The next morning Wolfe woke up to an almost empty bed, accompanied only by Stephanie, who had claimed a spot at his side. She was getting bigger, and she could hardly be called a kitten anymore, but she was still far from a full-grown cat.
She was basking in the excess mana that Wolfe gave off while he slept and seemed quite content to stay that way all day long.
Unfortunately, that wouldn't be possible today. There were mundane army units to hunt, and Wolfe was going to head out to meet Mary and Pup, who should be near the border if they'd gotten a ride yesterday after whatever ceremonies were left.
The scouts should have an update for him, and the witches listening in on the radio would know if Mary had managed to send a message of some sort to let them know that she had left.
She still felt determined, but he couldn't pick up individual thoughts without her focusing on him. The improvement in the bond was impressive, but it still had its limitations when they were trying to communicate over long distances. Familiars and Witches weren't often this far apart, though, so maybe it was just innate to the spell.
"Does everyone know what they are doing today? I'm about to head out to go get Mary, and I'm sure that there is more to do than play with the new Familiars." Wolfe greeted the dining room full of witches.
"Not too much. There are no solid leads on targets yet, but we will be working on the garden with the help of our new Fae friend, and that will be the majority of our work for the day. Getting everyone's power level and the stored supplies up are priorities as well. As the Command Office likes to remind us, we're not the only unit along the border, and we can only do what we can do." Priya chuckled.
"In that case, I am off, and I will see you all soon. Try not to get into too much trouble while I'm away, and don't teach our newest member any strange things."
Realistically, Katerina would likely teach these witches a thing or two about the real world since she had lived out here in the wastes all her life, but she was still innocent at heart, not corrupted by the cruel realities of the Covens. It was an odd combination, so skilled in survival but so sweet and naive at the same time.
The witches seemed to agree, and they were taking good care of her already, showing her everything that she would need to know and making sure that she fully understood the new information before helping her memorize it.
Wolfe packed heavier than usual this time, loading the side bags of a dirt bike with gear and food for a few days, then strapping three rifles and a grenade launcher to it. He had formed a plan to improve the grenades. If he could make the [Fireball] spell affect each individual piece of shrapnel that was packed within the grenade, with a short delay after the primary explosion, it would be as good as [Cluster Grenades Array] but with far less mana expenditure.
Unless you were targeting infantry with no armour, [Cluster Grenade Array] took a lot of mana to get up to the level of individual fireballs. That wasn't what it was designed for, so getting the [Fireball] spell to apply individually to hundreds of shrapnel pieces in advance would be much more effective in battle.
With his gear loaded, Wolfe set off into the wastes, which he noticed were looking a bit less frozen than usual. There were a few winter berries growing on the formerly desolate bushes, and the tracks through the soft ground, left by the passing of the military vehicles weeks before, were becoming muddy as the morning sun shone down upon them.
It was a good sign. The units that he had overheard or interrogated all said the same thing, spring was the sign to begin the retreat.
Wolfe wasn't looking for anything in particular as he travelled, he was only keeping an eye out for threats while heading toward the direction where he sensed Mary and Pup approaching from, but as noon approached, he began to hear the unmistakable sound of a mundane army unit getting set up for an attack.
"Those two tanks need to be dug in. The witches have found a way to target them from a distance. Everyone, prepare the Foxholes. We have four hours until the target reaches us." The Commander was calling out to his troops.
Wolfe did a quick mental calculation and realized that in roughly four hours at her current rate of travel, Mary would be close to this location. She hadn't contacted Wolfe to say that she was travelling with anyone, so it seemed unlikely that she was the target, but Wolfe couldn't risk it. He would meet up with her a bit later than intended, but he would eliminate this position before he did anything else.
Wolfe hid his dirt bike in a stand of trees and crawled his way through the long grass to see what the army unit had used as a defensive formation.
Strangely, they weren't pointing away from him but toward him. They had a wide spread of fire coverage, with machine gun nests placed in a semi-circle, both tanks were dug deep into the ground and facing Northeast and Northwest so that they were mostly hidden from his sight, and in the back, Wolfe could see that they had a full unit of artillery set up.
They must have gotten word that someone from the Den was coming this way. He had been careful not to broadcast anything over the radio, but it wasn't a secret that he was coming to get one of his witches, so it was possible that the army had captured a scout and obtained his messenger bag before it could be destroyed.
Wolfe didn't know if the locals could speak to mundane humans. The topic hadn't come up, but the army likely had a way to get information out of them, and it certainly wouldn't be pleasant.
But since they were waiting for him, or perhaps for the unit that they assumed was with him, Wolfe decided to oblige. He just needed a proper plan so that he could eliminate them all at once. He had the firepower to beat them, but the first battle of the war had shown him that if he wasn't the one on offence, he could be in real trouble very fast.
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