Over the next few days, things in Northreach Province shifted fast. Ridgehaven City and Springvale City got hit hard - both lost nearly twenty thousand troops to the Ice Regint’s fierce counterattack.
Thanks to Charlotte’s deliberate push, the Ice Regint made a na for itself overnight. Rumors flew everywhere.
Ridgebreak Battalion and Springvale’s forces did think about striking back - but as soon as they reached the old toll station, their tires got blown out, trucks stalled, and then ca the real punch: mortars rained down from Ice Regint squads hidden nearby. The damage was brutal.
To stop the enemy from going completely feral and copying their ambush tactics, Emily and Charlotte made a call. They absorbed a group of three hundred or so survivor fighters, gave them food and shelter, and assigned them one job: guard the periter around the underground grain bunkers - any area within mortar and rocket range.
Every hour, soone from that group would check in at the bunker just to make sure everything stayed safe. Their new role: full-ti lookouts.
*****
Willowglen Village.
They had brought 1800 prisoners here. It had been five days. Four had been spent working.
Magnus stood at the base of the teorite Hill, lowering his binoculars. Ashton stood beside him and reached to grab them right away.
That rock was the size of a small mountain - nearly 200 ters tall. Shaped like an egg lying flat, thick in the middle.
Since it sat flat, that 200 ters was actually its width. If you stood the thing upright, it’d be almost 350 ters tall. Impressive, no doubt.
"Magnus, sun’s going down. Let’s call it a day. Ian says dinner’s ready," Ashton said.
She had been sticking close to Magnus these past several days, getting fairly comfortable with him. Magnus nodded and glanced at Lucy and Molly.
Those two were sprawled out on the dirt at the mountain’s base, covered in mud, not caring one bit. It was sweltering, and they still had to wear heavy jackets and helts. From the 1800-plus prisoners, over 200 had already gone down from heatstroke.
"What are you looking at? Go hang with your sweet Ash," Molly muttered, voice thick with sarcasm and jealousy. Her attitude toward Ashton had soured these past few days.
Magnus didn’t take the bait. He just shook his head and told Ashton to let everyone know - ti to stop work and head back to the village for supper. Dinner was plain rice and salted greenleaf soup. That soup was bright green. Newcors usually got a bad stomach from it at first, but after a few als, people adjusted.
They had brought 1850 prisoners here. Ice Regint had 600 mbers present: 150 ca with the first batch, another 150 ca with Lucy and Molly, and then Magnus brought 300 more with Ashton instead of the planned 500 - he didn’t want to leave the grain depot too exposed.
Nearly 2500 people total. The villagers in Willowglen had cleared out 174 hos for them to live in. It was tight - any flat surface or heat bed people could sleep on was packed.
That ant Magnus couldn’t just take a whole house for himself. Only ten houses total. At night, Magnus had no choice but to bunk on the sa heated platform with Ashton, Lucy, Molly, and six other female team mbers. After dinner, two candles lit the room. There were two beds - one to the north and one to the south - with a narrow walkway in between. Magnus was sitting at the edge of the northern bed, smoking silently. The other nine female mbers of the regint, except Ashton, were sprawled on the beds, stripped bare due to the humid heat, too tired to care.
The eight won didn’t bat an eye at Magnus being there. They treated him like one of the girls. At this point, if he dared look at them from a man’s angle, they’d just tease him and start flaunting on purpose.
gan ca in holding a small notebook, followed by Amber and four squad leaders, each carrying a sack of rice. The six entered and carefully placed the sacks on the floor, then sat around the bed. gan settled beside Magnus, holding the notebook up to the candlelight.
"Commander," she said, "today we dug up 677 crystals. All here. Please check."
That so-called ’teor mountain’ was actually just loose earth - digging was easy, and the crystal yield was insane.
On the first day, Magnus joined the digging himself. With over 2,000 people (excluding the won guarding the prisoners), they managed to pull out 1,449 crystals in one day. The sheer number stunned him, though unfortunately, not a single black crystal showed up.
On day two, they got 1,211; on day three, 885. Now day four - only 677. The output was dropping, but even that was far beyond any usual find. Normally, one teorite would yield 8 to 10 crystals. Today’s haul equaled about 60 to 70 teorites.
Flipping a few pages back in the notebook, gan’s voice picked up with excitent. "Commander! We’ve dug out 4,222 crystals over the past four days. If we clear out the entire mountain, we might end up with over 6,000!"
Amber, also flushed from the heat, shrugged off her outer coat and leaned on the bed. Hearing gan, she grinned too. "Right, Commander! When we haul all this back to the granary, Emily and Sophia will definitely reward us. Even Professor Liana might cook us so braised pork!"
The word "reward" got the rest of the won perking up fast.
"What reward? I just want a decent bath. Three days straight, if possible."
"Sa here. But my dream reward is a hot bath - with our dear Commander. Just the two of us."
"You thirsty minx. You had all night to climb into his bed while he slept. Didn’t see you try anything then!"
"Ha! You’ve all been whispering and scheming for days now. Anyone made a move yet?"
...
Magnus had long grown numb to all this. He ignored their banter and studied the notebook under the flickering light, scanning the breakdown of crystal types and counts.
After a few monts, he asked gan about the male prisoners. But Amber cut in to answer, since she was in charge of them.
"Still manageable," she said flatly. "Forty more fell sick today, but earlier cases - maybe seventy - are recovering. So... kinda balances out."
The way Amber said "balances out," it was clear she didn’t see the prisoners as people. But that was expected. From the lumber camp massacre that claid over a hundred Ice Regint won, to the girls Magnus rescued from Coldre Town, to the survivors from Springvale’s slave pens, to the recent betrayal by Evan’s n that wiped out twelve of Molly’s squad... There was too much pain buried under those nas.
By now, most of the won in the Ice Regint didn’t just distrust n - they hated them.
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