Shadow Slave

Somehow, almost everyone in the convoy was still alive. Looking at it from the roof of the Rhino, Sunny felt both burdened and surprised. He had not really expected to get this far into the mountains without suffering severe casualties.

Was he supposed to feel proud of himself?

'...Let's try to keep it this way, then.'

By now, his shadows had already climbed the nearest peaks, allowing him to observe the surrounding area. The tunnel they had escaped from might not have been endless, but as it turned out, it was actually quite long. More than that, it cut straight through the mountains instead of meandering its way around the gorges and canyons. As a result, and due to the previous days of travel, the convoy had managed to cover a lot of ground and was more than a third of the way to Erebus Field.

Sadly, the good news ended there.

'That... is troubling.'

Sunny glanced at the screen of his communicator, then climbed back into the interior of the APC and opened the map of the Antarctic Center as a projection in the command suite.

They had reached the edges of the section that he had marked back in the abandoned bunker. From here onward, all Sunny had to go on was the stock map, which was not very detailed, and outdated on top of that. The battle between the Saints and the Titans had changed the topography of the entire region, and there were the effects of the Chain of Nightmares itself to consider, too.

Of course, he could always repeat the process and update the map with the help of his shadows again. Which was exactly what he had been planning to do...And why his mood was currently so foul.

With a sigh, Sunny started to put new marks on the projection. Soon, the position of the convoy was surrounded by a sea of red lines and symbols that stretched far to the north, with barely any green in between.

'Damnation.'

path ahead... was going to be rough, to say the least. They must have been relatively close to the place where the three Saints of the First Evacuation Army had battled the Winter Beast,

was trying to come up with a way to get the convoy through that mess, but

and those that remained were buried under heavy debris. Avalanches, landslides, and rockfalls were everywhere, reshaping

and he had already spotted at least two dozen active Gates, with more probably hidden

be able to make it through, let alone the civilian vehicles. No matter

His mood turned dark.

Sunny decided to get a fresh pair of eyes to take a look at the map, or better yet, several. He ordered the Irregulars to gather in the APC, and invited Sergeant Gere as well. Professor Obel was already there, so Sunny simply asked

and an improvised strategy meeting started. The result was about as disturbing as Sunny had expected. No one seemed to have

can use our Echoes to lead the Nightmare Creatures deeper into the gorge, we might be able to drive past this Gate without being swarmed by enemies. From there, we can follow the auxiliary road

Samara shook her head.

of them won't make it on this extremely rough terrain. We are already struggling to keep them from falling apart, and this whole stretch of the mountains is basically

everyone is forgetting about, too. Fuel cells. They are not exhausted yet, but going through a gauntlet like that will

glanced at Sergeant

we improvise something to

soldier hesitated for a few

Samara, some sort of converter can be rigged. The soldiers can join the refugees inside the transports... but, apart from the obvious loss of defensive capability, there are other factors against that solution. We are not too high on energy reserves ourselves, and the transports are much more

let out a heavy

ideas in his head, like hitching one of the transports to Nightmare and letting the black

with a proper harness, Sunny would probably be able to pull one of the transports himself. That