Chapter 11

Immediately after the battle, Erik fainted due to exhaustion. His soldiers brought him inside the headquarters and left him there under guard. He slept like a baby with nothing to worry about for the first time since he came to this world. But that only lasted about eight hours or so.

Erik woke up in the middle of the night. He found himself lying on a couple of sandbags piled up instead of a bed and a pillow. It was relatively bright due to the moonlight. And the system notifications.

Erik lazily opened the system and started reading.

[Tutorial cleared.]

[You have leveled up.]

[You have new title(s)]

[8004 Goblin horde cleared.]

Erik was now level five and got a new title Enemy of Goblins. Also he had a massive amount of points, specifically 40046.

Erik rubbed his eyes to check if he was hallucinating. He wasn’t, but after reading the next notification his mood abruptly darkened.

[Hey there, my little champion. It seems that you are still alive. Good for you, it seems you will live to fight another day. Your next quest, kekeke, is to establish a new base. There are some nice islands to the west with your name on them. Ah, also be wary of your new neighbours. They are quite a haughty bunch I hear, kekeke. I will be watching, so don’t disappoint me. – Your most awesome god of war, Ares.]

The mighty human general named Erik was thrown instantly into depression since his sworn enemy and local asshole god Ares wasn’t even in this plane of existence.

Erik was annoyed to the maximum but couldn’t do anything. So, he stopped thinking about his impossible revenge and started contemplating his future.

He was especially worried about his so-called neighbours. If Ares thought they were haughty, and he was a god, who could they be.

But, as usual, he had no credible information on anything vital. He was like a bumbling child in the dark trying not to stub his toes on furniture.

Since it was still dark, he had nothing to do. He laid on his makeshift bed and fiddled with the system menu until it was dawn.

When the sun appeared above the horizon, Erik couldn’t wait anymore. As far as he was concerned, he wanted to get on with his adventure as soon as possible.

He dragged himself out of the bed and started for the outside. The soldier guarding the stairs was startled when he saw Erik coming down and hastily saluted while Erik only gave a nod in his direction.

When Erik stepped outside, he saw little green mountains made up of little green men. A couple of soldiers were still cleaning up the battlefield, removing the goblin corpses. The ground was steeped in blood and took on a red hue. If it wasn’t for the hundreds of men snoring away in a corner, one would think this was a graveyard.

Erik went to search for the engineers and found them all piled up like sardines next to each other.

He lightly kicked them awake. With a few murmurs and a couple of curses they awoke to find their general staring at them. They blankly stared at him for a moment and then realization dawned upon them.

Faster than Flash, they shot up and almost deafened Erik, “General!”. That shout coincidentally woke up everyone in the vicinity, which meant the whole base.

Erik now found himself being stared at by a couple hundred pairs of eyes. His anxiety shot up even faster than the speed at which the soldiers woke up.

He sighed in his heart and spoke, “We won!”

For a moment everyone just stared at Erik in a mute silence, but when they comprehended the meaning behind the words the crowd erupted in cheers and applause. If anyone was still sleepy, they weren’t now.

Erik gave them a moment of satisfaction. But this moment couldn’t last forever. Erik put up his hand and then there was only silence again.

“We won, but this isn’t the end, on the contrary, this is just the beginning. There is a whole world out there for the taking. It doesn’t belong to us but we will take it anyways. That’s what conquerors do. Everyone prepare yourselves, we march west today. I don’t know for how long or how far but to the west lies our new home.”, Erik said with a hint of annoyance.

Erik commanded, “Receive your orders!”

Everyone in unison shouted back, “Sir, yes Sir!”

“Engineers, you are to clear me a path through this forest as straight as possible and wide enough for the tanks to pass through.”, Erik commanded.

“Everyone else, provide support to the engineers so that we can leave this shitty forest as soon as possible. Also pack up everything that can be transported. And someone better start cooking real soon some real food, I’m sick and tired of wolf meat.”

Everyone in unison with bright smiles on their faces shouted back, “Sir, yes Sir!”

Erik was finally living the life or what passed for life since he was a shut-in with zero ambition and motivation.

After his glorious speech, he summoned twenty transport trucks. They were to be filled with ammunition, food, fuel, everything and everyone needed to supply his army.

His ability to act as a spawn point was formidable but it had a significant drawback. It required him to manually summon everything and if he was ambushed he would die without summoning anything in time.

So there was only one way to mitigate that weakness and that was to summon everything before the fight even started.

Throughout the next week the pitiful forest was violated again. Erik even summoned another squad of engineers because progress was too slow. The forest rumbled and thundered. Trees flew everywhere, unlucky animals got caught in the explosions. It was anything but peaceful. The power of humanity was at its full display blowing shit up.

The sniper was sent to scout ahead of the engineers. He blended into his surroundings and watched for possible enemies as well becoming a prolific hunter of animals with too much courage or curiosity.

It took them a whole month to clear a path through the forest. Finally, the day when they could leave this godforsaken forest came.

It was a sunny day, around noon. Erik was living it up these days, since he only had to listen to reports once a day when the engineers came back to the base.

But today, the whole army was lined up in front of him and waiting for his awesome speech.

Erik could barely contain his excitement so to his embarrassment his voice cracked, “Everyone, today is the day! We have cleared a path to the outside! We can finally leave this forest!”

Erik’s army was a bit of a joke since he was the only officer. He held a rank equivalent to Generalissimo while everyone else were privates. It was fortunate that the army wasn’t too big to manage properly.

But when Erik finally noticed that small detail, it was already the day when they were leaving for the outside world.

And hastily that day, the whole command structure for the land army popped into existence. Erik summoned everyone from generals to privates. Bureaucracy prospered.

There was a proper command chain but since the army was too small it was almost pointless. He spent 10000 points in one go for minimal benefits.

But at least Erik had a new friend or subordinate at least. Erik was thrilled since he could delegate everything to him. His dubious orders would now be interpreted by a person who actually knew what he was doing. His new Field Marshal who now commanded his army was named Alan Brooke.

So the first order given to him was to clean up the base and bury as much evidence as possible.

Everything that could not be taken with them was torched and squashed with tank tracks. The palisade walls were set on fire and the trenches were filled up with dirt and little green corpses.

The remaining tank traps and barbed wire were also buried. If somebody came later, he would only field red painted dirt and charred wood.

The second order given was to march west.

But before they could they had to settle everyone so Erik had to summon even more transport trucks. Officers with nothing to do were stuffed into them like sardines.

Everyone boarded their assigned vehicles. Engines roared to life. Erik shouted with glee in his voice and a smile on his face, “Depart!”

To the front and back there were Pumas, in the middle of the convoy were the transport trucks . Interspersed among the trucks were the half-tracks, tanks and in the dead centre was Erik inside of his Tiger II.

They slowly advanced through the forest via the path cleared by engineers. The trees loomed over their heads with their ancientness. Lucky for Erik, that the trees had plenty of space between each other due to natural selection.

They needed only one day to traverse the path while in comparison they needed a month to clear everything in their path.

The forest was filled with engine sounds and all the animals in the vicinity were scared witless. For kilometres there was none courageous enough to approach Erik’s army.

The march was utterly uneventful but everyone was alert since no one knew when something could happen in this world that they have no knowledge of.

Everything was fine until the convoy left the forest.

…

…

…

They were followed.

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Your author here.

I had a shitty week. Suffice to say, I visited my dentist. During work hours.

Anyways, Erik finally left the shitty forest with the shitty trees. And a nice cliff to annoy you.

Also, it wouldn't kill you to comment,rate or review this story. Do something.

Read Lest Darkness Fall by L.Sprague de Camp this week (historian,transported to 6th century rome, awesome story)

Still on hiatus though, this is just me being a merciful god :) Still no dragons.