When the sun came up Jay had already awoken, and as he hoped for, the spy had arrived with valuable information.
An Iceborne village was found somewhat closeby. Only 5 miles North-West of First-city a village of an estimated 100 Iceborne existed. Luckily, it did seem like half of the village consisted of the young and elderly.
The weapons they used were mostly decent common-grade battleaxes. Another piece of valuable intel was that multiple carts full of stuff was sent to the north while the spy was scouting them out. He also saw a large amount of fish being taken so the destination shouldn't be anywhere closeby.
Looking at all the information it looked like it wouldn't be an easy fight. The enemy had more people overall. And even though his own men had better weapons many of them didn't even have armor yet. If it wasn't for himself and his generals he wouldn't be completely confident.
Before he left he went to the market, he was extraordinarily rich right now. With well over 600 gold he could afford all sorts of items. In the end, he got 20 more farmers for 20 gold pieces and the highest grade troop he could get on the system market: 2 giants. These 2 cost him 50 gold each.
The Giants were a bit of an odd race. Towering over 5 meter tall, giants were extremely well fit for sieges. They could easily knock down a gate or even a wall. On the other side they were also incredibly slow, this made it very hard for them to fight against a human with decent strength and reflexes.
In the beginning, Giants were seen as powerful trump cards for Lords and guilds alike but this quickly changed. After all it was very easy to take down Giants if you prepare for it, they fell over quite easily and couldn't get up if they fell on their backs, hence a bunch of siege weapons were quickly created for solely dealing with giants.
Since he knew there would be many things stopping them in the future, he might as well use this weapon now.
When he threw out the 22 tokens just outside of town, other than the 20 farmers there were 2, 5-meter tall giants. Their backs were arched and had a lot of hair on them, and on the front they had a massive package.
Just a few seconds after the giants had appeared half a dozen people rushed out of the town with weapons in their hands. But when they saw the Giants awkwardly bowing towards Jay, they quickly retreated rather embarrassed.
The Giants were unable to kneel, once they fell they would have a lot of trouble getting up. So instead of sleeping lying down they slept standing up, exactly the same as they would normally stand.
This made them perfect to keep out intruders as them just sleeping next to the gates would make most people too scared to even try and infiltrate.
Yet the giants ate surprisingly little, despite their extremely large bodies they got a lot of their energy from photosynthesis, similar to plants.
The farmers were sent to do some basic tasks such as moving resources in order to complete more buildings while the other workers would all be out. In the end, their offensive force numbered about 40 people. All these were fighters, most of which started as farmers but had long since gotten new talents thanks to the work they did and the training they received.
As for defense, by working through the night Miss Everdeen had finished her first tier-one golem. This golem was about 3 meters tall and extremely sturdy. Thanks to the rock core it was given it also had a natural layer of armor. And in order to have its defensive capabilities enhanced to the max, it was also given one of the F grade weapons he had gotten, a polearm to be exact.
He chose the polearm due to its Disarm I (Increased chance to disarm your opponent) and Break I (Has a chance to break lower grade weapons upon contact) properties.
Soon the vanguard moved out. This included Jay, general Green and some of their best troops. Their goal was to make sure the route was clear and nobody could alert the village.
Behind them came the main army, these were the Giants and close to 30 troops all lead by Geralt. They also took a cart with some food and a cart with tents, in case they were forced to starve the enemy out.
The terrain was rather tricky, the Icelands were filled with mountains, definitely this close to its border. Because of this, it would take the vanguard 3 hours to get to the village while it would take the main army around 4 hours. Usually, this would take longer but since the giants could easily carry the carts they weren't that much slower.
As the vanguard advanced Jay felt excited. This was the first time they truly went out to take out another camp. He had never heard of the Iceborne before but this didn't mean they were weak or rare. In his last life, he was extremely far away from the north and so he didn't know much about the sentient creatures here.
After about an hour-long walk the vanguard spotted some enemies. There were 10-or-so Iceborne sitting about a dozen meters away from each other. Each of them had a spear in their hands as they were ice fishing.
It was already reported earlier that the Iceborne most commonly ate fish. This was to be expected as there were many places where you could just drill a hole and start fishing.
But unbeknownst to these fishers, they were slowly being surrounded by a group of soldiers.
They might not outnumber them but Jay wasn't scared of this fight at all. He could easily kill 2 of them before even engaging using magic and he might even be able to kill all of them if he utilized all his skills. Yet that wasn't what he was going to do. He would start by killing 2 of the enemies but then he would let their 9 soldiers attack the 8 remaining enemies, only interfering if one of his men was about to die.
After about a minute 2 ice spears were created in mid-air and with just a move of his arm, the spears flew forward stabbing into the chests of 2 Iceborne.
Their fur was tougher then he had expected as the spears didn't penetrate them fully. But, it was enough. The Iceborne were both hit in their stomach and were heavily wounded, trying with all their might to stop the terrible bleeding.
Seeing his attacks were sufficient he signaled his troops, but when they got closer to the fishermen something moved in the water, they had fallen into a trap!