Lotus was using a [Refresh] spell on Thor to keep his endurance up, while Thor did his best to keep the [Refreshing Lightning] up, and the Golems tore apart the Yeti Clan to the accompaniment of dozens of Magic Missiles.
Both Dana and Tori were using them, while Ophelia kept the Yetis away from the mages.
They were winning, and half the Clan was already down, while the rest bled out onto the snow as they fought. Against [Lacerate] they were not going to win a battle of attrition without healers.
One last volley of arrows ended the already wounded Yeti Clan, and Karl quickly gathered the Frost Giant’s belongings for Tessa to identify.
“Is everyone alright?” He asked as he ran over to the main fight.
“We will be in a minute. Bear is still recovering from a couple of wounds, as is Thor. Rae should be good, but everyone burned a lot of mana and energy.” Tessa replied.
Remi’s blizzard was slowly covering the battlefield as Karl searched the bodies for magical items to toss into his trusty loot bag. The yeti corpses all had magical weapons, but no other items on them other than the cloaks that they were using to disguise themselves as Giants.
That was good enough for Karl, as ten more weapons gave them a chance to either switch, or to turn them in later for credits. The soldiers on the line would appreciate the weapons upgrades, and goodwill from your reinforcements could never be a bad thing.
Back in middle school, when he was the last one who hadn’t gone through puberty, Karl had one huge friend who looked out for him when he had time. Karl hadn’t thought about Big John for a while, likely not since becoming an Elite, but him and John used to study together all the time, and John kept the bullying from getting out of hand when the teachers turned a blind eye.
John hadn’t been on the train, so he was likely in the mines right now, slaving away for the pittance they made at the bottom of the hole.
The others quickly sorted through the weapons with growing disappointment.
“It looks like these are uniformly made, perhaps by a mass blessing by a Frost Giant Shaman. They’re all identical, and though the [Biting Edge] enchantment is strong Ice Magic, it doesn’t really grant any benefit other than the ability to cut like a Commander Rank weapon.” Tessa explained.
“Well, I think that will be good enough for the front-line troops. We can drop by and give them the loot tomorrow if we have time. But right now, we need to get ourselves into shelter before we can’t see what we’re doing at all. Hawk, lead the way.” Karl replied.
[There is a good spot not far from here, a small cave, but big enough for everyone to hide inside.] Hawk decided, not wanting to be stuck outside all night again, in case another cold front came through.
They jogged through the snow-covered hills with a blizzard raging around them, hiding their tracks from anything that might want to follow them and dispersing their scent trail. In this battlefield, it was quickly becoming their best ally, and a great safeguard against surprise attacks.
The fact that there was no surviving local monster population helped as well. Everything that lived here had run away, and the Frost Giant Army could only send so many troops to cover an entire border.
The cave turned out to be much larger than Hawk had thought it was. The front area was small, but behind it, a narrow tunnel led to a much larger room.
Out of an abundance of caution, and because they had fallen for that trap once before, the team checked all the walls to ensure that none of them were fake before settling in for the night.
With the front entrance blocked by silk and snow, and then a hanging cloth in the narrow passage to the second chamber, they were able to keep the rear chamber quite comfortably warm without having to turn the flaming blade up too high.
Tori smiled as she saw the two clerics setting up to make dinner. “You know, I could get used to this. But I suspect that when we get back to an operating base, I will be reassigned either to my old team or to a new one, depending on where they were sent.”
Lotus nodded as she created spices for the stew.
“Most likely. They are so short on people that they’re not going to want to let us wander around with an extra Ascended Rank mage, especially not one that is specialized in combat.
I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than staying with us, though. We’re guaranteed to be in danger just about every single day, so being reassigned to a different group, who is sent to deal with less powerful threats, might be safer.” Lotus suggested.
“Safer than being with Thor, Hawk and Rae? That’s like having three extra Commanders in your group. It might not be perfect, but it’s pretty close to it. Even outnumbered two to one by an all Commander team, we still weren’t in mortal danger, and we only took minor injuries.”
She had a point. A Commander Rank beast who recovered stamina at an abnormal rate was a cheat code when it came to keeping a barrier active over the whole group.
After a half hour, Remi let the blizzard fade, leaving them snowed in and secure inside their cave. There was no artillery on this section of the front, and the change from the deafening barrage made it feel like they were somehow all alone in the world as they rested in their shared hammocks that night.
Rae took watch, but she was inside the cave, not interested in going outside, as they were going to have to scout in the morning anyhow, and nothing should be able to find them here overnight.
Besides, even if the Frost Giants did somehow find their cave, they wouldn’t fit through the entrance, and definitely wouldn’t fit through the tunnel to the second room. She could just call her Spider Golems to attack anything that disturbed their door.
But nothing did, until the morning radio reports started to come in.
The main line that they had left behind suffered massive casualties the previous night, but repelled a Frost Giant offensive without losing ground. Thousands of the Frost Giants had been killed after the Shamanistic weather spell had passed overhead, thanks to the ingenuity of the General in charge of the zone. He had the whole front line turned into a minefield with Fire Element magical resources as projectiles.
The cost was high, but they were hoping to recover many of the crystals and metals from the bodies to be reused in another round of manufacturing, and the explosives had proven to be deadly to even Ascended Rank Giants.
That left the Commanders and one Royal Rank Frost Giant for the Elites and the Holy magic enhanced infantry to deal with. It hadn’t been easy, but it had been possible, and the General closest to Karl’s cave was reporting that the other position was intact and unmoved.
Hawk was sent to scout while the humans ate, and quickly started making reports of enemy movements. Most of them didn’t sound like they were intact units, the numbers were all wonky. Three here, seven there, and even some solo Giants were reported to be moving along the border toward what Hawk said was a city far on the horizon, visible only when he flew high enough.
That would put it at least a hundred kilometres away, directly into the Frost Giant Nation.
That wasn’t a troop movement that they were going to be able to stop, but they could deal with anything that came too close to them today, with the plan to rejoin the main line for the evening and turn over whatever loot they had found.
The soldiers were going to need it, as the Frost Giants wouldn’t leave anything behind after a raid.
[Hawk, you can take out lone stragglers and small wounded packs if they can’t attack back. It will make the others think that there are more groups in the area than there are, and it will help keep them away from the lines.] Karl instructed.
[Got it. Free rein to kill the Evil Ice Giants. Today is going to be a good day.]