Seeing that none of the other operatives had any objections, Sophia got to explaining the mission.
"Forward scouts have notified us that Palence's main army is advancing to our border as we speak. Estimations place their arrival time in five days. Your mission is to harass the army and its supply lines as much as possible. Any Intel you can pick up will also be appreciated, but the main goal is to slow down the army. Avoid detection to the best of your abilities and run the moment you encounter an enemy you can not face. There is no need to be reckless, you can't take an entire army on by yourselves"
She paused and grabbed a few folders out of her desk, handing them out to us.
"These contain everything we know so far about the army and its movements. Study them before you leave. Return within two weeks whether or not you succeed. Dismissed"
I was about to follow the others out the door when Sophia stopped me.
"Ah, Magnus, wait"
"Yes?"
She handed me a new badge.
"I didn't get a chance to give you this earlier, you're now a level three operative. Good luck"
I saluted Sophia and joined the other members of my new team. as I approached, the tallest in the group spoke to me.
"As the commander said earlier, I'm Harold, and I am the leader of this mission"
I nodded, I didn't intend to cause any more trouble. Seeing, this he smiled and spoke to all of us.
"Make a final check on your equipment, we will be leaving shortly"
Five minutes later, we stood at the gate to the fortress. After an assassin had followed Sophia and me all the way here, security had been strengthened. Operatives covered the wall, carefully observing every nook and cranny of the mountainside. We approached the guard at the gate and presented our badges, he jotted down something on a notepad before signaling to let us through.
We left the mountain range through a path that was different than the one I had used to get here. I made sure to memorize it in case I had to return alone. Once outside of the mountains we picked up speed, as there were no obstacles in the barren no man's land. Unlike my dash with Sophia, we had been provided with tonics that restored stamina. I was a bit suspicious of the strange liquid, but it didn't really matter as my stamina held out on its own.
A few hours after night had fallen, we arrived at the Palence army's camp. Harold signaled to enter stealth as we moved to a nearby hillock to get a better view. I activated [Shadow Cloak] as the three other operatives disappeared around me. Their techniques all mimicked the surrounding essence and made them invisible to my essence sense. However, the special forces badges could be linked to reveal their positions to each other. This effect could be canceled by both sides at any time and deactivated automatically after a certain distance.
I followed Harold and observed the camp. It was huge, many times larger than the one that I had seen in the forest. Looking at the number of tents, there were easily over a million soldiers. Though most of them were asleep. Night patrols circled the camp every few hundred feet, each one contained at least a rank 2 ascender with sight and hearing enhancement skills. Behind the army tents was a large block of wagons. There were hundreds of them, packed full of supplies of all kinds. Off to the side, there was a hastily erected pen surrounding a multitude of war horses. As I observed the camp, Harold spoke softly.
"Our target is the supply wagons, especially the food storage in the back. The plan is to sneak in and plant the flame runes before retreating. We will trigger them when the camp is just waking up to cause the most havoc. There is most likely a rank 4 somewhere in the area, so we need to be extremely careful. At the first sight of someone, stay far away and alert the team. Even if they aren't rank 4 it's better to be safe than sorry. I will take south, Cicely you take north, Sanir take west, and Magnus take east. Go"
As I moved towards the supply wagons, I activated [Heat Sense] and [Seismic Sense] as well as straining [Essence Sense] to its utmost in search of any lone patrols. [Seismic Sense] was a new skill that I had picked up on my way to Monolith, it allowed me to sense the vibrations through the ground around me. It was one of the three new skills that I had not acquired and not turned into essence. The other two being [Healing Orb] and [Summon Greater Scholar's Domain], which I had gotten from the book Sophia gave me yesterday. The last skill was quite interesting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[Summon Greater Scholar's Domain]
Rank A
Condense a large amount of mind essence into a complicated runic pattern, increasing the comprehension speed of yourself and those around you.
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With my speed, I reached the east edge of the supply train in under a minute and looked for the food storage. I found it quickly and pulled out a flame rune from my pack, placing it under the nearest wagon. Flame runes are small obsidian cubes that have been enchanted with an explosion spell that can be triggered remotely by anyone who imbued it with essence within the last 18 hours. We each had twenty of them that would be placed all over the supply train, hopefully blowing it to pieces and setting it on fire. The only problem is that any rank 4 that was paying attention could easily spot them and deactivate them. I moved through the lines of wagons like a specter, placing a flame rune every few wagons. Eighty of them couldn't possibly destroy all the wagons, but they were incredibly expensive so this many had already cost the special forces a fortune.
When I had placed all of them, I moved quickly to leave the camp. But when I neared the edge, my heat senses picked up a lone figure. I quickly moved backward and identified them, it was the rank 4 we had been trying to avoid. I quickly alerted the rest of the team of the danger and thought about my choices.
"I can almost certainly kill him before he raises any alarms. The question is how long it would take someone to notice his absence. No, it's probably not worth it, I'll avoid them"
I moved in the opposite direction in which the rank 4 was moving and made my way around them. They weren't coming close enough to the wagons to discover the flame runes, as according to the book I read yesterday, a rank 4 human's sense only extended a few feet away from them.
Once outside the camp, I quickly made my way to the hill. A few minutes later, the rest of the team gathered. Harold questioned me about the rank 4 ascender.
"Did they come close to the wagons?"
"No, they were patrolling the perimeter"
Harold sighed in relief before addressing the next move.
"We will rest here until sunrise, rotating night watch. I'll go first"
The night passed uneventfully. I had the last watch, and as the sun began to rise and the army camp was filled with noise, I woke up the other operatives. Once everyone was up, Harold spoke.
"Give it a moment"
He was observing the deconstruction of the camp. When the tents began to come down, Harold continued.
"Now"
There was a deafening explosion as eighty flame runes were activated. Pillars of fire tens of feet tall covered the food wagons. When the ringing in my ears stopped, It was replaced by screaming and shouting. A third of the food storage had been incinerated, and a fire was spreading quickly. Unfortunately, it put out in a few minutes by some ascenders with water essence skills. Seeing that the plan had been successful, Harold informed us of the next step.
"They now know that we are here somewhere, so being entirely stealthy is pointless. They will send out search parties, our next job is to ambush as many of them as we can. This should keep the commanders confused about our numbers and strength, as well as further delaying their departure. Magnus, you stay on this side of the camp with me. Cicely, Sanir, circle around to the other side"
Sanir and Cicely nodded before vanishing. I turned to Harold.
"I'll move to that rock outcropping"
I pointed to a large rock a few hundred feet north of the hill and activated [Shadow Cloak]. As Harold had predicted, after the camp calmed down and the soldiers regrouped, multiple search parties emerged. Each of them was similar to the patrol groups I had observed last night, having a group of 20 normal soldiers and one rank 2 ascenders. When one of the groups was about 500 feet(152m) away from me, I pelted them with wind bolts. It only took a few seconds for all of them to fall down dead. The two nearest groups noticed this, raised their shields, and approached cautiously. But to no avail, as my [Wind Bolt] tore through wood, steel, and flesh alike. With three groups being decimated, none of the others approached, they stood in formation, waiting for reinforcements. To my left, I heard screams and explosions, Harold letting off his long-range skills. Our attacks had completely halted the soldier's advance.
After a few minutes of nothing happening, a new group of people arrived from the camp, five rank 4s. One stood behind the others and seemed to be the leader. He walked with a natural elegance and carried a thin rapier with a handguard that looked more like a work of art than it did functional protection. The other four split into two groups that came towards Harold and I's position. A woman who looked like a withered vine and a buff and who carried himself with the arrogance of an expert approached the rock outcropping I was hiding behind. I fired a few wind bolts but they easily evaded them. I abanded long-range and conjured my shadow daggers before dashing at the buff man holding a large curved saber. With my [Agility] stat that was almost at 1000 and my multitude of buffs, I arrived in front of the man in seconds.
When I entered his sense range, his saber came crashing down towards me. I made a short jump to avoid it while using [Earth Manipulation] to disturb the ground under and around the strange woman. The arrogant man grinned as my feet fell towards his head. When I was still barely outside of his saber's range, I created a [Sky Step] under my feet. I pushed off in such a way that my body did a 180 flip in the air. The man's swing swiped by my head as I made another [Sky step] and pushed off as hard as I could. I activated [Assassinate], and my daggers, propelled by my point-blank leap, sunk to their hilts in the man's skull. The immense force also shattered the man's spinal cord in his neck, though he was already dead. I didn't bother pulling out the daggers, simply releasing them, jumping back, and reconjuring them.
I then turned to my left to see the withered lady crawl out of the jumble of earth I had created. She looked at her dead companion but then turned to me, seemingly uninterested. Then, green and black gas suddenly started to appear around her.
'Most likely some sort of poison, maybe toxin'
I backed up, wanting to stay away from the gas, and activated [Flame Lash]. A rope of flame appeared in front of me that I controlled to whip at the woman. When the flame hit the gas, there was a sizzling sound as a bit of the gas burned, but then my [Flame Lash] was snuffed out. The lady then raised her hand and multiple tendrils of gas rushed forwards.
'Well if one doesn't work, let's try a few dozen more'
I then proceeded to cast [Flame Lash] repeatedly, my reforged body lowering the cost by absorbing the surrounding essence. When the gas tendrils arrived, a wall of flame was already in front of me. The tendrils of gas managed to put out a few, but I just kept forming more. I made the ropes weave together into a blanket of flame and pushed it forward, constantly adding more. The sheer amount of fire pushed back the gas until the blanket had formed a dome around the woman.
She released a yell and my flames were put out. She looked even more haggard now and was surrounded by a dense cloud of gas. Her previous calm demeanor was gone, replaced with fury. Not bothering to form ranged attacks, she came charging at me. I quickly activated [Conjure Ice Armament] and a regal suit of full plate armor formed around me, entirely made of compressed ice essence. I then held my breath and charged at the woman. She seemed surprised and quickly drew a curved short sword. But charging at me had been her last mistake. Her physical abilities were below mine, and her weapon mastery was abysmal. Her sword did nothing to defend her as one of my daggers dug into her heart and the other severed her thin neck. As soon as she died, the thick gas dispersed. As I stepped back, I took a deep breath, and relized my armor was corroding.
'Some of that gas must have been acid'
I released my ice armor and observed the battlefield around me. The elegant man had not moved an inch, seemingly unconcerned about the death of two of his subordinates. Harold, on the other hand, was still engaged in a fierce battle with the other rank 4s.
'I guess I should go help him'