Shadow Slave

The situation was both clear and grim. Sunny already knew some of the things that Jet told them, but some were a complete surprise.

The First Army was planning to withdraw from the Antarctic Center, taking its entire population with them. The previous plan of hunkering down in a number of fortified siege capitals for gradual evacuation had been abandoned, or rather postponed - it was going to be enacted eventually, but not before everyone was safely relocated to Eastern Antarctica.

Eastern Antarctica was doing much better than the central region of the Quadrant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was much larger and more densely populated than the Center, with better terrain. That was why the First Army contingent sent there was several times more powerful.

The field army Sunny was a part of numbered a hundred thousand soldiers, with around five thousand Awakened accompanying them... or rather, had numbered. Now, there was maybe half of them left. The three field armies operating in Eastern Antarctica, on the other hand, had three hundred soldiers and fifteen thousand Awakened, not counting the local forces.

If that was not enough, two of the three Saints participating in the campaign were stationed there, as well. The emissary of the Song clan and the government Transcendent were both assigned to the larger landmass, with Sky Tide alone responsible for the whole of the Antarctic Center.

The Chain of Nightmares also seemed to be hitting the central region especially hard...

Lastly, and perhaps most pivotally, the Antarctic Center was where the Winter Beast had appeared. That titan alone was responsible for numerous deaths, since its influence had collapsed the communication network across the entire landmass. If it were not for the fact that Saint Tyris was a direct counter to its powers, the situation could have been even worse...

Sadly, she could only contain the Winter Beast, not slay it.

In any case, Army Command had decided to cut its losses and concentrate all the remaining human forces in the Quadrant on defending a single region. The first detachments of the Second Army were scheduled to arrive at the end of the month, so their decision at least seemed prudent.

...The problem, of course, was that the battered defenders of the Antarctic Center had to survive the relocation first.

to Eastern Antarctica was going to take at least three weeks. The strait was not very wide, so ferrying refugees across it would be ten times faster than trying to evacuate them all the way to the Northern Quadrant. Still, there were just too many of them to

make sure that the siege capital would survive those weeks under constant siege

Master Jet leaned back.

yesterday, and there are probably going to be four or five today. That number will only increase in the future. We will have to stop counting them eventually, I think,

each other. Eventually, the Ascended

me. It's the particularly powerful

Soul Reaper shrugged.

the big meeting is

a little, looking at the

the six Irregular captains were now dead. He did not know them too well, but their loss still seemed like a bad omen.

like a very

'Curse it...'

three fallen Masters were the ones who specialized in direct offense - be it frontal assaults, hit-and-run tactics, or stealth operations. The ones who survived were Sunny, Winter, and Dale - a utility specialist, a ranged fighter, and a defensive

he was too disturbed and saddened right now to figure

that... hey,

Jet and blinked a couple of

a small box in his hand in confusion. Opening

a bit solemn. Much more elaborate than the previous one he had received, with the attached ribbon

with

the highest military honor a person can receive.