Invasion: An Apocalyptic LitRPG (Viceroy's Pride Book 2) Read online

  “You mean that you have slipped, son,” Bowman replied frostily. “Look, I’m not here to judge you. You’ve seen combat after a fashion, so I’m assuming you get it. Awful things happen when you’re at war, and men will do terrible things to survive.”

  “Daniel,” the officer clasped his hands behind his back, unable to completely conceal the condescending tone from his voice, “I’m going to be honest with you here. You went into a warzone green and unprepared, and you did things that haunt you. If I were in your chain of command, your commanding officer already would have been drummed out of the service for putting you on the spot like that.”

  “I’ve served with enough men that suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to see the symptoms in you.” Dan thought he caught the hint of sneer on the soldier’s face. “That violence in your report? That’s PTSD, not some sort of magic mumbo jumbo. You’re relying on the diagnosis of a pre-technological drunken hermit. The fact that he can cast a couple spells hardly gives him a doctorate in psychology. I don’t know if Mr. Ibis has made a therapist available to you, but I’d suggest starting with them rather than some sort of ancient elven remedy.”

  “Colonel-” Dan tried to speak only for Bowman to interrupt him once more.

  “Daniel, it’s decided,” the Lieutenant Colonel shook his head. “We will take care of our own. If it turns out we’re wrong and one of our troops turns into some sort of killing machine, we will bring them in and get them the therapy they need to get their heads straight. Simple as that. The Department of Defense is already a bit uncomfortable with the amount of power the Thoth Foundation has over this entire endeavor. They’re not going to let you feed our troops some load of pseudo-religious babble.”

  Before Dan could reply, Colonel Bowman made a dismissive gesture and turned his back on him, taking a seat in the front row of the auditorium. Dan’s lips drew into a tight line. It had been a while, but he hadn’t missed the military’s stubborn arrogance. He could only hope that the Colonel was right and that a staff therapist would be sufficient. If not, the entire military half of Project Starshield would be a timebomb. Maybe he should just pair them off with the stubborn e-sports celebrities. At least then the two problems might resolve themselves.

  Dan shook his head to clear it of extraneous thoughts and gave his introductory speech. The soldiers were polite and listened to him, but he could tell that, like their commanding officer, they didn’t put much weight on his words. The entire lot was convinced that they were right, and no references to his last two years of experience would convince them otherwise.

  The rest of the initiation process went off without many problems. Sixty-one of the soldiers, including Lieutenant Colonel Bowman, had an affinity and were able to coalesce a spirit ball with Dan’s assistance. After almost a full day of silence, word came in from Washington that the soldiers who could use mana would be fitted with the System.

  As soon as the injections were done, Dan tried to start a joint training program between the soldiers and the Foundation candidates, but Bowman shot him down immediately. According to the Colonel, the army had their own training plans, and outside of the daily formal magic theory classes that Dan taught to both groups, he barely even saw the soldiers.

  About a week later, the military tried to send another sixty or so soldiers to test for further affinities, but Ibis shut them down. Officially, he said that the base was being put into lockdown to prevent any leaks while the teams were engaged in intensive training, but unofficially, the director was fuming over the army’s heavy-handed response to Project Starshield.

  Instead of a partnership to protect Earth, the military treated all proposals from the Thoth Foundation with an intense paranoia and instead primarily kept their own counsel. Although the rank and file soldiers were fairly friendly whenever Dan encountered them in the hallways, they always found excuses to not sit down with everyone else for lunch.

  Really, outside of magical theory lessons and when they used the gym for their own training, the only times anyone from the Foundation saw the military detachment was when they engaged in what Ibis angrily referred to as “baldfaced industrial espionage.”

  At first, Dan thought that the Director was exaggerating things. Henry Ibis seemed to have almost as much territorial distaste for the army “tromping all over his facility” as the officers seemed to have for him.

  Then he came upon a ranger captain, one of Bowman’s senior aides, cornering Sam and trying to badger the inner workings of the System and some of the more sophisticated equipment used by the Thoth Foundation out of her. The man brushed both Sam and Dan off as they tried to politely extricate her from the situation, and eventually Dan had to use Shocking Fist to “convince” him to drop the issue.

  It was honestly a near thing. Dan’s fights on Twilight didn’t really prepare him for another human that actually knew what he was doing, and even with his enhancements, he walked away from the encounter with a black eye. Luckily, the ranger had tried to grapple him, giving Dan the grasp on the man’s arm he needed to run enough electricity through him to dissuade him from continuing the fight.

  After that incident, tensions became much frostier between the Foundation and the military detachment. Apparently, the man had issued a formal complaint regarding Dan’s behavior, never mind that Sam had told him to let her leave at least four times before Dan stepped in. Ibis ignored the complaint, but from that moment on, none of the officers in the military contingent would even speak to him anymore.

  Well, other than Colonel Bowman. The day after the incident, the Colonel burst into his office and started screaming at Dan. A litany of threats ensued about how he was going to have Dan thrown in jail for assault, and at one point he used the word “treason.” Dan just stared blankly at the fuming Colonel and told him to close the door on his way out before returning to his paperwork.

  Maybe there was a more diplomatic way of handling the incident, but Dan was sick of Bowman trying to talk down to him. The Colonel represented every bit of inertia that held the armed forces back. He would keep developing tools to fight the last war until someone pried him from his post, still blissfully unaware that the tactics that worked on human guerillas were meaningless when fighting the Tellask.

  As tensions between the two camps accelerated toward a breaking point, Dan began to wonder if he’d made a mistake in not compromising with Bowman. The official itinerary for the joint training called for another five months before the two teams were to be deployed to Brazil, but Dan knew enough about human nature to read the glares the soldiers threw at him in the hallways.

  There wasn’t going to be cooperation. He was stuck working with civilians, half of whom thought the war was just an excuse to get a new brand endorsement, and security forces that didn’t respect him.

  Even if he was assigned to work with an army or security unit, the odds that they would follow his instructions were just about nil. When the time came, he was either going to be stuck babysitting or on his own.

  Dan sighed. With minimal help available, It seemed like he’d have to prioritize developing his own spellshield if he wanted to survive what was to come.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Shapes on the Horizon

  Dan walked into the gymnasium as the Thoth candidates were finishing up their daily runs on the obstacle course. Much of the Foundation’s training program borrowed heavily from Daeson, Dan’s former mentor and tormentor on Twilight. Other than adding weapon training, the Foundation’s only real change was to remove the unnecessary sadism from Daeson’s training regimine. The necessary sadism, Dan reflected sourly as he watched a pair of panting candidates try to climb a rope while padded beams slammed into them, remained. He still ran the obstacle course each morning, waking up hours before the candidates to ensure that he would have the gymnasium to himself. He didn’t have the same amount of time to devote to training as when he was studying with Daeson on Twilight, but that wasn’t a proper excuse to slack off.

  As the candidates finished up one by one, assistants handed them towels and water bottles. Dan approached them as they divided on their own into the three major cliques. Despite all of his and Sam’s brainstorming, they couldn’t find a way to bridge the gaps between the groups. At one point, they even ended up resorting to cheesy icebreakers to try and bring everyone together. It had worked in a way, with all of the groups agreeing that the team building exercises were trash. When Dan and Sam finally approached the Director for help, he disagreed with their very premise. As far as he was concerned, the infighting was useful and friendly competition would drive the groups to greater heights. Dan wasn’t entirely sure about that, but ultimately he didn’t have any way to make the groups cooperate without Ibis’ help, so there wasn’t much he could do.

  The only good news from the last two months of training was that the group of gamers that originally wanted to go home came around to the concept of training. Unfortunately, it was for all the wrong reasons. The kid with blue hair from the first day that insisted on calling himself DarkStryke69xX, Reggie Dobbs, convinced the rest of his crew that they would come out of the war in Brazil as super-powered heroes. Already, they were planning endorsement deals and triumphant press tours.

  Dan tried to warn them on several occasions that fighting the elves wasn’t a joke or a game, but they were all too wrapped up in their own world for his words to register. At least they finally engaged with the classes and started studying. Maybe they were only in it for themselves, but each of them became convinced that, after the elves were defeated, they would need to compete for limited endorsement dollars. Almost all of them were working on spells that were a little too flashy for Dan’s comfort, but most of the spells seemed to have promise.

  Jennifer Finch, the uncrowned queen of the hardworking clique, ambled over to him as Dan set up for the day’s lesson on magical theory. She had finished in the top five of the World of Magic Online tournament, but that wasn’t the most interesting part. For each one of her victories, she only used basic leather armor and her fists. Even with all of his enhancements, Dan wasn’t entirely certain of his ability to take her in a fair unarmed fight.

  Admittedly, hand-to-hand fighting wasn’t exactly his forte, but Dan had learned from the best before being thrown into the forge that was Twilight. A year of fighting for his life had honed his reflexes to the point that he could at least keep up with the more promising of his students, like Jennifer.

  Once her magic was awakened, Jennifer turned out to be a rare talent, boasting affinities in space, metal, and force mana. Rather than spread herself thin, Jennifer had followed his advice and focused on just her metal and force affinities. The candidate’s training time was limited before they were scheduled to be deployed to Brazil, and if they were going to end up fighting proper enemies one or two powerful spells seemed like a much sounder investment than a collection of superficial ones. It was a lesson he’d learned the hard way during his trip to Twilight. Luckily, his collection of weaker abilities was good at disrupting or distracting an enemy.

  “Did you hear the news from Brazil?” she asked Dan, taking a sip from her water bottle as he shook his head. “The elves have started making probing pushes to break containment. They haven’t managed to break out of the rainforest in force yet, but there have been a couple ambushes of the rapid reaction forces sent out to stop them. It sounds like the coalition forces lost a couple of F-16s and an A-10 in the most recent skirmish.”

  “A-10?” Dan raised an eyebrow. “Those things are pretty hard to take down. I understand shooting down an F-16 if you manage to hit it with a lucky lightning strike or something, but A-10s are designed to ignore some pretty serious firepower.”

  “It looked like they were ready for us,” Jennifer crushed her empty water bottle and screwed the cap back on it. “When the air support arrived, the elven formation fired a ton of tiny explosive spells at it. It distracted the pilots and disrupted their fire control for long enough that someone managed to launch a ten-foot-long metal spear into one of the F-16s. There’s some pretty vivid footage of the plane exploding and a storm of lightning bolts from its wreckage taking out the plane’s wingman.”

  “Shit,” Dan’s brow furrowed. “A multi-affinity spell. That’s some fairly advanced magic, and it sounds like it’s enough to take down low flying aircraft. Hopefully they only have one or two mages capable of firing off a spell of that magnitude. Either way, I’m not sure that we’ll be able to count on unmolested close air support when we deploy to Brazil.”

  “The A-10 was worse,” Jennifer shook her head. “The elves had some sort of flying lizard with a rider. The thing looked like a wyvern from a video game, but the elf riding it was able to shield it from gunfire with magic for just long enough to tear the A-10 apart. The wyvern must have been at least 25 feet long, and its claws just ignored the A-10s armor. We might have the heavy vehicle and weapon advantage for now, but if they start pulling magical monsters out of myth to fight us, that might not last.”

  “They must have a teleportation beacon somewhere in the Amazon,” Dan mused aloud. “Even if they’ve been able to slip void ships past our airforce by teleporting from orbit, I just can’t imagine one carrying a beast that size.”

  “Didn’t you teleport to a beacon when you went to Twilight?” She asked. “Why don’t we just end this entire war by having you teleport in with a nuke and then pop back out? One mushroom cloud and the problem is solved.”

  “I can’t find it,” he muttered, embarrassed. “We’ve looked for days. There’s an echo of something in the rainforest, but nothing I can lock onto. Doctor Weathers thinks that they’re doing something to conceal the signal. I’m pretty sure I could use it to teleport, but I wouldn’t have any accuracy. I’d just end up somewhere random in the middle of the jungle.”

  “Wait,” Jennifer frowned, a hint of worry creeping into her voice, “If they have a beacon, isn’t the current stalemate just us giving them time to resupply and prepare for a major campaign?”

  “More or less.” Dan sighed. “Ibis has been pushing the army to move faster, and for all his faults, Bowman is in agreement with us. The politicians just aren’t willing to commit to a new offensive until ‘everything is ready.’ Every time the Chairman gets on a talk show to push the issue, some senator will chime in to call him irresponsible and alarmist.”

  “That isn’t what we see on television,” Jennifer continued slowly, concern written on her face. “Right now most of the media has stopped even reporting on the day-to-day of the conflict. We only hear about it when something big like the wyvern attack happens. The rest of the coverage seems to assume that the elven army is contained in the Amazon, and that it’s just a matter of time until they run out of supplies and surrender.”

  “I’ll have to talk to Henry,” Dan replied, running his hand through his hair. “He already knows, but it doesn’t hurt to remind him that we might have to expedite things here. None of you have runescripting yet, and even with the magic you’ve learned so far, it’s barely enough to even the playing field against average Imperial troops, let alone elves. If they need us to deploy early, we’ll be better equipped than an ordinary military unit, but we’re going to be sticking our hand into a blender and hoping for the best.”

  “Runescripting?” Jennifer’s eyes lit up. Even in the midst of such a dark conversation, she always was thrilled to learn more about the elves’ magical technology. “Like the tattoos you have that give you super speed and strength?”

  “Yes.” Dan nodded before suddenly wincing. “Shit, I forgot that we don’t have a whole lot of material for ink. We’re going to need monster parts if the plan is to runescript everyone in the project, and the only way to do that is to collect them. That either means back to Twilight or Brazil.”

  “Twilight sounds fun!” Jennifer’s eyes were twinkling. “I’m especially interested in the more powerful monsters that came out at night. They made for the most interesting raid battles.”

  “Twilight isn’t fun.” Dan shook his head at Jennifer’s enthusiasm. “I’m not sure if Brazil is any better, but most of the creatures I ran into would rip apart any of the candidates. I got incredibly lucky, and I’m not sure we can count on that again, especially if the local governments are on the lookout for foreigners teleporting in.”

  “Hey, teach!” One of the awakened security personnel shouted at Dan before Jennifer could respond. “Quit jawing with your girlfriend; it’s time for our theory lesson!”

  The man guffawed and his friends joined him. Dan squinted slightly at him before letting the issue go. If he tried to push the point, it would turn into a giant production and disrupt the entire class causing a delay that they could ill afford. He was their commanding officer, and he should have warranted more respect, but their entire clique wasn’t exactly friendly with him. Other than being disrespectful, they left him alone, which was more than either of the other two cliques could say. It never got physical, but the security officers mocked the pro gamers constantly for their naivete and lack of real world experience. Dan did what he could to stop it, but he couldn’t completely disagree with them. He still doubted Henry Ibis’ wisdom in selecting his candidates from a video game, but what was done was done.

  On the fly, Dan changed the lesson to opening the mana pathways in the user’s body, a critical step to ranking up without bursting into flames and dying. The lesson had been planned for much later, after the candidates had more experience with their affinities and their beginner spells, but given the information Jennifer had shared, Dan was afraid that his students might need it sooner than later.