Chapter 479: Resistance
We spent the next week constantly on the move. Our ember never stopped - it kept fleeing as if its life depended on it. Based on my observations, I confirmed that the rat swarm was moving about as fast as we were. They had a much higher movement speed than our village-bearing beasts, but unlike our villages, the rat swarm would stop and set up a new base each night, which kept them from actually catching up to us. Short term, this was a good thing - after all, it meant that we weren’t locked into constant, deadly combat with a innumerable swarm of enemies. However, seeing this happen only confirmed how dangerous the rats were as a whole - seeing them suddenly appear at the edge of my dimensional sight each sunset and start building a new camp was terrible for my nerves. The only real upside was that a few of them were usually in range of extinguish, so I was able to farm a little bit of levelling progress - but my actions seemed to have no real deterrent effect or impact on the horde as a whole.
This only reaffirmed my anxiety about the universal tree’s actions as a whole. The universal tree clearly wasn’t planning on letting anyone on this continent survive - if this problem wasn’t strangled in the cradle, it would become a plague that we might never successfully drive out of this world. It might already be too late, realistically - the rats had been expanding outwards nearly as fast as we could run, and we had no way to halt or weaken their progress. If we kept running, and nobody stopped the extradimensional invasion, we would eventually run out of space to flee. It might take years, but the longer we ran, the worse things would get. Eventually, we would be herded into a path of total extinction if we didn’t find a way to strike back. The continent was only so large, after all.
On the seventh day, we caught sight of another group of bedraggled survivors. They only had one village-bearing beast left, leaving them in an even worse state than us. I could tell that not many people had survived on that village-bearing beast, either. I suspected they had less than two hundred survivors.
Most clans had somewhere between five thousand and ten thousand people, assuming their ember hadn’t grown large enough to become a settlement yet. For such a clan to drop to two hundred people probably meant that around one in forty people had survived. Almost everyone on that village-bearing beast had probably lost friends and family members. I sighed, and wished that things could have been different.
The final village-bearing beast in their clan was also quite injured. it looked as if about half of its body had been flattened - almost as if something massive had stomped on it. Seeing it made me wince. Clearly, this clan had a run in with one of the giants. Since they had escaped, I suspected they had somehow managed to kill the giant - but before doing so, it had wiped out most of their clan. It was a miracle that their final village-bearing beast was able to run with so much of its body damaged.
I couldn’t do much for them, but I still sent some healing magic towards their village-bearing beast. At the very least, I could do that, if nothing else.
Two days later, we saw another two groups of survivors. Strangely enough, the two groups of survivors were travelling together - which was not something I was used to. Typically, embers dictated where a clan moved. Embers didn’t stick near each other for long periods of time, because their predatory instincts towards other members of their species were far too strong for them to coexist peacefully. What was going on here?
Upon sighting us, the two embers started to head towards us, which made me more than a little nervous. Could it be that two embers had learned how to use teamwork, and wanted to turn us into food? I glared at the six village-bearing beasts approaching us, and tried to estimate their population. They had about eight thousand people in total, based on my rough estimates. Since we only had around three thousand survivors left, I didn’t fancy our odds in a fight.
However, it seemed as if these newcomers didn’t have hostile intent. The moment they got within viewing distance of us, a few members of their clan rushed to the front of each village-bearing beast and began waving colored strips of cloth into the air, as if they were trying to indicate that they wished to trade.
I frowned. The other side was clearly stronger than we were, at least on the surface. While battle was always unpredictable, if they wanted to attack us, I suspected they would win. If they were displaying peaceful intentions, perhaps things wouldn’t come to a fight?
Our ember seemed to agree with my thoughts, since it started to slow down a few moments later. Within ten minutes, the other side was within shouting range. A few of the leaders from their side waved at us a few more times, before they dismounted and hopped towards the ground. They brought along about fifty other warriors - enough to fend off a surprise attack if we acted in bad faith, but clearly not enough to start a battle on their own.
A few moments later, our mayor glanced at them, before he looked at the members of the hero trainee program, and then looked at the other village-bearing beasts. The other mayors nodded at him.
Our mayor sighed.
“Let’s go see what they want,” he said. “We’ll bring forty warriors and the hero trainees.”
The surviving hero trainees didn’t hesitate to join in, and after a minute, we also dismounted from the village-bearing beast. Soon, we were seated in the middle of the clearing.
“Greetings,” said one of the leaders of the other side. She was a tall woman with bright orange hair - a color I hadn’t seen before in this world. I imagined that in better times, she probably looked bright and cheerful - but now, she looked somewhat haggard and determined, instead.
“Hello,” said our mayor. “You wished to speak with us? Is it for trading purposes?” Our mayor grimaced. “I’m not sure what we really have to trade right now, besides sparks. Things have gotten rather… out of hand lately.”
The woman shook her head. “We can trade too, but that’s not why we wished to speak. Were you also recently attacked by some kind of horrifying rat swarm within the past week or two? Or one of those giant monstrosities?”
Our mayor tensed, before he nodded. “Indeed. About a week and a half ago, we fought with a very powerful group of monsters. They appeared from a giant purple crack in the sky and began to invade. We lost two village-bearing beasts during the battle, and thousands of people died.”
The woman nodded.
“I thought so. Your group looks nearly as damaged as ours.”
The mayor of one of the other village-bearing beasts in our clan sighed. “Things are truly disastrous. Worse, I’ve heard that the enemy is spreading like a plague. Every night, I’ve had some reports that the shapeshifting rats are hot on our heels. They aren’t even chasing us, specifically - it appears that they’re setting up bases and breeding. Who knows how long it will be before they spread.”
Those reports, naturally, had come from me. Since the clan knew about my ‘gift’ and my unusual scouting abilities, I was more than happy to share whatever intelligence I got.
When the woman from the other clan heard the mayor’s words, her eyes hardened.
“I thought so. My clan has heard, multiple times, that the greater planes are at war with some external invader. I’ve also heard, in recent years, that the war has been slowly turning against us. Seeing the purple crack in the sky, as well as the lack of reinforcements from the greater planes, I can only assume that the front line has collapsed. Perhaps reinforcements will eventually arrive, and perhaps they won’t - but I lean towards assuming that the greater planes have been forced to shrink the defensive lines. Perhaps we are now outside of the defensive lines entirely, and thus unprotected.”
Our mayor grimaced, but he didn’t object to the woman’s words. Clearly, he agreed with her.
“So the choice ultimately comes down to two things. Either we keep fleeing into the distance, and hope that the northern cities can establish their own defensive lines and keep the enemies at bay. If that happens, we will be forced to abandon our embers, abandon the southern half of the continent, and lose any form of independence at all. That is, if they’re even willing to take us in and treat us well. There’s also a chance that they’ll leave us to fend for ourselves, after ripping apart our embers and feeding them to their own cities. Or they might try to conscript us into being cannon fodder for the front lines. Even after all of that, there is still no guarantee at all that the northern cities will hold. After all, the enemy has a portal in the sky - they have effectively infinite reinforcements, compared to a small plane like ours. Fleeing into the distance is a course of action that has no future - just delayed death.”
A few of the mayors on our side nodded.
“That’s true, but what else do you propose? It’s not like we can control where we go. Our ember has been fleeing from the dimensional crack since the moment it appeared, and we can’t effectively communicate with it. It seems as if our future is just that grim and dark.” The man’s eyes glinted as he stared at the female mayor. “Unless… you have a different suggestion?”
“I do. One of our [Priests] has a Feat that allows him to command an ember’s direction, at least to a certain extent. Our clan, as well as the other clan travelling with us, has a different plan. We will gather several nearby clans, and within a month, at the latest, we will stage an attack against the invaders. We might not succeed… but if we do, we will potentially secure the future. Or, at the very least, we can give the invaders a proper bloody nose. After all of the people that died from the monster horde, I’m not willing to just let it be. I want the invaders to suffer as much as the people of our clans did. Are you in?”
Our mayor glanced at the other mayors in our clan. Each of them also had grim, determined expressions on their faces. After checking a few faces, to see if anyone objected, the mayor of our village-bearing beast nodded.
“Count us in.”