Extra's Sign In System: The Hero's an Idiot!

Chapter 262: Chapter 262: What the Fleet Is For

Chapter 262: What the Fleet Is For

Draven slipped through the northern Vanguard gate of Bastion Seven just as the freezing dusk settled over the horizon.

He had run most of the way back. Two days on the trade road, no sleep, no crawler, moving on stamina draughts and the map.

The city was visibly dying. It was day twelve of the famine gap. The heavy winter clouds blocked out the stars, trapping the biting cold in the streets. The civilian lines wrapping around the outer ring distribution centers were painfully thin. People huddled around small chemical fires, their faces gaunt and hollow. The air smelled of wet ash, desperation, and unwashed bodies.

Draven pulled his dark coat tight against the wind. He walked past a Vanguard quartermaster measuring out a meager, heavily diluted cup of World Tree sap for a shivering engineer.

’I have been gone for eight days,’ Draven analyzed silently, watching the slow, agonizing machinery of the city turn. ’And the Bastion did not collapse. The logistics ran. Sella distributed the rations. Lyra managed the fields. The survival machine held exactly as Helion predicted.’

It was a sobering realization. He had spent months engineering a system to save these people, and he had succeeded so thoroughly that his own hands were no longer required to operate it.

He did not stop to rest. He walked straight through Sector Four and descended into the heavy concrete bunker.

The underground war room was suffocatingly warm.

Lord Commander Helion Goldmane stood at the head of the heavy oak table. Aegon Logcheville stood to his right, his Crucible Warlord armor dented but polished. Three exhausted Guildmasters huddled near the edges of the room, their eyes fixed on the heavy iron map weights.

Draven walked in. He did not waste time with pleasantries or recount the harrowing journey back from the Capital. He placed his hands flat on the edge of the table.

"General Kest is under house arrest," Draven reported. His voice was a low, freezing rasp that cut through the murmur of the room. "Senator Vast outmaneuvered him on the Senate floor. The extraction was successful, but the political stall failed. A loyalist holds the pen now, and he signed the launch order the same afternoon."

The shadow beneath the doorframe rippled.

Nyx Vespera stepped out of it. She had come north on her own route, through her own tunnels, and she had arrived some hours ahead of him.

"They have given the field to a man named Corvin Marek," the Phantom Queen provided the grim intelligence. "Capital born. Youngest general in forty years. He is not compromised by Cult magic and he does not need to be. He believes in Capital supremacy the way other men believe in gravity."

"They have already launched," Draven finished.

The three Guildmasters turned pale. One of them slumped against the concrete wall, rubbing a trembling hand over his face.

Helion did not flinch. The Lord Commander looked down at the map of his own starving city. The golden armor shifted slightly as he braced his massive hands against the wood.

"How many days," Helion asked, his golden eyes sweeping the room, "until these walls can hold against a Capital dreadnought line?"

Nobody answered.

The silence was deafening. They did not have the manpower, the food, or the heavy artillery to survive a direct siege from the empire. If the dreadnoughts parked outside the perimeter, Bastion Seven would burn to ash in a week.

Draven activated his interface.

The massive, glowing blue continental grid projected outward, illuminating the dark stone of the war room. He shifted the parameters, locking onto the massive mana signatures radiating from the southern naval yards of Bastion One.

"They are two days ahead of us," Draven noted, watching the data stream. "They sailed while I was walking home."

Dozens of heavy red icons pushed out of the Capital. But as Draven tracked their trajectory, the vectors did not align with a direct strike on Bastion Seven. The dreadnoughts and armored infantry columns were hooking wide to the east, moving steadily up the ruined highway.

"They are not coming here," Aegon realized, tracing the glowing blue line with a gauntleted finger.

The red swarm was converging on Bastion Nine.

Bastion Nine sat exactly one hundred and eighty miles south of their current position. It was a wealthy, fat merchant city commanded by Lord Commander Ashgar Vell. More importantly, it was the only viable forward operating base a northern army could ever use to stage an assault against the Capital.

Draven stared at the movement.

He recognized the shape of it. Vast and the Cult were not erasing enemies one at a time. They were rebuilding the map so that no enemy could ever move again.

Helion leaned over the glowing blue light. The Lord Commander traced the eastern trade road.

"Vast is not opening the war," Helion worked out aloud, his voice dropping to a dangerous rumble. "He is closing the road."

Aegon frowned. "Bastion Nine never picked a side. Ashgar Vell is a merchant-politician. He broke the grain blockade to sell to us because the profit margins were high, but he never formally allied with the Vanguard."

"It does not matter," Helion stated, slamming a heavy iron marker onto the map. "Look at the geography. If Bastion Nine falls, the Capital controls the only highway north. They establish a secure resupply line right on our doorstep. Bastion Seven can never march south."

Helion looked up, his expression grim.

"We become a city under permanent siege," Helion finished. "They will not have to storm our walls. They will just wait for the snow to bury us."

The strategy was flawless. The Capital did not need to break Helion’s defenses. By taking Bastion Nine, they could park their dreadnoughts one hundred and eighty miles away and let Bastion Seven starve to death.

Draven looked at the red dots swarming the southern horizon of the projection.

He remembered holding a silver communication crystal in his hand just a few weeks ago. He remembered the static and the shouting.

’The last time I watched a city fall through a glowing stone,’ Draven thought, the cold memory hardening his resolve, ’Lord Commander Gunther lost his legs, and a young officer named Vinicius died holding a gate.’

Remote command had failed. Relying on an incomplete picture had nearly cost them the northern wall. He was not going to sit in a basement and watch a second Bastion burn. He would not feed instructions to a panicked merchant-king from hundreds of miles away.

"I am going," Draven declared. He stepped away from the table. "I am not commanding this from a map. I am taking a strike team south."

Helion straightened up.

For a fraction of a second, the towering ruler looked like a man who wanted to draw his greatsword and march out of the gates. Helion despised hiding behind stone while other cities bled for him. He hated sending teenagers to fight wars that belonged to him.

But the trap remained unchanged.

The exact day Helion Goldmane stepped off the wall, Bastion Seven was open. He was the only Level 200 Valor protecting a starving, fractured population. If he left, the remaining King Level Beasts in the north would smell his absence and slaughter the outer rings.

Helion hated his chains. The rigid tension in his jaw betrayed the violent frustration burning beneath his stoic aura.

He did not argue. He gave a single, heavy nod, accepting his role as the anchor.

Draven began issuing the roster assignments with rapid, unyielding precision.

"Aegon. Reina. Lucien. Nyx," Draven ordered, looking at his core combatants. "Armory. Prepare for heavy urban engagement."

Aegon gave a sharp nod. Nyx vanished back into the shadows of the corridor.

"Bram is still broken," Draven continued, addressing the room. "His collarbone cannot withstand a frontline deployment. Cole and Lyra have to maintain the tower infrastructure and the sap harvest. Natalie stays on the wall to provide long-range overwatch for the southern approach."

Estella Everdawn stood near the back of the war room.

The Star Mage wore her dark Vanguard uniform. Her hands rested quietly at her sides.

Draven did not assign her a position.

"Astraxion is exhausted from the northern flights," Draven finalized. "He stays in the courtyard to recover. We take the heavy Vanguard ground crawlers. It is one hundred and eighty miles overland. We ride within the hour."

Estella remained perfectly still in the dim light of the bunker.

She did not step forward to argue. She did not raise her voice or demand to be included in the strike team.

Months ago, she would have pleaded to prove her worth. Weeks ago, she would have asked to be taught how to fight beside him. She had begged to go to Bastion One and had been refused.

Now, she simply accepted the silence.

She had stopped asking him for things. She understood the pattern. She watched Draven, Aegon, Reina, and Lucien file out of the war room to prepare for the grueling overland journey south. She let the heavy iron doors swing shut behind them.

Estella turned around.

She walked away from the command table, heading deeper into the bunker. She descended the stone stairs, pushing open the heavy doors to the scorched, empty underground training arena.

She stood in the dark. She did not need to fight human soldiers in the wealthy streets of Bastion Nine. She was hunting a terminal phase that required total isolation. The Cult of the Eternal Eclipse had designed her to be a bomb. She was staying home to build it. A resolve to become actually useful had bloomed in her; a resolve that may end up poisonig her.

---

An hour later, the heavy iron gates of Bastion Seven ground open.

RUMBLE.

Two massive, heavily armored Vanguard crawlers rolled out into the freezing night. The thick iron treads crushed the icy mud beneath them.

Draven sat in the passenger seat of the lead transport. Aegon drove, his hands firmly gripping the heavy iron steering levers. Reina, Lucien, and Nyx rode in the cramped cargo bay behind them.

They left the starvation and the ash of Bastion Seven behind, driving hard onto the cracked asphalt of the eastern trade road.

The journey took two grueling days.

They drove through blinding snow squalls and freezing rain. They passed endless lines of desperate refugees walking north, fleeing the impending Capital war machine. The Vanguard crawlers chewed through the miles, their heavy runic engines roaring against the dead silence of the wastelands.

On the afternoon of the second day, the snow finally broke.

Aegon crested a high, rocky ridge. He pulled back on the iron levers, bringing the heavy crawler to a grinding halt.

He looked down through the reinforced glass windshield.

Bastion Nine sprawled across the valley below.

It was not a ruined fortress like Bastion Six. It was a fat, glittering metropolis of commerce. Massive storehouses lined the clean, paved streets. Gold-trimmed merchant estates sat safely behind high, pristine stone walls. The citizens walking the markets wore expensive wool and fine silks. The city radiated wealth, comfort, and arrogant security.

It was a city full of civilians who had no idea how to survive a war.

Aegon narrowed his eyes. He looked past the glittering rooftops, staring at the distant southern horizon.

Thick, black smoke plumed into the gray sky. The Capital dreadnoughts had arrived.

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