Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

CH648 Revenge Raid I

***

The base had once been a modest settlement, home to roughly a thousand villagers. However, due to its proximity to a key supply route used by the Lost Heathens to service their major clients, the dark mercenary unit had seized it... by force.

According to information gathered by the scouting party—from one of the few survivors who had somehow managed to reach BloodIron—the Lost Heathens had initially attempted to buy out the village.

The price they offered was, at best, insulting.

Yet beyond the offered compensation, the villagers held a deep attachment to the land—a land they had painstakingly cultivated into a home despite the harsh and unforgiving nature of the region.

Unfortunately, they had gravely underestimated the nature of the Lost Heathens.

Refusal was not something that group accepted lightly.

In order to further expand and consolidate his operations, Brock Peyton ordered his forces to wipe the village from the map entirely.

A handful of villagers who had been away at the time of the massacre managed to make their way to BloodIron and report the atrocity. However, no one was willing to intervene on behalf of a group of impoverished peasants—or a village that no longer existed—especially when it meant opposing a force as powerful and influential as the Lost Heathens.

The Wildlands was not a land of order or justice. It was a place where self-interest reigned supreme. Without sufficient incentive, no one would lift a finger.

Of course, the Fortuna Company was no different.

They were here for their own vengeance—not for the villagers’.

From a distance, the party observed the village.

The Lost Heathens had made significant improvements to the settlement’s defences. The mud walls now stood taller and more reinforced, with watchtowers erected at either end of the perimeter, both overlooking the central gate.

Each watchtower was manned by three archers, keeping vigilant watch over the surroundings.

Silver gave a silent signal to the crossbow unit. The six of them split into two teams and, under the cover of night, advanced swiftly towards the watchtowers until they entered effective range.

Thwack!

Bolts flew, striking the watchtower guards with deadly precision.

’Shit!’

One of the crossbowmen missed his mark. His target had bent down at the precise moment the bolt was loosed, narrowly avoiding death.

Silver reacted instantly. Working the mechanism of her bolt-action crossbow with practised efficiency. The moment another bolt chambered, she fired without hesitation.

Thwack!

This time, luck did not favour the guard. The bolt struck true, sending him tumbling from the tower—his body crashing down beyond the walls on the far side.

The crossbowman offered Silver an apologetic smile.

Silver did not respond verbally. Instead, she deliberately worked the mechanism of her crossbow.

The sharp, deliberate motion serving as a silent reprimand—an unspoken reminder that he should have reacted, taking advantage of the crossbow’s faster rate of fire to finish off the target immediately after missing the first shot.

The crossbowman accepted the admonishment without complaint.

As the rest of the Fortuna Company began their advance towards the village, the two crossbow teams pressed forward, reaching the base of the wall beneath the watchtowers.

Using grappling hooks, they swiftly scaled the five-metre-high mud walls and slipped into the guard towers above.

Thwack!

They shot down the two guards stationed below, behind the gate.

Immediately after, the crossbowman who had been reprimanded dropped down from the wall to open the gate, while the others moved along the perimeter, clearing out any remaining hostiles stationed on the walls.

When Alex entered through the opened gate alongside the rest of the Fortuna Company, his gaze swept to both the right and left along the inner walls of the settlement.

His brows furrowed slightly as he recognised the most significant drawback of Sugud’s modified crossbows—particularly in an urban combat environment.

’They are loud,’ Alex mused.

Much like their firearm counterparts—albeit to a lesser degree—the bolt-action and pump-action crossbows produced a noticeable sound, especially the longer-range, high-powered bolt-action variants.

Worse still, in a settlement such as this—filled with irregular paths, narrow alleyways, and tightly packed buildings—the sound echoed and reverberated between structures, prolonging its reach and increasing the likelihood of detection.

While the unfamiliar nature of the sound might momentarily confuse the hostiles, delaying their recognition of the threat, it would still instinctively put them on alert.

’Even so, it won’t take long before they identify it as a danger,’ Alex continued inwardly.

’We need to move quick—’

”Enemy attack!”

Unfortunately, before he could complete his thought—let alone issue a command—someone discovered a body and raised the alarm.

Hostiles began pouring out from all directions. Archers took positions and opened fire towards the scouting team that had initiated the assault.

The rest of the Fortuna Company surged forward to engage.

Under normal circumstances, a force of barely twenty individuals assaulting a settlement capable of housing over a thousand would be considered sheer madness.

However, with the equalisers in their hands, the Fortuna Company rapidly cut through the opposition—turning the enemy’s own buildings and narrow pathways into tactical advantages as they advanced.

The Fury knights were the most aggressive.

They remained in constant motion, running and gunning down hostiles before they could close the distance.

They leapt from building to building, crossed rooftops, and used alleyways as chokepoints, weaving through structures in a relentless effort to avoid being surrounded and to engage their targets one at a time.

The new weapons, combined with the unconventional—some would say ’cowardly’—tactics employed by the Fortuna Company, caught the Lost Heathens completely off guard.

To make matters worse, whenever one of the enemy’s leaders attempted to stabilise the situation and organise a counteroffensive, they were immediately singled out and eliminated by specialised raid teams tasked with preventing exactly that.

However, despite the effectiveness of the new crossbows, not everyone favoured them.

Havel, Kavakan, and Mogal adhered to their traditional methods.

Armed with a sword, twin axes, and bare fists respectively, the trio operated independently, hunting down high-value targets and any semblance of leadership that dared to emerge.

The three went on such a relentless killing spree that they began to draw more attention from the hostiles than even their crossbow-wielding comrades.

Ironically, this worked to the Fortuna Company’s advantage. With the trio drawing the bulk of the enemy’s focus, it became significantly easier for the crossbow units to pick off additional targets with precision.

However, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.

Eventually, the Fury knights began to run low on bolts. There was no opportunity to recover spent ammunition—doing so would require time to retrieve and reload them into their magazines before they could be fed to the crossbows and used again.

’That’s another drawback,’ both Alex and Sugud noted inwardly as they exchanged a brief glance.

Without hesitation, the Fury knights drew their weapons, preparing to transition into close-quarters combat.

The Lost Heathens responded with cruel grins.

They had assumed the Fury knights to be weak, given their earlier reluctance to engage directly.

Now that they had been forced to draw their blades, the enemy believed victory would come easily. The fact that the Fury knights’ aura coating appeared colourless only reinforced this dangerous misconception.

However, they were about to receive a harsh awakening.

***