LT’s first three-round burst dropped one of the short figures, as did his second. Then the rest of the clearing lit up in gunfire as the security team began bringing them down. Dan drew his handgun and tried to assist the security team. The System helped, but Dan really didn’t have much experience with firearms. He was pretty sure one of his shots hit a dark, slinking form, but it could have easily been someone else. After a couple of seconds, he realized that the rest of the candidates were moving toward cover while shooting, and that only him and a couple of the tournament participant candidates were still in the clearing.
“Follow me!” he shouted to the nearby candidates and fired off the rest of his pistol’s magazine before jogging toward the cheap metal and plastic of the prefabricated command structure. It wouldn’t be the best cover, but it was still much better than standing in the open or trying to hide behind the nylon fabric of a tent. At first, only about half of the candidates followed him, the rest likely still dazed from the thermobaric strike on the lizard monster, but as soon as they noticed that they were being left behind, the stragglers hurried to catch up.
The group clustered behind the building’s thin walls, and Dan took stock of them. Sam and Jennifer had followed him, but other than them, only twenty one of the candidates huddled behind the building’s spartan cover with him. He could only assume that the other thirty to forty candidates were stuck in some state of undress in the firefight. His lips quirked as he looked over his group. Hell, not all of the candidates were fully dressed. One of them was completely unarmed and wearing nothing but a red jumpsuit and sneakers. Dan frowned at the man and cocked his head while searching for his name. Giving up, he tapped Jennifer on the shoulder and pointed.
“Jester,” she hissed at him, catching his attention after a second. “Where did you leave your gear? We’re in the middle of a war zone, and you don’t even have your breastplate.”
In the distance, there was another flash of thunder mana followed by the sky going white. This time, everyone was thrown to the ground as something near them hit. When Dan blinked away the afterimages from the blast, the clearing was no longer lit by a floodlight. Instead, the only light came from burning wreckage of a tank at the foot of where the metal tower with the floodlight once stood.
“I just woke up and followed the crowd,” Joker replied frantically as he pulled himself back to his feet along with the rest of the candidates. “What the hell was that, artillery? Since when are the bad guys supposed to have artillery? I thought we were supposed to have more of a tutorial and an introductory quest line.”
Before Dan could reply, a cacophony of victorious high-pitched yelping yells filled the night. Standing atop the burning wreckage of the tank, one of the small figures held an assault rifle clumsily over its head and led the warbling chorus, backlit by the burning vehicle. For the first time, Dan got a good view of the creatures. They were somewhere around three feet tall with greyish green skin and spindly limbs much too long for their skinny frame. Rather than hair, the creature’s heads and necks were covered in a thin layer of thin black quills framed by a pair of six-inch-long horns that curved like a ram’s.
One of them shouted something in an unknown language and received a ritualistic screamed one word reply. Dan drew his sword.
“So, they’re using cannons, and they have a dinosaur and artillery, but they’re sending in goblins first.” Joker nodded with confidence Dan didn’t feel. “Now that the cinematic scene is over, it’s time to start the tutorial. I guess they did think this out after all.”
“Jester,” Jennifer interjected, concern on her face, “you really need to take this seriously. I don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the camp, but the Tellask are obviously pushing the marines really hard. I don’t think there will be much room for mistakes.”
Then the first injured marine jogged past the command center. A deep cut above her left eye partially blinded her, and at least two arrows stuck out of her kevlar kit. She paused briefly to fire, her rifle illuminating the determined look on her face before she continued jogging. Dan stepped around the side of the makeshift building and took in the scene. Here and there, marines were still shooting back, but most of them were retreating back through their camp. To either side, the security team kept firing.
From the direction of the forest, the ground seemed to be crawling as hundreds of the small creatures swarmed toward them. Some carried what appeared to be obsidian hatchets, while others scampered quickly and low to the ground on their hands and knees, knives clutched between their teeth.
Dan frowned slightly, wishing that the rest of the candidates had been given the time to practice until they had something even approaching military discipline. Instead, the Starshield candidates had been trained for the offensive, operating in teams of four or five deep in the jungle to scout and attack weak points in the enemy formation. Not once had they bothered to drill on how to dig in, mount a defense, or properly support conventional troops.
He glanced briefly at the candidates milling about behind the command building. They might not have the training, but the basics were pretty self-evident. Stick together to avoid being overwhelmed, and try to kill as many of the oncoming swarm as possible. He didn’t know how things were going in the other camps, but hopefully relief would arrive soon. From what he could see, the marines couldn’t hold out much longer now that the Tellask had found an answer to their armor and air support.
“Guys.” He turned back to the rest of the candidates. Jennifer, Jester, Ellie, and Sam were paying attention to him, but the rest were glancing about worriedly or engaged in hurried, quiet conversations. “I think the marines are retreating from this area, but no one has bothered to contact us to let us know anything. There’s a whole bunch of little gremlin things out there, and we aren’t going to be able to do anything without getting overrun by them. At a very minimum, we’re going to need to push them back enough for us to get out of here intact.”
Dan looked around wryly. No one, other than his immediate group, had listened to him. Sam put her hand on his back, and for a second, her eyes became glassy. Then he heard a buzzing sound and his vision blurred.
Interacting with user <Sam the Great>
<Sam the Great> is attempting to teach <USER> the Leadership skill. Do you wish to learn the Leadership skill? Y/N
Dan mentally focused on the Y in the corner of his vision and he briefly smelled bread baking before a welcome alert popped up.
<USER> Has learned Leadership, privileges set at 4. Establishing wireless connection with nearby Systems. Processing. <USER> may now directly communicate with nearby Systems.
“Could you always-” he began asking her only for Sam to cut him off with a nervous chuckle.
“Yeah,” she shrugged slightly, “Leadership isn’t actually a skill like swords or archery, it’s more a suite of communication functions, status updates, audio/visual playback, and the ability to use discipline procedures. I’ve been holding off on giving it to you because I’m pretty sure you’d just use it to get back at me for the first couple times I tricked you into getting zapped.”
“Amongst other things,” Dan narrowed his gaze at Sam.
“Look,” she muttered sheepishly. “The Director wouldn’t shut up about how we needed someone to ‘watch over you.’ I didn’t really like it, but you know how he is. Once he gets an idea in his head, he won’t stop ranting about it until he gets his way.
“I don’t really think I like that either,” Dan shook his head, frowning. “Once we get a minute, you and I are going to need to have a talk about you withholding information.”
“I know,” she sighed, ‘just keep us alive until then. For the time being, I’m pretty sure you have some sort of big heroic speech to give before we’re all overrun by pint-sized monsters.”
With a thought, the System connected him directly with everyone still in the camp. In the right corner of his vision, a dark circle appeared with a series of green dots clustered around the center, their positions approximately lining up with the candidates standing around him.
“Candidates!” He could feel his voice being transmitted directly to all of them. He didn’t really know how to describe it, but he just instinctively knew that all people with a System within range were hearing his voice. “It looks like the Tellask are starting to overwhelm the marines. They’re starting to retreat, and there are light enemy forces pursuing them. We need to buy time for the other camps to support us and for the conventional soldiers to retreat. Anyone who has a gun can shoot from behind cover, but anyone with a melee focus should join me. Our weapons aren’t helping anyone from behind this shack.”
Dan stepped around the corner, turning on his spellshield and hoping that at least some of his team would follow him. Almost immediately, he ran into three of the creatures assaulting the camp. One of them swung an obsidian cleaver at him, which he easily sidestepped, an almost casual blow from his blade taking its arm. The other two screeched at him, one throwing a knife that he slapped from the air with his enhanced reflexes, his spellshield glowing briefly as he deflected the dagger. The other stepped toward him with a hatchet, only for Jennifer to intercept it. Her arms glowed dully as she blurred forward, a downward blow with one arm removing the hand holding the hatchet while her other hand swept through the creature’s neck, decapitating it.
He shivered. Jennifer had taken to magic with brutal efficiency. From the beginning, she had made it clear that she would be fighting barehanded, and at first, Dan had dismissed her, but over time, she developed a series of force and metal spells designed to optimize her unarmed efficiency. She had a pair of force spells, one that let her create a localized but enhanced spellshield called a orce Plate that could stop most enhanced sword blows so long as she could predict where they would hit her.
The other was the ability she had just generated, Force Blade. It generated a foot-long force plate that she sharpened as much as her focus would allow, functionally giving her the reach of a weapon while unarmed in the form of short, invisible magical knives. Her final spell simply let her modify and control the silver threads in her armor, allowing her to reinforce specific spots, hardening them to take blows that the resilient fabric was not otherwise designed to handle.
Sam stepped around the corner with Ellie huddling behind her and gave both of them a thumbs up.
“Good job!” She cheered them on, “See, my pet, we have a regular pair of knights in shining armor to keep us safe from the bad monsters.” She stroked Ellie’s hair and threw a wink Dan’s way.
Before he could reply, another ten or so of the small monsters charged forth from the darkness toward them. At least a couple of them had bullet holes in them that were no longer bleeding. Definitely something to watch out for later. His sword took the head from the first one to step in range as Jennifer fell in easily beside him. On his other side, Jester had one of the creature’s obsidian axes in one hand and a cleaver in the other, his previously-red clothing stained greenish brown with their ichor.
Dan fired a Lightning Stroke into the next creature as it approached, causing its entire body to spasm and collapse with a charred hole burned into its torso. An arrow clattered off of his spell shield, slightly increasing the strain on his focus. Dan kept moving, his sword claiming life after life from the tiny creatures. Their only answer to the range advantage of his longer arms and weapons was the poorly-crafted arrows that began to clatter around him. He barely even felt their mana as he slashed through them, taking advantage of his rune-enhanced mobility to keep the archers from being able to lock down his location.
At least once, a creature he had thought disabled climbed back to its feet, its wounds no longer bleeding, to rejoin the fray. Swords and axes seemed to fare better against the tenacious little monsters, but unless a limb was removed or the creature was killed entirely, Dan had a nasty suspicion that they would return to the fray.
It made sense that they would be used against modern weaponry. There were more than enough of them to overwhelm isolated fireteams, and their ability to recover from disabling damage meant that a bullet that would have disabled or crippled a human wouldn’t be a major concern, after a short break.
Still, that didn’t make them immune to bullets, and the fire from the security teams helped thin the swarms down to manageable levels by the time the little beasts reached Dan, Jennifer and Jester. Behind them, some of the more enterprising candidates joined in, further stabilizing the situation. Still, almost half of the team remained frozen in shock, unable to process the chaos and violence of an actual battle. Dan grimaced. Recruiting from a video game might help the Thoth Foundation find a talent pool of people able to adapt to the new magic and System, but being the best digital duelist in the realm didn’t exactly mean that they knew what to do in the real world.
Once again, Dan couldn’t help but wish they’d had more time. Time for the recruits to learn more spells. Time to teleport to a place like Twilight where they could earn mana and polish their abilities before they threw themselves at a bunch of millenia-year-old magi.
But their world had needed them, and wishes and dreams wouldn’t keep the monsters at bay. His sword blurred from one small form to another, opening up stomachs and reaping limbs, and he prayed that his charges could hold their own against the onslaught.
Before long the stream of short monsters began to dry up. Dan flicked their blood from his sword and squinted at the darkness shrouding the jungle. Although he still periodically heard gunfire, it was no longer the cacophony of constant sound that it had been at the beginning of the battle. Perhaps even more concerningly, it had been a couple of minutes since he spotted a marine retreating past his position.
“Thrush,” LT’s voice sounded in his ear. Apparently the security candidate had been granted the leadership skill when he hadn’t. Great. “We can hold out a bit longer, but we’re starting to run low on ammunition, and I can’t raise anyone on the radio. I don’t know the local encryption, and no one is really answering. I don’t know if we’re going to get resupply, and I don’t know how long we can hold this spot without it.”
“I don’t know if help is coming, honestly,” Dan replied, focusing on his voice reaching LT only. “There’s still fighting going on between us and the jungle, but it seems isolated. Unless the regiment gets relieved by another camp, I don’t think we’re going to be able to hold out if the Tellask keep pushing.”
“Agreed,” LT began before his voice cut off. “Shit, one of our scouts says that something big is moving in from the forest. I think it’s time for us to strategically redeploy the hell out of here.”
Dan mentally toggled to switch his communications to broadcast to all nearby Systems, but before he could speak, Jester stepped forward and raised the obsidian hatchet over his head.
“We’ve got them on the run, boys!” The young man screamed, his eyes glassy and cheeks flushed with the rush of mana running through him. “Let’s bring the fight to them and push them the hell off of our planet!” The man let out a whoop and began running toward the jungle.
“Jester!” Dan shouted. “Come back; we’re falling back. I repeat, we are falling back!”
“Retreat?” The man stopped and turned, eyes wild as he stared back at the rest of the group from the edge of the circle of light cast by the burning light. “Now? In our moment of triumph? Not from a bunch of undersized-”
He never got a chance to complete his sentence. The head of a lizard, covered in intricate silver armor and the size of a small car, lunged downward from the darkness and bit him in half.
A tree trunk of a leg, encased in glinting plate and covered in flaming runes, slammed down at the outer limits of the spotlight. Another giant lizard, similar to the one that had been torn apart by the Apache helicopters, strode into the clearing while its companion chewed contemplatively. On its back, the human warriors in the two armored platforms began pointing at the gaggle of candidates. The first lizard slunk into the light after it, still idly chewing on Jester’s upper torso.
