32 (II)

Ambush

Somehow, Adam did the impossible: He managed to fully, genuinely, and absolutely impress Shiv. “Well, damn. It’s like I’m looking at your father.”

The Young Lord failed to hide a blush. “Ahem. First lesson: Shut up. Second lesson: You listen. Listen to me.” He pointed at the forces on the ground. “You see them?”

“Yeah?” Shiv said.

“Do not touch them. If you get into the fray, I suspect that most of the slaves will die—and there are approximately… nine-hundred or so slaves in this caravan. Worse, you might scare that big creature, and if it starts stampeding, we could be looking at mass casualties. If we’re going to do a slave raid, then by the gods we’re going to do this right and precise. No collateral damage if we can help it.”

“Rightly said,” Uva said with a tone of respect in her voice.

Behind them, Valor chuckled.

“So… what do I do?” Shiv asked, feeling slightly offended. “And I don’t intend to just discharge my Momentum Core among all those people—”

“Right. Don’t intend. But how often does what you intend to happen transpire?” Adam asked.

Shiv thought back to his vampire hunting days and grunted an acknowledgement. He set himself on fire more than a few times to survive after being spotted or surprised. “Yeah. Sometimes…”

“‘Shit happens,’” Adam said. “That is what Captain Irons used to say at the academy for TacStrat101.”

“What’s that?”

“A class. On tactics and strategy. 101 means it’s for beginners.”

“Ah.” And now Shiv was feeling something he hadn’t for Adam in a while: Envy. The Young Lord might not have Shiv’s Path, but he spent years being a Pathbearer—being an actual warrior. Shiv wasn’t blind to tactics, but the approach one took to clearing lesser vampire nests alone was pretty different from what was needed to ambush a small enemy force of a few hundred other Pathbearers without killing any of their transported prisoners.

Especially the big one, Shiv thought. Don’t know how Adam plans to deal with the adult cave biter…

Adam continued. “So. This being 101, here’s the basics to an ambush. Before anything else is intelligence. Know their strength and composition. We have that, but things are still not optimal. We don’t know their habits, tactics, or schedule. But the Umbrals do, and this should be the last in the group for a while.”

“Okay,” Shiv said, actually listening now. “But… what am I doing—”

“I’ll get to that. Lesson two, Shiv.”

“Fine.”

“Tactics are a whole study in and of themselves,” Adam said. “There are numerous ways Pathbearers can support each other in combat. Just learning about how to counter Jump Mages is a nightmare—but thankfully, I have that covered.” Adam tapped a space mana arrow with a finger. “There are definitely no powerful Portomancers among that group because if there were, they would have just moved the biter—despite the mana strain that would cost. This also tells me that this isn’t a well-trained operation. Even poor militaries avoid skimping out on a capable Jump Mage.”

“So, you can kill them if they jump?” Shiv asked. “All of them?”

“At the same time? No. I won’t be able to track the spatial routes. But I can kill most of them before they ever jump. Them, and most of the perimeter guards. Now. Next part. We wish to kill the enemy but keep the slaves alive. That requires speed and accuracy at the same time.”

“And that’s you,” Shiv said, sighing at the Young Lord’s attempts to show off.

“No, it’s all of us. I can only get so many—and even then the Adepts will likely not die so easily either. Remember these letters: METTT. Mission. Enemy. Terrain. Troop reinforcement. Timeframe. I explained the first two to you somewhat. Terrain is our advantage—the enemy has, perhaps due to fear of the flora and fauna, kept away from the vegetation flanking the road. This is a mistake. But the vegetation can turn against us if a dedicated Pyromancer survives and ignites all that can burn. It’s hard to fight in an inferno.”

“You can get used to it.” Shiv shrugged. Both Uva and Adam stared at Shiv. “What?”

“For us normal people, burning alive isn’t that fun. So if we want to preserve the terrain advantage, we do this quick and brutal. We break their resolve. We crack their formation and send most of them running. Ikki and the others can cut down those in the thicket without too much trouble.”

The Young Lord let out a huff of consideration. “Another part of this is our own troop availability timeframe. There aren’t many of us, but we should be considerably stronger—at least individually. That will have to make up for a lot—and the fact that we don’t have what we need to achieve a proper ambush formation. But if you and Uva do your parts right, then I don’t think that will be that essential.”

“Oh, and what do you need from this absent sister?” Uva asked.

“At a baseline, for you to pin that monster,” Adam said, indicating the cave biter. “If you can keep it calm and still, that will be optimal. What might be better is if you can pacify any other mind mages in the zone before breaking the minds of the hidden slavers.”

Uva nodded. “I will see it done. But there is an issue of range…”

“Yes, I’ll need you to position yourself closer with your sisters. Rush in just enough to pass your Psychomancy field over the biter. Call out any impediments to me using your brooch. Then draw back after you’re done with your sisters. Do not risk discovery.”

“Understood.”

“Shiv,” Adam said. “You are going to be my bird of prey today.”

“I thought you were the hawk?” Shiv asked.

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“I am the hunter.” Adam grinned. “You will be my beast. The final parts for an ambush are surprise, speed, and violence of action. Your Momentum Core discharge will signal us to begin our offensive and allow us to achieve all three of the aforementioned components. You’re going after the rider—to ensure they don’t get away and call in reinforcements, and to deprive them of any aerial assets. Then, after you drop, I will indicate harder targets for you. Hopefully, by this time their formation will break, and most of them will be fleeing into the woods. The risk we face there is if the slaves start fleeing too and mixing in with the slavers. Alternatively, the enemy will hold their positions and fight. I suspect some slaves will die if that is the result. Whatever the case, I’ll strike at the most dangerous foes with my arrows. Just follow the shots.”

“So, you’re going to be the nail guiding the hammer, huh?” Shiv asked.

Adam eyed Shiv and snorted. “I told you, Master

Shiv, the metaphor is a hunter and his beast. Bring out your skin decoys too and wrap one around your armor. We can’t have the bastards thinking you’re at all human when the killing begins.”

***

“Join the Traders, he said. Avoid my own indenturement by securing contracts from the others.” Vet spat off the back of his wyvern, hoping his phlegm would land on the head of one of the slaves below. He had been circling the air for well over an hour now, making sure this group of louts actually arrived. The other riders were gone—they were probably in Little Gomorrah drinking it up and getting dirty with the succubi. And here he was again, stuck with monitoring detail. “It’s shit. It’s all shit. I hate this. I hate my life. And I hate the godsdamned slaves—just move! Just fucking move! You signed the felling papers, what are you regretting now?”

And now he was projecting. Because he signed the same papers they did under Compact. The only difference was that he had a Path that gave him the means and skills to be useful. Useful in the sense that he was worth more as a slave catcher than a slave. They, meanwhile, weren’t that useful. Because the System was a felling asshole that either made you someone that could decide their own fate, or someone that appeased someone of the Martial Paths to ensure their survival.

These people weren’t doing much appeasing. That meant they were stupid. That meant they didn’t understand some very simple things.

Vet didn’t blame the cave biter that much. The dumb creature had the intelligence of a dog that could talk, but it was also the size of a mountain. Vet wouldn’t take shit from most people if he were the size of a mountain. Well, unless they were like a Master Pathbearer or something, but like, there weren’t that many of those out there, really?

“Hungry!” the wyvern chirped. The damn thing’s long, snake-like neck kept flopping back as it tried to rear back and take a bite out of Vet. He kicked it in the face with his armored boot, reminding it that he was the rider, and not food.

“I godsdamned hate you too,” Vet said, spitting on its forehead. Why he got the Path of the Lancer, he would never know. But a Martial Path was a Martial Path, and it was better than being one of the chained shits below. As Vet passed over the edge of another mushroom cap, he saw that the dumb bastards hadn’t moved at all. “Great One’s Corpse, what is so hard? Just hit the stupid thing with mind magic. It barely has a mind to change! I swear, if I was down there—”

A sudden ripple of wind washed over Vet. The wyvern shrieked, its four insectoid wings jerking hard against a sudden rush of turbulence.

“Hold… felling still!” Vet cursed. “Where’d that bloody wind—”

And then his answer came in the form of a bomb. Or at least, Vet thought it was a bomb. Approximately three hundred meters away, an entire patch of the forest below simply disintegrated into paste and shrapnel. Vet blinked as he tried to control his wyvern, his mind struggling to process what he was witnessing.

A faint gleam in the distance was the only warning he got before the monster came.

As Vet chose the wrong time to blink, a missile hit him. A missile that held the mass of a small mountain. The only reason Vet survived was because his wyvern took the brunt of the impact—but it didn’t spare either of his legs. Vet screamed as his mount splattered apart beneath him while his lower body was shredded below the thighs. Something hard cracked into his chest, and Vet felt things inside him shatter.

He vomited blood inside his helmet, and his Berserker Rage Physicality Skill Evolution triggered. Rather than going into shock from the pain, Vet let out a primal scream and took the handaxe from his hip—a handaxe he swung hard against the offending missile that was somehow still grabbing him. His axe crashed against the missile to the accompaniment of thunder, but a moment later, Vet realized that there was no thunder at all—it was just the echo of the sound barrier being broken. And as his eyes cleared as well, he saw that it wasn’t a missile holding him, but a nightmare.

The thing

was shaped like a man but looked like a monster. It wore a coat of flayed skin over a dense exoskeleton. A large spear followed the monster, drilling through the air and bound to the beast by crimson mana—Biomancy. Then, there were its eyes. Eyes of pitch black surrounding rings of light at their center. Vet noticed the monster was wearing a peeled-off human face over its skull-like head, and it was studying him too, ignoring him as he swung his axe against its sides over and over and over…

Until the axe shattered, like glass against metal.

The nightmare then reached up and tore Vet’s helmet from his face. It stared at him for a moment thereafter before sighing. “Hm, no, nope, you’re too ugly-looking for me. I’ll take someone else instead.”

Something inside Vet broke. Tears spilled out of his eyes. He started shrieking. Warmth spread through his ruined greaves. He barely got a note out before the nightmare tightened its hand, shaped a spell, and demanded that Vet’s heart stop.

***

Intimidation > 14

“Well, at least I got something out of that,” Shiv muttered as he cast the dead rider aside. He suspected the man had Adept-Tier Toughness and some kind of Adept Physicality Skill Evolution, but not much else besides. Considering how much of Shiv’s kinetic energy the wyvern soaked, smashing into the beast first was a good idea. His brief glimpse into its biology also gave him some insights.

He was beginning to notice that many organisms—even plantlife—felt similar at the foundations when compared to people, despite the massive differences in structure and anatomy. Cells… There’s something there…

Trailing colors flashed far below. Shiv watched as a tide of spell-carrying arrows cut through the air. As he crashed through the caps of mega-fungi and dipped through the foliage, Shiv caught sight of slavers bursting apart, slavers burning, slavers dropping as mind magic arrows destroyed their consciousnesses. In the time it took for Shiv to rip the wyvern and its rider apart, Adam was butchering the weakest enemies wholesale—so quickly that the caravan was still in a stunned state.

A second later, the fleeing began. All sense of cohesion shattered. The cave biter let out a loud cry of: “WAIT! WHO IN BRAIN! WHO IN BRAIN WITH—I… I AM SLEEPY…”

The Deathless grinned. Nice going, Uva. He reached into his cloak to retrieve his brooch—because having it on him while he discharged Momentum Core would have disintegrated the device outright. “This is Shiv. Rider’s dead. Mount’s dead. Touching down soon.”

“Confirmed,” Uva said, sounding slightly distracted. “I have the beast. Their mind mages have been pacified as well. Note that some of the slavers are using the slaves as shields.”

Adam’s sneering laugh came through the brooch with an interference crackle. “Not for bloody long.”

Then, there came the sound of more arrows being loosed—ending with crackles of lightning and screams.

Adam’s going to be a real problem when his Marksmanship or whatever he has hits Master, Shiv thought. I’m kind of looking forward to it, actually…

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