[-on your own tactical discretion,] The voice crackled into Specialist Sergeant Riley's comms. He muttered a curse under his breath, frustrated by the convenient absolution of responsibility.
'What a great way to deny all involvement in this shit,' he thought.
He glanced down at his tablet, which displayed the positions of his divided team. Squad One consisted of Mason and Woods, Squad Two was Tavish and Belinski, while Squad Three had Price and Polites.
Riley quickly adjusted the map, nudging Squad One and Squad Three toward Squad Two's position. Squad Three would act as a blocking force to cover any potential retreat route for the target, while Squad One was tasked with supporting Squad Two in the assault.
Peeking out from his cover, Riley tried to catch a glimpse of the Orcs in the distance, but the clustered tree trunks prevented his line of sight.
"Squad Two, what's your tactical situation? Over."
[Heavy escort,] Tavish whispered back through the comms. [At least a dozen Orcs, two were armed with their handmade firearms, four mages of unknown magical capability, and the target. Over.]
"Heading?" Riley asked back, studying the digital map on his tablet and watched the icons of his team as they went into position while being careful to avoid detection.
[Target appears to be heading to Cemetery Site B.] Tavish responded. [They will arrive within 15 minutes.]
"Squad One and Three, you heard that?" Riley comms over the all unit channel, "You got less than 15 minutes to get into position."
Acknowledgments clicked back over the comms as Squad One and Squad Three tapped their mics. Riley quickly scanned his surroundings, making sure he was still alone, then pulled the smart camo netting off, rolling it up and storing it in his Spatial Ring, before unclipping the carabiner from his harness and slid down the tree trunk.
After a quick stretch to shake off the stiffness of lying still for so long, he moved in the fastest possible speed and ghosted his way through the forest without attracting the attention of the rowdy patrolling Orcs.
Finding a nice vantage point beneath the massive roots of an ancient tree, Riley braced his AF-2 carbine against the roots and spotted movement between the trees, and luckily for them, the target was headed right toward the traps they'd set up the previous night.
[Squad One in position,] Mason's breathless voice came through Riley's comms. [We got movement here, eyes on the Target.]
"Squad Three, are you ready?" Riley whispered.
[Negative,] Price replied. [Too many patrols. We need more time to get into position.]
"Damn," Riley cursed under his breath. "Should I order the team to stand down or go ahead?" He weighed his options as he looked up from his hiding spot to see the first half of the Orc group had entered into the clearing. "Squad Three!" he hissed into the mic.
[Almost there!] Polites' reply came back, as the entire group of Orcs was now in the clearing, standing directly within the kill zone of the claymores.
[...We're here!] the elf finally reported.
"Price!" Riley whispered urgently into his mic. "Take the shot. Take it!" He held his breath, silently praying for success.
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Price lay comfortably on top of a wide moss-covered tree branch with his smart camo netting his whole body up, save for the large bulky silencer attached to his AF-3 Magekiller.
The thick matte-black silencer, measuring 40 cm in length, poke out from the edge of his netting and blended into the shadows. If not for the bipod supporting his weapon, aiming such a heavy weapon would have been nearly impossible.
He had zeroed his scope for a distance of 100 meters, practically point-blank for a sniper of his caliber while ignoring the usual considerations of wind and trajectory.
At this range, sniping was nearly a matter of knife-fighting as he opted for a 4x magnification scope instead of the standard 6x or even 10x options that would have narrowed his field of vision and compromised his ability to track other enemies in close distance without succumbing to tunnel vision.
As he listened to the background chatter of Squad Three racing against time to reach their blocking position buzzing in his earpiece, Price kept his crosshairs slightly aimed away from the hooded target.
After fighting and being chased by a literal army of superhumans, he believed that aiming directly at the target might sense or feel his presence, a risk he wasn't willing to take.
Finally, as the entire group stepped into the clearing, Squad Three reported they were in position, and Polites heard Specialist Sergeant Riley whisper his name.
[Take the shot! Take it!]
Without hesitation nor pause, Price swung his scope to center on the target and squeezed the trigger.
BANG!!
The muffled boom of the heavy weapon rang out, and the fire was followed by a cloud of gun smoke that momentarily obscured his view. He quickly cycled the bolt, sending a massive .50 caliber Adamantite round spiraling down toward the forest floor.
Now, he had to rely on his elf partner Polites to relay the results of his shot and confirm the kill.
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Polites slowly rose to a crouch, balancing properly on the tree branch and readied his AF-2 Magespitter in response to Riley's command to take the shot.
Less than a second later, a thump echoed, followed by a cloud of acrid smoke erupted from the upper branches where Price lay hidden, and Polites quickly focused on the target, watching it propelled backward by the force of the high caliber anti-magic round.
"Good hit!" Polites whispered with excitement over the team comms. "Target down!"
"Wait and hold position," Riley commanded as he quickly unfastened his binoculars to survey the crowd gathering around the fallen Necromancer. "Ensure the target is dead. We need to behead it!"
"No movement from the target on my side," Tavish from Squad Two reported. "But the Orcs are getting restless."
"Take them all out! Make sure no one escapes!" Riley ordered again, keeping a close watch on the anxious Orcs' movements as they shifted around the clearing.
"Roger!" came the responses, and several muffled pops echoed through the air as smoke clouds erupted around the clearing, signaling that Squad One and Squad Two had engaged the Orcs.
In less than ten minutes, the area was littered with dead bodies.
"Squad One, move in! Make sure none are alive!" Riley directed, urging his men forward.
Squad Two emerged silently from the undergrowth, their boots barely making a sound on the forest floor thanks to Polites' minor spell [Silent Movement].
The two Special Operatives advanced in tactical formation, side by side, each covering their designated firing arcs and sector. They headed straight for the target, purposefully ignoring everything else in their singular focus.
Specialist Lance Corporal Mason approached the target's body cautiously. He exchanged a quick glance with his partner, Woods, who nodded and kept watch, ready to cover him from his side. Mason took a step closer and delivered a double tap to the head of the hooded figure, just to be sure.
As the bullets smacked into the hooded figure's head, Mason suddenly felt an unsettling chill run down his spine.
"It's not dead yet!" he exclaimed, firing three more rounds into the figure's skull.
Suddenly, the hooded figure twisted and rose its feet in an unnatural way as it stared at Mason from the shadows of its hood.
Reacting quickly, Mason and Woods immediately fired into the center mass of the target, seeing their bullets hammered into the figure, pushing it back and jerking backward from the force of the bullets.
Thanks to their Mithril armor, which enhanced their physical abilities, they remained unfazed by the painful and violent recoil of their Automatic Magic Rifles without issue, weapons that would have surely shattered a normal human's shoulder.
"Die! You son of a bitch!" Woods shouted with rage in his voice as he and Mason emptied an entire magazine of 30 magic rounds directly into the Necromancer's body.
"Fall back!" Riley yelled at Squad One.
They quickly obeyed the command and retreated while firing as they went. A muffled thump echoed through the trees as another .50 caliber round slammed into the target's head, sending it flopping backward.
"Hit it with everything you've got!"
In the next instant, both Riley, Mason, Woods, Tavish, and Belinski opened fire and unleashed a barrage of gunfire as their silenced weapons popped and thumped in the clearing. Riley watched as the Necromancer jerked and danced under the impacts of their bullets.
Suddenly, the fallen Orcs stood up and formed a meat shield around the Necromancer, sending chunks of flesh and dark red blood splattering across the clearing.
"His magical defenses must be weakening!" Belinski shouted over the team channel. "It's using the dead to recover!"
"Fuck!" Riley cursed again.
By now the racket made by their silenced weapons and the rising gun smoke should have alerted even the dumbest Orcs.
"Go loud!"
Hearing the order, Belinski quickly dropped his AF-2 on its sling and reached into his Spatial Ring.
In an instant, he pulled forth his pump-action shotgun as the weapon materialized from the small pocket dimension into his hand, filled with a five-round magazine tube that was loaded with experimental explosive shells.
Each shell contained a hollow slug packed with as much black powder as could be compressed and surrounded by dozens of ball bearings. Tapered at the nose of each slug were a pair of wafer-thin disks carved with fire-igniting runes.
When the explosive slug impacted any hard surface, the twin rune wafers would collapse together and ignite the compressed black powder into a flame like an impact fuse. The resulting explosion would scatter the ball bearings in a deadly hemisphere effect, capable of killing or maiming any creature within a five-meter radius.
Belinski aimed at the wall of corpses and fired just as Tavish drew out his own shotgun and squeezed the trigger a second later.
BOOM!!
The resulting explosion obliterated through the Orc bodies, transforming them into a mass of unidentified meat chunks and offal.
BOOM!!
A second explosive slug detonated moments later, ripping through the remains and collapsing the corpse wall inward.
An unearthly cry erupted from the small mound of bodies as the Necromancer emerged with its robes tattered and riddled with bullet holes, while its hood was torn away.
To everyone's surprise, beneath the frayed fabric was a feminine elvish face, with lifeless eyes staring back at them, and the skin adorned with sanity-defying tattoos that writhed like living shadows.
[IMAGES]
"Holy shit, that isn't an Orc!"
But the shotgunners didn't stop shooting as they continued emptying their magazine tubes into the Necromancer and showering the female elf in a storm of hundreds of ball bearings, enveloping her in clouds of smoke and explosive debris.
[We got an incoming enemy from the Orc Camp!] Price yelled in the comms. [Engaging!]
"Squad Three, keep them off our backs while we kill the Necromancer!" Riley ordered as he slapped a fresh magazine into his weapon. "Switch to elemental magic rounds!"
Hearing his command, the rest of the team switched ammunition to elemental magic rounds and fired a stream of bullets upon the Necromancer, filling the area with fiery explosions, crackling lightning, and freezing shards of ice as they bombarded the figure from all sides.
Meanwhile from a distance, Polites extended his left hand and formed a seal-like gesture with his fingers as two small blue-white magical circles materialized before his hand. He began to chant, summoning a spell circle and channeling energy into a bolt of lightning that struck the smoke-shrouded figure, provoking another unearthly scream.
"Why won't this thing die?" Tavish shouted in frustration as he reloaded his shotgun with more explosive shells.
Suddenly, the Necromancer leaped out of the smoke and charged directly at him at superhuman speed, but Tavish dove out of the way and quickly rose on one knee.
At the same time, he dropped his empty shotgun, drawing his AF-2 from his Spatial Ring in a quick switch similar to FPS games and fired at the side of the Necromancer, causing it to flinch.
"DIE, YOU WITCH! DIE!" Tavish screamed at the creature, whose feminine elvish face and lifeless eyes showed no emotion, only a mouth that opened wide.
But the moment he caught a glimpse of the chaotic tattoos swirling across her skin, Tavish felt an unsettling itch in his mind and strange chaotic whispers clawing in his ears.
"What in the he-... AHHHHH!!"
"Don't look at it!" Riley shouted as he charged into the clearing and fired his AF-2 at the back of the Necromancer.
Dark splatters of ichor burst out, and wisps of black smoke erupted from the blood splats on the ground as it corroded what it touched.
"WARGHHHHH!!!!"
[IMAGES]
The Necromancer released a terrifying scream that felt like it could rupture eardrums, enveloping its body in a black mist and dark tendrils growing from its back, reaching out like claws.
"FOR DE HOOORRRRDE!!"
Like a ghost, the Necromancer vanished, and Mason sensed something wrong and immediately sprinted toward Tavish to tackle him just in time to avoid a deadly swipe from the Necromancer's sword-like claws as it appeared behind him instantly out of thin air.
Tavish, who was transfixed by the rune tattoos on the Necromancer's face, was barely aware as his mouth started to drool.
The Necromancer opened its mouth and let out another ear-piercing scream as its intended victim snatched from its grasp. But just as it was about to charge at Tavish again, it suddenly toppled backward again as a .50 caliber Adamantite round blew its left shoulder, sending a massive spray of smoking ichor across half the clearing.
"Back!" Riley shouted, reaching Tavish and Mason's side and helped drag Tavish away from the danger.
"Hit the explosives!" Riley shouted at Belinski, who quickly pulled out the detonator and cranked it to create an electric current before squeezing the trigger.
The daisy-chained black powder claymore mines, positioned to face the center of the clearing, detonated as one.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Eight mines exploded, each unleashing 700 steel balls at a staggering velocity of 1,018 m/s.
The Necromancer struggled to its feet and cursed just as 5,600 steel balls ripped through the clearing and shredded everything in their path apart.
"SOFT SKINS! ELDA WILL BE BACK!! AN' YE WILL BE PART UV MA SLAV—!!"
Spurt!