Chapter 491: Retreat
After the teleportation gate spat everyone back out, the battlefield stabilized. A few rats had come through with us - but none of the terrifyingly overstated Mages from the Universal tree had come with us. Our alliance was heavily battered, but we weren’t so helpless that we couldn’t at least mop up the remaining rats from our surroundings. Since the enemy had no reinforcements, after a few rounds of spells and slashes, our surroundings fell silent. I was in such a poor mood that I didn’t even look at my System notifications - it felt hopeless, now that things had come to this. A few more stat points could make me a bit stronger - but I saw no hope for overcoming the impeding catastrophe. Instead, I just… watched the people around me.
It didn’t quite feel like people were mourning. Not yet. Instead, it felt as if the entire alliance was collectively trying to process what had just happened.
A few dozen hostile Mages, all of which had unnaturally high stats for this world. An army of rats, some of which had new and annoying abilities to deal with.
Worse, I knew that this was nowhere near what the universal tree must be deploying on the ‘real’ battlefields - this was just a cleanup crew sent to deal with our higher than expected resistance.
I spent a few tense minutes watching our surroundings, as I waited to see if the universal tree teleported its troops over to us again and activated another round of fighting. However, they didn’t follow us. I wasn’t sure whether they couldn’t find us, or simply felt we were beneath their notice.
Eventually, one of the village-bearing beasts, as well as the ember it followed, turned around, and began trudging back the way we had come. The village-bearing beast had lost a few legs during the fight, and the right half of its body was riddled with scorch marks and injuries. Its back was hunched as it strolled away from the battlefield.
That seemed to act as a signal. Other village-bearing beasts began to turn around and follow it. Even without the Feat used to control what direction our embers moved, it seemed as if the embers had all come to a collective agreement. One by one, they began to follow suit, until we began a demoralized, disorganized march back the way we had come from.
I saw a few people eye me from the corners of their eyes with a strange mixture of emotions - an odd mixture of gratitude and reluctance.
It wasn’t hard to piece together why they were upset. I was also unwilling. I didn’t want our hopes to end like this, when we had been so close to the rift. If we had been able to break through the universal tree’s defenses, we might have actually been able to close the rift and save our world, at least temporarily. Unfortunately, the stat disparity between members of the universal tree and the average warrior from this world was simply too severe, especially when we faced enemies without obvious, major weaknesses. Their life force and stats had been dozens of times higher than our strongest warriors - and the ability to throw around village-bearing beasts had made them foes we could barely stand against.
I sighed, before I also hung my head. I had thought we might die, but I hadn’t thought that we wouldn’t even be able to reach our destination before the universal tree stopped us cold in our tracks.
Morale was at an all-time low as we trudged through the snow. The eldritch half of me, the half of my body and mind that was deeply attuned to the concept of hope, felt like it was sinking into an icy abyss with each second that passed. It felt like half of my body had sustained some kind of massive injury, and the injury had been dipped in salt and lemon juice afterwards.
“Miria?” asked someone from behind me. I whirled around, and saw the mayor, as well as two of the generals who used to control some teams during defensive battles standing together. They were a few of the people that had been with me whenever we and the [Sound Mage] had made plans with other mayors from the alliance - because they had control over the military and a decent understanding of the fighting strength of our town. “You’re the one that teleported us out once things started to go wrong, right?”
“Yeah. I didn’t see any hope for us winning at that point. They still had massive mana reserves, based on the way they were firing spells everywhere. By contrast, we sustained way too many casualties in the opening barrage. The rats were also a big problem - they kept too many of our fighters occupied for too long, especially after they started self destructing. I didn’t think we could win.”
The mayor nodded. “I agree. Their stats seemed a lot more well rounded than ours - and most of them had absolutely ridiculous stat totals overall. Even the warriors who had compound sparks are still much weaker than them. The highest stat of a compound spark user who devoted most of their stat points to a single stat would still probably only be two or three percent of their average stats - and nobody would develop their attributes in such a lopsided and extreme way unless they had a way to make up for the shortcoming.”
I sighed, and then nodded.
“Now that we’ve lost, have you seen any signs of the enemy? Do you have any idea what they’ll do next?”
I looked at the mayor and the two generals, and realized, with some surprise, that they were willing to listen to my advice. Perhaps I had proven myself over the last few weeks of constant hectic battles and decision making - or perhaps they simply valued my scouting abilities.
“I haven’t seen any signs that they follows us. I don’t know if they know where we are and haven’t bothered finishing us off, or if they have no idea where we ended up. I didn’t notice any powerful spatial magic on their side, apart from their teleportation gates. As for what they might do next… I imagine since we failed to cut off their gate, they will finish whatever they’re doing with that massive tree root. Since that tree root seems to connect us directly with their home plane, I imagine they’ll start sending much bigger and more organized armies very soon after they finish connecting with us. We should prepare for big waves of enemies very soon. Perhaps it would be best to coordinate with the other village-bearing beasts again in a few hours, and try to flee this area as fast as possible so that we can rely on others to resist the next few invasion waves.” I sighed. “I think that’s about all we can do, really.”
Oddly enough, as I spoke, I saw a faint flicker of life return to the mayor’s gaze. His eyes were still dim, as if his soul had been sucked out - but he didn’t look completely lost anymore.”
“Even if the enemy completes their connection, it isn’t completely the end, is it? We can still hold out for a while. The greater planes might still be able to reconnect with us and cut off the enemy. Since we failed to take the initiative back, we just need to survive as long as possible and hope for the best. But that doesn’t mean there’s no hope.”
I paused. The man’s words weren’t wrong. At the end of the day, our success or failure on this battlefield was never the deciding factor for the survival of this dimension as a whole - the greater planes would decide whether we lived or died on their own battlefields. Our actions had been a way to buy time, to hold out as long as possible and hope for the best. Losing didn’ mean we had no hope, just that our odds had gotten much worse.
It was still a disheartening blow, but there was still hope, however dim.
“Let’s just make plans and hope for the best. We need to be prepared for follow-up waves of monsters and enemies, first. The enemy will probably at least send us a few hordes of rats and other threats to handle, too, so I’ll keep an eye out for that. Do we have any plans for re-establishing contact with the other village-bearing beasts?”
“Some of our faster scouts are already moving between beasts. We also noticed that a few of our people got flung off of our beast but landed on other village-bearing-beasts, so we’re working on recovering them. It’ll take some time to get organized again, though. I imagine once we get a unified direction again, we’ll start heading north.”
I relaxed. Sallia had also gotten flung away, and while I could still track her life force, and she seemed fine for now, I had no idea how to get her back over to us. It looked like the town already had plans for that.
“Can I count on you to keep watching our surroundings and scanning for monsters?” asked the mayor.
“Of course. If nothing else, I’ll always make sure that we have knowledge of the nearby enemies,” I said.
After that, the mayor and the two generals departed from my side, as they went off to organize the other members of our clan and start preparing for the worst. Meanwhile, I fell into thought.
Our situation seemed hopeless, and I didn’t know what to do to boost our odds of survival - but I also realized that I couldn’t give up. I could feel the hope in our surroundings dying, and the eldritch half of me felt terrible - but that meant I needed to buckle down harder and find the ray of light in this shadow.
I was the eldritch embodiment of hope. When we had landed in the Market, I hadn’t even known who I was. I had still fought for a way for my friends and I to survive. In our first life, I had died trying to carve out a slim chance of success for the villages of the island. In our second life, I had died trying to find a path to survival for the people of that world. In our third life, I had been a doctor that healed thousands of people, after doing my best to stymie the tide of extradimensional invaders. In our fourth life, we had our first major success - we had saved an entire civilization from ruin, and single-handedly created a future where none previously existed.
We might have lost this battle - but until the very last moment, I couldn’t and wouldn’t give up hope.