A few more days passed in the clamor of firing armaments and frenzied howls of dying Nightmare Creatures. The dark landscape of the Antarctic Center flowed past the incessantly moving caravan, with the starlight and the undulating visage of Aurora Australis finally appearing from behind the clouds of ash, only to be devoured by the veil of snow.
The blizzard was picking up again, making Sunny wonder if he was going to meet the second titan raging in the region. He was not very enthused to make its acquaintance, to say the least.
The journey… was a strange one. Sunny was used to things going south fast, but the situation of the caravan was very different. Instead of something dreadful and devastating happening all at once, their circumstances were growing slightly more dire with every hour, bringing them closer to annihilation little by little.
The confident pace the caravan had established after leaving the resupply station was long gone. Instead of rare skirmishes with weak swarms of Nightmare Creatures, they were now embroiled in a nearly unstoppable battle with the sea abominations flooding the northern reaches of the Antarctic Center.
The pressure on the Awakened and the MWP pilots had increased tremendously, and the infantrymen had to bloody their bayonets on more than one occasion already.
Worst of all was the inescapable corrosion that the multitude of Gates were exerting on their tech. The military vehicles were shielded from the detrimental effects of the Call to some degree, but very few had the same rare and expensive modifications as the Rhino had. They were managing for now, but there was no telling how long it would last.
The problems were mounting.
…The casualties were mounting, too.
During the harrowing push to Erebus Field, Sunny had lost only a handful of people to the vagaries of the Spell and the deadly crucible of battle. Their losses were few enough to consider each one a poignant event.
It was not so much for the current step of the journey. The caravan had grown too much, and the combat engagements they had to fight were too frequent and intensive to avoid losing soldiers. The attrition rate was not terrible, and in fact remained admirably low, but it seemed that every time Gere contacted him to give an update on the state of the column, more names had to be added to the list.
Sunny was strangely bothered by it. He had thought that with the drastic increase in numbers, the loss of individual soldiers would not affect him too much, especially if the casualties were below expected. He had also thought that he would eventually grow numb to the news of people under his command dying.
But he had not.
The more of his soldiers died — no matter how few — the more bitter and angry he felt. However, the most powerful emotion he experienced was rather unexpected…
Indignation.
Sunny felt indignant about the fact that he was forced to watch good men and women die, to see mundane humans putting their lives on the line to protect the defenseless refugees… all the while the truly powerful ones were nowhere to be seen, embroiled into their own internal strife.
'Damned bastards…'
Maybe he wasn't cut out to be a leader, after all.
…That was not to say that Sunny was ineffective. On the contrary, he was doing a good job of leading the caravan and pretending to be an intrepid commander. However, it was all alien to him. It was something he was doing because the circumstances had forced him to, not because he wished to play that role.
Living alone in the dark had been much more comfortable.
'Ah, good old times.'
There was another strange thing about the caravan's advance north… something that Sunny should have expected, but nevertheless failed to account for.
Despite the slow attrition, the number of people under his command was not reducing. Instead, it was growing… ballooning, even. The further they drove, the larger the caravan became.
There were other large groups of people who had escaped from Erebus Field, squads of soldiers that had lost contact with Army Command due to the blizzard, and evacuation convoys that had gotten stuck in a limbo after their destination was destroyed. All of them were happy to see a well-organized force moving north, especially since it was led by a Master.
So, they joined the caravan. Sunny could not really turn the stragglers away, and at that point, there was no point to.
So, the four thousand refugees under his protection turned to five, then six, and then twelve. The five hundred soldiers turned into more than a thousand. The three cohorts of Awakened swelled to seven, and there were now two auxiliary Sleeper cohorts instead of one.
There were many more vehicles, too. The bloated caravan stretched for two kilometers now, and showed no signs of stopping the rapid expansion. Looking at it, Sunny couldn't help but shake his head.
'That's just a recipe for disaster...'
At this rate, he was going to end up leading a whole division by the time they reached Falcon Scott. If they reached it.
Hopefully, he would stumble on a colonel or two and push the command responsibility on them soon. If the colonel was not an idiot, of course.
…Sunny had just finished dealing with a very nasty Fallen Demon laying in ambush in the path of the caravan and returned to the head of the column. As soon as he appeared from the shadows on the roof of the Rhino, the Crow flew down and perched on his shoulder, his feathers ruffled and covered with snowflakes.
He glanced at the miserable bird and sighed.
"What? Did you see something?"
The small monster bobbed its head.
"Crro! Saw!"
Sunny waited for the Crow to continue, knowing that it had to be bad for the Echo to seek him out. The flying monster cawed again:
"Hord! Hord!"
With that, the bird turned its head and pointed its beak in a certain direction.
'Curse it.'
There was a horde of Nightmare Creatures ahead… one that the Crow did not know how to avoid. Finally, Sunny's fears had come true.
He hurriedly sent the shadow that was closest to the direction where the Echo was pointing to forward. It had already been scouting far ahead, but apparently not far enough.
Soon, Sunny's eyes narrowed.
There was indeed a vast horde of abominations, and bypassing it was out of the question.
Well… unless he used the coastal highway, of course. In that case, the caravan would have a chance of skirting the sea of abominations unmolested. A slim chance, at that.
They would also be risking a meeting with something even worse.
'...Damnation.'