Chapter 12

Did I Just Do That?

Getting a nap in had definitely been needed. Star awoke with the sun still up, but making its final descent in the west. His first course of action upon waking was to find and inform his pack about his plan for tonight. He’d be sneaking into the enemy army’s encampment and planting as much C4 remote charges as he had the resources for. Star explained it to Amy and was surprised by how much she opposed his plan. She was afraid he’d be captured or killed. That was understandable but Star remained firm about carrying through with it. In one fell swoop, he would end the threat of this army and begin the liberation of the other cities being sieged.

“Just make sure that you come back to me… To our pack. You are changing everything, and we need that change.” Amy said, clutching him in a bear hug.

“Of course I’ll be back. If things get too hairy out there I’ll just dip out.” He said as he untangled himself from her clutches.

The others were nearly as emotional but they all seemed to be worried. Willow had actually finished with her enchantments on his Juggernaut armor set so he put it in his inventory, then donned the kit. The enchantments on it were to make it tougher, and disperse blunt impacts better. He had no idea how much this affected the armor, but if it was anything like the armor of that one dude he’d shot at when he first arrived at the city, then he had just received a massive upgrade to his defenses.

Star waved goodbye to the four women and headed out. Making his way to the wall of the city. He wasn’t going to be leaving through the gates. He’d be leaving over the side once the sun was down. The enemy army may not be near enough to see through the trees, but they most definitely had scouts watching the walls and gates.

Going over his store page in the WarPad Star spent what was left of his meager resources on almost a ton--as in 2000Lbs-- of remotely detonated C4 charges. Hopefully a literal ton of explosives would make his problems go away… The best way to make a problem go away in his opinion.

Star waited at his egress point on the wall until the sun was well and truly set. Darkness covered the land as he slipped over the wall and dropped the thirty or so feet to the ground. Rolling with his landing to absorb the impact of the fall then dashing for the treeline for all he was worth. The optics of the Juggernauts helm making the world as bright as a cloudless midday. Inside the cover of the trees Star made his way towards the area where the scouting reports suggested that the army should be.

But it wasn’t as simple as taking a stroll in the forest. Star almost immediately encountered scouting patrols from Justin’s Kingdom. And unlike in a video game where AIs never noticed a missing patrol. These people would be missed if he just dispatched them and moved along. So Star found himself conducting a stealth insertion mission. Moving as silently as he could given his armor and environment he made his way past the patrol.

Making his way deeper into the forest, Star encountered patrol after patrol of scouts… Or forward perimeter guards, whatever they were, he found a lot of them. In fact, over the course of nearly two hours Star had avoided encounters with more than a hundred different individuals and groups of patrolling scouts. These peoples commanders must be paranoid as fuck. He thought to himself as he finally got near enough to see the enemy encampment.

Star was actually very surprised by what he found. This army was much larger than what had been reported to them. Much much larger. There was no clear line where the camp began, no fences or anything like that.. What he found was a freaking tent city had been established in the forest. There were numerous patrols moving throughout the area. moving between tents and bringing with them strange torches that had to be magical in nature. Just counting the number of people he could see moving around within his admittedly limited field of view, there were hundreds of people awake.

The real picture came from his minimap. Apparently encountering the edge of the camp counted as enough to reveal the extent of the camp. His minimap showed an area that more than likely held at least a hundred thousand soldiers… He was going to need a new plan of action. And he was going to need to know how the hell the enemy had gotten this many soldiers here this quickly.

Taking care to keep himself concealed, Star began circling the perimeter of the camp. Going through the canopy of the forest sometimes, and other times crawling along on his belly as he tried desperately to avoid detection. He succeeded mostly. The few patrols that had noticed noise or caught a glimpse of him seemed to think he’d been a wild animal of some sort.

It took nearly five hours, but he’d successfully made a full circuit around the perimeter and discovered something disturbing about the army that was here. There were definitely many more people here than the scouts had accounted for… By a large margin… But that wasn’t the disturbing thing about it. The disturbing thing about the camp was that there was no sign of which direction they had arrived from. This many people would leave a huge trail in their wake as they made their way through the forest. But the only signs of people traversing the forest came from the camp itself.

It's like they teleported to this location. Star thought to himself. He extracted his WarPad and typed a message to Lupin and General WhiteClaw. Informing the two of them of his observations and suspicions. Then he pressed send. Two identical scrolls with wings popped into existence and began winging it towards the city, completely ignoring the trees in their path and moving straight through. Now came the hard part. Infiltration and information gathering.

Star took his time sneaking through the camp. Moving deeper and deeper into the maze of tents that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He would only have a few more hours of darkness to cover him in this infiltration, and he needed to make the most of it.

Once he got deep into the center of the camp he found something very strange. A clearing. About fifty yards wide, and it was entirely barren. No tents, no foliage and surprisingly no patrols. The only thing present in the clearing was a large egg shaped stone at the center that seemed to have carvings all over it. The strangest part about it was that he hadn’t noticed the clearing until he had literally walked into it without seeing it. Obfuscation magic seemed to be in effect around the clearing. The only reason that he’d found it was that he’d been avoiding a patrol and stepped foot into the clearing.

Now Star was no expert. But a strange carving covered rock in clearing in a world with magic just screamed that this was something important. So he did the only logical thing to do with a said rock. He sprinted over to it and slipped it into his inventory for Willow to examine. In retrospect he should have realized that this was probably a stupid idea. Which it was. A stupid idea that is.

The second that the rock was in his inventory the obfuscation magic around the clearing disappeared. and shouts rang out from the camp all around Star.

“Oh Fuck” He whisper shouted to himself. Then took off at a dead sprint, headed in the direction of Dragons Roost.

The time for stealth had passed. Star equipped what was probably his favorite gun ever. The P90-S as he sprinted and began lobbing C4 charges all around him, aiming them at tents as he ran. It was still dark out. and apparently the enemy forces didn’t really know what was going on. So Star encountered minimal resistance as he charged through the camp. Leaving a trail of explosives in his wake. As he dove out of the camp and charged through the forest Star figured he was far enough away to detonate the charges, so he pressed the button on the detonator that was clipped to his chestpiece.

The satisfying sound of the couple hundred presents he’d left for the neighbors being opened rang throughout the forest in a deafening BOOOOM. Followed by shouts of joy and adoration for the sick presents. At least that is how Star chose to interpret the screams that followed the major blast of all that C4 going off in the enemy camp.

Star was starting to think that he might get away from all of this scot free. As he mercilessly gunned down a patrol in his way when he had a sudden feeling deep in his guts telling him that he needed to be anywhere but right where he was at the moment.

Star dove to the side. Paying heed to his instincts. But that was not enough to save him fully. There was a sudden whoosh of displaced air as he leapt. And he felt a strange line of pressure exert itself on his back and his dive became a tumble that ended with him smashing into a tree. Apparently his dive had been a very good call, because directly in line with where he had been running previously there was now a trench of displaced dirt and several shattered trees. Stars ears were ringing and he barely heard the destruction that had just unfolded.

Scrambling to his feet Star glanced around and found the source of whatever the attack had been and found a man in full plate armor seated on the back of a griffon. Griffons are a lot larger than Star had expected. He’d always pictured them being about the size of a horse. this creature was more like the size of an elephant. Both it and it’s rider looked angry. And were Star a lesser man, he would have immediately pissed himself then turned and ran. But seeing as how Star was not a lesser man, and he held in his hands a fully automatic weapon, he simply raised it and aimed at the guy sitting atop the flying elephant sized creature that was currently gracing the forest floor with its presence.

The man atop the griffon had clearly not expected to be attacked. Especially because he hadn’t even registered the fact that Star had a weapon on him. So when Star unloaded thirty rounds into his chest from only thirty yards away his eyes widened and he kicked his mount in surprise. To Star’s surprise he saw that his bullets didn’t really do much good other than rocking the man a bit. The rounds bounced off of his chestplate and ricocheted off in random directions.

Fortunately for Star, the man's surprised jerk caused his mount to leap into the sky, misinterpreting its master's kick as an order to do so. Star immediately spun around and began sprinting at full speed into the forest again. Pulling out his WarPad and quickly hitting the Accept prompt for all the looting stuff then switching out his P90-S for his RKKV rifle. He only had three rounds for it. But he figured that it would be the only thing that he had that could take down a Griffon in a single shot.

Apparently though, the Griffon Rider had decided that coming in for a landing again would be a bad idea. Instead the griffon was making strafing runs above the canopy. Allowing its rider to unleash that crazy attack from above. And there was more than one of them. With different types of attacks raining down from above, Star could not see where to aim to get a shot in between the attacks. Though it also meant that they didn’t know his precise location either. but their attacks had a large AOE and seemed to be magical in nature.

With fire, lightning, strange beams of purple light, what seemed like compressed air, and even massive gouts of water crashing through the trees around him Star was hard pressed to stay one step ahead of his pursuers.

When Star finally reached the clearing before the city with its mile and half stretch of flat open ground with no cover he didn’t hesitate. He knew that hesitation right now would most likely mean death or capture.Sprinting for all he was worth into the open terrain Star leapt forward and twisted in the air, lining the barrel of his RKKV rifle up with the heavens and centering his aim in on the first griffon in his line of sight. He squeezed the trigger.

The massive rifle kicked hard. Driving his shoulder into the dirt and practically flipping Star over as the impossibly fast round exited the rifle and struck the griffon center mass in practically the same nanosecond.

Star didn’t get to see what happened as a sudden explosion went off around him. Fire engulfed him and sent him flying a good dozen yards. middair Star slipped his RKKV rifle into his inventory just before he slammed into the ground. Using the momentum to his advantage Star ignored the sudden and intense pain that was washing through his everywhere, and rolled to feet and continued his sprint towards the city.

Star could smell burning flesh, he could feel broken ribs grinding. Still he pushed on. Running towards the city gates as fast as his legs would carry him. The Juggernaut Armor was pumping his body full of Regeneration Syringe liquid and even as he ran he could feel his body being put back to rights by the substance.

Reaching the Gates Star found them open and waiting for him. Once he got across the threshold Star allowed himself to crash to the ground. His body was still torn to shreds and he didn’t want to actually know how much damage he was suffering from he just knew that if he remained still the healing would go faster and he was in too much pain.

Laying there gasping for breath and surrounded by concerned looking soldiers Star pondered to himself, “Did I really just do that?”