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 From here onward, all Sunny had to go on was the stock map, which was not very detailed, and outdated on top of that.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.'

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, the Goliath, and the Whispering Legion, eliminating the latter Titan. The resulting earthquake had destroyed a good chunk of

was trying to come up with a way to get the

heavy debris. Avalanches, landslides, and rockfalls were everywhere, reshaping

of course. The whole area was seething with them, and he had already spotted at least two dozen active Gates, with more

Rhino would be able to make it through, let alone the civilian vehicles. No matter how hard he tried to find a safe route, there

His mood turned dark.

gather in the APC, and invited Sergeant Gere as well. Professor Obel was already there, so Sunny simply asked the old man to join

about as disturbing as Sunny had expected. No one seemed to have

gorge, we might be able to drive past this Gate without being swarmed by enemies. From there, we can follow the auxiliary road to

Samara shook her head.

them won't make it on this extremely rough terrain. We are already struggling to keep them from falling apart, and

everyone is forgetting about, too. Fuel cells. They are not exhausted yet, but going through a gauntlet like that will put them under strain, which I don't think we can afford. Driving through the mountains is one thing... driving

then glanced

improvise something to charge the

a

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 power-hungry. So it won't be a drastic change... maybe a difference of another hundred kilometers or so,

out a heavy sigh,

transports to Nightmare and letting the black steed pull it like a

be able to pull one of