Second Life as a Soldier

“Colin, take your squad to the right flank.”

“Victor’s squad to the left flank.”

“Celeb and Aaron’s squad support the front line.”

“Rowan’s squad, fill in the gap between the left and right flanks.”

I ordered from the rear, letting all the sergeants and privates know how I wanted to organize their squads. Most of my squad was assigned to the front, combined with at least one top-tier fighter from the other squads, while the job of the left and right flanks was to direct the beasts toward the front wall. The role of the rest of the squads was to support soldiers in direct contact with the beasts and rotate them out if the battle lasted for a long time.

While the formation was taking shape, the wolves were not waiting for us to do so. They kept attacking the retreating privates. I blocked a few of the attacks using my mana shields. Once my squad was in the front line, it relieved pressure from me. Soon enough, Victor and Colin’s squads joined as well, but by this time, the number of wolves attacking had also increased.

Rowan jogged from the front. He stopped to my right. “Not going to use a shield, Sergeant?” he said with a raised eyebrow, pointing at the shield I was carrying on my back. Without waiting for my reply, he continued his jog.

I did not get the opportunity to reply to Rowan. I was too focused on supporting the soldiers facing the wolves. Mana shields had increased my support capabilities by a lot. This was also the reason I no longer needed a physical shield, at least not if I was leading from the rear. My mana shields were strong enough to hold off against Tier-2s, but I did carry a shield on my back just in case I had to face a Tier-3 beast.

“Kael, Garran, show some flames! Push them back!” I ordered, a little bit of happiness slipping into my voice. This would be the first time Kael and Garran had used their Fire Affinity and Flame runes on their shields and spears in front of other soldiers.

“Rokan, Deran, support Kael and Garran with Rock Hammer.”

Kael and Garran’s outer rims ignited, making the wolves hesitate to approach. From behind, Rokan and Deran dragged their hammers on the ground. In doing so, the pebbles on the ground started getting stuck to the hammerheads, increasing the size and weight of the hammerheads.

Once they reached behind Kael and Garran, Kael and Garran stepped to the side, creating space for Rokan and Deran in synchronized motion. Both of them struck the heads of 2 Tier-1 wolves, killing them in one strike.

Seeing the wolves die, the Tier-3 alpha growled at me. By this time, the formation had already taken shape, but the alpha’s growl did something. 10 more wolves came from the forest.

Now it was 38 wolves against 60-something soldiers. We needed to be very careful from here. While we held the numerical advantage, if we lost even a few soldiers here, the difficulty of this mission would skyrocket.

The surprise from the wolves did not end with their increasing numbers. In a coordinated attack, all of them charged at the left flank.

“Front wall, support the left flank!”

As the front wall moved to support the left flank, the alpha took off running, taking that opportunity. Only then did I realize the fucking alpha had planned it. It was a wind-element beast, extremely fast on its feet. With its speed, it could easily exploit the gap created by the movement of the front wall.

Colin’s squad started moving from the right flank to fill the gap.

“COLIN’S SQUAD, HOLD YOUR POSITION!” I stopped them in their tracks as I charged my spear with mana. A hasty movement from the right flank would weaken their shield wall’s strength, and alpha would tear through the broken flank without much effort.

As the alpha approached the gap, taking my spear in both hands, I made an attacking motion. With that, a 3-foot-long white arc of mana traveled from my spear to the alpha, hitting it in the chest and pushing it a few steps back. It did not do the damage I was expecting and only created a small wound on the alpha’s chest, but it gave an opening.

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“Right flank, attack!” Now that the alpha was caught off guard, this was the best time for striking the alpha. If I could take down the alpha, the battle would be over.

“Rowan and Aaron, do not give the alpha a chance. Keep pushing and separate it from the others.”

“Front wall, right flank, Celeb, box in the wolves. Take V formation!”

I kept giving orders, coordinating the soldiers against the pack. Thankfully, none of them disappointed me. All the squads followed orders effectively. After a few more minutes of relentless attacks on the alpha, it started retreating.

Once it was away from the reach of the right flank, it howled, calling for all the wolves to retreat.

Thankfully, during the fight, I did not have to use my mana arc attack again. It was part of a fighting style I wanted to develop, but it was still not there yet. The attack had a huge amount of mana cost, and just one attack cost me 500 mana units.

With my capacity being just over 3000, I could use the mana arc attack only 2–3 times in active combat.

By the time the wolves were done retreating, we had reduced the pack’s number by half. The bigger achievement was that our soldiers had taken only minor injuries. There were a few people with bite marks and some torn leather armor from wolf claws.

“Great work, everyone. All of you performed extremely well. Great coordination, great aggression. Initially, I was afraid about your coordination for this mission, but you all have proved me wrong. Now I’m relieved,” I said with a smile, looking at everyone. “And as a reward, all of you will get a small amount of rest. We will take a 45-minute break. Also, injured privates, get into line. You all have good news, you are in the presence of one of the few sergeants proficient in healing at Fort Darrow,” I finished with a haughty tone, earning chuckles from the younger privates.

Before I could start healing, Victor, Aaron, and Celeb gave me respectful nods.

It looked like this battle and my performance had achieved the effect I was hoping for. But in doing so, I had revealed some of my squad’s capabilities, like the flames on Garran and Kael’s shields, the rock-based attacks of Rokan and Deran, and my mana arc. Still, the impact of revealing those abilities was far greater than any advantage we would have gained by continuing to hide them.

Checking the soldiers’ injuries, I decided to put on a bit of an extra show. Instead of healing them in my preferred way—with herbs—I simply covered all the soldiers with my skill [Triage Ward] and started using [Vital Restoration], patching up every injured soldier.

Once I was done healing, Rowan approached me.

“So, which noble house have you pledged your allegiance to?” Rowan asked bluntly.

“Why would you think I have pledged allegiance to some noble house?” I asked with a frown.

Rowan scoffed. “You expect me to believe a commoner sergeant somehow got his hands on four rune-equipped items with two different types of runes for his squad? I was not born yesterday.”

“And what are you going to do by knowing the noble house?” I said, letting him believe the equipment my squad used was a gift from some noble house.

“I would like to purchase those runes,” Rowan said.

“Sorry, I am not allowed to say it,” I lied. One good thing about noble business was that it was hard to verify, so as long as you did not mention a specific noble house’s name, it was easy to get away with it.

Rowan simply nodded. “Let them know my house would like to purchase those runes, especially the fire ones,” he said and walked away.

I knew why he was interested in those runes. They were not designed to do heavy elemental damage, but only to enhance fighting capabilities. The idea came after the kunai Silas and Barry created.

Since then, the squad had started looking for ways to use little bits of elemental affinity they had in combat.

Kael and Garran’s shields used flint stones on the outer edges to create sparks, and then we used fire runes to ignite the whole outer rim. The only role Kael and Garran’s affinity played was controlling the temperature and direction of those flames. Shields were not good for killing or even against human targets, but in environments like forests, where an inherent fear of fire existed in most beasts, they were extremely useful.

Similarly, for the rune on Rokan and Deran’s hammers, they provided mana to the rune, which helped attract rock or stone fragments from the ground onto the hammerheads. This was why the dragging motion was so important before their attacks.

None of us could create elements from scratch, so we came up with ways to use the resources available to us. I had also improved shields for Brakk and Oren, but their enchantments were not useful against agile beasts like wolves.

Only Varric’s element was something we were not able to use effectively in squad battles.

As for the reason I allowed Rowan to believe those runes came from a noble house, it was simple. I wanted to perfect them first and then submit them to the army for military merits. Involving a noble house now would only create problems for me.

Once the 45-minute break was over and most of the wolf pelts were harvested by mine, Victor’s, and Colin’s squads, I stood up.

“Everyone, let’s begin. Tonight was the night we were supposed to hunt, but I think we have done enough hunting for the day,” I said with a smile. “We will change our path a little and avoid going into the territory of the beast herd we were supposed to hunt. Let’s go!”

And once again, the caravan was on its way.