"Save us! General!"
26 tattered clothed soldiers ran while screaming their lungs out.
"Who's stupid plan was this?!" Captain Cain yelled.
24 fingers pointed at Hector. They split apart to avoid the hurled rock before sending a sharpened wooden stick back.
"Don't waste your time with a single pathetic arrow!"
"What do you expect?! We don't have any arrows left!"
Hector laughed and punched another rock that was thrown at them.
"Stop laughing Hector!"
They gained unwanted attention by screaming for help and the Trolls immediately started their rock toss as they closed the distance. The 26 of them could only run, they didn't even know enemy numbers but there was a whole base of them that they caught the attention.
"I'll haunt you if I die Hector!"
"They're closing in fast! These aren't your random bastards!"
"Come on, they have way longer legs!"
"Shut up and pick up the pace!" Captain Cain silenced their complaints.
Hector continued to holler for General Truewater.
"Inc-"
They were all alert and saw the shadow from the sky expand rapidly, multiple Trolls were dropping on them from an impossible height when none of these giants were capable of flight.
Captain Cain tossed the slower mage away while he remained and took the airdrop on. All of them were splattered with blood hard enough to topple a tree.
""CAPTAIN!""
Shellshocked.
Some of them managed to get their surrounding buddies to get a hold of themselves.
"Scatter!" Hector's squad leader commanded.
A casual glance around showed Hector that their opponents were a squad of Grandmasters. Slim Trolls.
Too slim to be considered a diet choice and the paler skin tone that barely had a hue of green indicated to him that this squad wasn't your average Trolls.
'I should've studied their tribes, damn it. Captain…' Hector blamed himself. Deaths from his idea were on him.
He readied a quadra-enhanced mega panch to distract the three that landed on his captain. It was to avenge his captain, release his frustration and distract as many of them as he could to buy time for his allies. Unfortunately, there were five more Trolls that were spread out. He could only hope that some of his buddies could escape.
'They were still far, how did these guys catch up so fast? Is it a speed focused tribe or one that can fly or did I underestimate their physical superiority? ' Hector clenched his teeth when he realised that even just four elements tore his body internally.
Surprisingly, even after the dust cloud was starting to settle and his friends run a distance away there was no attack. There was a lot of blood though. Hector squinted before he threw his punch.
The only thing left on the ground was a mesh of torn flesh and broken bones poking out from them.
And a grumble of pain from a human voice.
Hector threw away his preparations for a mega panch and dashed into the crater that his captain was in. He saw a familiar arm under the fleshy remains and quickly dragged his captain out, hoping that the man was in one piece.
He swallowed his spit and urge to vomit when he saw his captain's mashed-up body that was actually still in one piece. He rearranged Captain Cain's limbs as fast but carefully as possible before putting that body over his back.
Hector burst away immediately but something grasped his entire calf from ankle to knee. He wailed.
The regenerating Troll crushed his leg in its grasp like a tomato.
Hector saw himself as normal. He didn't have high tier or levels of pain resistance nor did he have any skills to toggle pain receptors off. He was lost from shock and was too stunned from pain to react or come up with a course of action. He didn't have a body that moved by itself or beastly fighting instincts.
A few wooden sticks that acted as arrows pierced into the giant arm that crushed his leg but it didn't bring any sort of reaction.
The Trolls were beginning to separate from each other as their body regained enough of their humanoid shape to be recognised as living organisms.
Perhaps it was due to how badly damaged the arm that crushed his leg was but 24 idiots came back and cut the arm off to free Hector.
"Get a hang of yourself!" Words weren't really getting through to the hoarsely wailing Hector but another bout of pain did. The sting on his face woke him up from his stupor.
Captain Cain was taken away from him and he was similarly thrown onto someone's back. 4 squads surrounded them and rained every bit of strength they had to destroy or slow down the regeneration of these Trolls.
All of them knew to go for the limbs while the squad on injury duty escorted Hector and their captain at full speed ahead. The squads were rearranged and he realised that only the fastest feets were on the squad carrying him. The remaining water and wood mage also stayed behind as they were the best choice for locking and delaying the Trolls.
'No…no!' Hector didn't have the strength to voice out. His body didn't even have the time to heal before it was subjected to more torture. It shut down and his muscles didn't listen to him.
Hector could only hear more screams from his buddies and a useless function of his body continued to work. He cried but not for long.
"Ha…hahaha."
He forced his moist eyes up when they stopped moving and he heard suppressed laughter from his buddies.
The dim shadows they were covered by already told him enough. They were surrounded.
His world went white when the largest fist he had ever seen came propelling towards them. The fist could easily hit all of them.
And it did.
❅❅❅
"How did you get beaten?" Ning Xin asked.
The two of them were still lying in defeat.
"Strong and skilled dwarf. He countered my sound magic with a pulse of mana to wash away the vibrations." Ebony replied.
Sonic Intrusion had been getting so useful that nothing much really stopped it before this other than sheer toughness of a material or monster. They didn't think about reflecting his mana vibration with another pulse of mana. It didn't even have to be at equal frequency since the Dwarf simply washed and stabilised his vibrations just enough so that it was ineffective.
"Sounds like a good technique, I should pick it up before your sound magic destroys Scorchy and Scorchie. What else?" Ning Xin pondered, she had been relying on high-quality equipment to deal with his sound and gravity magic.
After she got her magic body, she just started to get him to train her gravity and sound resistance without her equipment on.
"His earth magic, I had my domain on and was alert but I couldn't sense any movement under me before that snakehead rose from under me. I couldn't react fast enough, not even my domain or Will pulled me out in time."
"A warrior strong enough to push you and a mage skilled enough to exceed your body and mind's reaction?"
"One person, yes."
They went into detail about his fight but got interrupted.
"How long are you going to sleep there? Get up, meditate or whatever. We have to be in position in six hours. Introduce yourself to the first assault squad and get a briefing from me in my tent 4 hours later." Commander Wil knocked his head and Ning Xin's mask with his metal club.
'Didn't get to see him fight.' Ebony didn't know he was thinking the exact same thing as his battle-loving companion.
He only remembered the old man stopping him from cutting the lizard woman's arm off and casually pushing his greatsword out.
He stood up and they returned to the camp. It was surprisingly quiet.
"We're about to move off, they need all the rest they can get. First time on the battlefield youngins?"
"Mmm." They nodded.
"We're as out front as you can get. You'll learn to get whatever sleep you can."
Ning Xin looked away and he could tell from the tiny bobbing that she was sniffing something.
"I'll go help." She turned and walked away.
Commander Wil prodded.
"She's a chef, she probably went to the cooks." He answered
"Ah. Being young sure is nice but confident as you are, make sure she gets some rest. Don't forget to show up for the briefing." Commander Wil shooed him away but Ebony was planning on following her anyway.
The militia's camp had thousands of people and about a dozen men and women took on the duties of cooking for everyone. Ebony sort of assumed that they weren't so centralised and would break off into groups and only cook for themselves but he was proven wrong.
Ning Xin jumped into the scene with ease by asserting herself as a chef and using one of the empty stations. Apparently, a few chefs died in their previous mission and with permission from the person in charge of logistics, she could easily begin using their ingredients.
Ebony had no place here.
'Oh yeah, I could set up my forge here. The state of some of their equipment is horrible.' Ebony might be unfamiliar with repair work of any kind but he had to start somewhere and with these people's equipment, no one would be surprised if they broke.
He could simply knock some of his mana into it and when he becomes confident with those materials perhaps he could help lay on some runes. Most of them didn't look like they had any magical properties. As for those that had good equipment, he recognised them to be ones that he or Ning Xin had fought nearer the end of their little test.
But not today, he needed all the mana he could recover. He had 5 Glacial Models in his bag, the rest was usually spent in spars and training. He spent the next few hours near the eating and cooking house recreating Glacial Models. He renewed his Will upon the 5 old Models but not much changed. It was just a habit that also let him play around with 'Will'.
It had been a surprise that none of the Frost Elves could do what he did and create clones that can fight. Even if he didn't consider the non-combatant villagers, both Koawe and Korben couldn't replicate it to the extent that he could.
That didn't make him a better ice mage than them. They were also capable of imbuing their Will into a mass of ice mana but they had to imbue Will in real-time and even then, they were not very capable of combat. Ebony just had to do it once, he didn't have to 'feed' Will constantly and they didn't need specific instructions to fight properly.
If there was one area he improved it was that in his domain, the Frost Elves couldn't fully tear away his control over ice mana. Even Koawe could at best redirect his ice magic to a small extent and he needed too much concentration to be worth the effort. That was a massive improvement and he had one less worry of his magic becoming useless in front of a greater ice mage.
Something he still couldn't do was to accurately gauge how much mana his opponent has left. Supposedly one of the basics when it comes to fights between two mages or higher level combat. So Ebony was a little interested in how much he wore his Dwarven opponent out, was attempting to draw it out into a battle of attrition a good idea?
A bowl of meat stew entered his line of sight while he was filling vials of his blood. He stretched his arm out to serve her a fresh meal too but she didn't want it. She sat beside him with a bowl of her own and they ate in silence.
"You're fine with eating out in the open?"
Ning Xin paused and he waited.
"I forgot. Never mind, it doesn't matter anymore. Sister Jing never cared anyway and they never considered me as one of them."
"But you'll still wear that."
She touched her mask.
"It's what my mother and grandmother wished for, although they never said that. How's the stew?" She changed the subject.
"It's pretty bad." He replied honestly. His sense of taste has completely recovered for a long time now.
"I thought so too. I couldn't use much meat and seasonings are limited too so it's diluted. It was my first time cooking such a large quantity, the pots were huge!"
It was time for the briefing so they had to cut their conversation short. Meal time was more than sufficient as rest. They were so weak that a short spar could tire them out.
They were late, commander Wil's tent was full. They were greeted by both familiar and unfamiliar faces. The ugly-faced swordmaster and master warrior that was pushed to the floor in his domain, the lizard woman who only had scaled arms but mostly human, a few of their other opponents and the Dwarf who beat him up.
His kidnapper wasn't present.
According to Ning Xin's intuition and his own senses, there were a few more that should be more than capable of beating them up. All of which were Grandmasters. Ebony might not be able to Identify them all but he was capable of gauging from their overflowing essence. It was now clear to him why Identify could differentiate between ranks, it was far too easy to sense. It wasn't simply the quantity of essence, it was the quality. Like the qualitative difference between different rarities of mana ores. Of course, there are many ways that one can hide their aura.
'No, those few are masters too.' Ebony glanced at the side, 5 of them had strong auras but not quite like the Grandmasters.
It was pretty nice to know that there were strong people fighting for their homeland but also showed him how dire the situation was. He wouldn't probably get a clearer picture after a fight or two on the battlefield that he was on.
"Hurry it up, newbies! We ain't got all day." Scaled arm lady complained.
"Aight, everyone's here. Introduce yourselves youngins." Commander Wil stepped in.
"Ebony."
"Scarlet."
"Is this colouring class or what?"
A bout of laughter was raised but those that got beat up didn't join in. Only middle-aged and older men and women laughed.
Commander Wil unrolled a large scroll onto the table, uninterested in introducing the others to them.
"Scry chart?" Ning Xin murmured.
"Ay. Good eye you have there young lady."
"Courtesy of the Empire, it's updated every half an hour during day time and every ten minutes at night. Those Foxmen are working hard."
He noticed the ear twitch from the masked lady beside him but now wasn't the time to converse with her.
Ebony looked at the scry chart, it was a map of the battlefield. It showed where Fifth and Fourth Tide nothing further east, the map wasn't big enough for that. The cities had red colour patches here and there, concentrated on the walls. Further up front were three thick red lines, they were the Imperial bases. The front line where they were currently had the second thickest and darkest red lines.
Beyond that was an assortment of green hues dotted and splattered all over the brown map.
Commander Wil saw their confusion as to how to read the map since there wasn't a legend table but he didn't have time to explain.
"This is where our camp is." The old man pointed his club at a light red dot. The map zoomed in and got clearer but only the colours and their separation.
"These two bases are our targets today." One was a lime green dot 5 to 6 times larger than their militia's camp. The other was a dark green line that stretched out a few centimetres on the map.
"First assault squad will take on the Benumbed tribe together with first support. The others will take hit-and-run tactics with the main forward base."
It appeared that there were other squad leaders in the tent and not everyone was of the same squad as they were.
"Missy general's orders were to mess with them for 2 days but we'll scrap that crap. We hit Benumbed tribe fast and hard, hopefully wiping them out or at least making them retreat."
Commander Wil then informed the squad leaders on where they should position themselves and to coordinate their operation's timing properly. The bulk of the militia would be distracting the main forward base with ranged bombardment and to stop them from sending reinforcements to the Benumbed tribe.
The old man dismissed them but the two of them remained to get more information.