Chương 260

The victory tasted like ash. They had annihilated the enemy's army, at high cost, and even witnessed the druidic elders' sacrifice, only to realize they had been outmaneuvered. The heart of the forest was exposed, and the Iron State was already marching on it. Oh, that wasn't to say this was a wash. The machine army had been a very real threat, and they'd even destroyed twelve zeppelins, effectively crippling the enemy's operations.

It would take them a very long time to forge a new force of the same quality and quantity, time they could use to hunt down and destroy their bases. But if what Candra said was true—and Orion trusted the old woman to discern her visions better than anyone except the High Priestess—then their main base was gone, and they'd be playing catch-up as they tried to prevent the destruction of the true Heartwood. Her specialty was Jewelcraft, after all, and few things could focus the Sight more than gems.

As panic threatened to ripple through the surviving officers on the cliff, Orion found his own pulse remaining remarkably steady. His newly elevated Mind attribute allowed him to process the situation with cold detachment. He did not feel overwhelmed; the variables had simply changed, demanding a new solution. Asteria did not waste a single breath on despair either. She turned her back on the smoking canyon, already weaving a complex pattern through the air.

When it coalesced, she tore a glowing rift in the fabric of space, anchoring the destination to the coordinates of their command center.

"Be prepared to fight," she instructed. Candra had seen the enemy move on, but there was no way to tell whether they'd left any surprises behind. Orion, Pauline, Elder Candra, and Archmage Valentia stepped through the portal immediately after her, closely followed by a detail of witches. They emerged onto the suspended platforms of their staging ground, stepping out of the spatial tunnel and straight into a graveyard. It immediately became clear that the command camp was gone.

Orion had to brace himself as a flood of expected information came in, but with forewarning, he was able to start parsing it with relative ease. The enchanted vine walkways linking the outer platforms were cleanly severed, sending entire areas tumbling to the forest floor. The silver wards that had protected the pavilions were shattered, their runic anchors dissolved by pinpoint applications of Silence. The guards they'd left behind lay where they had fallen. There were no signs of a prolonged struggle.

The witches and mages had been executed without being able to fight back, their throats cut by heated blades and their chests pierced by high-velocity slugs. Several people cursed, and some tried to cast healing magic on the fallen, but there was little they could do. They'd only left behind enough people to hold the wards together and the support staff. None of them could have put up a fight against the kind of force the Iron State could muster.

Their greatest strength had been their belief that the camp's location was unknown and that the wards were strong enough to hold long enough for word to be sent. Given the sheer concentration of Silence he could sense at the edges of the camp, as visible in the withered look of the trees there, the enemy had used an overwhelming amount to break through and prevent any communication. They must have been aware of our location for some time.

This has all the hallmarks of a preplanned operation, though perhaps they've been forced to move before they were ready, given that they had to sacrifice the bulk of their army to carry it out. It was cynical to say, but in the grand scheme of things, the loss of a couple of hundred people, most of whom had been noncombatants, wasn't that terrible a price to pay for the position they were in. Orion knelt beside a fallen witch, his Arcane Overlay rapidly analyzing the state of her body.

"There are a couple of broken bones, but they seem to have come from trying to hold back something massive. I don't think they knew they were under attack until it was too late," he muttered. Valentia surveyed the slaughter, clenching his jaw tight with barely contained fury. His floating staff sparked with errant arcs of blue lightning for a few seconds before he regained control.

"We got blinded by greed, and they managed to punish us for it." That admission almost seemed physically painful, and Orion had the impression he was supposed to feel guilty, given that his plan had led to the battle in the basin. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Normally, he would have dismissed such a thing as ludicrous. It wasn't his place to think about such matters.

Others, with far greater experience and power than he, were in charge of the camp's defenses, and they'd been certain it could withstand an attack. But that clearly had not been the case. He turned it over in his head, trying to figure out how he felt. I do not like this, not least because it taints our victory. I am angry that our people were killed without our being able to do anything about it. But most of all… Something about this doesn't seem right. Abruptly, he stood and walked to the edge of the camp.

Pauline followed him, sighing in mild exasperation, and he silently promised he'd let her rest once this was over. She'd certainly earned it. As he'd sensed, there was still some Silence in the air, which, considering the attack had happened hours earlier, was an indication of the sheer concentration that had been deployed. He knew Dreadnoughts could carry similar loads. They'd faced one such machine when it had tried to corrupt a mana pool.

But no matter where he looked, he found no tracks or traces of its passage. Of course, someone skilled in nature spells could have hidden them, but the Iron State was essentially anathema to that school. Even its humans seemed to prefer alchemy or magitek to regular magic. No, the most likely explanation was that it had not been brought by a Dreadnought. That would also align with the defenders' complete lack of forewarning. Such machines were truly mighty, but subtle they were not.

That meant the Iron State had another way to produce such quantities of Silence. It couldn't be spatial magic, both because they'd shown no abilities in that school, which would have allowed them to penetrate Cyril with much greater ease, and because the Silence disrupted delicate workings, especially those that required a very stable connection to the Field, like mass spatial spells. Is it him, then? Has the Alchemist finally shown his hand?

"We must recall the army," an Arcanist suggested, having been in discussion with Candra about the damage.

"We should pull every available wand and staff back from the Shattered Basin and march east."

"No," Valentia countered instantly, his smooth mask back in place. He turned to face them, and Orion felt a shiver crawl down his neck. The Archmage was easygoing most of the time, but he could be very scary when he was this angry.

"We cannot abandon the Basin simply because they struck back. We slaughtered an entire army today. We shattered a dozen zeppelins and thousands of their front-line machines. Their northern front lies open." It didn't seem to go well with the witches, who looked ready for revenge for their fallen sisters, but Asteria came to his support.

"If we pull back now, we'll just give them the time they need to rebuild their numbers. The sacrifice our people made must not be squandered."

"The bulk of our forces will march north," Valentia decided, his voice echoing across the ruined platforms.

"They shall push through the ashes of their armada and strike their supply lines. Break their footholds in the Ironwood. Force their command to recognize the cost of this feint."

"An army cannot catch an elite stealth unit anyway," Asteria added, looking east.

"The terrain is too hostile, the forest too thick. We need a strike team of our own. Fast, lethal, and unburdened by supply lines."

"I am coming," Orion hurried to proclaim. He didn't have enough proof yet to share his suspicions, but if what he thought was true, there wouldn't really be a difference between him being here or there. Valentia frowned at him.

"Orion, you have already done enough today. This hunt will likely pit us against Tier Four enemies. It is no place for a young mage, no matter how clever."

"With respect, Archmage, cleverness is exactly what you need," Orion replied without batting an eye.

"Elder Candra reported that she scryed new technology in the attack on the base, models we have never faced. My Trait allows me to parse their powers on the fly, despite the Silence's interference. I can identify their weak points, so you don't waste mana testing their armor. And if they are as powerful as you believe, it might be enough to save lives." He pointed toward the severed vine walkways.

"Furthermore, they are moving under stealth. They are likely masking their mana signatures. You cannot track them with standard divination, as even Elder Candra lost them."

"And you can?" Asteria asked.

"Every action requires energy," Orion explained, letting a thread of mana flow into his CC to project a glowing trail of numbers onto the wooden platform.

"They are using energy to move quickly through the canopy, likely riding specialized machines. Even if they mask the heat, they cannot erase the trails. I have calibrated my glasses to isolate the decay of alchemical residue, which should let me follow them." Candra let out a raspy chuckle.

"The boy is a bloodhound when set on a new mystery. Let him go, Valentia. You'll need eyes that can see through their tricks." The Archmage offered a curt nod, acknowledging the logic. The roster was set in seconds: Asteria, Valentia, Jonatan, Orion, Pauline, and a guard of six elite Magistrae. The rest of the surviving command staff walked back through the portal, preparing to lead the weary but victorious Alliance army into a brutal counteroffensive.

After giving Asteria information about where she had lost the trail, Candra led them, having decided that at least one Tier Four should remain with the army in case the Iron State had any more surprises. That the old woman was the least useful in an open fight went unsaid, as did the fact that she could unleash the greatest destruction, given enough time to prepare. By the time she reached the enemy bases, she would be a force of nature.

When the last slipped through the swirling void, Asteria collapsed it and opened a new one.

"I have never been to the Heartwood, and its presence is shielded by powerful nature magics, but if you can track them, we should be able to follow from where Elder Candra lost them," she explained. They all walked through after ensuring they had enough supplies and that all their battle injuries were healed. The parts of the forest Orion had seen so far were old, but the deep East was truly primeval.

The ironwood trunks here were unimaginably thick, their bark twisted and grown beyond their natural limits by centuries, if not millennia, of exposure to nature magic. The canopy above was an impenetrable ceiling of dark, metallic leaves, plunging the forest floor into a perpetual, eerie twilight lit only by the faint bioluminescence of various plants. More oppressive than the lack of light was the Field itself. The ambient life mana here was so dense it felt viscous, like wading through deep water.

Few other elements were present, and all were so tightly bound to it that Orion assumed any spell he cast would carry some of its flavor. That might not be too much of a problem for faith-based casters, but he'd need to adjust his calculations. The CC came to life and began drawing data from the SDGs, finding the relevant information and using it to adjust his spell formulae.

Once he had a handle on it, he used [Hypotheticism] to study his surroundings, adjusting his mana until a faint glowing trace became visible in the distance. A cross-reference with the data he had gathered from the broken base told him all he needed to know.

"Found them."