Chapter 336 - Bloody March

Surprisingly, it was the smell that affected him the most. Gulley thought he understood what he was Marching into, what with all the practice they had with the Mercenary Corps. They had endless mock battles, from squad combat all the way to companies fighting in huge simulated battles. None of them were strangers to battlefield combat by now. They even had special scenarios where they fought against the various tactics used by the invaders.

That was all well and good, and it ensured they were properly prepared for the actual combat. It didn’t paint the full picture, though. The ambience surrounding the war was draining on their morale just by existing. The days of sunshine and birdsong were gone with the advent of the Imperial Elders entering the fray. The sky was shrouded in smoke and smog, so even on days where it wasn’t constantly raining, the sky remained obscured and gloomy.

The soil was mud everywhere. There was no dry land. The river spilling into the lowlands was the least of it. Rain, blood, and sweat combined with the constant churning from the various soldiers constantly trudging about created a reddish muck that clung to everything.

Then there was the smell. It was a combination of blood, body odor, and excrement. Death was a smelly business, and the invaders didn’t seem to care much about keeping their people alive as long as they accomplished their goals.

Flies and carrion creatures swarmed the fields, feasting on the decaying flesh of the dead soldiers that nobody had time to remove from the land. Their bodies were pressed into the soil, further adding to the mushy mud prevalent across the battlefront. Gulley lost balance more than once Marching across what he thought was simple, flat ground only to stumble from an unexpected dead body shifting under his steps.

The invaders needed to keep pressure on a certain amount of landmass for their purposes, according to Major Reivyn’s speculation, and they had a lot more troops than the allies had realized, most of them waiting in reserve out of sight. After the initial push from the Elders and the first large-scale assault, the invaders were pushed out of their defensive positions, but their fallback locations were solid fortifications reinforced with reserve troops.

The Imperial Elders came out to launch another devastating aerial strike against the invaders, but the enemy robed powerhouse showed up with a gaggle of Mages, blocking most of the attack. Gulley didn’t understand the intricacies involved, but he could tell it had to do with Space Mana. The robed powerhouse had helped fuel some sort of shield that displaced the attack enough to alleviate most of the damage.

It had taken a lot out of the robed powerhouse, and the Imperial Elders had attempted to finish him off then and there, but the enemy was more powerful than Major Reivyn had even realized. The robed powerhouse fought off the Party of Imperial Elders to a stalemate and escaped with the Space Mages in tow. If they didn’t have the ability to quickly retreat from the battle, the Imperial Elders would have been able to overpower the robed powerhouse, eventually, but they couldn’t muster enough power to overwhelm him fast enough to prevent the Space Mages from whisking him away.

That encounter had led to a cat and mouse game between the higher Tier Classers and Mages, effectively removing them from the overall combat situation. The field was reduced to slugging it out between the two main armies, which was the main purpose of waiting for the Imperial Elders in the first place. Taking out the enemy powerhouse and Mages would have been a deciding blow for the war, but as it was, it was still going to plan.

The allies initially thought they had a numerical advantage after several months of more allies arriving each day and the invaders having been cutoff from their reinforcements, but the reserve forces of the invaders had revealed they were more equally matched than they had thought. The allies were still better equipped and higher Level than the main forces of the invaders, but the reserve units were mostly equal in power.

Gulley returned his focus to the present as his platoon made their way across the open field. Gulley’s squad was in the second row, spears at the ready. The front row had their swords drawn, ready to engage the enemy. The ground sloped up gently, crawling out of the edge of the lowlands, the cliffside fortress and mountain a distant spear into the sky behind them.

The sounds of combat reverberated across the field as the soldiers of each army engaged each other in fierce combat. Vultures circled in the air above, watching and waiting for their next meal to come. Arrows and Spells flew overhead in both directions, causing havoc among the rear ranks. Occasionally Gulley and the others would need to raise their own shields to block a stray arrow, and their group shield Skill activated to withstand the errant Magic Spell.

Yelling, shouting, and screaming accompanied the sounds of metal on metal ringing out. The noise was nothing new, they had simulated it rather accurately during their training, but the intensity and constant prevalence of sounds could grate on the nerves or distract from hearing commands. Gulley and the other mercenaries in his platoon were focused on their platoon commander and followed the sound of his voice impeccably.

A screaming horde of low Tier Classers from the enemy army came charging at the platoon as they maneuvered into position along the flank of the main unit, shoring up the edges as the enemy attempted to expand around them with their numerical advantage. Not every engagement was skewed the same way. Some battles had allies clearly in the lead, most had them evenly matched, and some engagements, like this one, the enemy forces were nearly double in size.

Gulley didn’t know the full extent of the quality of the other allied units their mercenary company was fighting with, but he had supreme confidence in their own unit. They had first-hand experience even against the higher Leveled reserve forces, and they were at worst evenly matched against the best the enemy could throw at them.

The best units, that is. Even though there was only the one robed powerhouse that they knew of, there were still lesser strike forces among the enemy camp. They moved about as Parties, wrecking havoc at opportune moments.

The enemy soldiers slammed into the shield-wall of the first row, not caring for the damage they received. They halted the platoon’s advance in their tracks, even knocking them back a few feet as the press of their body weight overcame their footing at the initial clash. Arms reached over the first row soldiers, attempted to grab ahold of shields and armor. Even with their reinforcements blocked off from the teleport camp being destroyed, they still used the same tactics of using their own bodies to try and force them into disorganized melees.

Gulley and the others stabbed forward with their spears, reaping the lives of many of the lower Tier Classers. The first row soldiers slashed and hacked at the survivors as Gulley and the others stowed their spears and drew their swords. The first row, having experienced this tactic many times, decisively gave up their shields and anything caught in the grasp of the dying soldiers as they fell back all the way to the back row. Gulley and the second squad became the first line of fighters, taking up the shield wall with the support of the third row and their spears.

Now that the initial charge was over, the enemy force didn’t have the momentum to close the distance once more to attempt the same tactic again so soon. The lieutenants called out the orders, and Gulley and his squad utilized a combination of shield bashes and straight thrusts to force the enemy back.

The platoon kept pushing them, and eventually, the entire unit moved past the point of contact, and the first row mercenaries simply scooped up their discarded shields once more. They would need to be repaired later, as they took quite a beating from the charging enemy followed shortly by being trampled on the ground, but they would get the job done for the remainder of the fight.

The enemy human shields turned and ran, many getting slashed and stabbed in the back for their efforts, to only be replaced by a reserve unit of better equipped soldiers. These new soldiers were disciplined and acted very much like the mercenaries. They were methodical in their attacks, and they attempted to reap the benefits of engaging an enemy that was already losing Stamina while they were fresh.

Too bad for this particular unit in targeting the mercenaries. Despite having been deployed on the field, Marching about, and having thwarted an enemy charge already, their depleted Stamina didn’t affect their fighting capabilities at all. As the engagement wore on, Gulley could see the confusion and frustration in their eyes when the mercenaries didn’t slow down or buckle at all.

This tactic was effective against many of the other allied units that either hadn’t started training their Stamina or just hadn’t had enough time for it to make much of a difference yet. The training method was spreading like wildfire, but they would need months, if not years, of consistent training to bear obvious fruits. It helped marginally, but that was only obvious at the last moments of combat.

Gulley was focused on the fight in front of him, constantly switching places with his platoon-mates in the back rows to spread the Stamina consumption across the whole platoon and making sure the mercenaries under his charge were performing properly. Despite being fully focused on the fight, as the squad leader on the end, he still had a perfect view of one of the enemy roaming Strike Forces charging toward them from the enemy’s rear.

There was no panic in the lieutenant’s voice as he instructed the platoon to hold position. Gulley had learned to trust the decision making of the officers in situations like this, and he trusted him once again. True to that trust, Major Reivyn and his Party charged out from where they were basically hiding their presence behind their platoon to meet the enemy strike force.

The enemy Party was obviously not expecting to be countered by the same move they had used, and they were clearly not as high Level as Major Reivyn, his father, and the others tore through them in no time. Three of the eight Party members turned tail and escaped, the other six adding their bodies to the growing murk beneath their feet.

Major Reivyn took the opportunity to use their positioning to swiftly thrust into the flank of the enemy reserve unit. They sliced into their side from the rear like a hot knife through butter, almost making it a quarter of the way through the enemy platoon before they broke the engagement and retreated.

They didn’t turn and run like the lower Tier Classers they used as human shields, though. They were still disciplined and conducted a fighting retreat. Major Reivyn and the others kept the pressure up, killed several more as Gulley and the others in the platoon allowed the enemy to disengage.

Once a decent amount of distance was put between them, Major Reivyn ordered his Party to return to the rear so as not to get overconfident and surrounded by too many enemy soldiers. The enemy was bleeding soldiers over the long-run, and there was no need to risk serious injury or death just to take out a couple more soldiers in the immediate. The enemy were the ones who were dictating the slow attrition, and Major Reivyn and the others were only happy to oblige.

The platoon gained a couple minutes to recharge their Stamina before the lieutenant received orders from a runner. He gave the commands, and Gulley and the others once more set forth to re-engage the enemy in a different flanking location.

—

Gulley wiped the sweat from his brow, holding his helmet in his offhand, as he surveyed the remains of the battlefield. Several companies had come together to head off the enemy forces en route to reinforce a strategic defensive position just on the other side of the lowlands. He didn’t know the outcome of the main fight further away, but they had carried the day and drove off the enemy soldiers.

He supervised as his squad went through the ranks of dead enemy soldiers, checking for signs of life and dispatching any they found feigning death. They had attempted to render aid to any enemy soldiers in prior conflicts, but they always, without fail, attempted a suicide attack on anyone with their guard down. Not only did the higher-ups waging the war for the invaders not care about their lives, but they didn’t seem to care, either.

It was grisly work, but if they let night fall without taking care of the wounded enemies, they would group up in the night and attack any weak points they could find. More allied soldiers died to these underhanded tactics than on the field of battle. Gulley went about the task with a stoic facade, though there were other soldiers who were obviously upset about the necessity. They carried out their duty, but there was more than one cuirass covered in the remnants of a past meal.

Their own wounded and dead had already been retrieved and tended to. They didn’t have anyone trying to hide among the bodies, for one, and only those that had been knocked unconscious needed to be searched for. Those with First Aid and other mundane Healing Skills were escorted about by a couple of protectors to find all of their downed men to the last one. They weren’t going to leave anyone behind, dead or alive.

The field of battle extended for well over a mile away from their tail end. Bodies, spears, swords, shields, and various other gear were strewn about. They wouldn’t have time to properly bury all of the dead enemies. After going through and dispatching any hidden threats, a group of Mages would take the time to simply till the earth. They would simply sink the bodies a couple feet down, bringing “fresh” dirt and soil to the top.

Despite their efforts, there was no such thing as “fresh” dirt to be found in the hellscape. This was truly bloody fighting with nearly a million soldiers fighting up and down the frontlines. Tens of thousands, maybe even over a hundred thousand, had already perished, and many times more had bled into the ground.

Even if the empire they were protecting managed to stop the invaders from stealing their Providence, the local area would see a huge hit to its prosperity. Nothing would grow for a long time. Blood and corpses didn’t make good fertilizer, especially when combined with remnants of offensive Magics doing more damage to the foundations of the land.

Gulley looked over and saw Major Reivyn attending to the same duty. He had a grim expression on his face, but he moved along with the others to dispatch any hidden saboteurs. Gulley’s respect for the man continued to grow. He wouldn’t order his subordinates to do something he wasn’t willing to do. He was obviously uncomfortable with the necessary action, but he still grit his teeth and did it.

Even though he wouldn’t order others to do something he wouldn’t do, he did spare his friends and family from having to do it, too. The officers and squad leaders didn’t have to do it either. Major Reivyn said it was a perk and an incentive. There wasn’t one squad leader or officer that didn’t partake at least once in the morbid task, though. They took a book out of Reivyn’s leadership style, and it showed with incredibly loyal mercenaries under them.

One of Gulley’s men suddenly stopped and dropped his sword. He crouched down and covered his head with his hands, refusing to move any further. Gulley put his helmet back on his head and trudged over to the man. He placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. The mercenary flinched before looking up at Gulley.

“Corporal?” The man asked, clearly rattled and fearing he’d get in trouble.

Gulley reached down, picked up the fallen sword, cleaned it off, and handed it back to the mercenary.

“Sheathe your weapon, Mercenary,” Gulley said, drawing his own weapon. “I’ll take over from here.”

The mercenary fought to prevent tears of relief from falling, nodding his head as he stood up and stumbled toward the staging area. There were other mercenaries and allied soldiers already waiting there. Gulley put on a mask and continued the task of checking for life and ending any he found.

Gulley glanced up and saw Major Reivyn looking at him. The Major nodded his head before continuing with his task. Gulley took the compliment, but it couldn’t lift his mood as he set about searching through the bodies once more.

—

“I hate having to treat the enemy like some common monster,” Reivyn muttered, leaning back with his arm shielding his eyes. He sat in the embrace of Kefira who held him close after the culling. She was always there to comfort him after such a task.

“They bring it on themselves,” Kefira said, shaking her head. “They’re some sort of fanatics. There’s no helping those kinds of people. They’re lost, and death is probably a mercy for them.”

“I understand everything logically, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I remember my first time having to cull goblins as a conscript. It was nothing like this. At least when it comes to monsters, we have the Euphoria to shield our minds from the trauma. I’m afraid we’re going to have far more casualties to the mental strain than from anything the enemy can throw at us.

“We haven’t seen any deserters yet, thankfully, but I’m sure there will be a mass exodus from the Mercenary Corps after this deployment. I’m sure the others under Captain Jekle in the other deployment might go through something similar. The Euphoria keeps Adventurers sane, but this is a mental meat grinder.”

“At least there’s no Misery associated with dispatching them,” Kefira pointed out. “That’s proof that the System recognizes their malicious intent. If they weren’t bent on causing as much harm as possible, even in that state, the System would punish us for our actions. It’s noticeably silent, though.”

“That’s only going to assuage someone so much. We’re still killing helpless people.”

“I know.”

Kefira’s arms tightened around Reivyn. She brought her cheek to rest against his arm blocking his eyes, giving it a quick kiss before simply holding him close.

“We’ll need to have some sort of counseling for everyone once this is over,” Reivyn said. “I think I’ll make it a mandatory thing from now on. After every deployment, everyone has to talk to someone about it. It’s not even about retaining mercenaries in the Corps. People kill themselves over this kind of guilt.”

Kefira’s grip almost became painful at that statement. Reivyn chuckled.

“No need to worry about me, dear,” Reivyn moved his arm to bring Kefira down into his own embrace, giving her a quick kiss to reciprocate. He looked straight into her eyes. “I’m fine. Well, I’ll be fine. My Dreams of the Past actually help with this aspect of warfare, as well.

“In fact…”

Reivyn suddenly sat up and exited the tent, motioning for Kefira to wait for him. He made his way over to the Captain’s tent. He indicated for one of the mercenaries standing guard to announce him. The mercenary pulled the flap back and said something to the captain before indicating Reivyn to head inside. Reivyn nodded his head in appreciation.

Reivyn ducked into the tent. The captain was sitting at his stool and campaign desk with his head in his hands. The day taking an obvious toll on him as well. He and Reivyn, and the other leaders for that matter, didn’t have to deal only with the culling, but also the dead under their command. It took a strong mind to be able to handle that kind of pressure.

“Captain,” Reivyn said, walking over and placing his hand on the man’s shoulder. The captain quickly lowered his hands and sat up straight.

“Yes, sir, what can I do for you?” Captain Caivel said.

“I’ve noticed a severe dip in discipline among the mercenaries,” Reivyn said. Captain Caivel gave Reivyn an incredulous look. “Tomorrow, before any other orders are received, you and the lieutenants are going to conduct a surprise inspection. You are going to grade the mercenaries as strictly as possible.

“After that, you’re going to come up with tasks for them to complete all day, every day. There will be no lounging about. The men need to be busy in order to maintain discipline. Cleaning, tending to gear, patrolling, drilling… anything you can think of. I don’t want to see any idle mercenaries.”

“Sir… All day, every day? No free time at all?” The captain asked skeptically. “The men have just gone through some terrible business. They’ve lost friends and comrades. They’ve had to kill helpless people who would slit their throats if they had the chance. I fear if we push them too hard…”

“They’ll have no opportunity to brood,” Reivyn finished. Captain Caivel looked up, a spark of recognition at what Reivyn was getting at in his eyes. “Make them complain about anything and everything. Anything except the battles and their lost comrades. Fill their time with mundane work, and ensure it’s never good enough.

“They’ll hate you and the other leaders in the short run. That’s fine. You can even tell them that I personally ordered you to do it because they’ve grown slovenly.

“Hopefully, that will keep their minds occupied until we can get back to garrison where we can actually help them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Reivyn clapped the man on the shoulder as he left. Getting the captain to participate in the shenanigans he was going to put the mercenaries through would also help to keep his mind off of things. It seemed like the man had understood that and was grateful for it. The men would complain and hate life in the short term, but hopefully, most of them would live in the long term.