Explorer of Edregon

The next day was perhaps the busiest Vin had ever seen from the newly built town.

The goal was for the Earthers to take down the entirety of the Red Dawn in one fell swoop. Not only without letting a single one of them escape to wreak havoc elsewhere, but without losing a single Earther on top of that. To that end, Golrim, Vin, and Shia ended up being essential.

The three of them worked in tandem to go over every possible detail they could recall about the Red Dawn, giving the amassed force of combat classes as much preparation as physically possible. Vin and Shia had only witnessed a handful of different abilities and warriors during their time spent in the Red Dawn's camp, but Golrim practically had an entire manifest for their group.

If anyone still had any reservations about which side Golrim was truly on, they were squashed rather heartily as the Logistician spent the entire morning working with Phil to go over the Red Dawn's weaknesses and come up with the best way to counter them.

"Borgough is an orc with the Bronze Skin Capstone, which allows him to become nigh invulnerable to slashing and piercing weapons when activated, but he's still susceptible to blunt force trauma," Golrim explained to the gathered warriors.

"Ralph, you and your team will be in charge of taking him down," Phil called out, making sure he got a nod of acknowledgement from a rather burly looking man leaning against a massive maul before he motioned for Golrim to continue.

"Pratis is a whip user with passives that cause their strikes to inflict far more pain than they should, even through armor or skills that usually nullify pain," Golrim continued, frowning even at the thought. "They're nearly unbeatable in a one-on-one, but weak if you can surround and overwhelm them."

"We'll try and focus them first from range, but if that fails, I'll have one of our more mobile squads take them on," Phil nodded, making a note as to who he thought was best for the task.

"That works. Next would be Clarissa. She's a shortbow user with pinpoint aim, but she almost always goes for the joints to draw out her kills. You're going to want additional armor on the joints for whoever goes after her…"

And so the list went on and on for just about every single member of the Red Dawn. Golrim admitted that his information was a few weeks out of date, and rightfully warned them that the members most likely had picked up a few new abilities even he wasn't aware of at the moment. Apparently, he couldn't actually talk to Curash through their soul-bond. The best he could do was tug on it and give Curash a vague sense of when and where he wanted to meet.

"Based on Vin and Shia's recounting of their meeting and the number they killed, the Red Dawn should be down to somewhere around forty members at this point," Golrim explained. "It won't be easy taking down forty prestiged combat classes without suffering any casualties… I don't think I've actually met them yet, but who is your town's Strategist?"

"We don't have one," Phil said gruffly, dismissing the gathered fighters after instructing them to spend the next few hours training and preparing according to Golrims specifications.

"…Of course you don't." Golrim sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Okay! I suppose that means we need to come up with a plan. Suggestions?"

"I sort of thought this was your area of expertise," Vin admitted. "You know, being a plotter and all that."

"There is a massive difference between scheming and logistics and leading a group of people into battle," Golrim said, shaking his head. "I don't have the skills or experience needed for that. Come on, your town truly doesn't have a single person with a strategic bone in their body? I thought you were just hiding them from me! Strategists have critical abilities for this kind of thing, if you don't already have one, you need to start pushing someone in that direction as soon as possible! They can empower troops and work literal magic across a battlefield!"

"Spur has a few abilities as a Commander that boost everyone fighting under him," Vin pointed out helpfully.

"Enhancing one's troops is not nearly the same as leading one's troops. Our kingdom's top strategist had a Capstone that allowed him to shift troop attributes on the fly! Imagine rushing a group of Archers that had been shooting down your troops all battle with their high dexterity and focus, only to finally reach them and discover that they suddenly had the strength and endurance of front-line fighters!"

"Okay, I see how that would be useful," Vin admitted, wondering what other crazy abilities someone whose class was all about strategy would have. "But currently, Spur's the best we have."

"Gods help us all," Golrim muttered. "In that case, I'm more than open to ideas."

"What if we got the elves of the Sacred Forest to help us?" Shia chimed in. "The trees would provide us with cover, and my people mainly specialize in archery, which is excellent against most of the Red Dawn members from what you told us. We wouldn't be able to risk the Druids helping us in battle as they're too valuable, but plenty of others would volunteer."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"You really think the elves would let us bring in such a large force of humans?" Vin asked, remembering some of the looks of sheer hatred he'd received the very first time he'd entered her village. Erik's declaration that he was an honored guest had stayed anyone's hand who may have wanted to do him harm, but Vin wasn't sure if even the elves' love of the Ancient Ones was enough for them to put up with having a few hundred humans enter the forest.

"It would definitely have to be a smaller team than we're planning on now, but the elves would fill out the numbers, and it's a worthy trade in my opinion," Shia pointed out. "If we just come at them with overwhelming numbers, we'll almost certainly lose a good handful of people in the battle. But if we try to pick them off and fight them more carefully in the forest…"

"This is why you need a Strategist," Golrim nodded. "And you think your people would join in the battle?"

"Absolutely," Shia scoffed. "The Red Dawn has tried to chop down the outer trees of the forest a couple of times now from what I've heard. The elves will be begging to rip those marauders apart for daring to defile our forest."

"You should meet up with Kelly and have her help you convince everyone," Vin said, realizing this was exactly the kind of reason why they had a Diplomat in the elven village in the first place. "Even if Erik can just make a blanket declaration that the elves will follow, we don't want this to end up damaging our relations with them. I can have Tom or Vanessa chat with the combat classes from our town that will be fighting and explain the importance of not damaging any of the forest. I bet those two have passives that will help everyone understand the importance of what they're saying."

"Good idea, the last thing we want is for any of your Earthers to unintentionally hurt one of the trees," Shia nodded. "Let's run this past Spur before I make the trip."

The three of them jogged over to Spur and ran their plan past him, quickly getting his seal of approval. Shia headed off to get everything smoothed over with the elves of the Sacred forest, even going so far as to bring Alice with her in order to lay the groundwork for a few simple traps.

Golrim continued working with Phil and the combat classes, reminding them of the different abilities they needed to ensure they were prepared to counter and helping to lead their practice. The battle wasn't planned until tomorrow, so they had a good number of hours to smooth out any wrinkles and make sure they were ready.

To Vin's surprise and the trainees' annoyance, Alka actually requested the six Slayer-trainees under her not participate in the battle. According to her, Slayers were primarily used for hunting and killing monsters. While they would be capable of participating in such battles in the future, she didn't want to risk losing any of them before they prestiged and earned the actual Slayer class.

In fact, the vast majority of combat classes selected to participate in the battle hadn't quite hit their first prestige. With Shia and Kelly working as an in between, Spur and Erik had agreed that Terra would send fifty of their own fighters into the Sacred Forest, and the elves would supplement that force with a hundred of their own. Erik was willing to burn a little bit of his own power to help camouflage a hundred and fifty troops and lure the Red Dawn deeper into the trap than they otherwise could without him, but he couldn't help hide any more than that.

Luckily, Shia and Alka didn't count against the Earthers' fifty for obvious reasons. Even Vin was given his own unique pass, on account of being a personal friend of Erik's.

By the end of the day the plan was set, the troops had practiced, and everything was good to go. Vin was just about to turn in for the night after wrapping up one final recap of everything he'd personally seen in the Red Dawn's camp, when a familiar voice called out behind him.

"You guys going to war, or something?"

"Scule?!" Vin all but shouted, spinning around and nearly dropping his journal he'd been putting away. "Where the hell have you two been?! It's been days!"

Other than the admittedly embarrassed look on Scule's face and the shameful tuck of Reginald's head, the petian and his companion looked the same as ever. No injuries, no sounds of police chasing them off in the distance, nothing to indicate why they'd up and vanished for three days without warning.

"I uh… I don't suppose you'd accept me telling you it was something personal and that I'd rather not go into it?" Scule tried, sounding hopeful as he glanced up at him.

Vin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he wondered what the hell was going on. In all the craziness of dealing with the attack on the Red Dawn, he'd entirely forgotten Scule and Reginald were even gone. "I mean I would, but I kinda hoped you trusted us by now to be upfront about everything."

"You sound just like Reginald," Scule muttered, patting the nodding rat on the head as he looked up and pointed his tail at Vin encouragingly. "Fine… I was visiting my folks."

Vin stared at the petian, wondering if he'd heard him correctly. "I'm sorry, your what?"

"My parents, alright! I was visiting my family." Scule sighed, looking like he'd rather talk about literally anything else. "We don't get along all that well so I don't see them that frequently, but I've tried to visit them at least once a month ever since I left home. This was the first time since I joined up with you guys and left the citadel."

Vin continued staring at Scule as his mind struggled to process this. He pictured an older version of Scule aged up about thirty years, sitting beside yet another one that was also female, each petting their own grey and wizened rat companions. Try as he might, he just couldn't do it.

"You never mentioned you had family before now," Vin finally managed. "Why keep them a secret?"

"Like I said, we don't really get along. And…" he paused, as if even he wasn't sure he wanted to continue this line of thinking. "...it messes with my image."

Vin stared in disbelief at the tiny Rogue, and Reginald squeak-snorted, which made Scule huff angrily. "Look, image is important when you're a petian! What sounds more threatening, a Rogue that runs around poisoning people he doesn't like and taking whatever he wants, or one that does all that, while also routinely checking up on his family to make sure they're alright? I certainly know which one sounds scarier!"

"We don't have to talk about it any more if you don't want to," Vin offered, realizing Scule was starting to get genuinely upset. He still didn't quite get it, but he didn't want to offend his friend any more than he already had. "To answer your first question, we are going to war. Tomorrow morning, we're launching a surprise attack against the Red Dawn. If you want to join, I'm happy to run you through the current plan. I'm sure there are plenty of ways you can help."

"We're finally getting rid of those bastards that put me in a cage and threw rocks at me?" Scule confirmed, his anger quickly shifting focus to a new, more appropriate target. "About time. Just tell me where I need to be."