Chapter 300: Misdirection

It was the hill giants that had been closest to Marimgar, and they were the ones who had been spotted by the scout patrols. A small scouting team, only twenty giants strong, but they had been enough that they had nearly managed to eliminate one of the minor tribes on their own.

It was a wonder that some of the factions still had System access.

They should, by any logical measure, have been eliminated simply for being pathetic, in the minds of the giants. But they were still stubbornly hanging on.

They had found a nomadic group of Swineherd Demons, and had managed to slaughter most of them before the remainder of the tribe ran away, and the System informed them that they had not completed the task.

Unfortunately, the Demons rode the armoured boars, and they were simply too fast for the Giants to catch.

They had run inland, towards the desert, so the patrol had warned any other Giant tribes patrolling the area to watch for them, so they could finish the Swineherd Tribe off. But there weren’t many in that direction.

It simply wasn’t somewhere that was suitable for Giants to live.

Of course, it wasn’t really suitable for anything else to live their either, but that was a problem for the Swineherd Tribe when they arrived.

The next day, another patrol from Marimgar found the Hill Giant scouts. They knew where they were, so they had sent a heavier scout team. Two heavy speeders, and six assault speeders, with two utility speeders full of heroes.

It was overkill, given that there were only twenty giants.

But the idea was to mislead them and make them think that Marimgar was further down the coast. If they led them a hundred kilometres southeast of the actual city, it would take forever before the Giants actually found Marimgar.

Assuming that they knew where this team was about to go missing.

So, they circled down the coast, and came at the Giants from the south, unleashing their full fury on the scouting team the moment that they saw them.

That was what Marimgar would do if they were within the actual city’s territory, so that was how they greeted the Giants now.

"I sense magic. They’re not attacking, so they must be sending a message. I think that they took the bait." Yara noted as she watched the spectacle from the windshield of a utility speeder.

Vinnie smiled. "I love when a plan comes together.

Now, we just need to loop around the area we’re pretending to be from, and eliminate any other Giants that we find. But skip everything else, so that anyone who comes looking for them has something to find, and a fight that isn’t with us."

Nobody had any objections to that.

But when they circled the area, all that they found were some flatfoot patrols, a lot of scorched plant life, still recovering from the solar storm, and endless empty territory.

If there were other giants in the area, they were not easy to find.

In reality, the Hill Giants were much further from home than the scouts had expected. They came from far to the north, in Kalka, and had travelled over five hundred kilometres in ten days, moving at a fast jog to meet up with the other scouting teams that were running a similar pattern, looking for weak tribes to eliminate.

The Mountain Giants were doing the same in the north, with a little more luck, but the Frost Giants were making out like bandits.

They had found two small nomadic tribes the first day, and completed the core of their requirements. Now, they were leading the search for the humans. The other Giants sympathized with their anger, but quietly felt that the Frost Giants likely had it coming to them.

They always did focus too much on offence, and not enough on defending their cities.

Only when the speeders descended upon the Hill Giant patrol did they truly understand the danger of the human forces that the Frost Giants warned them about. Without seeing it, the assumption was that they were simply using magic in a way that the Frost Giants didn’t understand.

But this was something else. Magic blended with technology. Or technology so advanced it looked like magic.

However, they never managed to get the full details out, only that a human patrol had been spotted in the area and they were under attack. After that, they were all too busy to be sending more messages.

But no message was a message of its own.

One of defeat.

That roused the other Giants in the region to action, and they reinforced their teams with mages to defend against flying attackers, before beginning the search for the human settlement. They had a general location now, and they just needed to narrow down the search to reach their crowning glory.

Victorious, the team flew back out over the ocean, moving high above the waves to discourage monster attacks as they circled back to Marimgar.

Vinnie relayed his report, along with the others from the team. "Coordinator, we eliminated the Hill Giant team. Twenty giants, and they got off a message home. We came at them from the south, so they’re likely to start in that region, but they’ll eventually work their way up the coast.

I recommend setting watch towers, or night patrols, so that we don’t get taken by surprise when we send out farmers one morning."

"Got it. That was the consensus on your mission. I will work out what we’re going to do, and if we want to station guards further from town, or simply have patrols run all night.

With the speeders, we don’t need a big team at night, we can have them fly high and use thermal optics to watch for Giants. They’re not particularly good at hiding, and they’re even worse at it in the dark." Kalli agreed.

"Then we will leave it in your capable hands. I will turn in now, I’ve got an early morning leading new farmers to the southwestern region by the forest. We’re going to collect some of the balsa trees for carpentry."

"Sleep well, and let me know if there are issues with the trees."