Chương 83: Chapter 84: The army

I sit in my tree while my MP recharges and try to figure out what to do next. The track leads back to an army, I send El. There's at least 400 of them, level around 50. Can we take them? El asks. Maybe with your spell? No chance, I say. 400 is a low estimate. There could be thousands of them. There's a few minutes of silence. Ash says to see if you can get any more intel about them. Something we can bring back to Elmspire. That's a good idea. I'll see what I can do. I'll let you know if I die.

I put weapons, my armor, and most of my jewelry in my spatial bag. The only thing I leave out is my ring of the assassin. I'm not preparing for a fight here. If I get caught, odds are I'm going to die. Which is acceptable, I suppose. I'll fight back, of course. But I'll be doing it more with magic than anything else. I want to keep my equipment. I meditate a few minutes until my MP is fully charged, then slip down the tree and start walking carefully into the army camp. I wouldn't try this during the day.

The camp would be much more populated and there would be a lot more light to try to avoid. But I do have to keep in mind that I'm not the only one who has dark vision. I'm pretty sure it's a racial trait for both elves and dwarves. I move slowly, trying to avoid any campfires and instead taking a very circuitous route through the camp, darting between shadows and holding still as other soldiers go by. The soldiers are all level fifty. And there are more of them than I first estimated.

The tents don't fit two; they fit four. So there are at least eight hundred of them. I don't know what the proportion of players to soldiers is, but I do spot several other players. They're all around level forty, and mostly of fighting classes. There might be more scouts and such. I wonder if the scout we followed was a player or one of the natives. I never actually caught him, so I can't be sure. I slip to the side, ducking into the shadow of a tent as two women walk past me, chatting.

They seem to be talking about the battle to come, and how they're planning to level up on the way before the actual attack on the city. Which means it's an invasion. Realistically, I've got enough information now that I could just turn around and get out of here. I can confirm that they're heading to Elmspire, and I can give the city time to set up their own army and their defenses. I could send the information to El and Ash and let them start back now, getting the information there as fast as possible.

Actually, I could send the information to Gigi and Vincent. That would get it there even faster. I could also send it to John, that one random guy I met who seemed relatively cool. That could get the information there fast. But it wouldn't get me any kind of reward. For a reward, I need to bring them something that can provide proof and provide real intelligence for the scout faction. So to get that, I really need to get to the commander's tent. I move closer, stepping carefully.

Blur gives me about forty minutes of movement with double sneak, but there's only so much it can do. It isn't invisibility. If there's someone else in the commander's tent, I don't know what I'm going to do. Everyone here is in some kind of uniform, so I can't pretend that I'm one of the players who came along for the ride. Can I? Maybe I can sneak into one of the tents where people are already asleep and steal a uniform, or enough of one to be able to pass if someone stops me.

I can speak their language, whatever it may be, so maybe I can do this. I slip into a tent where there are four soldiers sleeping deeply, snoring the night away. Presumably, these people will be getting up early and maybe taking the morning watch, so they're asleep already even though it's only been dark for a few hours. I find a sash hanging off one of the soldier's beds, and I slip it over my shoulder like it's a piece of my uniform. Then I muss up my hair and step back out of the tent.

I keep moving with Blur, but I at least have a backup plan if I get caught. Other than just activating Mab's Rage and running, I mean. I continue in my meandering route, trying to avoid soldiers wherever possible and staying out of torchlight and fire light as best I can. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I get to the hill that the command tent is on. I sneak as carefully as I can up the hill – there's nothing to hide behind – and get to the commander's tent. This time, the flaps are down.

Unlike at the last staging ground, this tent is being used as an actual tent, not just a pavilion for the commanders to meet in. I slip around the tent to the back side and take a moment to get my bearings. There are hundreds more tents on this side of the hill. This isn't even the center of the camp. This is more like the forefront of it. I do a quick count, glad that military discipline makes people lay the tents out in rows. There are another five hundred tents on this side.

That puts the number of soldiers closer to three thousand. Three thousand level forty or fifty fighters is a terrifying thing. I don't know if they can actually take Elmspire, but they can certainly put a hurt on the city. And there might be more of them. This might not be the entire army. I listen to the tent I'm next to, trying to see if there is the sound of conversation within. Sure enough, I do hear one voice talking. But one voice means at least two people.

I don't think there's a commander in there just talking to herself. It doesn't have the right cadence for that. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. What do I do now? I can't get in there while there are people inside. Can I cause enough of a distraction that they'd leave? Could I get the girls to attack the camp? They'd definitely die, sooner or later. But could they cause enough of a ruckus to get the commanders to leave their tent to see what's going on?

I wish I could, like, summon Wrax. He wouldn't even need to attack necessarily. But a dragon flying overhead might be enough to distract the people in the tent. I can't summon him, so that's a moot point, but it would be cool if I could. Could I fake it? Could I convince people that there was a dragon flying overhead? I don't have any kind of illusion power, but maybe if I shouted that there was a dragon, other voices would take up the call?

No; they'd probably just come and see why there was someone yelling so close to the command tent, find me out, and kill me. I don't know that I have any good options. I have one idea, but it's a bad one. Do I want to risk a bad idea in the hopes that it'll give me the chance? Maybe I could rush into the tent, grab the maps, and shove them in my spatial bag before I got killed. Then I'd at least still have the maps when I respawned in Wrax's cave. I'd have the evidence that I need.

That seems risky, and like it's unlikely to be successful. I could try to kill everyone in the tent, and hope they don't call for help in time. But the commander is probably a native to this world, which means 15, 000 hit points. I can't do that quickly and quietly. If the other person that she's talking to is a player, I can probably wipe them out, but I don't think I can kill the commander. The most damage I can do is with a Rapid Shot, and that would deal at most five thousand damage.

I could hope that a Killing Blow would do the trick, but there's only a one in fifty chance of that happening. Not a good plan. I guess I'm left with my bad idea. I put my hand to the edge of the tent and cast Flame Bolt. Immediately, the tent starts to smolder and burn, as I move around to the opposite side of the tent. Now I just have to wait for them to notice, and hope that I can grab some intelligence before they decide to save it all while escaping the burning tent. Shit. I didn't think of that.

Of course they're not going to leave the intelligence just sitting there while the tent burns around them. That would destroy the intelligence, which they still need for the planning. They'll take that first. All I've done is destroy the command tent. And wasted a whole bunch of time and effort to get here. I slip under the flap of the tent and get my first real clue of what's inside. There are three people in here. Currently, they're standing around a map.

I'm in a shadowed corner of the tent, and I don't think they've noticed me. Or the fire. Not yet. But it won't be long.

"Six days to the edge of the city," one of them says.

"There we'll take their wall and then lay siege."

"Do we have the shield brigade?" That's the first voice I heard. Katlyn Delver. Very Rare Elite dwarf general. Level 55. HP: 27, 500/27, 500.

"They'll be ready for the archers on their wall. And the engineers are ready to cut their outer perimeter down if necessary."

"I'd rather not have to – fire! The tent is on fire! Raise the alarm!" And then they gather up the maps, and I roll out of the tent. I keep rolling, letting myself roll down the hill and stopping myself at one of the tents on the bottom of the hill. The alarm is being raised, and people are being roused out of their beds. Weapons are being drawn, and there's very little chance of me being able to sneak my way out of this. I slip into the tent that I landed against. It's empty, thankfully. Kind of a nice tent, too.

Four military cots means they aren't sleeping on the ground, and there's a carpet of furs on the floor of the tent anyway. There's a small area in the middle of the tent which could in theory fit another sleeper, but the four beds have the tent pretty close to cramped. It's not a bad tent, but I wouldn't want to live in here with three other people for any length of time. I crawl to the other side of the tent and lift the barest corner of it, so I can better listen to what's going on. The camp is in an uproar.

There's a bucket brigade forming to put out the fire in the commander's tent, and there are people looking for the saboteur. Patrols are organizing, on the theory that whoever did it is still in the camp and can be captured. They begin searching at the base of the hill and head outwards. That means they're going to be looking in here soon. I pull up the edge of the rug and try to flatten myself beneath it. There's a bed hiding me from the front door, and I still have Blur going.

It's got about ten minutes left before I run out MP. That's ten minutes left to escape with my life. Assuming I want to. Of course I want to. What kind of question is that? Where does a thought like that even come from? My heart is pounding when the first soldier opens the front flap of the tent and looks inside. He gives the tent a good once over, but doesn't seem to see me.

"Clear!" he shouts, walking away but leaving the flaps of the tent flipped over the side and wide open. If I wasn't already at the very edge of the tent, I wouldn't be able to move without being spotted by anyone walking by. Luckily, I am at the very edge, under the rug, listening. I listen as the patrol checks the next set of tents. I listen as a set of footsteps passes maybe two feet away from where I'm hiding, checking around the tent that they've already cleared the inside of.

I listen as they slowly start to move away. I listen, counting down my mana as we go, waiting for there to be enough distance for me to be able to actually start to sneak away. One minute passes. Two minutes. Three. Thankfully, the patrols are efficient, and they're moving quickly to catch the saboteur. After about four minutes, they're far enough away in camp for me to be willing to get out from my hiding spot and start making my way towards the edge of camp.

I just have to find where the circle buckles, where the ring of guards making their search is thinnest, and then sneak out that direction. If need be, I'll follow them all the way to the edge of the camp, and just sprint through them and into the woods, losing myself among the trees before they kill me. Hopefully. It's a hard decision to wear armor or not to wear armor in this situation. The armor would provide extra speed and extra protection, but it would also be noisy.

And it would mean that I could lose the armor if I died. It's safer this way. If I die, all I've lost is a few days of leveling up. I can do that again. I can be sneaky and level up that way for a while. I can regain what I've lost. But I can't regain my equipment. Better not to wear it, even if it means that I die because I didn't have the protection. I move as quickly as I safely can, tip toeing past guards as they search tents, sliding so close that I could have picked their pockets.

I get a better idea of the number of players, at least. They seem to be looking the most carefully, and there are a lot of them. I manage to sneak right past at least three of them, and I identify several more as I go. This is an army of players, not just an army of dwarves and elves.