The First Legendary Beast Master novel Chapter 296

Chapter 296 Still The Same

Tessa frowned down at the body of their last kill of the day. The Frost Giant was a Commander, one of the many team leaders that they had killed that day, and unfortunately, identical in appearance to the others under the war paint.

Doug stepped up beside her, and turned the corpse's head to one side with his boot.

"It would have been better if they were different looking." He grumbled, agreeing with Tessa's silent complaint.

"Well, we can say for certain that they still have the means to summon more Frost Giants, and we now have a decent idea where they are coming from." Lotus added helpfully.

Karl checked a corpse for magical items before he joined the conversation. "And once we radio in for the evening, Command will know as well, but I'm not certain what they will be able to do about it. From the sound of things, this front is being withdrawn further every day, and the number of actual elites on the line is nearly nonexistent now.

They have been called away to the other fronts, and the regular army has been left to deal with the Frost Giants."

The battle wasn't lost. In fact, it was far from it. What the army was doing was luring the Frost Giants down out of the mountains, where they could shell the enemy lines with impunity.

They did have to evacuate a few villages, but that was a minor loss in the grand scheme of things, and the relocation would cost them less than a day's worth of wasted munitions if the Frost Giants continued to hide in the hills.

The same General was responsible for this section of the line, and it sounded like he had gotten a single Elite strike team to stay with him for security reasons, but almost all the other scouts had been swapped for regular soldiers with a battle cleric.

The change was obvious to anyone in range, as the radio call in patterns were different for the Elites, who gave their number, and the Clerics working for the army, who gave a team designation by regiment and company.

Theirs was the only regular daily check-in that was still coming to that position by Elite number, and they were considered to be too far behind enemy lines to be extracted, so the army just accepted the numbers that Karl and Bob gave for the day without question.

They certainly weren't going to send anyone out here to find out for sure, and they didn't want the teams to stop hunting if they were giving accurate numbers. Intercepting them in small groups before they got to the main lines was much more effective, it seemed, than hitting them with artillery.

Once they were safely back in the village for the night, they began drawing up a map of the Frost Giant reinforcement routes, and marking them the same way that the officers marked the battle lines. It still seemed like the best way to do it, but with so few details on their map, anyone else who read it might not even understand what they were looking at.

"So, what do you think, should we go for a spot near the other attacks, or should we go all the way over here, to make it look like there are multiple groups hidden in their territory?" Karl asked with a gesture to the map.

Bob pointed further down the border. "I think that we should hit them over here, so they believe that it might be something coming out of the ash zone and killing their reinforcements. They would naturally suspect it, and it would make for a good cover, instead of sending them looking for humans immediately."

Karl looked to the others, and they nodded in agreement.

"Alright, that sounds like the best plan we've got. I will have Hawk scout the area in the morning, and we can attack the Frost Giants further down the border, closest to the ash wastes, first."

With their plan made, they settled in for the evening, keeping a light watch from inside the village. The cave mouth was open now, as the presence of snow over the ash would actually make it easier to find them instead of harder.

But when they arrived, the cave was open and nothing had ever disturbed it, so none of them were too concerned about it, especially with the Spider Golems standing watch in the tunnel all night, prepared to deal with anything that might try to attack them.

Karl didn't have a turn on watch that night, so he woke up to the smell of breakfast cooking, and Hawk's first morning scouting report.

[We don't need to go down by the border. There are no Frost Giants there. The glowing red things ate them.] He reported.