The next day started, and the duo of Elise and Nina woke up not feeling the greatest they’d ever felt. However, Nina was used to having difficulty sleeping (mostly due to hunger) while Elise had gotten some experience recently whenever Nalia’s training reached a particularly intensive part, so they pretty much just shrugged it off after a minute or two and went to have breakfast.

‘While we’re eating could I ask you something, big sister?’ Nina communicated to Elise.

‘Of course. Ask anything you want.’

‘How well am I doing? You know, with the training?’

‘That’s difficult to say, since pretty much only my sister ever trained like this, and her situation was different. Some physical specialists do eventually manage attain a similar state as what we’re trying to reach, but that’s only as a side-effect and after training a lot with regular methods.

‘But in terms of how long it will take for you to get some results out of the training… I believe it should take less than two weeks.’

‘I see… Two weeks, huh… Two weeks… Two weeks…’ Nina kept on muttering those two words for a bit, seemingly full of complicated thoughts.

After breakfast, Elise told Hiroka that she and Nalia would stay training for most of the day and then rest for the operation, so the fox woman sent a message to command and got permission to visit her village.

‘It’s been a bit, so I miss home.” She told the younger girl “Plus I’ll have access to more ingredients to make some extra lunches for you.”

Elise smiled upon hearing that “Thank you very much, I’ll be looking forward to your food. But speaking of home, I got curious: Do you live with someone?”

“Yeah, I live together with five cousins. Two men and three women.” Hiroka replied “What about you two?”

Nalia was the first to reply “Because of the way we’re born, all the fairies in my village are more or less sisters. I do have a few friends I’m closer to, but I lived on my own until I became Elise’s partner.”

“As for me, I already told you that my family isn’t related to me by blood.” Elise said “But they’re also not related by blood and still consider each other as sisters, so we’re all the same. I intend to go back and live with my older sisters after my journey is over.”

“I really want to know more about the people who raised you, but that would probably take a while, so… Would you mind telling me about it another time?” Hiroka asked.

“Sure, as long as you tell me about your cousins too.”

With that said, they gave their farewells to each other and Hiroka left. Then the remaining three began to train as promised. Nina stayed inside the armor at first, just in case the alliance sent someone else to accompany them while Hiroka was away, but apparently they were content with knowing where the ‘mercenary’ was so they could contact her when it came time for the operation, so they had some privacy.

Still, Nalia cast a spell to create a thick mist around them before letting Nina out to get some fresh air. There was no reason to be careless.

“I’m really happy you can use cleaning spells, Nalia.” Were the rabbit girl’s first words after that “It would feel really unpleasant otherwise.”

“Yeah. That’s some really useful magic, isn’t it?” Elise agreed with her “Though that makes me think… Would you begin smelling bad if you spent too long without being cleaned? You usually have no smell at all, so…”

“No.” Nina replied “Whatever it is that makes us have no smell also prevents that sort of thing. Though it does have limits. If we’re covered head to toe in a strong smelling substance, then the smell will still be detectable. But if it’s just small amounts then that’s another story.”

“Very, very interesting… Someday I’ll have to try and figure out how that works.” Nalia said.

They didn’t talk too much after that. Nina did a few stretches to work out the kinks and they went back to their training. Nalia was doing the usual, trying to refine her spells and develop new magic as well as practicing what she thought was particularly helpful for their situation, and of course Nina went back to her full awareness training under Elise’s supervision.

They had started over from the beginning in order to get Nina back into the groove. She quickly managed to achieve full awareness on both arms and then the legs did not take much longer, given that she was getting better and better at the basic skills required for it.

Only the stage of doing both legs at once took more than ten attempts before achieving success, but after that it was time to go into uncharted waters as Nina tried to gain full awareness of her own trunk, starting with the chest and going down from there.

It was a massive wall right from the very beginning. That was the first time Nina had to deal with internal organs, those being the heart and lungs, which were connected to each other and to the rest of the body in countless different ways, all of which had to be taken into consideration while attempting to get an awareness of them.

She made progress little by little, once more relying on Elise’s instructions to make sure she wasn’t just imagining things. Hours passed and they had to stop for a bit, both because the group needed to eat and because the painful side-effects of the training had triggered.

“Argh… Feeling the pain in my chest is even worse somehow…” Nina complained.

“At least the training is… Progressing nicely…” Elise replied.

It took a long while for the pain to go back to a level where it was reasonable for them to train once more, but they still had a lot of time left.

+0+

In the end, Nina was able to finish getting full awareness of the upper part of her trunk, but the lower parts were a different story. They just had so many organs all squeezed together and with all sorts of unique parts that had to be taken into consideration at once.

It was already late evening by the time they had to stop again because of the pain, and Elise decided that they should stop there in order to avoid losing sleep again, given that the date of the operation was nearly upon them. The trio then talked about what Nalia and Nina’s roles would be during it, and discussed possible scenarios:

“I think having you as the vanguard while I support you from range would be the best general strategy.” Nalia told Nina “Big sister can help coordinate us for maximum effectiveness.”

“It makes sense. I just wonder how I’ll do in combat. I know I’ll have your boost, but still…”

“With Nalia’s boosts, your physical abilities are pretty much on the level of the strongest beastkin, generally speaking. You’ll have no trouble in purely physical battles.” Elise said “It’s hard to say how you’d fare against the Strangers, given we don’t know what skills they may have, but I’m confident about our chances.”

“I think it’s not gonna be a problem at all, unless we’re fighting multiple Strangers at once, or a combination of Strangers and powerful beastkin.” Nalia judged “But regardless, we’ll be able to see how things go tomorrow.”

“We’ll see, huh… I just hope I don’t screw things up.” Nina said.

“You did quite well in your first fight ever against that woman.” Elise said “And we’ll support you, so just relax and do your best.”

“Okay. I will.”

Soon after that, they received a message from command telling them to head to a certain part of the forest in order to prepare for their mission. Nina went back inside the armor and the trio followed the instructions, Nalia’s wind movement magic helping them make quite good time. Soon enough they were able to see a small encampment and a squirrel tribe beastkin who was acting as a lookout.

He had obviously been told about them and their appearance was pretty distinctive, so he simply waved them in after a moment of surprise once they were spotted. The trio still slowed down and entered the area at a walking pace since there was no need to rush.

The camp was very clearly a temporary one, full of hastily assembled tents and hammocks, along with a fire-pit at the center and quite a few beastkin moving here and there, carrying stuff. And as they were taking in the sights, a familiar voice was heard.

“Ah, you’re here.” It was Hiroka.

“Ah- Err… You surprised me. I didn’t expect to see you here, Hiroka.” Elise got flustered by the sudden appearance but soon managed to regain her composure.

“I didn’t need to spend too much time at home, really.” She replied “Just checking in with the others and cooking some food. And because my village isn’t that far from here, I decided to come after receiving a message about where you girls had to go.”

“Right… Well, it’s nice to see you again, even if it was unexpected.”

“Do you know where we need to go to receive our instructions?” Nalia took the chance to ask.

“Yeah. I’ll take you to the command tent. Let’s go.”

Elise and the others followed Hiroka to one of the biggest tents in the camp, which was most notable for its deep violet color. They drew some stares (specially the ‘empty’ suit of armor), but the people around were too busy to care beyond an initial look.

The commander of the operation was a male foxkin with red eyes and hair. He quickly got down to business after a short greeting:

“Tomorrow’s operation will be a full-scale assault on the bobcat tribe village, with the intent of taking it over to use as a jumping off point for further advances.” He stated “From the information we were able to get, the village doesn’t seem to be particularly well-defended, and we suspect that a good portion of the bobcat warriors are currently outside.”

“I see.” Elise replied “So the reason why I didn’t see anything unusual during the recon was because there really is very little activity going on in the village, right?”

“That appears to be the case. At any rate, your role on this operation is simple: Supporting our troops, as well as keeping watch for any Strangers that try to interfere and intercepting them if necessary.” He stopped for a moment “Defeating such opponents would obviously be ideal, but if that’s impossible you should try and delay them to give time for our troops to finish. Your ability to detect them from long range will be extremely useful for that.”

“Understood. I believe having Nalia provide ranged attacks while the black armor acts as a wall-breaker would be a good way to support the attack. Is that acceptable?” Elise asked.

“Yes. That is perfectly acceptable. And well…” He sighed “You can go and rest at the camp. We’ll be leaving for the operation one hour before dawn. Get ready.” He dismissed them before turning back to look at a large pile of maps as if it had personally offended him.

+0+

The only thing of note that happened after that was Hiroka somehow finagling herself into the role of cooking for the troops. Needing to make much larger amounts of food than usual didn’t really seem to hinder her too much, so they had a pretty good meal that night.

That also meant Hiroka was too busy to spend time with them and the same went for the other troops, so the ‘mercenaries’ ended up just staying quietly in one corner without talking to anyone. Aside from that, the meal came late enough in the night that Elise decided to go to sleep soon afterwards, since they would have to wake up very early.

They simply found a nice unoccupied spot to lay down the sleeping bag while the black armor stood beside, had Nalia set down her usual protection spells and quickly fell asleep.

The fairy also set down an alarm spell to wake them up half an hour before the scheduled start of the operation (so they could get ready before leaving), but the noise and movement of the rest of the camp getting up rendered it unnecessary by waking up the group a few minutes before it would trigger.

They did their usual morning routine and ate along with the troops (Hiroka and her helpers had woken up even earlier to prepare the food), then the march started.

It was pretty impressive to behold. There were more beastkin on that march than the total population of Nalia’s village, and besides the foxes, owls, squirrels and moles they had already interacted with there were many other types, like crocodiles, badgers and a few types of birds.

The flying ones moved through the air about four meters above the ground, the grounded ones were often working in groups to carry large objects like siege weapons or materials to construct fortifications on the spot and there were magic users all around casting a combined spell to accelerate the troops.

And thus the most impressive element of the march was its sheer speed. They were going about half again as fast as a normal human’s running speed, which was particularly impressive for the ones carrying heavy loads. Plus their pace was unbroken as the loose formation of the troops allowed them to smoothly weave around obstacles without slowing down.

They had started quite a distance away from the bobcat village in order to conceal their gathering of troops, but the march was so quick they were able to see it within half an hour.

That also meant the bobcats were able to see them, of course. So a loud horn sound echoed from the direction of their village as their lookouts gave the alarm. And the defenders mobilized quickly, closing the main gate and beginning to fire upon the approaching force.

However, even a fully mobilized bobcat village would have struggled against the sheer force arrayed against it, let alone one who was currently lightly defended. The defensive fire barely made a dent on the troops, and two groups carrying heavy battering rams moved to the front of the pack as they reached the closed gate.

The two rams struck in close succession as the rest of the troops split between protecting them and counter-attacking the defenders on the walls, with it mostly being flying troops doing the latter. The gate buckled but held.

‘Go!’ Elise ordered Nina, who had been advancing close to the vanguard.

She leapt at the gate, helped by a quick burst of extra speed from Nalia, and threw a punch that hit with a sound of tortured wood and bent steel, but couldn’t get fully through the thick defensive gate. The armored rabbit girl pushed off of it with her legs to avoid falling in front, which left the space open for the rams to strike again.

One, two and it was finally too much for the gate, that broke away from the wall on its left side first before fully going down. The magically amplified voice of the commander sounded from their side, ordering for the rams to move aside as soldiers carrying huge tower shields switched from protecting them to running through the open passage.

They took the brunt of the attacks of the bobcats who had become frenzied upon having their home ground invaded. One fell to a heavy steel ball dropped from an observation tower, another got bitten in the neck by a bobcat that pounced on him without regard to the blades that came in his defense.

Yet, more came to take their places, holding the line as more troops filtered through the broken gate to join the attack, soon beginning to push back the mass of defenders. The fighters at the walls were overcome, and the pressure on the bobcats instantly doubled as the fliers joined the offensive.

It was too much for the bobcats to take. Their attacks flagged and they began to fall back to the nearby buildings, which were defensively reinforced because of their proximity to the gate.

From then on the battle became a repetitive, time-consuming affair of breaking into defended buildings to clear them out. Having broken into the village itself and established a beachhead meant the alliance forces could send in their troops freely and take full advantage of their superior might. One place after another was cleared out, slowly tearing down the resistance.

Sometimes while sweeping buildings the troops would find non-combatants hiding in basements. They had orders to leave those alone and simply move on to the next spot. And while all of that was happening, Elise and her partners helped out where they could, but left most of the work to the beastkin troops. Nalia had also been keeping an eye on the Strangers she could detect, paying particular attention to the ones which were relatively close to their current position.

Eventually, as if to signal the start of the second phase of the battle, the voice of their commander resounded again:

“Enemy reinforcements coming from the west and northeast!”

Which was followed by a series of orders to mobilize the reserve forces in order to intercept the new enemies. There were other traitor tribe villages relatively close, not to mention the possibility of the bobcats outside being called back to their village, so the alliance forces had been prepared for such a situation.

As such, Elise did not do anything special at that point. She was ready to go help the allied forces if the enemies turned out to be strong enough to put them in danger, but before the reinforcements even reached there something more important came up.

‘One of them is heading here.’

It was quite obvious what that ‘them’ was referring to. Elise responded to that by asking Nalia for a voice amplification spell and speaking:

“Mercenary heading out to intercept enemy Stranger.”

Going from words to action, she called Nina back and then Nalia gave them all a big movement boost, allowing the trio to run off and jump over the village’s wall, heading forth to serve their true role in that operation.

It was time to to fight another powerful enemy.