Chapter 31

  After a day of planning, newly minted captains Zag and Iska took our newly minted general with them to begin the mission to sneak into Garoshek and recruit a proper army. The rest of us waited in the forest until they safely made it into the city, then it was time for us to make our way to the designated position to set up the diversions I had planned.

  I had an easier time crawling among the rocks and craters than the others on account of being smaller and having a higher overall level than them, but it still took us half a day to reach one of the abandoned enemy camps some 400 metres behind an active one filled to the brim with enemy combatants.The abandoned campsite was large and barren with hundreds of indents in the cracked, dried out ground marking where tents or other structures had stood until a few days ago. The only thing breaking the monotony of the site were the berms and the trenches, and we crawled through the place until we reached the earthen mounds on the other end. We were on the south-side of the city, and I had agreed with the scouts that it was the best location for our purposes. The active camp had all their ditches, berms and wooden stakes facing the city but had no fortifications to protect their rear. Our location, on the other hand, had its own defensive structures between us and them — although dilapidated already — and with some quiet work, I’d be able to set up the sentry turret on an elevated platform.

  I had never imagined I’d one day take joy in the planning of the kind of carnage that was to come; perhaps after weeks of being in Hell, my partially demonic nature was starting to affect my human psyche. Maybe it was for the same reason I was developing a strong dislike towards the minotaurs, werewolves and cavers from the Third Ring, thinking to myself that they were more than deserving of the bloodshed I had planned for them. Was I going native already? What would happen when I finally started eating the flesh of the wild animals here? Would I become a real demon? I hoped not.

  Setting aside the question of what life as a demon would be like, I had to start surveying the place and to choose a spot for erecting a platform for the sentry turret, and I had to do it unnoticed. The 400 metres distance between our position and the nearest enemy camp was ideal in terms of accurate shooting, both for me and the turret; my rifle had an effective range of about 600 metres for point targets, and the turret had a similar range if I remembered correctly, although the AI operated targeting system of the gun usually extended it somewhat — at least that’s what I had heard from other soldiers and maintenance crews back in the Army. I got to work, and after ten minutes of crawling up and down, I found the spot.

  ‘Okay, somewhere here I think,’ I whispered to Grashon who groaned with pleasure as he finally lifted himself from the ground and sat down, leaning his back against the berm, stretching his limbs as if he had just escaped from some vicious tormentor. The others did the same, and I learned that except for scouts, slithering on the ground like a drunken worm was not something demons enjoyed.

  ‘Somewhere here?’ Grashon asked as he turned around and climbed up to peek over the berm. ‘I can … see the enemy. That’s some camp they have there.’

  ‘Yeah, and all of them will be charging us soon. And possibly the two other camps further away on the sides, too,’ I said to him, then looked at the two archers, who looked rather disgruntled despite not having to haul over three hundred arrows between them while crawling all the way out here. I had graciously offered — as probably no demon lord ever would — to stash anything away in my storage that seemed too much to carry, including their arrows. ‘Are you two ready to take them on?’

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  ‘Let them come!’ Sur hissed with an evil smile.

  ‘We’ll make short work of them, Lord, you can count on it.’ Vik proclaimed.

  That was good to hear; morale was strangely high despite being outnumbered by an insane margin. Then again, demons didn’t seem to put too much stock in their own, personal safety when it came to killing hated foes. Under any other circumstances our operation would have been considered a desperate last stand, and I’d had the bad luck to see for myself how some of those ended. But here in Hell, with a bit of magic, higher levels and firearms made by the leading manufacturers of the Allied Systems military-industrial complex, we had a chance.

  ‘Good. Once we start this, I want you to target enemy mages!’ I told the archers. They had both swore blind they could shoot accurately for up to three, maybe even four hundred metres, which would have been an impossible feat for a human archer, but then again, magic and levels made a huge difference. ‘Can you tell them apart from the rest? From what I’ve heard and seen, they typically use earth-type spells. I don’t want them to literally undermine my sentry’s platform with their magic.’

  ‘We’ll spot them, Lord, leave it with us.’ Vik assured me.

  ‘What is this “sentry” thing, Lord?’ Sur asked.

  Huh! Surtakhan was the curious type? Who would have thought?

  ‘You’ve seen how this works.’ I lifted my rifle up for him to see. He nodded. ‘My sentry is similar, but bigger, badder, louder and way more powerful. And I’m willing to spend a whole drum, that’s four hundred rounds. I’ll set it to the one-shot-one-kill program.’

  My explanation seemed to pique the interests of Grashon and the other three warriors with him, their eyes on my rifle, and I could almost sense as they played out scenes in their minds of a giant version of my rifle mowing down the charging enemy. Well, they were in for a good show.

  ‘So, are we just … going to wait for General Reinos to get his army ready?’ Grashon asked, seemingly eager for action already.

  ‘Yes and no,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to time everything according to how he’s doing with the army and his part of the diversion. In the meantime, we set up. I don’t mean to disappoint you Grash, but if things go well, you and your fighters won’t have much to do.’

  His face fell into a grimace of disappointment, looking at me as if I had just denied him the dessert after heroically finishing a dinner he didn’t like. And he wasn’t the only one.

  ‘Really, really disappointed,’ Burning Darkness chimed in. ‘After all the training and skill levels you received, you want to fight at range? Is this how I raised you? What happened to happily disembowelling your foes?’

  ‘Alright, first of all: you didn’t raise me,’ I protested. ‘Second of all, you’ll have your chance to shine when we find the enemy general. But before that, the plan is to engage the enemy at a distance and create the diversions so Reinos and his army could do the disembowelling. Oh, and I’m counting on you to bolster my rounds with Hell Mana, Mr. Item Set Manager.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know. Don’t you worry my man, we’ll give them a fireworks they’ll never forget.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose you could do the same for my sentry turret?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, that thing isn’t part of the set,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen it doing its thing yet, but I don’t think it will need anything extra. It looked powerful enough as it was.’

  ‘It is. 12 mm hybrid-propellant tungsten-core rounds, AI controlled targeting and active stabilisation. It will hit a demon at 500 metres, and he’ll go down along with the next two standing behind him. You do not want to get in the way of this puppy. I’ve seen it, and it’s not nice.’

  ‘If you say so,’ the sword said, and it sounded like a shrug, somehow. ‘Wherever you come from, your people have perfected and redefined the meaning of carnage. I can’t believe that movie in your entertainment library is based on real events. How can that ship-thing obliterate an entire city from a thousand kilometres up in the sky? What kind of magic is that?’

  ‘The kind of magic I would really like to have right now,’ I muttered.

  ‘Damn right!’ the sword laughed.

  I turned my attention back to my troops.

  ‘Alright, let’s set up and wait for our general to give us the word.’

  And we got to work.