Sneak Peek #29 (Post 1 of 3) (Patreon)

Chapter: Into the Caves

Erik, Rugrat and the special team with them didn’t know the changes that were happening in Alva’s small empire. 

Everyone had some broken sleep in the orc camp. Dawn came quickly as they used clean spells to get rid of the sweat and grime from the previous day. 

It wasn’t the same as washing with water but it was the best they could do.

Rugrat and Storbon repaired armor and gear. Lucinda monitored the area with her beasts while Yao Meng patrolled the wall, looking for signs of movement. Yuli prepared food as Erik was checking the loot from the orcs, there was orc tusks that could be used as an alchemy ingredient, their rusted weapons that Rugrat had already appraised, all of them were worthless, they could only be melted down to be turned into something useful. Then there were the orc totems, only someone that had followed the path of shamanism could use them. They were made of rare materials and could be broken down by crafters, then there was just hide armor with such low durability that Erik had just tossed them to the side. 

A collection of rare gems, ores Earth grade mana stones and ingredients were the main parts of the haul. The most valuable items were also the most basic. Monster cores.

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Loot:

1x Common Earth Grade Monster Core

2x Grand Earth Grade Monster Core

1x Greater Earth Grade Monster Core

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Translated into experience, they were worth 33,000,000 Experience. 

“At one time that might have been enough to power level us from one realm to the next, now its barely a third of what I need to increase one level,” Erik looked at his experience bar. “With how slow it is to level I’m starting to think if I should start to use monster cores to increase my level, with the massive amount of experience required, its no wonder that the people of the ten realms need extended lifetimes to become stronger.”

Erik stopped checking the loot in his storage ring and stretched, his armor was one that needed to get buffed out, the solid plates were strong, but the orcs had all been close to level sixty, with body’s like Iron, a higher constitution compared to humans, racial buff for working together in a group that boosted their stats by forty percent and then the damn Shaman’s buffing them up from the rear.

Erik’s body was tight from the fighting, the bruises and internal damage he’d dealt with already.

He grabbed his rifle and walked over to where Rugrat and Storbon were working.

“How does the loot look?” Rugrat asked

“Most of it is going to need to be pulled apart, should be enough to get a few rounds at the bar when we get back,” Erik said dropping into a squat with his rifle over his legs.

“How’s my armor?”

“Dented, they can hit like a damn transport truck,” Rugrat said he used his domain, creating flames around the armor plate and hammering it back into form.

“Most of their weapons are blunt they can stagger you easily with a hit, or send you flying,” Storbon said. “Have to watch out for internal injuries and broken bones.”

Erik grunted in agreement as Storbon sharpened Tian Cui’s blades, with their tough bodies just hitting the orcs degraded the condition of their weapons.

Storbon continued talking.

“Good thing that all of us have tempered our bodies to Iron, well Yuli is at Body like Stone vut she should be in the rear of any large fight we get into.”

“Its going to get harder before it gets easier, the Orcs know that we’re here, when they group together and have their shamans they’re a pain in the ass to kill, going into the caves we’re going to lose our defensive position. We’ll be fighting them head on. Means we’ll probably be facing just the orc fighters while the shamans hide in the rear. They can circle around us and hit us from behind,” Rugrat said darkly, looking at them both and then inspecting the armor plate he was working on.

“As we go we could collapse the secondary tunnels that lead into our path, give us a way to retreat and make it harder for the orcs to flank us?” Erik said.

“Could work,” Rugrat said.

“I’m scared that it could all come down on us if we do that,” Storbon said.

“Gilly and I should be able to do it, if we think that it might all collapse, we’ll just set up a bunch of walls that the orcs would need to break through?” Rugrat threw out the option.

“I’d feel safer with that,” Storbon conceded, looking directly at Rugrat. “With Erik and I up at the front I’d feel good if you were in command again, have Yuli as your second. Lucinda won’t be able to use her beasts much in close quarters fight, but she can scout out the caves before we start moving.”

“Alright, lets get her started then.”

Lucinda’s beasts headed out down the tunnels, they took turns watching the walls, taking breaks to eat and relax, Rugrat and Storbon finished working on the armor.

It was midday when Lucinda’s scouts had gone as far as they could and they picked out a route.

They gathered the formations and unused mines and explosives before they mounted up.

The caves were foreboding and darker than the cavern that the camp had been in.

Erik looked at the ruined walls of the camp and used his night vision spell, the cave brightened as he stepped forward, Lucinda was on his right, Storbon was on his left. Rugrat and Yuli were behind them with Tian Cui and Yao Meng taking up the rear guard.

“Lets start the grind,” Yao Meng said.

They had their rifles ready as they walked forward, scanning the area, they destroyed the entrances to the tunnel they were in, folowing one of the routes that Lucinda’’s scouts had checked out.

Erik opened and closed his hands around his rifle, feeling the pressure of it, trying to remain as alert as possible.

Finally the tunnel curved and then opened up, getting brighter.

Erik slowed down as they got to the mouth of the tunnel, taking a knee with Lucinda and Storbon as they surveyed the cavern in front of them.

It looked to be a farm to raise the big bulky hogs the orcs rode on.

There were several plots of mud where the hogs lived, their snouts to the ground, trying to search out something to eat.

Some had Orcs whipping them or riding them, breaking them in. Others, older looking hogs carried their scarred bulk around, jostling and hitting one another as they wandered their paddocks.

There was a group of large hide crafted tents in the middle of the muddy pens.

Orcs milled around the tents and headed off into the caves in groups or returned from the caves.

There had to be close to a hundred orcs and nearly twice that number in hogs, maybe more. 

All of them are as strong as the second group that attacked us, probably between level fifty seven and sixty.

He saw the same bone and sinew carriages outside the village, they were all emptied of people. One hog attacked another with its tusks, the orc let out a pained noise and whipped their head to the side.

The orcs hearing the commotion moved over to see the hogs fighting, raising their weapons in excitement.

“Pull back,” Erik said over the comms. Once they were back in the cover of the tunnels he started to relay everything to the rest of the team.

“Alright everyone get set up,” Rugrat said once they were forty or so yards back from the entrance to the open area.

Gilly raised spiked walls to guide the attackers through, Yuli and Rugrat tossed down amplification formations. Erik created trenches through his magic behind the walls, creating firing positions and a secondary line that was more suited to hand to hand combat. 

Gilly created raised platforms for Yao Meng, Tian Cui, Yuli and Rugrat to see the battlefield from and be above the three front-liners so they could shoot and used ranged attacks without hitting them.

They were almost done when Lucinda’s voice sent a chill through all of their bodies.

“There’s a patrol coming.”

“Yuli, do you think that you could target the village and the pens?” Rugrat asked as everyone moved to their positions.

Yuli grimaced and looked at the tunnel and at the wall between them and the tent village.

“I can try.”

“Good enough for me, fire it up,” Rugrat said.

Erik was in one of the trenches, his rifle fitted with a drum magazine as the noises of the orc patrol grew louder.

He could feel the surrounding mana gathering around Yuli as she prepared her spell. Without line of sight she would have to rely on her long distance artillery training to guesstimate the ranges she was working at and hit the enemy village.

From that mana she’s pulling in, looks like she’s aiming to just hit them in the large area of effect.

Erik pushed those errant thoughts from his head as the patrol group turned the corner of the tunnel.

The orcs made some confused noises, those in front not knowing why the tunnel had changed.

“Open fire!” Rugrat said.

Erik fired into the foremost orc, tracers cut through the tunnel, hammering the orcs and dropping them. Smelling blood, the orcs in the rear charged forwards.

The Shaman started to cast his spell when a round found his head and he collapsed backwards, the spell dying with him.

The orcs racial buff affected them but they had lost half of their ten orc group before they charged, not one of them made it to the first line of defenses.

Erik changed magazines, checking the magazines he had laid out along the trench’s wall, making sure that they were all still in reach.

“Damn,” Erik said, feeling the fire mana channelled into the cavern next to them, the mana built up quickly, he felt small impacts hitting the ground and then larger ones that made the tunnel they were in, shake and drop dust from above.

“Shift fire away from us and to the north,” Lucinda said, she was using one of her beasts she’d snuck into the cavern to alter Yuli’s attack.

“Got some orcs coming this way!”

Orcs rounded the corner, they were in a panic, trying to escape the cavern, rifles fired and the orcs added more tombstones to the ground.