Chương 84: Chapter 85: Reporting to Elmspire

I manage to make my way out of the camp without them finding me, but it's a near thing. Thankfully, the system rewards me for that with another ten thousand experience points. That puts me almost halfway to my next level. I don't think we're going to get a reward for this, unless we're the ones that tell them. The army will be at the edge of Elmspire's territory in six days. El, Ash, and I can make it back to Elmspire in two days. Maybe one and a half if we really push.

That gives them four days to make plans and gather their own army. That's not much time. Six days would be more time, and might still not be enough. But if we tell Gigi or Vincent now, then we won't get the reward for telling the scout faction. On the other hand, how long would it take to get from the scout faction to the army? How long would we be delaying things? The city can't afford to wait. Damn it. There's an army heading for Elmspire, I send Gigi. I've counted at least four thousand strong.

Elves, humans, dwarves. A lot of our kind. They're planning to be at the edge of Elmspire territory in six days. I think that means the ring of trees surrounding the great tree. How sure are you of this? She asks me. Saw it with my own eyes, I say. Listened to the commander talk about their timing. Couldn't get any solid proof, though. It'll have to be enough. Thanks, Caleb. You did the right thing telling me this. Yeah, yeah. We'll be back in two days to join the defense. Can't wait to see you.

I find Ash and El and fill them in on what I saw and what I heard.

"That's more than we can take on," El says.

"Do you think we could even delay them?" Ash shakes her head.

"Not at any significant level. We're better off pulling back and getting more numbers on our side. Let's book it back to Elmspire." She stretches a little.

"I don't think we're going to be able to sleep on the way. We need those hours for running."

"All the way to Isengard?" El asks with a whine in her voice. Then she laughs and looks at me.

"You should put your boots back on," she says.

"We're going for distance, but we're also going for speed. We're all alone. All alone in our time of need." She snickers. I put my armor back on, boots included, but I leave by bow in my spatial bag. I strap the sword to my back where it'll be out of the way while we're running, and then I take point to lead us back to Elmspire. We run through the night, stopping to catch our breath and drink some water around dawn.

We're making a lot of noise as we go, so most of the animals who we would've come across have moved to avoid us. I'm kind of surprised we haven't been attacked by a wyvern or a bargheast or something that hunts humans, but I'm not going to question our luck in that arena. We aren't looking for tracks, aren't trying to be sneaky, and are just moving as fast as we can. I'd say that even in the forest, we're keeping up a steady pace of about six or seven miles an hour.

That's faster than any human could move, at least for as long as we're moving. Going sixty miles before the dawn is a lot. We're already almost halfway back to the city.

"We should set traps along the way," Ash says.

"Maybe get a group and head back out, set a bunch of traps for the army as it moves."

"That'll slow them down," El agrees.

"We don't even need to set all that many. We just need them to stumble into a bunch of them, and then they'll have to move more cautiously."

"Traps take time to set up," I say.

"And I don't know if we have enough time to trap the whole forest."

"Maybe there are premade traps ready to be distributed," Ash says.

"Like bear traps or that kind of thing. And maybe there are earth mages who can move the dirt and create pit traps really quickly. We aren't taking the possibilities of magic into account."

"That's because we don't know anything about magic," El says.

"But Vincent does! I'll ask him." She closes her eyes and focuses on the message system. I look at Ash.

"However you slice it, this is going to be a bloody battle," I say.

"There were at least four thousand soldiers. Does Elmspire even have that big of an army?"

"They've got two thousand regulars, if you include the city guard," she tells me.

"If they conscript people, they can probably get the numbers to meet this army head on. Plus there are two thousand players in Elmspire."

"Not all of them are warriors," I say.

"And not all of them are going to get involved in a war. Especially not one where we get sent to the front line and thrown away because our lives aren't permanent."

"You really think they'll put our kind out front?" I shrug.

"It's what I would do. We're powerful, we do a lot of damage, but we have low health compared to the regular army. And if we die, we respawn, unlike the regular army. They'll want to spend our lives first before they spend the lives that don't just show back up the next day." She sighs.

"You're probably right. Damn. I kind of wish we had a guild."

"Why?"

"We could have them organizing for the battle," Ash says.

"Have them start setting traps or setting up killing fields or whatever else would help them fight. And we'd know who we're going to be fighting with when the battle starts. We're probably going to be alone, or grouped with other people who aren't part of any guild." The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"They can do it!" El shouts.

"They can start making big pit traps and fucking up the terrain between us and Elmspire. I told Vincent where we were. I hope that's okay. I mean, we're not staying here long, right? Anyway, he and his guild are going to come out and mess with the terrain a bit, and he's going to get another guild to come out and start setting traps. That should slow the army down by at least a day. So we've bought a seventh day. That's good, right?"

"That's great," Ash says. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

"All right, then," she says.

"Are we ready to keep moving?" We take off again, munching on mammoth jerky while we jog. I lead them around trees and down animal paths as much as possible, trying to avoid roots or anything that someone might trip on. We continue to make good time. The sun rises above us, just peaking through the canopy every so often. As we move, I can't help but think of how I would defend Elmspire. There's that ring of trees outside the city proper.

Each of those trees is like a little fortress, a tower filled with archers who can rain down death on anyone who comes near. They have overlapping range, so it's not like you can even attack just one at a time. If you're in range of one of the towers, you're in range of three of them. Can a shield brigade really do anything about arrows flying at you from three different directions? Well, let's think about what a shield brigade even is.

Maybe they have tower shields and move in a phalanx formation, completely covered in all directions until they get to the base of the tower. Then what? Do they cut the tree down? That was a definite possibility. But maybe they climb the tower and take the fight directly to the defenders. Are they ready for a melee battle? Do they have enough numbers? We know which way the army is coming from.

Do we abandon the towers on the other end of the circular clearing and fortify the ones that the army is going to be attacking? They only need to take down three or four towers to be able to get their whole army through to the city. Do we fortify those towers and leave the others abandoned? Or maybe with a skeleton crew, in case the army decides to swing wide in anticipation of us moving our forces? This is already giving me a headache. I'm glad we're not in a guild, or at least not leading one.

I don't want to be in charge of a bunch of people. I don't want to be responsible for strategy. I just want to fight. I can do a lot of damage with my bow. I might be able to snipe away several of the players. Maybe Ash, El, and I can kill their forward scouts. Those might be players or might be natives. But that's at least something we can do. And it's something we can do now, without having to run the rest of the way back to Elmspire. On the other hand, we have a lot of quests to turn in.

We could turn those in and get a few levels out of them before turning and going after the scouts. Maybe I should go after the scouts myself, and let El and Ash take on more militia style roles. I'm meant to be out in the woods, not fighting on the front lines. But they're both front line fighters. They're both built for this. I mean, I'm built for it too. I'm built for just about everything now. Yesterday, I received a notification that I had qualified for the Assassin class and the Spy class.

Apparently I unlocked them when I sneaked up to the commanders tent. And I'm sure that I technically qualify for even more classes, if I just went looking for them. My stats are incredible, and my skills are no slouch. I have 380 of them. And 67 secondary skills. I could change my equipment a little bit and change my class over to knight if I wanted to. Probably paladin, too. I don't know if I could qualify for El's class, which is a Blood Rager, or for Vincent's Archmage class.

But I know I could switch out to another class that I'm not as familiar with if the need arises, just to be able to fight in this war better. But I'd rather fight as a ranger. That's how I identify myself. It's the class I want. I worked hard to unlock it, and this might be my first chance to really use it. Maybe assassin would be better for what I'm planning, but maybe not. I need to be able to beat the scouts at their own game. Maybe I should switch to scout. Is scout better than ranger?

The sneak and tracking requirements are both higher for ranger. The bow requirements are the same for both classes. Scout requires more awareness, but rangers are meant to survive on their own in the wilderness for a long time. Scouts are good at setting traps, but they're not meant to be out and about all the time. Rangers are meant to be in the wilderness all the time. Which means attacking at any given moment, without notice or hesitation. No, I think it's best to stay Ranger.

We make it back to the edge of Elmspire just after dusk. I'm doing better than the girls, but I regenerate stamina a lot faster than they do. I'm built for this kind of thing. They're both exhausted. That further proves that I should head back out and go after their scouts alone. The ring of trees looks different now. For one thing, there are ropes between the trees, making a sort of fence.

There are already palisades starting to form along the ropes, making the tree towers into a real wall, one that they can actually defend. There's a hill of earthworks between each tower, a three foot wall that the spiked poles are being shoved and hammered into. Even now, as full dark falls, there are people working on the wall, building it. We have to go almost all the way around the wall before we find an actual gate that will let us through. The guard at the gate stops us, but not for very long.

Once we tell him that we know the army is on the way and we're here to help, he sends us right through, telling us to find the grand marshal. I don't know or care who that is. All I care about is handing in my quests, maybe spending my renown, and then heading back out. The quests I have to hand in are worth a total of 165, 000 experience. They garner me an extra 75 scout renown, 110 hunter renown, and 75 adventurer renown. That gets me to copper membership in the hunter and adventurer guild.

I debate buying a skill book for sneak. It increased to 38 after sneaking out of the army camp, but I could stand for it go even higher. But then I see something that I really want in the hunter renown trade. Dragon bone bow. Very Rare bow. 21/30. Base damage: 168-178. It means losing four agility, but dealing an extra fifteen to twenty five points of damage. That's nothing to scoff at. I think I can handle the loss of agility; the stat itself is still over 230.

I trade in three hundred hunter renown for the dragon bone bow. Now to deal with the levels. 165, 000 experience puts me up to level 27, giving me 35 stat points to spend. I put seven into agility, bringing that up to 240, then put four into each of my other stats. That puts my HP at 7884, my MP at 2943, and my stamina at 3213. It also makes my defense 282. Once everything is turned in, I check to see if there are new quests. There are, but they're special. They're war quests.

War quest: Confirm number of soldiers in enemy army. Reward: 20 war renown, 10, 000 experience. War quest: Set traps for invading army. Progress: 0/50. Reward: 50 war renown, 25, 000 experience. War quest: Slay members of the enemy army. Progress: 0/50. Reward: 100 war renown, 40, 000 experience.

"I'm heading back out," I tell Ash and El.

"I'm going to start taking out their scouts. You guys going to be okay here?"

"I'll help them build the wall," El says.

"Then I'll stand on it and fight the enemy when they arrive."

"Hopefully, there won't be any real battle," Ash says.

"Hopefully they'll negotiate a peace when they see that we're ready for them."

"You really think so?" I ask. She shakes her head.

"I just hope," she says.