Sneak Peek #28 (Post 2 of 3) (Patreon)

Yui walked the deck of the cruiser, as the armed ships were being called.

He used the hand rope that was strung across the boat from time to time as they were pushed side to side, it was a jarring experience having the ground moving underneath him. A few people’s stomach’s had already disagreed with the momentum. As soon as the wood workers were finished with the first ship they had started training in them. Nothing replaced training Yui found.

The weapons were roughly similar to what they used already. The mana cannons used mana stones to fire, there was a readout that would tell one how hot the cannon was, needing to be cooled down with spells or slow down the rate of fire. The repeaters were standard weaponry. They put automatic FAL lok-alike emplacements around the ship. They had created a belt feed, it looked like a wooden snake that went from a metal box to the weapon system. Gears with rotating formations lined the wooden snake arm, when activated they would turn, moving the ammunition from the large box on the ground to the weapons, allowing them to fire for much longer without needing to reload. Once the ammunition box ran out, then they just had to move the lower section of the wooden snake to a new ammunition box.

Erik and Rugrat had passed on as much knowledge as they could onto the Alvans, at this point they were making multiple advancements all on their own.

Yui was proud of what his people were able to do.

For them to come back to having the entire dungeon under our control. Yui stood up a bit more as the boat shook again, tilting wildly.

People panicked.

“Right side!” Yui yelled.

People shifted their weight, the ship coming back over.

The ship hit the water again and water came in through the open gun ports to the swearing of the now soaked gunners.

Some had fallen over but they were getting back up, or others were helping them.

His sharp eyes looked over the ship looking at the groups, they were recoving a lot faster than they had before, they were quickly loading their weapons, going through the motions without actually firing them. Senior Sergeants would call out issues for different gun teams so they’d need to react differently.

It worked the same as the artillery platoon, there were Sergeants that controlled a single mortar or group of mages, they would coordinate the group while the Senior sergeant would command four of these teams while Staff Sergeants would command half of the platoon each, passing the orders from the Platoon’s Second Lieutenant.

As a leader, Yui could see how beneficial a chain of command and their training that built on their prior foundations allowed for quick transitions to new situations.

He passed a group clearing a stoppage, the two person gun team working as a singular unit as they pulled the feed from the gun, empty rounds started to pour out.

“Turn off the damn formation!” a sergeant yelled, seeing the issue before Yui could say anything.

The two chastised themselves and worked even harder to show that they weren’t idiots as they slammed the weapon system back together and started ‘firing’.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” The call came from above decks and filtered down as everyone stopped what they were doing and calmed down. They were all breathing heavily it was warm inside the ship, there were three levels for the ship, one in the hull, and two in the pyramids.

“End ex!” Another call went out.

“Unload weapons clear hatches!” Sergeants called out.

“Clean up your area of any obstacles. Make note of what you dropped!” Another called out.

Hatches opened, revealing outside.

They were in the largest pond on the Alva floor. The floor was growing bigger to fit in more housing, more industry. They were already three quarters of the way to the barracks and beast stables.

Pillars of fused rock dotted the area, supporting the ceiling above.

The ‘pond’ had water running around the city, creating a small river with it’s green banks for people to sit on.

Around the main pond there were some people watching, a dock that moved pleasure craft for people to sail around in had been taken over by the army, there were tents along the shore to support training.

“Well needs must I guess,” Yui muttered to himself, looking at the ropes connected to the ship that were attached to shore where two platoons had been hauling on the ropes randomly, creating chaos inside the ship’s hull.

“Well it’s a good work out,” Second Lieutenant Sun Li said.

“Frigging tug of war and we’re in the middle,” Yui smiled.

Li snorted and shrugged.

Boats made their way to the boat and people disembarked, once they were ashore, the next group were shipped out to the boat.

Glosil was on the shore, he snuck out of a tent he had been in as he saw Yui.

“Sir,” Yui said snapping off a salute, the group with him coming to attention.

“Captain,” Glosil returned the salute as he indicated for Yui to follow him.

Yui waved the group off and walked with Glosil.

“Pretty magical how seeing two officers everyone seems to hide,” Glosil said dryly.

“Ah, yes and you weren’t hiding in that tent so that your arm wouldn’t go numb from saluting everyone coming ashore?” Yui asked.

Glosil just smirked letting out a bit of a chuckle.

“How are we looking?”

“We’ll need some more time, we have the weapon systems sorted, getting used to the movement is the main issue, people need to get used to it, still have people losing their lunches.”

“If we’ve got anything we have time, you have three weeks. Gives them a goal to strive towards, we’ll have another talk then,” Glosil said.

“What about the Wilful Sect?

“We haven’t seen them doing much of note recently, they’re annoyed but some of them probably don’t even know who is attacking them, or that they’re being attacked.”

“That will change one way or another,” Yui said.

“Yes, it will, the situation is fluid, if something happens your Company will be the first to be sent out. I know that Domonos will become part of it too, we now have enough troops to create a third Platoon. I’m going to be pulling leaders from Dragon and Tiger Company to form Panther Company, they’ll meet up in Alva, get used to one another, then they’ll head to Alva and then pull half veterans half new bodies into their unit.”

“Just as we discussed in building out new units,” Yui said.

“Just as we said,” Glosil agreed.

Yui paused, making Glosil stop walking and look back at him.

“Glosil, I feel that there is a fight coming, a big one,” Yui said.

“King’s Hill Outpost has been newly formed and the other kingdoms are eyeing it as more roads connect it to the surrounding outposts every week. Vuzgal is a prize that any sect would want to have, Alva is hidden for now but if others were to find out about it, then who knows what they might do? Then we’re poking the Wilful Sect with the Adventurer’s and Trader’s Guild and then the Stone Fist Sect won’t have forgotten that we might have been the reason for their ice empress leaving, slapping their faces and pissing off one of the larger factions inside the Stone Fist Sect,” Glosil said, sounding a bit tired. “The Ten Realms has never been a quiet or peaceful place, one has to fight to earn their place here. There will come a time that we need to fight, for now we just need to make sure that we’re as ready as we can be.”

“More training,” Yui said, looking at Alva, “You know, sometimes I still can’t believe all of this is real.”

“You should probably sleep more,” Glosil said with a sideways glance.

The two of them started laughing at Glosil’s joke.

“After we take the water floor then we will be moving ahead with the new beast assignement,” Glosil said.

“It’ll be good to have some more diversity with our beasts, the panther’s can only create so many young. I heard that you have plans for the flying beast that Pan Kun captured at King’s Hill?”

“If we can have scouts that can fly then they’ll be able to get to spots others can’t and survey the area before others. Also they can conduct bombing raids,” Glosil said.

Then with the fire Lizards we have long range capabilities that will compliment the artillery units well, Metal affinity beasts with high defenses that can assist our Engineers with the Rifel platoons riding on the quick panthers and healers using the Earth affinity beasts to increase their mana regeneration and effect of their healing spells and speed across our lines. What about the CPD and Special teams? I haven’t heard any plans for them.”

“They’ll get to choose their own beasts, at that point they’ll have worked with them alland while there are some beasts that we can raise fairly easily, there are stronger beasts that have lower reproduction rates and are harer and more costly to raise. They’ll be able to pick from those,” Glosil said.

“Makes sense, with all of those beasts being added to the fight it will diversify what we can do allowing us greater flexibility on the battlefield.” Yui paused, causing Glosil to slow.

“It might just be me overreacting but I can feel it building, everyone is honed in, our military is growing rapidly and we’re taking on more aggressive operations, special teams deployed to scout out the Willful Institute. We’re going to war aren’t we?”

Glosil looked at Yui and then looked at the tower that stood in themiddle of Alva, the headquarters of the dungeon.

“The Willful Institute has crossed the bottom line of the Adventurer’s Guild, they have attacked Erik and Rugrat in the past. If we exist, they cannot. One way or another we will tear them apart. The Adventurer’s guild attacks weaken their foundations, they will pave the way,” Glosil let out a sigh and looked to Yui. “This is the ten realms, we need to show our strength, there are peopl eyeing our Vuzgal, if we are able to defeat the Willful Sect we not only remove a thron in our side, we gain capital and position. We affirm our position, sending a warning to those that are thinking of attacking us.”

“You don’t think that the guild can handle this by themselves? Won’t we be exposing the fact that they’re part of us?”

“I don’t think that they will be able to deal with it all, they are a powerful group, don’t get me wrong, but this is a powerful group, they’re split right now, but once united they’ll be strong, we need to hit them before they have time to pull themselves together. We will show our hand in the guild, but there are plenty of forces that control guilds and groups of different kinds. Showing that we have hidden cards and that one of them has become so powerful will look good for us and warn others. We have the ability to raise an army, a guild and expert crafters, not to bad,” Glosil said.

Yui sunk into his own thoughts. 

“Taking the water floor isn’t just about taking the water floor, we need to scure our rear lines, our home first before we attack externally,” Yui looked to Glosil for confirmation.

He nodded and cleared his throat.

“Once we have taken the water floor, you and your batallion will rest up and then head for Vuzgal, the forces in Vuzgal will return to Alva, the trained Company will have some rest and then they will turn to offensive operations against the Willful Institute. We’ll start hititng them more directly, undermining their strength, when you rotate back to Alva then you will take over offensive operations and Domonos will defend Vuzgal and Alva. It is time to put our new units and training to use.”