2222 April 9th, 2020 CE

0211 Sun 10th, 196 AE

Frontline

The entire elven army was on the run. US Brigade Combat Teams made rapid advances throughout the night and reclaimed the Magusian lands that the elves ran from. The Magusian Army couldn’t keep up with the speed of the American advance.

It was clear that the elves were starting to use scorched earth tactics. Every single house, town, and city that the American forces came across had been mostly razed to the ground. The scorched earth tactics had no effect on the US forces. Of course, it caused a lot of anguish to the Magus. It was certain that the Magus wasn’t going to like this one bit.

50 miles behind them, the airfields were nearly finished with their modifications. The runways had been smoothed out and cleared and all needed facilities to operate American aircraft had been set up. Air support had finally come back online. With the US army getting ever closer to the elven airbases, they had begun to be within the range of elven aircraft. Because of the dominance of American airpower in the old world, the US did not have a large arsenal of capable air defense systems. What they did have were shoulder-fired FIM-92 Stingers which were meant for short-range anti-air. There were also versions that were mounted on Humvees and LAV-25s. AN/TWQ-1 Avenger Air Defense Systems were basically Humvees with 8 Stingers attached and LAV-ADs were the same as the Avengers but were LAV-25s that also had a 25mm gun with anti-air capabilities. The other system was MIM-104 Patriots which had medium and long-range anti-air and anti-missile capabilities. A Patriot battalion which consisted of six batteries had been spread out and deployed miles behind the frontlines but were not expected to be used unless things got really problematic. A single Patriot missile was just too expensive to be wasted on a propeller aircraft.

The sirens of multiple diving elven dive bombers could be heard. Although quite effective as a psychological weapon against the Magus, it didn’t faze the US soldiers at all and was more of a detriment to the elves since it gave their position away.

The Avengers quickly found their diving, screeching targets and fired. Sixteen missiles from two Avengers flew at Mach speeds toward their targets. When elven dive bombers start to dive down, they would quickly be within the range of the FIM-92 Stingers which could easily shoot them down before they could even drop their payload. Within only a few minutes after they were heard, the entire squadron of elven dive bombers had been shot out of the sky. Missiles reducing their aircraft to mere fireballs.

Somewhere in the Elven Nation

An elven officer in a sleek grey uniform sat comfortably in a chair behind a desk and stared at the human standing in front of him. The human was tall and had some muscle to him. The officer looked back down at the clipboard in his hand. In a crisp loud voice, he shouted.

“Laborer. Next!”

The elven officer flipped to the next page. A boy who was 14 years old according to the information provided on the sheet of paper on the clipboard stared at him with a face full of anxiousness. The elven officer cocked his eyes.

“Servant. Next!”

A young girl came up.

“Servant. Next!”

A young woman approached the table. The officer looked up at her face and then down at her “assets”. His eyes looked down on her file and wandered back up towards her “assets”. He stared at them for a few seconds.

“...special work. Next!”

Unlike some of his colleagues, he was less inclined to say what “special work” was directly.

This was one of the few camps that were organizing the captured humans. Laborers were mostly sent to factories. Servants and a few laborers were sold on the market to citizens by the government. The “special works” went to the brothels.

Rather than killing all the humans, the elves believed that they had the “compassion” and “mercy” of letting some of them live to serve elves. They were basically slaves.

0220 April 10th, 2020 CE

0410 Sun 10th, 196 AE

A sector of the Verona River

The sun was starting to set.

“Move! Move! Get everything across the bridge as soon as possible!”

An engineer came running towards him from the bridge.

“Sir! Sir!”

The Lieutenant General turned to face him.

“Are the charges set?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Lieutenant General nodded and glanced at his adjutant.

“How much more are coming across?”

“This is the last division.”

“Tell them to get a move on. We don’t have time.” The Lieutenant General then went to find his executive officer. The executive officer was in the midst of ordering his division. He called out to his executive officer. “How are the defensive positions?”

“Machine gun nests are being set up across the river line. Mortars are ready to assault anything that tries to come across. All units should be positioned. We have every type of gun trained on this river, they are not passing through.”

A few minutes later, explosions rocked the sides of the bridges. It all came crashing down into the river. One of the many bridges that led across the Verona was blown up. More were to follow.

American HQ

“The elves have blown up every single bridge on the Verona River. They are setting up defenses on the bank. From the reconnaissance drones, I can see a whole array of machine-gun nests, anti-air emplacements, artillery positions, and a heck ton of ground units. They are adamant on not letting us through.”

“Shouldn’t be that hard of a nut to crack.”

Miles behind the American frontline

“Fire!”

M777s and M270s thundered in the plains. The crews of the M777s fired for hours on end. The M270s went back for constant reloads of their rocket launchers. Overhead, formations of F-15Es rocketed through the skies. Once they arrived at the river banks, they swooped in low to drop bombs onto the elven defenses on the shore. Whatever the elves had put into that river line was pounded for hours to oblivion. Nothing but blackened dirt and mangled metal remained.

Detecting these aircraft, elves scrambled to get their fighters in the air but the end results of their air battles would never change. Every single time, their formations would be blown out of the skies by hundreds of missiles from F-16s.

0307 April 10th, 2020 CE

0445 Sun 10th, 196 AE

A sector of the Verona River

Numerous HEMTTs (Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks) came up right beside the river. The trucks that were carrying small tug-like boats backed up into the water. Bridge erection boats were deployed from the back of them. After the boats were deployed, a few other trucks backed up into the river. They were carrying a different cargo. Improved Ribbon Bridges slid off of them and into the river. The once big cylindrical tubes that were on the back of the trucks slowly came apart into a flat floating bridge on the river.

Like tugs, the bridge erection boats started guiding the Improved Ribbon Bridges. They were soon all snapped together to form a large bridge that could cross the Verona.

The first Abrams rolled onto the bridge.

In the darkness, two elven scouts stared in amazement. The moonlight and the light from the American equipment gave a perfect view of what was happening.

“They are sliding bridges into the river!”

“What?!”

They stared at the scene through their binoculars. They were hiding in one of the few remaining bushes left after the relentless bombardment. They watched as a human magipanzer started moving towards the quickly made bridge.

“Isn’t that thing too heavy?”

A few seconds later, the human magipanzer moved onto the bridge and it held up. Even more human magipanzers followed and piled onto the bridge.

“...no way…”

One of the elves slapped his partner's shoulder.

“We have to go. Their magipanzers are crossing. We have to get this information back. They are doing it much faster than we are expecting.”

1205 April 10th, 2020 CE

0603 Sun 10th, 196 AE

Cat Kingdom, United Beastmen Kingdom, Soane Continent

Miller knocked on the door and entered

“Wasn’t our supply of extra rations and equipment supposed to get here today? We haven’t received it yet.”

Wolfred looked up from his book.

“...ah, forgot to tell you. The ship carrying that stuff over got sunk. We got a second one coming. We should have it by tomorrow. Cutting it close but there’s nothing we can do.”

“Huh? Sunk? By who? The Elven navy?”

“No. According to the Coast Guard, it was attacked by some water creature. Large holes on the bottom of the ship or something.”

“Hm. Scary.”

Wolfred shrugged.

“Not an isolated incident either. There had been reports here and there. Pretty sure people are calling whatever is attacking, “The Kraken”. Funny thing is, they aren’t even sure if it’s a massive squid.”

“Heh. Is the government doing anything about it?”

“From what I have heard, not much, too focused on fighting the elves as of right now. Guess there's not enough damage to justify a dedicated response or something but the Coast Guard is investigating. Shouldn’t be too surprising. Probably something similar to those giant birds in the New Frontier. Well. New world, new creatures. Look around us.”

Wolfred looked back down at his book.

Somewhere in the Kingdom of Albea

Swords clanged on the battlefield. Armor glinted from the sun. Dead bodies littered the ground. With his binoculars, an elf observed the battle from a cliff. He had a frown on his face.

“Damn beastmen.”

“Should we prepare an armored assault now sir?”

He shook his head.

“Too many casualties.”

He knew how fearless the beastmen were. There had been multiple reports of them charging tanks and placing bombs on them. A lot of armored units had been disabled by that. Turns out quite a lot of the beastmen could take multiple hits from machine-gun fire and not go down. They were also masters at assassination and infiltration. An entire armored column had been mysteriously blown up one night.

Originally the elven invasion force was split between 70% going to attack the Empire and 30% to the kingdoms. However, with the constant failures occurring at the Empire, resources and units were diverted. It was now split between 85% Empire and 15% kingdoms. With such few units, mounting a full offensive was just not possible anymore. Furthermore, with mounting losses from the beastmen’s infiltrations, the elves could only form a defensive position. However, they knew that with their allied human kingdom mobilized, it will only be a matter of time before it shifts in their favor.

A human knight was battered aside by a bear beastmen who towered over all the humans. A cheetah beastmen raced across the battlefield and cut down the humans who couldn’t react to his speed.

0822 April 10th, 2020 CE

0744 Sun 10th, 196 AE

The ocean between the Magus Imperium and Elven Nation

Another one sunk.

The submarines had been constantly attacking elven ships that had been trying to cross the ocean towards the Magus Imperium. After destroying the last of the ships in that convoy. They quickly started moving away. Staying in one place was a death wish even with a modern submarine. It won’t be long before elven destroyers and submarines started swarming the entire surrounding area dropping depth charges and randomly firing torpedoes.