Chapter 36

  I kept running, and in five minutes my psychic resistance skill reached level 5 for no apparent reason. I was worried; this must have been some diversionary tactic of the enemy. Perhaps the general knew I was coming for him and had the means to remotely influence me? Because magic? Or something similar? But no matter how deeply I looked into myself — well, as deeply as I could while running at full speed anyway — I couldn’t find anything that might have changed; my determination to take on the enemy general had not wavered, I wanted to win this battle as much as I had before, and I didn’t think my thought process had changed at all. Hm. I supposed my resistance skill was doing its job after all. Well, bad luck, enemy general, I was not abandoning my objective — too much depended on it to just stop and start looking for demon-phantoms in my head.

  ‘Reinos! How are things?’ I asked my general.

  [We’re holding Camp One, my Lord, although reinforcements from other camps are arriving, and we are now surrounded completely, so retreat is no longer possible. I might need to call on Detachment Alpha and the reserves to come out and help us cut a path, but not yet.]

  This was not a good development. I didn’t want to lose Reinos and his army to these bastards, so they had to hold out for a while longer.

  ‘Keep holding. I’m five minutes from my objective. Fight like hell!’

  [That’s what we’re doing, my Lord, in case you were not aware.]

  Huh! Reinos had found his snappy, sarcastic side in the middle of a life and death battle. And it made me smile. Good for him! I left him to his duties, and I put every ounce of the power my levels gave me into my legs, and ran as fast as it was supernaturally possible, until even Grashon — the strongest and fastest of the grunts — had trouble keeping up with me.

  [Skill: Psychic Resistance (Combined) has reached level 6.]

  [New skill available: Psychic Remediation. Both human and demonic variants are available to you, or a combination of the two. Would you like to receive this skill?]

  I wanted to yell “not now, Button”, but if I’d had any doubt before, now I was sure I was under psychic attacks, or at least a psychic influence of some sort, otherwise would The Genius have sent a new skill my way? I didn’t think so. I was nearing my objective — only a couple of minutes now — and I didn’t have the time to read through Button’s descriptions of the new skill. I honestly didn’t think the attack was having much effect, but I was worried enough to decide I needed the extra skill there and then. So, I went with the previously established principle of long term usefulness and told Button to get me the combined skill.

  [Skill: Psychic Remediation (Combined) has been added to your list of skills.]

  [Psychic Remediation: while this skill does not shield you against psychic influences, over time it repairs and removes existing psychic effects that had already affected your mind.]

  ‘Right, cheers, do your thing!’ I panted as I tried to activate the skill immediately.

  I wasn’t sure if this was the same kind of passive skill as Psychic Resistance, one I could run in the background, so to speak, without having to actively do anything, or if it was more like a healing skill and I’d need to cast it like a spell. I didn’t feel anything, but either way, I had more pressing issues approaching rapidly, namely a high-level minotaur general, and I could now see the camp I was aiming for.

  ***

  I had to set all the psychic nonsense aside as I slowed down and then stopped to have a better look at our surroundings. Grashon and his four demons stayed right behind me, looking around as well. For the moment, we were alone. A couple hundred metres in front of us the same type of old, abandoned camps lay with their berms and trenches, and beyond them were the active camps. If nothing else, the minotaurs were consistent in how they made their defensive structures; if I didn’t know I was at the western side of the city, I would have sworn I’d never left the southern side, as the camps had the exact same size and arrangements. They had surrounded the entire city this way, and I had to admit it was good work by the bullfaced beast-demons.

  I called Grash to follow me quietly, and I made my way to the abandoned outer camps, hunching and crouching, even though I was the least likely to be noticed on account of being smaller than the fire-demons.

  ‘Grashon, we’re going to the far edge of the camp, to those berms.’ I said to him. ‘From there I will approach the enemy alone, and you guys will stay here.’ I instructed the demon, and I saw the protests coming so I didn’t stop talking. ‘I have to be able to see the enemy general to challenge him, which means I have to get close. Do you think you’ll survive marching into the middle of a minotaur camp?’

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  ‘Uh … no, but we’ll take a hundred of them with us at least,’ he said, his troops nodding in agreement, their yellow eyes glowing with the promise of extreme violence and virtually no regard for their own lives. Ah, demons. Well, I had no doubt their higher levels than the average minotaur could potentially allow them to slay a hundred of them before they were killed, but that’s not what we were here for. Whether he’d understand it or not was another story, so the fastest way to convince him was to pull rank.

  ‘You will be staying here to keep an eye on everything. That is an order.’

  A disappointed demon was an interesting sight; Grashon’s lipless mouth drooped, his eyes narrowed in a weird way, presenting the very image of an oversized kid who had been denied dessert despite eating all his veggies. But he had one last argument to offer.

  ‘What about you, Boss? Can you survive until you can challenge that bullfaced scum?’ he asked.

  I drew my rifle from my back and patted it as if it was a pet.

  ‘I’ll manage,’ I said with more confidence in my tone than I actually felt.

  Based on my experiences so far, Hell Mana infused rounds fired from an assault rifle tended to cause quite a bit of shock and panic among minotaurs who hadn’t seen the likes of it before, so I had every reason to believe I could make it into the middle of their camp. Staying alive long enough to challenge the general or winning the duel was … well, up in the air. But I had to get it done regardless; Reinos — doing a great job as he was — couldn’t hold out indefinitely. The enemy command structure had to be dismantled, and so it was time for the kind of stupid heroics that usually got soldiers and marines killed, and which I had already done once since falling into Hell.

  [Skill: Psychic Resistance (Combined) has reached level 7.]

  [Skill: Psychic Remediation (Combined) has reached level 1.]

  Again? Come on! I wanted to ignore the notifications as I had more important things to do, but for the first time I actually felt something: a vague presence, as if sensing a demon’s levels, or rather the shadow or perhaps an echo of it through a thick wall or some other obscuring effect. Was there something or someone actually nearby? Grashon and his troops didn’t seem to notice anything, Burning Darkness was quiet, and I still couldn’t find anything in my own mind that might have been influenced or altered. If anything, I was feeling strangely good. Ah, to hell with this psychic rubbish!

  ‘Right. Let’s go set up!’ I told the troops, and turned around to make my way through the abandoned camp.

  ***

  I jogged through the abandoned campsite, followed by Grashon and company, keeping a low profile, sticking closely to the earthen structures, until I reached the last berm, beyond which and after a couple of hundred metres of flat, open terrain, the enemy general’s camp waited for me. I crawled to the top of the berm and aimed my rifle at it to have a zoomed-in look. As expected, the camp was filled to the brim with minotaurs and werewolves, armed to the teeth and running around, preparing for something. I guessed Reinos was doing well enough to warrant reinforcements to be sent. Or maybe it was something else. At this point, it didn’t matter; I was going to have to go into that camp.

  ‘You know, I have just discovered a major and potentially fatal flaw in your plan,’ Burning Darkness commented.

  ‘Oh, did you now?’

  ‘Yes, my man, I did,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do once you slay the scum-general? You’ll be standing there with his corpse at your feet, surrounded by thousands of his soldiers. Have you thought of that?’

  Shit. At least he wasn’t doubting that I would slay the enemy general, but I hadn’t thought of what would happen after. And I should have, as I wasn’t fond of suicide missions. While it was true that interference with the duel would be prevented by The Genius by some magical means, and with their general gone the enemy army would lose buffs and cohesion, but my sword was right: it wouldn’t mean they would just drop dead.

  ‘I have once found myself behind enemy lines three city blocks from my squad, and I’m still here,’ I said as I racked my brain to rectify this oversight on my part to no avail.

  ‘You know, this just proves you’ve been reckless even before now,’ he said, sighing.

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ I said.

  ‘I hate to break it to you, but that bridge isn’t that far.’

  ‘Okay, the plan is … uh … the plan is: “run”. Sound familiar?’

  ‘Run, huh? Alright, running it is. Why not?’ he conceded, clearly not convinced it would work, even though he’d had the exact same plan when we had rescued Flamey and Tarashak.

  ‘So it’s fine when it’s your idea but not fine when it’s mine?’ I questioned him, sneering.

  ‘Alright, let’s put that aside for now.’ He deflected my accusation. ‘Listen, my man, once you’re in the camp, you’ll need to look for the biggest tent. Possibly decorated with the heads of slain fire-demons. Minotaurs have a weird taste.’

  ‘Noted.’

  ‘Speaking of which, how do you intend to get in there without being torn to shreds in the first few seconds?’ he inquired.

  I looked around; the berm was long, plenty of room to set up the sentry turret. I slid back a little and crawled to a spot some twenty metres to my right which looked easy to flatten enough for the gun emplacement. Grashon and the grunts made quick work of it, compressing the dirt and the rocks, and I brought out the sentry once again; it had worked wonders before, and I was sure it would do it again. My only complaint was that after this I’d have only one drum of ammo left for the handy and deadly contraption. Well, sometimes, for the greater good, sacrifices had to be made. I made sure the gun platform had stable footing, ordered Grash to hold this position for as long as he could and to take the sentry with them if they needed to run. Then I slid down the side of the berm into the trench on the other side and moved away from them until I found a good spot some fifteen metres to the left.

  ‘Right. So, what now?’ Burning Darkness asked.

  ‘Now I’m going to employ a time-honoured, tried and tested tactic that human militaries had used throughout history,’ I said to him, beginning to sweat under my helmet, my hands shaking slightly.

  ‘Which is?’ he asked.

  ‘Climb out of the trench and walk very slowly towards the enemy.’

  ‘Uhm … are you serious?’

  ‘Well, how do you figure I was going to get there? Teleport or something?’

  ‘Alright, alright, no need to get snappy, my man!’ he grumbled.

  ‘I’m nervous, so get used to me being snappy.’ I grumbled back.

  ‘I get it, I get it. So … now we charge?’

  ‘Yeah, sort of.’ I nodded and I climbed out of the trench onto the flat ground, stood up, drew my rifle, and started to walk very slowly towards the enemy.