Chapter 155: Victory, At No Cost

After arriving at base, I settled various affairs like turning in camp equipment and paying for the tear Eric left on my tent. Then, I went with Pollux to file the mission report. 

Giving a mission report had been covered in the Silver Six books. There was a paper to fill out, and I had to walk Polly through everything we did so she could log her own data. Pollux was there to help me in case I missed anything, but since my memory was good, he wasn’t needed, to his immense pleasure. 

I was now in charge of debriefs and mission reports for the Pathfinders. It was a bunch of office worker crap, but I wasn’t that opposed. Taking on a responsibility like this got me out of other things. 

Once all that stuff was filed away, Polly sat me down.

“You did well for your first mission. I’ll be talking with Pollux later, but based on his mood, I’d say he has no issues with you.”

“He wasn’t very happy this morning.”

“Hardly bearing on your performance, and I know that snobby dick Eric is probably giving you trouble too, so don’t worry about it. Your ranged combat ability speaks for itself already. Scouts that like to linger in the distance have always been an issue. With you there, they may just become a non-factor during missions. Those golden eyes of yours also seem to be a valuable asset. So as long as you use that head of yours and keep yourself away from trouble like you did yesterday, you’ll soon carve out your own spot with the Pathfinders. They’ve needed someone who can handle the intelligence side of things for a while. I’m hoping you can fill that role.”

“I’ll do my best. And if it means anything, I’ve already read and memorized the Golden Trio books. I’d like to say that I can handle anything that might need that.”

“Is that right?”

She looked at me with a faint sense of fascination before turning away and diving back into her prior work. 

“I’ll think about it. I’d like to wait for the approval to come down for your promotion first. Just focus on adapting to life here. I don’t need you dying because you tried to bite off too much responsibility.”

“Understood.”

I gave her a salute before leaving. 

Since we had just finished a mission, there was nothing else to do for the rest of the day. I decided to go fill myself up, since we had gotten back at around lunchtime. 

I spoke with Pollux for a while on my way to the mess hall – he thankfully didn’t chew me out too much about the gunfire today, given he was probably hungry too – and sat down with Amary and Co. From them, I gathered a bit more information about the base and its environment and pieced together what my life would look like here for the foreseeable future. 

Missions like the one we just got back from didn’t happen every day. Two or three times a week seemed to be the usual maximum. And if we weren’t doing missions, our jobs consisted of either training or occasional patrols, which was just busy work. 

The Pathfinders were responsible for the intelligence side of this base’s operations. We collected data, ensured sensors were working, did reconnaissance and generally kept tabs on everything happening from the base to Hare’s Pass. We occasionally got a hunter-killer mission on a Scout Troop or a small enemy encampment and the like. Since we weren’t that strong, our scope was limited in regards to combat. Very occasionally, we were given special orders to operate with the Snow Doves. 

Everything else was handled by everyone else. All the grunt work around the base, such as logistics, patrolling, night watch, and other miscellaneous tasks, were handled by the lower level individuals. And anything that required combat power was handled by the Snow Doves. 

So the Pathfinders were in the middle stratum of Stronghold Charlie’s hierarchy. From what I gathered, this base held about a company’s worth of soldiers, between 300 and 400, along with another several hundred other grunts. The Snow Doves consisted of about 40 of those, while the Pathfinders were another 40 or so. There was another base of soldiers, consisting of some at the level of the Snow Doves, but those guys were apparently out at a forward base somewhere in the boonies. Besides that, everyone else was lower level, supporting the operations of everyone above them. Logistics makes the world go ‘round. 

The Pathfinders were in a pretty decent position. They got to remain pretty detached from the really dangerous battles and had a good amount of time to themselves. The Snow Doves had even more time off, but they also put their lives on the line in the big battles for it. 

That meant that I’d have enough time to train, which I planned on taking full advantage of. 

After eating lunch, I disappeared into my room instead of joining Amary in the common area to hang out. There, I dug into my advancement formation, continuing from where I was rudely interrupted. 

Given some time to think, I had finally figured out some of the quirks of these formations. They were baby steps, but I had to start somewhere. At some point, brute forcing your way over the learning curve was necessary. There wasn’t any easy way around it. 

So that’s what I did. I had expended minimal energy today, so my mind was sharp. I was also learning to harness the sheer power of my mind better, beyond simply memorizing and searing information into my brain. 

There was a reason summoners were the smartest. The Spark was like a secondary mind, another processor that worked alongside the brain. I could assign it to work, allocating its power to carry out tasks ranging from automating my telepathic connections to keeping track of all the little types of squiggly runes and shapes and arrays within my advancement formation. The best thing about it was, unlike my mind which could still lose track of some details, my Spark had a perfect ‘memory’. It didn’t remember things long term – a task my brain still had to carry out – but like RAM, it could temporarily retain batches of information for me to easily pull on when I needed it. It could also repeatedly feed data to my mind, resulting in the information being repeated in a redundant loop, a technique I used to memorize those books in mere hours. 

All of this meant that my advancement formation was just a little less daunting. 

I had cradled my Orb in Sawn’s workbench, using it to project the massive advancement formation into a good chunk of my room. 

My advancement formations were generally shaped like spell circles, except now, it was a 3D constellation, more spherical than flat. As my eyes glanced between symbols, I cataloged the differences between each symbol before drawing them with my Psyka in the air. I would mimic them as best I could before chaining different portions of the formation together. And, to test it, I would run power through it and see if I got anything coherent in return. 

These formations were supposed to move the Magika from a White Crystal and my Psyka in a very specific way through my mind, resulting not just in an increase in power, but a transformation. That meant that any given part of the formations should, complete or not, move something in a specific way. 

Of course, I didn’t know if the right something was being moved in the right way, or how it should be moving, or whether it should be moving something at all. The formations generally worked as a whole, not as pieces, so what I could test out was limited given the information I had. But I had to start somewhere. So long as the power that was being moved wasn’t flying out of control, and I could discover what kind of directions each symbol and rune provided, I could gradually learn the language, understand what the formation was trying to do, and piece it together. 

But, as with most things, getting started was the hard part. The energy consumption was far beyond anything I had done before, as I dumped energy into learning everything, rectifying mistakes, maintaining precision, testing formations, and on and on and on. It wasn’t even just brute force work; I also had to slog through the sheer amount of information in the results, isolate what was important, and infer what was going to happen, constructing logic chains similar to equations to discover unknown variables. 

It was all rather exhausting. By comparison, using my power for shooting at stuff was way more enjoyable. 

It was only when dinner came around after several hours that I finally stopped and put everything aside. I had gone through perhaps 80% of my Psyka and was still barely getting started. 

Hopefully my dreams would help me out at night. Lord knows I’d need the assistance if I wanted to keep the pace of my advancements. 

……

…

Apparently, the Pathfinders were often given leave during their days of downtime. 

We weren’t given stuff to do every day. After we returned from my first mission, we were given two days off. Our Stronghold wasn’t responsible for pushing the front lines forward. We just had to make sure no monsters slipped past and snuck behind us. That meant there were often periods of inactivity on both sides. 

During our days off, we had the option of heading to the nearby town. 

It was called Frostfront. It only had a population of a few thousand, but because of the relatively high level of soldiers at Stronghold Charlie, the town was richer than most, since smiths and enchanters took residence there. That meant it was also the place where everyone went to maintain their gear or buy new things. The base even outsourced some of its work to them. 

There were also plenty of entertainment opportunities, which is why the soldiers loved going there. It was much more lively than the stagnant Stronghold. 

From what I heard from the men, it even had a brothel, whatever that would look like in a town setting. I only remembered the ones from the red light district in the Founder’s Market, which were massive.

The facilities there in regard to enchanting would possibly be useful in the future, if I needed to prototype designs I made, but I didn’t go now. I was too focused on my advancement formation. Not only that, but I took a few glances at the enchanting lessons on my workstation, seeing what it was all about. 

Turns out, it wasn’t too different from what I did with my advancement formations. 

Enchanting was a warlock’s arena. Only they could actually make enchantments work with materials. That was how we got enchanted stuff like the Aerials or enhanced structural materials for the obscenely tall buildings that spit in the face of engineering and architecture. 

But warlocks didn’t have the brains to create complex enchantments. That, or they didn’t care to try any harder. So summoners were recruited to help them. And because enchanting was much like programming, but for magic, summoners were able to codify everything and turn it into something they could work with. 

Now, there was a whole dictionary full of magical symbols and terms that one needed to memorize in order to enchant things. It was its own language with grammar and nuances and all the other complicated things that came with a coding language. 

That wasn’t to mention that, because this was magic, there was technically only one language, unlike computer programming, and this world’s enchanters had yet to unearth everything, let alone find out all the different ways they could build syntaxes and such. It was still a growing field, and those at the bleeding edge were just the ones who were creative enough to first find the best ways to utilize and apply new discoveries. 

However, from my perspective, it would actually be an incredibly easy field to get into. I had no issues memorizing things, especially when they were already set in stone. It wasn’t like my advancement formation, where I needed to discover the definitions all on my own. I just had to go through Sawn’s dictionary and learn the language. Then, I could start enchanting at any time. The only difficulty would be utilizing the language to effectively create my own programs, like software engineering. 

I was no software engineer, but who said I couldn’t learn? Just based on my increased speed of thought, I’d learn in five years what any ordinary person would learn in a decade or three. That wasn’t even counting my Spark, or whatever power I gained from future advancements. 

I could barely hold myself back from diving in, but until I made some worthy progress with my advancement, I put it on hold. 

One thing at a time. 

Like that, my two days of free time passed. Pollux actually held training for the knights and warlocks, but since I was neither knight nor warlock, I wasn’t included. Even then, a few hours of target practice every day hardly distracted me from my studies. 

And then, after those two days, we were ordered into mission readiness. 

We got a new assignment, and it wasn’t replacing sensors. 

……

“Alright, Pathfinders. Today, you’ve got a target. This will be a joint strike with your friends at the FOB Treehouse. We’ve been picking up Scourge activity around Treehouse for a while now, and the latest recon suggests an imminent strike. We’re going to hit them first.”

Pollux listened to the mission brief for a few seconds before tuning it out. It was nothing he hadn’t heard or done before, not to mention that he knew of this operation yesterday. 

Instead, his attention was on the Orb in front of him. 

Although it was a famous event, there were few copies of this video. He had only received it from a friend in the Capital who luckily recorded it himself. 

Even then, the fact that this video was in circulation at all was telling to its fame. Video recording was still a new and expensive technology. Only the most interesting videos would be saved. 

And Pollux could understand why this one made that list. 

John’s consecutive battles and victories were eye opening. The metal pipe that breathed fire like a dragon, the poison gas that could cause horrible blistering, and whatever weapon that allowed him to blow holes in massive earthen walls and defeat the earth warlock behind them all. 

That last one earned Pollux’s scrutiny. If John were a knight, he’d need to utilize Emission and destroy the walls with concussive Vigor. A warlock would need explosive fireballs or compressed air. 

So what did John use? What could possibly allow a summoner to cause such explosions? Pollux only saw one, the explosion that blew down the wall at the end of the battle, revealing John and the bloodied earth warlock he held by the neck. But when he thought about how this weapon would work, rather than simply the result, he found himself stumped. That itself spoke volumes. 

Not to mention the flame thrower and poison gas. He knew that those two things simply contained their contents and expelled them, but the fact still remained that John was a summoner, incapable of wielding the elements. Since he had to pull on weapons from whatever dimension summoners had access too, what the hell kind of dimension was it? Some theorized that summoners called upon weapons from other worlds. What kind of world would produce such destructive and mysterious weapons?

Finally, there was John’s battle with Ponteck, which was the most eye opening. While watching it, Polux realized that he had underestimated John’s ability to survive, as well as his cunning. 

The video showed John’s clones, which he used to confuse Ponteck. This alone revealed how powerful his Aura was. For the level he was at, it was extraordinary. He had developed his own technique! Not even Pollux had done that. 

Then, there was the lethality. John could punch through Ponteck’s skin, someone who could use Emission. Disregarding Pontecks prodigious talent, breaking through that level of Vigor was incredibly difficult for those who couldn’t also use Emission. Knights were the toughest for a reason. Under no ordinary circumstances should John have been able to harm Ponteck in any significant capacity. 

But he actually beat him, reducing him to a bloody mess before taking victory through a slug fest. Just watching it, Pollux found himself scoffing, thinking it asinine that a summoner could ever fight hand to hand against a knight. 

But the video didn’t lie. 

“…”

Once it ended, Pollux sent the Orb back into his storage, contemplating in silence. 

No wonder John had so many eyes on him. He was a rising summoner promising unheard potential. He was already an extraordinary fighter as he was now, let alone what he could become later. Pollux didn’t know the details, but he was assuming that John had access to a particularly amazing advancement path, which would be the only logical reason he had so much power. 

Now, things were making more sense. Pollux would also have to rethink how he used John. His ranged abilities were clear, but he was also smart and capable of surviving even against a knight on his heels. It was clear that he wouldn’t have to baby him so much. He could afford to draw out more of that lethality. 

Though, there was one other thing that caught his eye. 

John wasn’t exactly subtle with how intimate he got with that one girl. 

“Talerria…”

He remembered that name. The warlock Marshal, the rich one who controlled the City of Joffrun. John was actually chummy with that woman’s daughter, which wouldn’t be possible unless the woman herself approved. 

So if something happened to John, he’d have to answer to her personally… and that was the last kind of person he wanted to be on the bad side of. It wouldn’t be much better than angering a Sovereign. A Sovereign would probably just kill you. A Marshal couldn’t do that, so they’d just make your life a living hell instead. 

He had guessed this before, but now he was certain. John was a delicate bomb in his hands. He was thankfully capable of surviving some normally hopeless situations, like during the tournament, but one small slipup and he was dead. He had to make sure John never faced anything too far beyond his ability to survive. 

Pollux sighed as the briefing came to a close. This next battle would be a good guage, but he still couldn’t help but be anxious. 

A glass cannon indeed. Powerful but weak. Pollux had never seen someone who tread that line so precariously. 

He glanced at John, who was conversing with Polly post-brief. The other Pathfinders passed him by, preparing to deploy. 

He couldn’t feel John’s Aura. Turns out, that was because his own was actually less developed. And in that position, John would be able to know when someone had their eyes on him. He’d be able to sense their emotions, perhaps even a glimpse of their thoughts. Aura was a mysterious and sometimes scary thing. It was discomforting to know that one of his soldiers could actually see through him. 

With another sigh, he started walking off. John would fit in nicely with the Pathfinders; he wasn’t worried about that. But time would tell how. Would he be another soldier like the rest of the Pathfinders, or would he be an elite, someone perhaps destined to become a Snow Dove? Maybe he would become something else entirely. 

Thinking about it gave him a headache, so Pollux halted that line of thought and focused on the mission ahead. No matter what, his objective didn’t change. 

Victory, at no cost. Hopefully John would be a means to that end. 

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