May 6th, 629

General Gaffney didn’t have to give me the report. He had stopped doing so a while ago, knowing that there was little that could escape my knowledge, especially something so obvious. 

Stronghold Charlie was on approach. 

We had decimated several small armies of Scourge in our way, ultimately finding ourselves on the treacherous path toward the Stronghold ruins. The Stronghold had been difficult to attack precisely because of its location, which meant that moving Superheavy Tanks and hundreds of other armored vehicles along roads not meant for them was a tall task. Most ended up staying behind as terraforming measures took place, widening roads, carving out new ones, and building a path that would allow us to access the north. It would take some time, but it was through that path that we would gain access to what had originally been long established Scourge territory. 

Territory that hadn’t been intruded upon for many decades. 

Warlocks and Summoners were already figuring out how to tackle the task of building a bridge across Hare’s Pass, that nostalgic ravine that used to be the source of so many missions for the Pathfinders. Now nothing more than biomat-covered dirt and poisoned water, the place was a total wasteland. 

Even the Black Forest, that magical, beautiful canopy of lights and harmonious ecology was completely razed, no sign that it was ever there according to aerial scans. 

Despite difficulties, we managed to get several Superheavy Tanks through toward Stronghold Charlie as well as several armored transports full of our more specialized fighters. I had a Marshal with me as well, just in case they had another Authority 11 Royal on their side that needed to get taken care of. 

I glanced at a screen in the HUD of my exosuit. The local scans from jets above were showing a sizeable force of a few tens of thousands of Scourge. The main concern though was the fact that many of them weren’t monsters. 

We were finally encountering armies of Corrupted. 

Humans mutated almost beyond recognition. I had been expecting to encounter them sooner or later. The fall of the Treehouse had left the Scourge with many prisoners and victims. There were plenty that had come nowhere close to escaping. My retreat wave, which had to fight tooth and nail just to breach the encirclement and still lost just about everybody, had been one of the first to leave. The vast majority of the Trehouse’s forces hadn’t been ordered to retreat at all, left to fend for themselves and attempt to escape only after they realized that they had been left for dead. 

Now, we were encountering some of those forces. 

I spotted my gunships in the air, already aiming at the concentration of monsters. As we crested some hills, we finally laid eyes on the ruins. 

The Stronghold was just about entirely leveled, buildings replaced with towering organic constructs. Massive bloody veins extended from the tower of flesh in the center, extending into the biomat below and making it thicker than it had any right to be. 

Spore spewers filled the air with caustic gases, making it just as poisonous as everything else around here. It was a good thing that our armors and vehicles were environmentally sealed. 

As soon as we were within line of sight, we garnered a reaction from the Scourge forces around the place. Corrupted and an army of monsters started turning toward us under the beckon of their Scouts. 

I sent a signal to our birds in the sky, and as we moved into position for battle, they started chucking shells. 

Explosions dotted the army. The tanks around me went to rapid fire, our air support dropping bombs that uprooted the fleshly constructs. Mages found places to stand where they could cast their spells. 

The army started running toward us, but they had already been softened up. The Marshal suddenly appeared by my side. He looked toward me. I returned the gaze. 

Marshal Ryan Boulund was an Authority 11 Warlock whom Ironheart had recommended. He had always been moving with the Brigades before the Line had been established, always fighting, always eradicating every army he came across. Specializing in wide area spells, he was a walking disaster only lesser than the Sovereign Ironheart had killed not long ago. 

He didn’t look like much either. He was over a foot shorter than I was and was generally muted with his emotions. Sector 4 had reported a whole lot of nothing on him. He had no outstanding quirks, triggers, or attributes. He was so normal and plain that it was suspicious in itself. 

That was until they investigated his private residence and found that he really, really loved sculpting. I could vividly recall the pictures and footage of entire rooms filled with thousands of ice and stone sculptures, including one of a nude woman that he kept in his bed. 

Turns out he was quite the expressive man. And maybe glaringly autistic if the detail in his sculptures was anything to go by. 

I nodded to him.

“Marshal Boulund.”

“I sense nothing greater than Authority 10. Should I step in?”

He asked, turning his gaze toward the incoming army. I hummed in response. 

“If you didn’t mind saving me some money.”

He smirked a bit, then stepped forward while raising his foci. 

Even through my exosuit I could feel the temperature drop. It was always cold this far north, but after he started casting his spell, I could see little snowflakes form from the freezing moisture in the atmosphere. 

After that, his hybrid magic launched itself toward the army. 

Water and Earth magic intertwined and flash froze only moments before hitting the enemy, creating a wave of sharp ice crystals that shredded through everything it came across. Corrupted and monsters were skewered before their wounds froze over with permafrost. 

The weaker ones weren’t even graced with spikes. They were simply frozen, encased in ice that completely halted all life. 

Before I knew it, the entire army had been turned into a sea of bleeding ice. Only the most powerful could survive the wave, and those were swiftly taken care of as our Brigadiers moved in to finish them off. 

General Gaffney gave the order to move, and the tanks started rolling forward. Monsters turned into ice sculptures were run over and crushed, reduced to shattered crystals. Anything else, Marshal Boulund melted down, making sure our vehicles didn’t have terrain issues. 

Tens of thousands of monsters and Corrupted, rendered completely helpless before the might of a Marshal. It pissed me off every time I saw it. Boulund didn’t exert himself that hard either. He could do that dozens of times over, killing hundreds of thousands by himself before getting tired. Then it would just take a period of rest before he could do it again. 

I couldn’t imagine how many lives could’ve been saved by the Kingdom if their Marshals got off their sorry asses and did the same. They treated Marshals and Sovereigns like a nuclear option, never to be used at the expense of so many thousands of lives. 

And that was exactly why I was so disruptive to the symphony. I simply didn’t give a damn and used the weapons at my disposal. 

We rolled forward, killing off anything that was lucky enough to survive. Then we finally rolled onto the old grounds of Stronghold Charlie. 

It was nearly unrecognizable, not that the salvo of bombs helped. I still saw how the structures morphed to the natural formation of the hill, but otherwise, nothing remained of what once was. 

I felt Umara approach as I stared at the location of where the Pathfinder barracks used to be. Now in its place were the charred remnants of some spore spewers. 

I sighed, letting the memories pass through me. I could see the entire base from where I was, barely distinguishable from reality. And as much as I wanted to feel nostalgic about where I was, there was nothing here in this place that could feed it. Not even the same air. 

Everything had been poisoned. 

“Are you alright?”

Umara’s voice reached my ears despite the humming treads of tanks. Her large witch hat filtered the air from anything that would seek to dirty her body or lungs. 

“I’m fine. We’ll spend some time here at the Stronghold, help coordinate the terraforming. Once we can get that bridge across Hare’s Pass built, we’ll make our move toward the Treehouse.”

“Sounds like as good a plan as ever.”

“Well, they’ve got a whole host of Corrupted. We may not need artillery, but we’ll still need to prepare. That army has some intelligence on top of their numbers.”

I explained while going through what intel we had. The Treehouse had been turned into a corruption site only days after it fell. It had been years since then, and it had acted as a springboard for those millions of monsters that sieged the Line during the Battle of Heaven’s Fire. 

It had been turned into a Nexus, a site of sustenance and transportation for those Gargantuan Intestines. It was the point at which the intestine which supplied reinforcements against the Line started. While moving, we had been cutting into the intestine, severing its connection and blowing it to bits. It would die off before long. 

But we still had to take out the roots. That Nexus would be the first main root that we pulled out and burned to cinders. 

We had plans to soften them up as well. If we still only had propeller planes then it would be too risky, but with our new lines of jet aircraft, we could operate in the skies uncontested. Whether it was missile strikes or bombing runs, for as much time as it took to establish a proper bridge across the Pass, we would be firebombing that Nexus. 

Even if they decided to send troops to attack us in retaliation, there was a day of travel between us and them. Anything they sent would be decimated before it could reach us, not to mention the defenses we could mount. In time, we would also have artillery operational. Even if they sent everything they had, their most intelligent option, we would be entrenched. 

Stronghold Charlie had been placed where it was because of its advantageous position. The Scourge would have no chance against us. 

Camp was quickly set up after we arrived. Warlocks and Summoners started to raze the local terrain to make the place livable, removing the biomat and expelling atmospheric contaminants while setting up shielding around the area. Supplies were dropped and move vehicles started moving in. 

I made sure everyone knew their jobs, which meant delegating primary tasks to my Generals. Once that was finished though, they needed nothing more than general oversight to correct any mistakes or deficiencies, if there were any. 

That meant I had plenty of free time, which I put to good use. 

I was still refining my own personal technology. After plenty of time taking over the Citadel at the Island of Continuance, more old tech had been found and sent over. I analyzed as much as I could, learnt anything I could dissect from the Mantle’s advanced Psykic and computational devices. The Wonderland facility on the island did the same. Years later they were still primarily studying the Anomaly. As important as it was, all information was strictly confined to that island. The main teams on the mainland knew nothing about the place, let alone what was being studied. 

Plenty of progress had been made regarding both the anomaly as well as the automatons. I used everything they gave and refined it myself. 

While the core automaton technology still continued to elude me, even superficial comprehensions were revealing things about the nature of Psyka that I would never have found otherwise. 

All of it helped toward my advancement, even if I wasn’t studying my advancement formations. 

The thing about summoners was that they were thinkers. They could advance without combat. In fact, such was the norm for all summoners. Even I had limited gains from battle. It primarily helped me in the act of draining my Psyka, which stressed my regeneration and thereby filled my mind with Psyka. Oftentimes I would regenerate while sleeping, and I would dream about my Psykic comprehensions. 

However, there were other ways to achieve the same effect without a hint of combat or danger. Combat had always been something I engaged in because I wanted to, not because I had to. It did more for me by simply keeping me sharp and motivated. There was nothing about shooting guns packed with Psyka that helped me with my comprehensions about the nature of the world. 

So while I simply sat back in my tents or workshops and studied, I was making breakneck progress toward Authority 9. Every new device and piece of tech I built, every new enchantment I designed, every new comprehension I discovered helped me toward that next realm. 

I already knew that it wouldn’t be much longer until it arrived. The advancement formations themselves had almost been completed in my mind. After that, it was just a matter of cultivating the power. 

I just hoped that I would be fast enough. I wanted to acquire what was in my 9th Star before the song of desolation befell my Iron Legion.

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