Chương 167: B3 - Chapter 3: First Victory

Seth and the Rogues of his squad knelt over the bodies of the Bridan soldiers, and their hands rifled through the corpses' belongings, patting down pockets in search of anything valuable. They stripped off the Endless Pouches and Protecting Belts, then checked necks and fingers for enchanted jewelry before gathering the fallen weapons and stowing them away. After pushing himself up, Seth dusted his hands off on his pants and turned his attention to the sole survivor.

The Elementalist was still on his knees in front of Selena and two of the Rank-40 Rogues, the enchanted shackles at his wrists and ankles. The young man glared up at Seth, unbridled anger flaring in his eyes. It was almost refreshing to see that not all of the empire's soldiers were as cold and emotionally dead as Kaelen. Even if the Dark Assassin had been chatty in the caves, he'd had the look of someone who could watch a friend die and calculate the tactical advantage of the tragedy. This soldier?

He was fueled by the raw, messy emotion of a normal human being.

"Who the hell are you?" the Elementalist spat, his gaze darting to the teardrop necklace, which Colossus and Nightmare had entered back minutes ago.

"You're sure as hell not from Kastal." Seth didn't bother to answer; arguing with a prisoner was a waste of breath. But the surrounding squadmates weren't as dismissive.

"He is," Alfred, one of the Rank-40 Rogues, snapped, stepping into the prisoner's space.

"Maybe you should stop underestimating us." The prisoner sneered, curling his lip in disgust.

"Bullshit. You lot are trash. Fodder. He's the only reason you all aren't cooling in the sand right now." Before Seth could intervene, Alfred drew his arm back and drove a heavy fist into the man's face. The impact made a sickening crack, snapping the prisoner's head to the left and sending him sprawling out onto the rugged ground.

"Hey!" Selena stepped forward, shoving Alfred's shoulder.

"That was unnecessary!"

"No, it was," Alfred muttered as he rubbed his knuckles.

"He earned that." Seth ignored the bickering. He glanced up at the sky, once more feeling the weight of the Spirit's gaze, then shook his head and refocused on the members of his group.

"Let's move," he commanded while nodding toward the distant fortress.

"We need to be gone before they realize we killed nine of their men."

"Eight," Alfred corrected. The Rogue stared down at the bleeding prisoner.

"Killed eight. Captured one." Seth raised a brow but said nothing. He simply turned his back on the desert and began to walk back toward Henry and the others. The group fell in behind him. Alfred and one of the Guardians hauled the Elementalist to his feet by the chains. The empire soldier tried to resist at first, heels digging into the sand and throwing his weight back. Alfred didn't have the patience for it. Two vicious punches to the gut folded the prisoner in half.

Gasping for air and the fight drained out of him, the Elementalist staggered along as they broke into a jog toward the safety of the walls. It took about fifteen minutes to cross the scorching terrain and reach the massive, reinforced gate of the base. High above on the battlements, a lookout spotted their dust cloud.

"They're back!" the shout echoed down, frantic and joyful.

"Open the gate!" The heavy timbers groaned, parting just enough to let Seth and the returning squad slip through. Two Warriors immediately slammed it shut behind them, the heavy thud resonating outward like the stone being sealed over a tomb. Henry was waiting a dozen paces away. The moment he saw them, the tight coil of tension in his shoulders snapped. A relieved grin broke across his face, and he threw his hands up as if he wanted to hug the entire group.

"You actually pulled it off!" Beside him, even the perpetually stoic Eddin wore a rare smile. The rest of the courtyard erupted. The Rogues and the members of the bait group were practically shaking from the adrenaline, clapping each other on the back and recounting the skirmish in breathless, overlapping shouts. They boasted about the eight kills, marveling that they had returned without a single casualty.

The only injured Rogue, still clutching his chest, winced as Selena hauled him off toward the healing station, but even he was grinning. Seth stood amidst the clamor, feeling a strange disconnect. It was peculiar, watching people cheer for the deaths of others who had done nothing wrong but been born on the wrong side of a border. An imaginary line drawn by men and women. The soldiers lying dead in the sand a few miles away probably hadn't wanted to be here any more than his teammates did.

Sure, every death on the empire side was one less blade aimed at their throats—yet the jubilation left a bad taste in his mouth.

"Alright, stow it!" Henry shouted, his voice cutting through the noise as he raised a hand for silence.

"They lost nine men in that ambush. We didn't just win a skirmish; we shifted the balance." The squad leader pointed toward the sealed gates.

"We have the numbers now. And more importantly, the clock is ticking against them. They know that if we both sit behind our walls until the time limit runs out, they lose by default. They have to come to us. And when they do, we'll be ready!" The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. A roar of approval went up from the courtyard. The nervous energy of the morning had turned into a dangerous confidence. They all believed they were untouchable now. That they could crush the empire.

Seth watched them, his face impassive. Let them believe it, he thought. Morale is a weapon, even if it's built on a half-truth. Their victory hadn't been won by tactics or numbers. He knew that. One of the Rank-30s Rogue stepped forward.

"You should have seen the monster, Henry. We'd be dead right now without it. Or at least, we wouldn't have come back whole." The young man glanced at Seth with a mixture of respect and genuine fear.

"Seth's new beast... It's really something. Not a single soldier could scratch it. It was like having a Silver-Tier Guardian out there—taunting them, shielding us... It was absurd."

"You brought him out during the fight and I missed it?" Henry clutched his chest in mock betrayal.

"I thought I called dibs on the first introduction! Colossus, right?"

"Colossus?" Selena repeated a few steps away.

"That's what you named him?"

"Yeah," Seth said, glancing at her before turning back to Henry.

"I had to bring him out. The situation was going sideways."

"The name fits it," one of the Guardians from the bait group said with a chuckle, wiping dust from his armor.

"I'm sure it does." Henry grinned, moving closer to clap a heavy hand on Seth's shoulder.

"Well? Are we going to see him, or do I have to wait for the next ambush?" Seth nodded. He cast his consciousness into the necklace.

'You okay coming back out, Colossus?'

'Yes!' the scorpion answered. The air beside Seth blurred, and with a ground-shaking thud, Colossus materialized. Most of the squad instinctively flinched backward—a primal reaction to a creature of that size—but the fear quickly gave way to awe. Henry's eyes glazed over for a second. Then his grin widened, stretching until it seemed to hurt his cheeks.

"Holy hell," he muttered, stepping forward to rap his knuckles against the scorpion's brown carapace.

"One hundred and fifty-three base Toughness? That is obscene for his Rank." He looked up at Seth, his expression sharpening.

"But even with that, the empire's elite Rogues should have been able to at least injure him. Just how strong are his defensive spells?"

"Extremely," Seth answered, intentionally keeping it vague. Showing the scorpion was one thing—revealing Mountainborn Shell and all Colossus' other trump cards was another. Henry seemed to sense the boundary and gave a short nod as Seth recalled the scorpion into the teardrop necklace. A moment later, the squad leader clapped his hands and raised his voice to carry across the courtyard.

"Alright, show's over! Back to your posts. We gave the empire a bloody nose, and you can bet they'll be looking to return the favor. Keep your eyes open. They might not attack right away, but when they do, I want us to see them coming." As the squad dispersed, buzzing with the high of victory, Henry caught Seth's eye. He jerked his head toward the central stone building—the command post. Seth signaled Eddin, and the two of them followed the bald man inside.

Once there, the squad leader closed the heavy wooden door behind them, muffling the noise of the courtyard. He then leaned back against the table, and the wood creaked under his weight. His demeanor shifted, shedding the boisterous commander act.

"You okay breaking down the details of what happened, or do you want to keep it to yourself?"

"I don't mind if it's just the two of you," Seth answered.

"I just didn't want the whole squad to know the specifics… so I can avoid drawing any unnecessary attention." He paused, meeting Henry's gaze.

"He has a passive that boosts his Toughness by around sixty points." Henry and Eddin froze. A heavy hush fell over the room.

"Wait," Henry said, raising a hand as he ran the mental math.

"So his functional Toughness is... over two hundred and ten?"

"Exactly," Seth confirmed.

"His active defensive spells are calculated off the base hundred-fifty-four shown by Identify, though."

"Damn," Eddin muttered with a slow shake of his head.

"That's not a beast. That's a walking fortress."

"So basically, if he casts all those spells, those of our Rank could not even scratch him?" Henry asked. Seth nodded.

"That's why he turned the tide during the ambush single-handedly. Nightmare and I could have taken out a few Rogues on our own, sure, but without Colossus, a few members of the squad would have been killed."

"Hmm." Henry frowned, rubbing a hand over his face, the stubble rasping against his palm.

"I planned to keep you with the Rogues, but now... I don't know. This new variable changes everything. With a defense like that, he could save more lives if he's with the main force holding the gate." Seth's mouth twisted.

"Maybe. But we don't know for sure. And frankly, the three of us fight better as a unit. If we stay with the Rogues, I can drop a giant Guardian directly into their backline. It would disrupt their formation instantly."

"Fair point," Henry conceded.

"Although to be fair, debating this further might be useless. We're turtling. With the current situation, sending you out to scout for another ambush is too risky. They know we're dangerous now. They won't split their forces again. They'll probably bring their entire remaining force to our doorstep instead." Seth's mind raced, visualizing an assault from the empire. The open desert. The fortress walls. Then, the realization clicked.

"But what if they bring their own arcane cannons?" Henry looked at him.

"If they set up artillery at range," Seth pressed.

"We don't have barriers strong enough, or large enough, to shield the entire fortress. We'd be sitting ducks in a stone box. Things could turn especially ugly if they bring barriers of their own." For an instant, he thought about Colossus' Sandstorm Dome, but even that wouldn't be enough to shield the entire squad from sustained artillery fire. Seth shook his head.

"I don't think we can just sit back and wait for their charge." Henry's brow furrowed.

"So you want to keep the Rogue crew outside the walls?"

"Yes," Seth answered.

"We need a strike team in the field. If they deploy artillery, we ambush them immediately. If they don't, we flank them."

"That puts a hell of a lot of risk on you and the others, Seth," Henry warned.

"If they turn their main force on you guys... you'll have ten combatants against forty-one."

"I can buy time," Seth retorted.

"Long enough for you to charge out with the main force and join us to crush them. Sure, we'd be fighting in the open without the walls, but it's better than waiting for the walls to come down on our heads." Henry looked at Eddin, who had remained silent in the corner.

"Thoughts?"

"He's right," Eddin said, pushing off the wall.

"We can't let them establish a siege line. We need the ability to destroy those cannons. And best case, if they just rush the gate? Seth's team hits their backline the moment they engage." A long silence stretched as Henry pressed his lips together.

"Then it's decided," Henry finally answered and straightened up.

"You'll stay outside with the Rogues. Your primary objective is the artillery. Secondary is high-value targets: Priests and Elementalists." The squad leader paused, looking Seth dead in the eye.

"Just... be careful. Don't get caught by the whole army before we can get there."

"No worries." A grim smile touched Seth's lips.

"Whatever happens, I'll adapt and find a way out for the others." After all, that was the essence of his class: surviving.