I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 908: Purpose and Reaction

Deep in the forest, a temporary campsite that had belonged to the military had by now been utterly transformed.

The tents had been torn to tatters, the metal frames twisted into a single tangle, the bonfire long since dead, with only a few charred lengths of firewood buried in the ashes.

Several bodies lay sprawled every which way at the centre of the camp. Blood had soaked into the earth, mixed with rainwater and slurry, and gathered in the hollows into a small dark red pool.

Broken weapon parts lay scattered all around, along with several communications sets that had been cut neatly through the middle by a keen blade, their wiring and metal plates laid bare to the air.

Plainly, not long ago, an exceedingly savage battle had been fought here.

At the centre of the camp, a group of men in black were hard at work.

They wore matching deep black combat suits, and every one of them wore a black half-mask, so that only pairs of cold eyes showed.

Several portable lamps had been fixed to the ruined tent frames, and the light they gave threw the men’s shadows across the ground.

“Area Seven reporting. One student squad located, already cleared.”

“Area Five. Target cleared, no survivors.”

“Area Three…”

From one communicator, report after report sounded in turn.

The leader of the men in black stood at the centre of the camp, hands clasped behind his back, listening in silence.

Until another voice suddenly cut into the channel.

“Area Four has found that apprentice who got away. Target sighted! He…” The other end of the communicator plainly hesitated for an instant. “He’s killed another two of our men!”

At this news the leader’s face darkened at once, and an aura spread out from him in a moment, so that the men in black working around him held their breath without meaning to.

“Useless.” Two words spat out coldly. “A student, nothing more, and he has cost you four men?

Without waiting for an answer from the other end, the leader had already given his order. “Keep after him. Don’t let him out of the search area. This time I want him alive, or I want his body!”

“Understood!”

Once the connection was cut, the leader put the communicator away and raised his eyes to the centre of the camp.

There stood a vast structure built of metal and bone together. Complex runes covered the ground, a great many black crystals had been set into the nodes of its patterning, and a scarlet light flowed slowly along the lines.

The leader asked, “How much longer until it’s finished?”

His second, standing behind him, answered at once. “About another half hour. The core structure is eighty per cent done, and the finishing work will go quickly.”

“Good. Speed it up.” The leader nodded.

Just then his second stepped closer. “Boss, there’s one more thing.”

“Say it.”

His second lowered his voice. “The man we planted on the military’s side hasn’t answered for some time now. By the look of it he’s already been found out…”

At that the leader laughed instead, and in the dead silence of the forest the sound was singularly sinister.

“So he’s been found out? Later than I expected, in fact. Not bad; if he could stall them this long, that is quite enough. It seems our own operation will be discovered before much longer as well…”

His second could not help frowning. “How could they find out this quickly…”

“The military are not fools.” The leader raised his head, cutting him off.

“We may have simulated the signals, but that also means that as far as the military can see, not one of those students has sent out a single distress call in all this time. That in itself is abnormal, so we were never going to keep it hidden for long.”

The leader turned, his gaze falling on the forest in the distance. “Not that I ever intended to keep it hidden.”

“The array needs more sacrifices. These students and what is left of the mutant beasts in this stretch of woodland are nowhere near enough. We need more lives and more power!”

At this the corner of the leader’s mouth curled in a cold smile. “Which is why the military were always the sacrifices I meant to draw in!”

His second started. “You mean…”

“Whether they come to save people or to wipe us out, they are certain to enter the field.”

“But… against the army, with our strength, I’m afraid… it wouldn’t be an easy fight.”

His second had put that very delicately.

In truth he knew perfectly well that a sorry pack of small fry like theirs could manage killing off a few students well enough, or taking out one or two small camps by dirty means.

Meeting a properly constituted regular force head on, even a force of no great size, they would be beaten to a pulp.

The leader nodded, unconcerned. “Quite so. With our strength, facing regulars is no different from suicide.”

“Then why…”

The leader’s tone shifted. “Which is why we shall have to find the army an enemy of its own weight!”

With that the leader pressed his communicator and connected to another channel. “Elite squads, report!”

A moment later a voice came through. “Elite Squad Two has taken the north-western temporary camp. Nobody escaped!”

“Elite Squad Three has reached the vicinity of the southern camp. Contact expected in five minutes!”

The leader broke into a satisfied smile. “Well done. With this camp, once all three are taken, a gap will be torn in the military’s outer defence line.”

He looked towards that pitch-black forest in the distance, as though he could see within it the eyes gathering in packs, glimmering faintly. “Once the beast tide comes through, the army won’t have time to bother with us!”

…

…

A dozen kilometres away, the military command post.

Bang!

With one tremendous crash, the metal command table caved sharply in.

The teacups on it leapt, and scalding water splashed across the whole surface.

An old soldier with grizzled hair stood behind the table, his fist pressed hard down on the top. “There is still no signal?!”

Beneath his hoarse voice was pent a rage on the point of bursting out. A young officer stood beside him, cold sweat already breaking out on his forehead.

“Sir, from the moment the trial began this morning until now, the trial zone truly has not received any distress signal…”

The old man’s head snapped round, his gaze such that he might pick a man out and devour him. “A situation this abnormal, and you failed to notice it?!”

By normal reckoning, the second day of the graduation trial was the peak period for distress calls.

And on the first day there truly would not be many distress signals during the daylight hours, but the first night usually brought a small early peak of them.

After all, there were always some who had not learned their wilderness survival lessons well, and with a good many of the forest’s mutant beasts coming out to move about at night, there were always some who could not hold on.

That this time not one distress signal had come through was something they should have marked as abnormal long ago; it was indeed a dereliction on the part of the technical staff.

At that moment the door of the command room was flung open and an adjutant strode in. “Sir!”

“Speak!”

“We have it, sir. There was a mole in the Technical Department, and he has been taken. By his own account, this is the work of a group from the Descent Faction.”

The old man’s eyes went cold on the instant. “That rubbish from the Descent Faction?”

The so-called Descent Faction went by another name as well: “traitors to humankind.”

Whether because something had come loose in their heads, or because they wanted revenge on society, or because they really had been brainwashed, the chief aim of these people was to use any means available to guide the creatures of other worlds into descending.

“They used the intelligence that mole supplied to slip into the trial zone.” The adjutant nodded. “By what we know so far, there is every chance they mean to open a spatial passage in the forest, and those communications signals earlier were forgeries of theirs as well.”

“Good, good, good… all these years I have been at this, and an old man like me gets played by a pack of scum…”

The old man’s voice was perfectly level, but everyone nearby could feel that the temperature of the whole command room seemed to have turned a great deal colder.

Just then…

“Sir!” A panic-stricken voice came suddenly from outside the door, and a signaller all but slammed through it as he rushed in. “Front-line Camps 11 and 12 have lost contact at the same moment, and Camp 3 has only just sent word that it is under enemy attack!”

The command room fell silent in an instant.

Boom!!!

A violent aura burst out from within the old man. The metal tabletop was flung away by an unseen force, and his white hair streamed about his head.

In that instant the old man, who a moment before had looked somewhat advanced in years, seemed to have turned into a savage beast.

“Good. I hadn’t gone looking for them yet, and here they are, delivering themselves to my door!”

The old man laughed suddenly, and the laugh was uncommonly cold. “Then of course we cannot fail to receive our guests.”

He drew his aura back in and turned to the signaller. “Pass the order. All reserve units to assemble at once and enter the forest. Objectives… Camps 11, 12 and 3!”

“Sir, we’re going in now?”

The young officer beside him started, hesitated, and then steeled himself to point out, “There are already holes in the outer defence line, and those Descent Faction people will surely use something to draw the beast tide as well. The beast tide will be into the forest before long, and if the main body of our force pushes deep in strength at a time like this, the losses could well be severe. What’s more…”

He lowered his voice. “If those Descent Faction people really are using students and soldiers as sacrifices, then to go on sending men in is very likely to play straight into their hands.”

The old man gave him a cold look. “You think I don’t know that?”

His gaze fell to the sand table, to the green stretch that stood for the trial forest, like one enormous wound.

“But whether it is rescuing whatever students may still be alive in there or dealing with an array that has already been laid, we have to go in. We absolutely cannot let those bastards have their way! Even if every one of us dies here, it still has to be done!”

He reached out and pressed down hard on the sand table. “Once that passage is open, what follows will not be as simple as a few students sacrificed and a few squads dead! By then the defence line across the whole north-west will be torn open, and once this region is lost…”

The old man did not go on, but everyone there understood the consequence.

Once the line here was broken through, the pressure on the whole defensive line humanity had forged would grow greater still, and the entire region would be laid waste!

The adjutant and the signaller exchanged a glance and pressed the matter no further.

“If we are quick enough, we may yet wreck their plan before the beast tide and that array of theirs are ready. Go. Carry it out at once!”

“Yes, sir!”

The two figures left the command room, and it soon fell quiet again.

The old man stood before the sand table, looking down at that marked-out stretch of forest. “The little devils in there… hold on a while longer…”