Chương 87: Chapter 88: Elves, Dwarves, Humans, and Orcs

That was too close. I don't get close to any other conversations on my way out, but rather just try to think about what I've learned from the two of them. I know that there are primarily players – which they called earthlings – in guilds, and I know that there are six guilds worth of people, and it's the entire guild. In Elmspire, the guilds are between one and two hundred people. Some of them are smaller, but I have to assume that they're on the bigger side for the invasion. That means twelve hundred players.

That's a lot. If they're just a quarter of the army, that means there are nearly five thousand total soldiers in this army. As I walk around the perimeter of the camp, I can see a lot of tents. A lot of flags, too. Different brigades, or the guilds themselves, I suppose. I count five hundred tents as I leave, which only allows for about two thousand people. I know my count is wrong. Maybe the supply wagons are the key. There are twelve wagons, laden down with supplies.

Assume that the players are all carrying their own supplies in their spatial bags. How many soldiers can each wagon supply? I don't know what's in each wagon, but let's say five hundred. That would mean six thousand soldiers. But that's a guess. Damn. Getting a better idea of how many of them there are is going to be a lot of work. I drift out to the edge of the camp and go looking for the guards around camp, the ones who form a perimeter.

If they're far enough away from each other, I might be able to take one or two of them out, especially if they are players. The duo's reaction to my hit point total makes me think that none of them are going to be anywhere near what I have in stats, so I should be able to kill them quickly. Unfortunately, the guards are stationed so that they can always see each other, and none of the humans are on guard. Makes sense not to put someone on guard if they can't see at night. Kind of a useless assignment.

But I was still hoping. Rather than trying to kill one of the soldiers, I decide to leave the entire army behind. I'll report what I found out to Ash and to anyone from Elmspire that I come across, but I've got that nagging feeling about the orcs, and I need to know if it's true. So I start moving as quickly as my feet will carry me through the woods. I can maintain a pace of about eight miles an hour through the woods. Which seems a bit fast.

How am I moving faster than everyone else even with the wanderer's boots? Maybe this is the extra bonus I got for hitting level thirty five as a ranger. I've never bothered to look it up, because I just kept getting distracted by it. But maybe. I pull up the description of the class. Sure enough, it's right there: Ranger: All your ranger skills are improved and will grow more rapidly. Add your agility to the damage of all ranged attacks. Gain sneak attack when appropriate.

Your nature based spells and abilities will level up faster. Your steps are 20% lighter, allowing you to run for longer and preventing you from leaving a trail in most environments, provided you are sneaking when you move. You move 20% faster in your preferred terrain (forest). I move an additional twenty percent faster in the forest, in addition to the lighter steps and the bonus from the boots. So I'm moving at least 140% of normal speed. So yeah, I guess that tracks.

Eight or so miles an hour through the forest is really fast. That's moving around trees and down the animal paths that are already in place. That's not even a straight line. If I made it to the road, I could probably go even faster. Was the orc fortification at the end of the road? There was a road leading out of the fort, but I don't think there was a road to Elmspire from there. But I can get to the road if I take a bit of a detour.

I move as quickly as I can, trying to get to the road so that I can move even faster. It takes me about an hour out of my way, but once I'm on the road I can really open up. Five minute miles are nothing to me. I can do a mile in about four minutes with all these bonuses. That's fifteen miles an hour. I don't know if I've ever gone this fast on foot. The problem with going so fast is that I don't have the time to really pay attention to my surroundings. I can see the road, but I walk right into a bandit trap.

It's more embarrassing than dangerous. They're only rare advanced, and only level twelve. So they only have 1200 hit points each. I don't even slow down. I just shoot a Sniper Shot at one that shot at me, killing him with the initial strike, then use Rapid Shot on another of them, killing him. The others don't rush me, apparently deciding that two dead in the time it took them to even try to threaten me meant that I was out of their league by far enough that they should just let me go.

I keep running, not caring that my Shell went down by about 50 points from the three times they shot me. I only get the experience credit for the two I killed, but that's okay; they weren't worth much to begin with. While I'm running, I compose a message to Ash. In it, I tell her about what I've learned. Twelve hundred players, somewhere between four and six thousand soldiers. Twelve supply wagons, two of which I've sabotaged. You're doing great, Caleb.

We should be able to buy at least two days with the traps and the harrying. Word around town is that we should be able to hold out against a siege pretty much indefinitely. The only problem is going to be that players won't be able to get out and level up. But they need at least double our numbers to be able to break the siege, and our forces number about six thousand. Don't forget the orcs, I say. They might provide the numbers that the mountain kingdom is lacking.

We've got people looking for the orcs now, she assures me. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. I'm heading that way. Why? It's a waste of time. It'll take you three days to get out there. I'm faster than that, I assure her. I'm almost back to Elmspire now. Another few hours and I'll be at the orc encampment. How the hell are you moving so fast? Did you find a mount? Rangers are fast on our own, I tell her. I'll be in touch when I know for sure.

Truth is, I'm not looking for the orc encampment. We know where it was, but we can't be sure that they would form up there again. They might have decided that the location was compromised. Or they might just be marching towards Elmspire and not stopping at their former staging ground. So I'm not looking for that. What I'm looking for, once I get off the road and back among the trails, is sign of orc scouts. If the orc army is coming, they're sending scouts ahead of them.

They're doing the same thing that the mountain army is doing. They're checking the way to make sure that there aren't ambushes or traps awaiting them when they're still vulnerable. So they'll send out scouts way ahead, possibly all the way to Elmspire, to find out what's going on. Those scouts I need to find and kill before they can report in. I don't want the orcs to know that the walls are being built around Elmspire, and I don't want them to know that we know they're coming.

So as I jog along through the forest, I'm keeping my eyes out for any orc trails. I'm kind of surprised that the bandits attacked me at all, now that I think about it. I'm such a higher level than they are, and there are armies moving through these woods. The bandits should be running for the hills, waiting for the war to settle down before returning to their banditry ways. What are they going to do if a thousand dwarves march into one of their ambushes? Are they going to try to attack them?

Are they stupid enough to do that? They were stupid enough to attack me, so maybe. I'm about an hour past Elmspire when I first spot orc tracks. I use Highlight Trail so I can follow the tracks at speed, and it's not long before I come across my first orc scout. Orc Scout. Rare elite monster, level 35. HP 8, 750/8, 750. I don't hesitate. I just fire a Sniper Shot and then a Rapid Shot. Between the two of them, the orc scout dies almost instantly.

I hurry over to his corpse and start searching his pockets, hoping to find something that will tell me what I need to know. There's a map in his pocket. It has a big circle marked 'horde' on one side of the forest, and another smaller circle marked 'elves' right about where Elmspire should be. But there's something else, something that confirms my theory. There's another circle, marked 'dwarves' right about where the mountain army should be about now. They're definitely working together.

I don't like the term horde. It implies numbers beyond counting. And something occurs to me. If the orcs are going to be a legitimate threat, there have to be a lot more of them than there are elves and dwarves. The orcs are much lower level. Even this one scout, while he's higher in level than any of the orcs that were establishing the beachhead fortification, is lower level than the soldiers in the mountain army.

If all the orcs are level 35 or so, then they'd have to have at least double if not triple the numbers to be of any real threat. That four thousand hit point difference is huge, and can only be made up for with a lot of just extra bodies. I need to get close to the orc army and find out. I find three more scouts on my way to the orc army. None of them last long enough to be worth talking about. But between them, they do provide enough experience for me to reach level 29.

Also, all this running through the woods and tracking people down has increased my alertness to 26, my tracking to 29, and my Find Path to level three. I put two of my nine points into strength, agility, and vigor, then put the other three into charisma. I don't know if I'll be able to pull off a bluff with the orcs, but I want to stack the deck in my favor as much as possible. I stop and rest for a few hours, climbing up a tree and doing my best to hide myself there so I can sleep for a little bit.

I think I slept longer than I intended to, though; by the time I wake up, I'm in the middle of the orc army. They're walking around my tree, and I'm grateful that I didn't bother to set any traps around it. I just climbed up as high as I comfortably could and took my rest. Now I'm surrounded by a swarm of orcs, all moving heavily through the forest. They're not even trying to be quiet. They're stomping along, chanting marching chants as they go.

They translate to basically "blood for the dragon" and "You had a good home but you left it," with them stomping on the left foot as they say left. Cute. They're better armed and armored than the ones we saw at the encampment. And from the looks of it, they're much higher level. I still see a few in the thirties, but most of them are level fifty, just like the troops in the other army. From my vantage point, I can get a pretty good count of the orcs that are going by.

It doesn't hurt that it takes them several hours to actually get past me. Orcs are much closer than the mountain army, I send to Ash. And more numerous. Estimate they'll be at the edge of Elmspire in two days. How numerous? Ten thousand. Are you sure? I'm literally counting them as they go by. Shit. Two days? Can you delay them? Not by myself. I picked off a bunch of their scouts, but there's not much more I can do. We'll send out a division to set traps in their path. Think you can help? Probably.

I'll set traps as soon as I can. Okay. Keep me posted. Will do. I wait until after the bulk of the army has passed, waiting for the supply wagons to come. But there aren't any supply wagons. That doesn't make sense; an army lives and dies on its stomach. Without food, they're going to arrive at Elmspire weakened and starving. They have to have something. It's not the longest campaign. Are they all carrying their own food and weapons?

I watch as stragglers behind the army struggle to catch up, and decide to find out for myself if they have their troops carrying everything. I pick out one of the stragglers and take aim, then do a Power Shot, immediately followed by a Rapid Shot and then a Sniper Shot. If he survives this, he's going to know the attacks came from the trees, but hopefully not which tree. Thankfully, he bleeds to death before he can pinpoint my location, and there aren't any other soldiers behind him to see him fall.

These guys really need to work on crying out when they get hit in the chest with a bunch of arrows. Though I suppose the attacks collapse their lungs, so they really can't. I shimmy down out of my tree and sneak over to the corpse. Sure enough, he's wearing a heavy backpack that has camp supplies, a tent, and a bunch of food. This guy essentially is the supply wagon. He's only going to be able to supply a few others besides himself, but if there are enough of these porter type orcs, they won't need wagons.

Maybe they're doing it this way because we attacked their supply wagon at the fortress. Maybe they're carrying enough to settle in for the siege, and the wagons will come once they've cut off the escape for the elves.