abcnovels
Chapter 148: Enter silently, go out with the boom
Chapter 148: Enter silently, go out with the boom
Not every part of the camp was suitable to use for an exit.
Obviously, first things first, it had to be on the edge of the camp. But beyond that… It had to be as far away from the huge flames as possible. The more obstacles there were in the way of those leaving the camp, the better.
Those and all sorts of other considerations led me to guide the entire group right back to the spot where one of the patrolmen tried to stop us.
By now, only the suspicious man remained, staring off at the nearby fires consuming the supply depot.
'They are pretty well organized, I will give them that,' I thought, noticing how there was already a line forming of people carrying water to try to quell the fires. At the same time, Fay finally began her bombardment, drawing as much attention away from our group as she could by showering the other side of the camp with her fires.
Conditioned by the earlier attacks, whoever heard the massive noise of the familiar attacks, rushed to either raise a barrier or find one to hide beneath.
Right at this moment, a girl walked forth, standing right between my group and the guard who, despite looking our way, appeared to be extremely dazed.
BOOM!
The botched explosion went off behind our backs, this time much louder. The fires it caused weren't as well-hidden as the one in the blaze nearby, alerting more and more people around.
We moved a bit closer, just a few steps away from where we could make our exit and disappear into the darkness of the muddy plain, hidden in its cold embrace from the enemy pursuit.
Faster.
Now that our disguise was down, the time pressure grew only stronger. And despite Fay's best efforts, someone was bound to realize that her hammering down on the barriers despite little to no results… maybe weren't aimed at causing as much damage as possible.
And once people would arrive at this simple conclusion, this entire camp would be after my neck!
We moved closer and closer. All the way to just a few steps away from the girl who stood in our path.
Taking a few hurried steps, one of the divines rushed forth and reached out for the girl's arm…
'Good thinking,' I thought, praising the man in my mind as, under the pressure of leading the group through the enemy camp, I completely forgot about an important part of the mission!
The young guard finally noticed us. And most likely by catching the change in the man's expression, the girl suddenly spun around, pulling out and slashing with her saber in one, swift move…
Only to watch her weapon meet the divine's hand and shatter into pieces.
Before the girl could gather and process her thoughts, the divine man pushed his hand forth, easily wrestling the broken iron from the young woman's hands.
"Good thinking, Varus!" I praised the man, only to finally notice the distant whistles coming from the deeper parts of the camp. And quite notably, they all appeared to converge on our position.
At this point, there was no further point in trying to hide ourselves. And so, I've released the hold of my aura, watching with satisfaction as the woman's face froze in terror.
'Maybe I'm not as weak as I was worried I was?' I thought, allowing just a small smirk to appear on my face.
"I nearly forgot about this part of our task," I muttered, right as Varus the divine added another spell on top of my intimidation, turning the girl into a mere doll following every mental command he made.
"NAM!"
The young guard shouted, kindly announcing his charge as he rushed forth to free his companion? Friend?
'Well, whatever.'
The guard charged… Only for a Celestial behind my back to roll its eyes and unleash his aura, instantly showering a huge chunk of the camp with the shadow of his spiritual power.
The man's charge came to a near-instantaneous stop, only for that unfortunate young man to end up as another doll within the control of our group.
"A second volunteer?" I commented with a small smile before happily clasping my hands together. "Great! Now we will be able to cross-check their words!"
This was actually one of the major points that allowed me to push the idea of this raid through. For regardless of what Loraz thought about me… even he could see the value of intel in war.
And so, as the logic went, it was better to have two tongues to pull for info than one!
Yet, as much as I wanted to celebrate, there were intensely pressing reasons for why I could not.
"It seems like we are out of time," I muttered, looking into one of the camp's main paths which was already filling with people rushing in our direction.
Once they would reach us, my neu-shottie and the celestial and divine elites would buy us some time… Only for more and more of the humans to come and bury us under their weight.
It didn't matter what weapons or skills we had. Sooner or later, we would be buried until a mound of shattered corpses, faced with all the camp elites once the meat for the grinder would stall us for long enough.
And so, I could either enjoy the rapid advancement of my level while hoping to somehow find a way out once we would be in a much worse situation…
Or I could simply leave right now, right as all the rest of the bombs were about to go off, and distract at least a small part of all those people, slowing their general advance down.
"Grab them and let's ditch!" I ordered, no longer bothering to keep up any appearances. "This mission will lose its purpose if we allow them to bait us into a fight."
Staying behind to farm some experience… would be a simply bad idea. So, rather than going full young adult story protagonist, I decided to do the actual smart thing and retreated, jumping over the small barrier of stacked boxes with some supplies.
Soon, my entire unit followed suit, dropping into the wet swamp outside of the camp.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
One by one, the explosive spells that my unit set up started to go off. And Fay's aim now moved to the place we just left, showering our pursuers with explosive shots.
As for us… We dove with our feet into the soft ground, sinking further and further with each step as we tried to hurry through the wetlands. And in the time that took humans to finally push some people through the open area under Fay's bombardment, we barely managed to move by about fifty, eighty meters.
A bit more than a tenth of the distance that separated us from the safety of the treeline.
"Faster! Don't hold back!"
Swish!
A first arrow went right by my ear, threatening to end my otherworldly adventure right here and now. Then another.
Then, a fireball exploded a mere two steps from Varus, showering him in intense yet seemingly harmless flames. The divine man simply brushed the fires off with his arms before silently continuing deeper into the swamp.
Ten more meters, twenty.
By the time the humans finally braved past the wall of fire set up by Fay's bombardment, we rushed one hundred and fifty steps into the field, finally reaching the place where the light of camp's torches and the massive lights burning every few hundred steps could no longer reach.
In an instant, the accuracy of the humans decreased… But not enough to stop a total of three arrows from finding their target. And while one of them bounced off after drawing a deep arc in the sky… Two others shot much flatter, dug into the flesh of an unlucky celestial.
Step by step, we treaded through the thick mud of the swamp, soon crossing the maximal effective distance of the ranger fighters from the camp.
"Keep going! We can't slow down now!"
With little to no doubt, no human at the camp's edge could match our speed through this mood. And even if they did, stepping out of the camp and into the darkness of the night was akin to asking Fay in the distance to greet one with her welcoming, explosive rounds.
And before long, we crawled out from the mud at the edge of the forest. Tired, cold… but satisfied.
"We've brought two tongues," I called out, before gesturing at the divine controlling our prisoners to send them forward. "So how about we learn why are they even attacking this place?"