“Warn everyone that we are attacking again in five minutes. They already rested enough in half an hour. I won’t delay a single second, make that clear.”

The messenger nods to the military commander in our hastily constructed ‘tent’. Though calling it a tent was mostly because of the current structure's temporary status instead of the construction. The roots and branches protecting the people inside from the sun and the possible rain in the sky could be permanent, but that is not in our plans.

My mind however barely takes in those details paying attention to what is happening in the enemy’s encampment. Sure, I could have done this all along, tracking and almost hearing their voices from a thousand miles away, but my attention was limited and without knowing their language I would learn far too little to justify the time spent when there were so many other worthwhile things to do.

Now, in the midst of an attack, pretty much every phrase that they utter should be a gold mine. I can’t actually understand their words nor even properly listen only through the perception field, but I can still engrave into my memory their actions and those speak way louder than even a screaming baby.

I try to learn their command structure, customs and anything like I’m watching a foreign movie without subtitles while keeping an eye out for any surprise they have in store. If they had some ritual that could hit us unaware or some system function like ‘Lord Max’ demonstrated so long ago it might manage to kill quite a few of us.

In the last few minutes, I let Paul’s words pass in one ear and out the other leaving nearly nothing behind. My attention is still on the enemy gathering standing behind and atop their walls.

“Letting the newer recruits take the brunt of the fighting has been working wonders on their skill levels…. but now that we are entering their village, I think that the older of us should take point instead of risking our more vulnerable counterparts.”

I walk forward behind everyone else frantically looking for any tricks that the enemy might be hiding under their sleeves. Still, the very fact that they hid deep inside the village just screams for an explanation. It probably has something to do with the runes the system put around their village.

Each step closer add weight to my main hypothesis, but I don’t talk about it. Both Paul and the commander were already aware of my suspicions and there isn’t much I can do beyond speculation without more concrete information.

Like a wave; the front row, fully clad in the best armor we had, most of them wearing full plate without sparring the metal to cut down on weight. We come closer and closer to the enemy’s wall and nearly into their village.

Glowing runes create a field that halts our advance. I look for the source of mana, but even my perception field can’t detect anything.

I don’t understand what or how it works and the very simplicity of the dinner plate sized rune in the middle with dozens of small and unfamiliar ones makes the whole thing even more inscrutable. If it was more complex I might recognize more than a single connecting rune which might let me narrow down what it actually did. As it is, I only learn that it is a complex enough design to need a connector of that type.

But what most baffles me is the lack of a mana source. It simply appears in the mana input runes.

Our front lines start to push with greater and greater strength as I extend roots from the inner world out across the barrier trying to get direct feedback on what is happening. Slowly but surely we gain ground. But each time the advancing roots take a break, the system pushes them out to nearly the starting place. Through each cycle, we gain a little ground and their protective field loses a couple of inches.

This tug continues as I fight to get even a few modestly sized roots to roam around their village, but without fully exposing the inner world to anyone paying attention, I can’t be too overt in my actions and provide a plausible explanation as to the origins of the roots I’m wielding, but I can still do a lot.

As the minutes pass I get more impatient. Not because we aren’t making any progress, but the area we cover is too small, even if it’s probably safer. But keeping everyone in a near square means that the front line is barely a hundred meters wide. Probably with the same thoughts in his head, the commander once again splits the main unit comprising nearly everyone into some 80 smaller ones each with about 100 people. Enough to both surround their village while maintaining a line 10 rows deep, if we count the mages and other support at the back.

After a few minutes, the entire village is surrounded. Most other groups don’t have the same caliber in their front lines, but with similar strategy and their sheer numbers, I can almost feel them straining something from the system.

But each step forward is still tiring, sapping their stamina, like they had pre system stats and were trying to climb a steep sand slope wearing loose flip flops.

“Pando, Aspen and every seed without a job: our troops need a stream of Vigor. It won’t replace stamina, but it will help to make up the difference. Tap into your stores.”

Listening to that, waves of agreement wash over me and then a field of Vigor rises. I may not be able to affect their Mana or Health pools in any appreciable way, and unlike Mana, Stamina couldn’t be externally manipulated and like all system resources it can’t be absorbed from someone else without experiencing extreme backlash. Vigor, however, is an entirely different beast. It would replace some of their need for Stamina.

Vigor seems to be the best thing I could have acquired from Pando. I can infinitely share it.

Marching forward, then resting in timed intervals, their breaks grow shorter and everyone manages a step or two further with the extra Vigor boost. Empowering so many people would actually be a problem for a long period if we didn’t have Pando, but unlike every other resource, his size made Vigor regen just on the rational side of endless.

I reach my limit with my exploration. I can barely spread roots 40 meters from myself without relying on the inner world and at this point that is not on the table. An idea keeps popping up in my mind. Itching feet prompt me to follow them in the rhythmic dance. A dozen steps forward, 11.9 steps back, each time gaining a couple of inches.

At this pace, an hour’s exercise would only give us a few meters. Even then, we couldn't keep this up forever. Every minute that we spend on high alert puts a greater strain on ourselves while lowering our guards for the enemy to take advantage of. The system made up and changed a lot about combat, but even if our limits were higher, they still existed.

A well-timed attack might cost us dozens if not hundreds. And that is assuming they didn't have some super weapon or another surprise. Especially considering that as well prepared as we are, our second line is entirely consisting of low level people.

Though, I still question why they didn’t at least try some perfunctory long range attacks, even randomly thrown rocks would drain our mana shields. Instead, every single one is huddled together in one of the two central buildings. Probably something about the rules of these protections that we didn’t know about. Maybe they would only be protected if they abandoned their attacks.

I walk to the front of the line surprising everyone, but they simply grim, probably curious about what I’m going to pull. Not a single person nearby misses my passage, with a wooden and leather amalgam that looked quite different from their own armors. I’m the only one that chose to wear this for good reason. Even if the leather strips are Titan skin, Pure Leather provided in most cases better protection while good quality steel is in an entirely different league.

Even the few nature mages we had at the back wore sturdier protection than a root armor.

But everyone knew that is how I rode into battle. And the ones that mattered knew that I didn’t rely on it to actually stop any damage. In the worst-case scenario, after getting past all my layers of defense, I could just tank it with my prodigious constitution stat. About 300 points after all the multiplication that my new titles provided and Pando’s help. That is more than any level 100 pure tank could hope for, let alone that number or higher across the board.

Still, I needed to be careful. This is how things are for now, but they might change. Sheer defense might become a lot more important for me compared to the flexibility that I have available for now.

The front line presses forward in the timed rhythm and I follow along with them.

A suppression, a heaviness in the air slows me down. It’s not physical, nor Aether let alone any type of skill or the gaze of the system. It doesn’t check the boxes for anything that I know and I scrape the bottom of the barrel for ideas. But as everyone else slows to a crawl, the weight isn’t nearly as strong on me. I still can’t take a deep breath, but I can keep going.

Which in some sense makes sense even if our stronger troops only go a step or two more than the average. As everyone struggles for a few seconds against the first dozen steps, I keep walking and feel the indomitable force pushing us back ever so slightly destabilized around me.

I take twenty, thirty, then forty steps and the entire thing and I’m still not at my limit. In the next cycle, near the path I walked, that disruption lets them take another couple of steps. Seeing that and guessing that it must have been my actions, I start to plan. So I send to Aspen:

I need oxygen if I hope to continue doing this.

A wave of agreement washes over me, simple yet containing something that even a thousand words would fail to encapsulate. My eye trained on the enemy watches them growing anxious and intent on moving.

Then come an echo as a few other seeds that had helped Aspen in the past take up the job.

Your blood shall be renewed.

A moment later the stream of blood leaving my body and returning grows significantly passing through thin and delicate capillaries in the inner world sustaining the living repository of power that Pando had painstakingly built over there. But instead of it slowly siphoning off a little bit from e, it goes the other way around. The cycle is reversed and I take the excess oxygen.

The acrid buildup of carbon dioxide in my blood quickly fades and my strength returns as I start to walk in front of our troops roughly 10 meters inside the limit that everyone else has encountered. It’s not a perfect circle given all the empty outer buildings and the particularities of each group’s strengths, but by breaking the trail the others push further and further inside.

For the fist few cycles, they manage a full step further instead of a couple of inches.

What had started as incursions 10 meters inside t he perimeter in minutes become 20 and then 30 meters. Then our progress slows to a crawl again even with all my help. I may have ‘broken the ice’ that slowed everyone, but there seems to be a fundamental limit that they can achieve.

After a few minutes everyone retreats 200 meters away and I accompany them to take a breather, my mind working on it.

Sure we had progressed a lot, taking over a third of their village’s area. Even if there wasn’t anything explicit from the system, I could feel we are doing something important.

This wasn’t supposed to be possible, for anyone but the most organized and suicidal of races. A commensurate reward for our actions has to be in place. Probably less territory for them to occupy, restrictions on their numbers or something along those lines. But as the enemy is cooped up in the center of their village the next marching cycle arrives, and this time that I plan to go as far as I can.

When we advance again, I boldly walk straight in ahead of everyone else.

The confrontation might take a second a minute or an hour, hell it might not even happen but I’m loaded for bear, with a world of resources at my disposal and I may not relish the actions that I had to take, but though I didn’t choose to start this war, I would work to end it. I’m knee deep in it and I would not wash my hands of the problem. I won’t let people weaker than me risk their lives to take my place at the forefront especially when they had much, much worse odds than myself.

Elves, I come for you:

To learn.

To expel.

And to END your threat.