“Cassie, Ella? Are you ready to go? Wolfe called down the tunnels once the Fox Demon and her team were gone.
“We’re on our way. We just lost Stephanie.” Cassie called back.
Wolfe brought the extra ammunition back inside to put it back in storage and found Stephanie sitting in the top pocket of his backpack with a feline smirk on her face.
“She’s with me. Have someone put this crate in a room on the lowest level so that it doesn’t attract monsters. The others were afraid to take it home with them for that reason. Maybe we can equip the patrol with a magazine if we decide to send anyone outside.
I would recommend that they all stay indoors for the time being, though. There are going to be a lot of angry soldiers in the area looking for retribution soon, and we don’t want them finding our home.”
That made sense to the witches. If Wolfe’s mission went well, the army would lose a major shipment of food and munitions again. They were already enraged about their previous losses, and this unit was much closer to Sylvan territory than the other attacks had been, so they were likely thinking that they were in the clear.
In reality, they really were close enough to think they’d already made it to safety, especially with Wolfe attacking another unit not long ago and at a location nowhere near their route.
The girls came up to the exit in their snow camouflage magical armour with rifles slung over their shoulders and a satchel full of extra supplies.
“If Stephanie is coming with us, we’re good to go. I think we’ve got too much ammunition, but better than not having enough. We both packed a ration pack and a few pieces of monster jerky. With that and a canteen of water, we should be good for a day or two, even without magic.
I think they’re getting more desperate as time goes on. They all seemed to expect that the monsters would do most of the work, but the lines held, and they had to use the tanks before they wanted to. It gave the witches advance warning of their arrival, and they took a lot of losses the first day, even though they weren’t fully pushed back.” Ella explained.
“That’s good news for us. We want them desperate and struggling. Once we decipher how they herded the monsters, we can turn them on the army and repay the favour.”
They headed out into the hills, and Wolfe looked back at Stephanie, who was resting in the top pocket of his bag with her head resting on her paws.
“Since you’re comfortable, how about you cast us some stamina spells? We will need them for this mission.” He instructed the Familiar Kitten.
She wrapped her magic around the three runners, giving them the stamina to jog all day, and Wolfe led the group in the direction that the scouts had given them.
“We will have to hurry so we don’t leave the other groups waiting. Our attack is their signal. The hope is that the sequential attacks will confuse the radio transmissions enough that the army can’t tell what it’s actually happening.
The more confused they are, the less likely they are to send an appropriate response to the attack.
There are rumours of an airstrip in the Wastes as well. The locals assume that it was relocated to a forward position in order to save time attacking Sylvan, and if we can find it, there will be all sorts of good stuff there.
Searching blindly for it in the mountains is a lost cause, but if we see what direction the planes come from when we attack, we can narrow it down every time they respond.” Wolfe explained.
“So we’re both the strike force and the bait?” Cassie asked.
“In a way. But I plan to be long gone before the planes actually get here. We can bait them later when we have more missiles available.”
Even at a jog, it took them all morning to find their target. They had increased their pace, hoping to get out of the Wastes and up to the front lines, but they weren’t fast enough this time.
The situation wasn’t what Wolfe and his team were expecting, though. The army had sent back a unit to escort them. Five hundred more infantry, densely packed in pickup trucks with guns mounted in the box, were headed toward his target.
The emblems marked them as mundane army units, so Wolfe signalled the witches to duck behind a hill and wait.
“Attach these to your rifles. They dampen the noise. You two attack the infantry, and I will disable the vehicles.” Wolfe whispered.
He carried two rifles with him today, an automatic rifle for [Fireballs] and one with a scope that he had inscribed with lightning and gravity enchantments to take out armour.
The trucks should be especially vulnerable to [Chain Lightning] with their light armour plating and exposed gunner.
Wolfe nodded to the witches and carefully squeezed the trigger for his first shot, hitting the lead truck in the windshield and sending it crashing into the truck beside it extolled the lightning spread to a half dozen more, frying their ignition systems and stopping them in the road.
Then the [Fireball] barrage started as the two witches fired bursts into the group. Wolfe continued to fire, electrocuting infantry and disabling trucks in the front of the convoy, while the witches caused chaos in the main unit.
[Fox to Snowman. They’re on to us. Fire and Fade.] The Fox demon announced over the radio, using the mundane army’s frequency.
Something must have gone wrong, so Wolfe motioned for Cassie and Ella to fall back with him, moving their group behind a hill and under a small rock ledge just before low-flying planes raced across the sky and dumped bombs everywhere in their general vicinity.
Wolfe and his team had done their damage, most of the unit they attacked had been destroyed, and Wolfe’s barrier was holding, but as the fires from the first round of bombings faded, a second round of jets arrived and began to drop gas bombs.
Not the anti-witch ones. These were regular nerve gas. They were utterly lethal to anything in their radius without an effective shield. It didn’t matter if Witches, Monsters, Mutants or Demons were attacking them. This gas should be effective against almost anything that it touches.
Wolfe and the Witches waited a few minutes, safe behind the barrier, until a group of ten infantry came over the rise from behind them, in full protective gear and wearing gas masks.
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Vines reached up from the ground and snapped ten necks at once, then dragged the bodies past the barrier. They didn’t have a chance to send out a warning, and even if they were tracked, it would look like they were dutifully searching the area.
The Unholy Flame barrier cleaned the gas from their victims, as well as roasted the one survivor among the group as they were pulled in, and Ella got right to work pulling off their masks and their long coats.
“We can put them over our armour spells. Are we retreating or finishing the fight?” She asked.
“Finishing it, of course. I can hear vehicles coming our way, so the others must have retreated when they realized it was a trap and sent the signal. Once they arrive, we can hit the army with everything at once, then run and hide.” Wolfe suggested.
“Then I recommend putting a [Lightning Storm Array] on one of those shots and a barrier on another. Lock them in and light them up. How much mana do you have?” Ella asked.
“After yesterday’s advancement, I’ve got plenty. Listen closely for check-in signals so we know when they’re all in range.”