A Black Market LitRPG

Below Kyle, the supply logistic corps of the Raktor military was in flames. The storage area had been struck directly by Kyle’s railgun, igniting the flammable liquid that was used by the war machines. Soldiers and engineers scrambled alike to stem the flame, trying to prevent the ensuing wildfire from spreading through the camp despite the heavy rain.

“Who’s attacking us? Get our observers out there ASAP!”

“Return artillery fire!”

“Which way?!”

“Get the extinguisher here!” One of the knights bellowed, commanding his platoon to hustle while other members of the supply logistic corps scrambled to save as much as they could.

Pairs of soldiers lugged forward a large mobile wagon mounted with a cannon, which began to rattle violently as it chugged arcia fuel before blasting water in high pressure, blanketing the flames and starving it of oxygen in a single push.

One of the wagons instead started to spray out a purple mist, leading one of the knights to smack a soldier on his helmet.

“Idiot! You’re wasting our precious liquid! Swap it to water!”

“Ye-yes, sir!”

Kyle hovered only just six hundred meters over the camp, ensuring his stealth engravings remained effective while he observed the layout of the Raktor military. This should be good enough for now.

He wasn’t planning on decimating the entire Yual Dominion camp – he wanted the battle to stall here, not eradicate Count Leon’s forces. Continuing his observation, he reported on the mapping of the sectors while flying slowly overhead.

“Sector 29K, Raktor Artillery Crew located. That should be the last sector.”

[We have the full layout now.] Feldon was back in Desham, marking out each of the brigades and divisions in the corps that Raktor had sent to Ocra.

The scale of the sortie was significant – sixty thousand men in a single corps, with each soldier at a minimum covered in some form of arctech armour. Compared to the grim state of Versian recruits, the Raktor infantry soldiers were much better equipped.

However, this was far from the only corps from the Yual Dominion attacking: two more Counts had their corps on the march behind, amounting to an entire offensive of one hundred and eighty thousand, give or take.

The scale of the battle was minuscule to Kyle, who has participated in wars spanning star systems. Millions had died around him in a single hour during his time, buried in metal coffins kilometres long that would drift for eternity until salvaged by an opportunistic crew.

But for now, Kyle knew the Versian military was on the backfoot until it could ramp up its already significant mobilisation. The question becomes whether Versia has enough effective weapons to gear all of their soldiers.

Despite the height of the observation, Kyle could already spot a few of his own weapons that the Seven Snakes produced in circulation among the Raktor military. The new arctech guns that the soldiers sported were all rifled and far more lenient on arcia energy consumption, allowing soldiers to fire better and faster.

The mortars had also been upgraded to their version, along with custom explosive projectiles designed by Eric Dicar. Kyle smiled slightly to himself, knowing that if he wanted the war to last anywhere near a year, he would need to beat his inventions.

One invention that surprised him was the warmachine. It was effectively a tank, though its production cost was immensely high. The entire corps of Raktor only had twenty in store, with minimal spare parts seen around the base. It means it is a recent addition to the military. This would be a tough nut to crack.

[Boss, you’re nearing your three-hour limit.]

“Returning to base now.”

Kyle didn’t linger any longer, flying straight back as fast as he could. Reaching the underground tunnel base, he landed in the large hangar bay, where the newcomers sent over by Diya were already hard at work, butchering the corpses of the mammoth hogs under the guidance by Drake.

The hunters had been bolstered significantly thanks to that, increasing the rate at which food was being entered into Desham. Drake ran up to the dismounting Kyle, a sapling in a pot in his hand. Kyle noted that Drake was far more receptive to Kyle now after knowing that Kyle was doing everything in his power to stall the Yual Dominion’s advances at Ocra.

“What’s this?” Kyle examined the sapling as Drake handed it to him.

Kyle was internally excited, but he did not show it in his body posture, keeping still as much as he could while he kept up the act that he did not have a System telling him.

“Back in the village, we used to cultivate this in small gardens. Boiled in water with a few pinches of Greis Powder can serve as a great stimulant.”

“Greis Powder… do we have that?”

“It comes from rocks in the ground and is pretty abundant. The problem is filtering them out from other unwanted elements is pretty hard.”

Kyle recalled Drake was a herbalist in the first place, so he was not too surprised that Drake knew of a few basic potion recipes. We could begin pumping out Stamina Potions from here – the Versian Military would love it.

He quickly instructed Drake to work with Diya, reconstructing a similar factory process to mass-produce Stamina potions. Heading over to Desham itself, he joined Feldon in the war room, with the map fully labelled out now.

The map of Ocra and its surrounding lands was laid out, with markers indicating the positions of the brigades at every sector, thanks to Kyle’s observations.

“You might have to intervene once every day to stem the main attack, but the main issue is that we don’t know where the other corps are.” Feldon pointed to the Raktor corps that Kyle just attacked. “With two more corps missing, it is highly likely that they are going for a feint or they are planning to flank Ocra.”

“You’re saying they’ll send a corps to cut off the reinforcements.”

“Yes. If they want to capture Ocra, they will have to put it into a siege.”

Kyle pondered as he examined the map, with Feldon shifting the brigades around to represent what he meant. However, he could already see inconsistencies in the ‘strategy’ that Feldon was assuming. He did not blame Feldon for it – the man had no training whatsoever in military warfare.

The objective of Count Leon is to storm the capital. This means he has to take it in less than two weeks. A siege on Ocra is very unlikely to be part of his plans… The decades of military warfare lessons and practice in his former life kicked in, allowing Kyle to glimpse at all the possible attacks.

“He’s planning to gas the entire city.”

“Gas?” Feldon was confused before his eyes widened in realisation. “You mean the same gas that the damn Nest fuckers used on us?”

“Exactly. He’s going to wipe everyone out in the city in one fell swoop.”

“That’s impossible – the Versian military must be prepared for such a chemical attack themselves. The Nest hitmen we fought all had countermeasures.”

“Not if Count Leon has developed something completely new that can circumvent that.”

“Then how the hell are we going to stop them?”

“Did you write down the reports of each sector?”

Feldon handed him a stack of paper, with Kyle flipping through them, reading the notes quickly as he recalled all of the military elements he spotted. Warmachines sheds, food supplies, makeshift mess hall, heavy construction equipment for road building, wagons for logistics, extinguishers… extinguishers?

Kyle thumbed through the notes again, checking carefully. Originally, he had not specifically noted down the number of extinguishers wagons, but now that he saw how they fought the fire, there were a bit too many of them.

The wagons seemed to work on the basis of arctech pumps, blasting out vaporised liquid at high speeds. To Kyle, this was perfectly normal – except for that one wagon that had blasted out a purple mist instead. But none of the soldiers was affected even if they breathed it in, and the knight did not seem too flustered either. Unless…

Every chemical weapon needed a countermeasure: either a filter or a neutralising agent. Kyle became confident that the wagons were meant to neutralise the chemicals after they swept the city.

If he let Count Leon gas the city, all his efforts at stalling the battle would go to waste in one fell swoop, allowing the Yual Dominion to occupy Ocra and use it as a base for logistics.

“You’re coming with me.”

“Huh…? What?!”

“I’ll explain in the air.”

“In the air?!”

Kyle grabbed Feldon and rushed back to the underground tunnel base, ordering him to gear up with weapons. While Feldon clumsily put on an ordinary set of armour, Kyle brought along a few potion flasks courtesy of Desham before removing his arctech armour. Such heavy armour would not be the right purpose. Equipping himself with the thunder sword instead and a few light pieces of non-arctech armour, Kyle attached a radio to his belt, ready to sortie.

Kyle passed Feldon an arctech radio before the two of them launched into the air on the same stealth-engraved hornet, the speed nearly causing Feldon to fall off as he grabbed on tightly.

The ant soared through the evening sky towards Ocra, the former rain clouds long gone in replacement of a pinkish hue. “No, no, no, I didn’t sign up for this! I’m not going to sneak in!”

“I’m the one doing the sneaking. You’ll stay up in the air and coordinate, got it?”

Kyle had a concrete plan – he needed to touch the neutraliser physically. He had an inkling that it was similar to a potion, and with his System title, he should be able to investigate exactly what it was made of with a simple distillation method. Or the System could tell me the ingredients directly.

If he could get in contact with the actual chemical weapon being used, it would be even better, but Kyle wasn’t counting on it. Most likely, Count Leon has stored it away somewhere well-protected or inconspicuous.

The day soon turned into night, darkness taking over the land as they soared above the forest, the arctech lights of encamped Raktor forces and Versian garrison glittering on the horizon. A few small isolated fires were still raging, fought off by the Raktor soldiers.

“Which sector were the extinguishers reported in?”

“Last report was Sector 29K, but they came in from 25G.”

“Got it.”

Kyle directed the hornet down to the ground, dropping onto the forest floor with a crunch as he stepped on leaves, his feet light without the armour. The lights of the Raktor camp flickered in the distance, with sounds of chatting and laughter as the Raktor infantry had their meal in the night.

“Entering camp now. Keep an eye out for me for any big movement.”

“Got it.”

Sneaking into the camp from tree to tree, Kyle kept himself hidden as much as possible, trying to find an entry point into the camp. Already he could see a few foot soldiers on patrol duty, their arctech spotlights casting shadows on the trees. Kyle kept his body low to the ground, avoiding their view while trying to map out their patrolling pattern.

[The patrol pattern isn’t the same as daytime.]

“Expected.” Kyle was not too fussed, having a rough idea of the night time patrol sequence, but he knew he was on a time limit. “Found an opening.”

Kyle took his chance, silently moving through the forest before aiming at the camp, leaping over the fence. He landed quietly on the other side, only to find one Raktor patrol guard skiving off behind the fence, clearly not following the patrol pattern, their eyes locked on one another.

“Shit.”