean to. Nearby, Jennifer was waiting, having been ready as soon as she put on her armor weave. Dietrich, Sam, and Ellie were finishing their preparations. Dietrich was a larger, no-nonsense man with close cropped hair and a meticulously trimmed mustache. Even though he kept his shortsword in reserve, he usually wielded a large, wooden club studded with thorns and barbs that he could envenom magically.

Sam was at least trying to adapt to the new reality, training with her sword and working on a combat-capable spell. More than that, she was much more pleasant to everyone around the camp. Dan wasn’t entirely sure if she was dropping her superior attitude for good, but it was a welcome change. Really, it was funny. He didn’t even realize that her attitude bothered him until it disappeared. Maybe it was because he had always seen her looking at the entire world with a slight smirk, like she was the smartest person in the room, that he had normalized the situation.

Ellie, on the other hand, wasn’t doing that well. Even though Abe’s group had found her in time, the attack by the snake had scarred her emotionally. She refused to train or work out, and barely ate. Sam turned off her discipline protocol so she wasn’t constantly getting shocked for her refusal to work out, but Dan wasn’t entirely sure that doing so was the best idea. Ellie needed a therapist, but barring that, she needed a purpose. Something to keep her active physically and emotionally. Simply letting her stew in her own memories while the rest of the camp worked wouldn’t help.

“You ready to go, Dan,” Abe asked, adjusting the rifle on his shoulder. Hopefully, the soldiers wouldn’t need their guns as the noise would give the team away, but if there was more than one elf, it was better safe than sorry. It would be preferable to find another campsite and duck increased patrols than to all get killed by an overwhelming force.

“As ready as I’m going to be.” Dan turned to the other man. “Do we have any information from Raoul on what we’re facing?”

“Nothing much.” Bill shrugged, motioning at the radio on his hip. “He mentioned, ‘humans, a lot, heading south,’ and then went silent. In all likelihood, they’re still near him, so he’s shutting up to avoid capture. We told him to break silence if he was actually spotted, and that hasn’t happened yet.”

“Well then,” Dan grunted, motioning toward Abe with his right hand. “After you, my good sir.”

The soldier chuckled and led the way. Before too long, the team found the ambush spot they had prepared along the trail that the Imperial troops were using. It wasn’t anything terribly special, just a handful of blinds made out of foliage for them to hide in, with a single deadfall trap overlooking the trail. Abe had made the thing via a couple logs suspended in a cradle of vines just below the canopy. The entire contraption was connected via a crude pulley system to a camouflaged length of rope that ran into the soldier’s blind. Dan wasn’t entirely sure about how accurate the trap would be, but he didn’t doubt its ability to surprise an opponent and sow chaos. That was a factor almost as important as actually killing their targets, according to Abe.

Then they waited. The tension built as the minutes stretched longer. Dan knew that they picked an ambush spot a good ways away from Raoul’s spotter position, but that didn’t stop the nervous energy from building. His mind conjured the clink of armor or the murmur of voices in each rustle of wind and nearby animal.

Finally, he actually heard them. The uneven pad of armored feet through the heavy underbrush combined with muttering in a language he partially understood. The System wasn’t clear if their dialect or Twilight’s was a patois of the other, but at a minimum, he could make out enough of their speech to recognize the griping and complaints.

The Imperial soldiers ambled into view, slightly alert but not taking the situation all that seriously. It was a squad of about twenty humans, a bit more than Dan felt comfortable attacking with their current team, but within the realm of what Abe and he had decided was an acceptable risk. Of the soldiers, 18 of them were armed with spears and shortswords. They were all young, fit men wearing silver breastplates and heavy leather kilts studded with steel.

The remaining two, a middle-aged man and a woman, wore heavy robes made from a silk-like substance, covered in golden runes. Each of them held a silver walking stick topped with a small crystal orb. At their belts were a handful of other mysterious orbs. Dan immediately designated them as mages and raised the priority of their capture. If anyone had information, it was those two.

The battle began with little warning. Abe’s sword hit the log behind the rope with a thwack, followed by the logs tumbling into the path. Before anyone could charge into the fight, Dan immediately launched a fireball at the two mages in the center of the formation.

None of the soldiers were expecting an attack, so their limited spell shielding wasn’t on. The fireball knocked most of them to the ground as the logs slammed to the ground, only catching a couple of the Imperials. Those they hit, died instantly. The others quickly staggered to their feet as they tried to make sense of what was happening.

Dan felt the mana beginning to flow into him as he charged into their midst, his sword glowing as his mana sharpened the blade. Two soldiers tried to interpose themselves between him and the mages. They were fast, but Dan was faster, his sword catching the spear haft between the soldier’s hands, easily cutting through the wood. He lunged in, under the surprised man’s guard, and punched him in the throat, his hand crackling with electricity as he activated Shocking Fist.

The man fell to the ground, windpipe crushed and twitching from the blow’s electricity. The other man’s spear soared past Dan as the remaining soldier threw it with a panicked yelp while drawing his own sword. Dan didn’t give him a chance, disabling him with a Lightning Stroke that caused the man’s weak spellshield to glow for an instant before collapsing. As he fell to the ground convulsing, Dan stepped past him, dragging the enchanted blade across his throat.

The male caster’s eyes went wide as he saw Dan’s approach, and he extended the staff toward him, shouting something incomprehensible. Dan felt a flash of thunder mana, then a bolt of lightning flashed out from the orb on the staff and hit him in the chest. His spellshield sucked mana for a second, turning from translucent to yellow, but the caster didn’t have enough mana or control to actually threaten Dan. Dan’s sword whipped out, taking off the caster’s hand at the wrist. The man began screaming, but Dan just kicked him in the face, breaking his nose and shutting him up.

As the male caster flopped to the ground, insensible, Dan stepped toward the female caster. She had been closer to the fireball’s epicenter and was covered with burns. With a quick glance to the side, she took in her companion and simply dropped her staff. Dan’s eyes blazed, the euphoria of battle consuming him.

He could see her mana. How easy it would be to just take it. A distant part of him noticed her eyes going wide. She could see the madness in him, and she was helpless before it. The woman closed her eyes and leaned back.

The moment seemed to stretch for a minute, but somewhere, Dan knew that it was only a fraction of a second. Frantically, he wrestled with the more bestial side of himself for control. With a monumental effort of will, the walls of his self control separated his consciousness from the hunger.

Dan kicked the staff away from the caster and placed the blade of his sword over her chest. She opened her eyes briefly and breathed a sigh of relief at the change in him. She briefly showed her empty hands before placing them at her sides and closing her eyes once more.

He turned his focus back to the battle. The soldiers and Jennifer were holding their own, but all of the soldiers clearly had class runes. They were stronger and faster than everyone but Jennifer and Dan, and as the chaos from the ambush subsided, they were beginning to bring their increased numbers to bear. The rest of the team tried to make up the difference with magical tricks, but every time an Imperial soldier was temporarily disabled, one of their companions would step forward to protect them while they regained their senses.

Enough of that. Other than the two guards on the casters that he had disposed of, no one else in the Imperial squad was really paying attention to the center of their formation where he stood. Dan began launching alternating Lightning Strokes and Forcebolts into their backs. None of them wore a proper spellshield, instead having weaker versions that could maybe stop one sword stroke or a bullet. With their backs turned to him, it was a slaughter. They couldn’t see to dodge, and his spells quickly disabled or crippled them.

As the Imperials’ resistance collapsed, Dan took a moment to marvel at how far he had come. His first iterations of fireball and Lightning Stroke took so much mana that he could only launch a handful before he was consumed with a mana deprivation migraine. Now, here he was, launching spell after spell with all of his runes on without any substantial side effects. It was one thing to see the numbers iterate up on his status, but another altogether to watch his spells hit harder and cost him less, to actually feel himself getting stronger. He had to admit, the feeling was more than a little intoxicating.

Dan glanced down at his prisoner to ensure that she wasn’t resisting and smiled slightly as he felt the mana still flowing through him. His vision became pink as he lowered the walls of his self-control, his body singing in joy. Now that the battle was over, it wasn’t too bad to… indulge a little.