Aetherios System [Slow Build OP MC, Isekai LitRPG/Cultivation] Chapter 128: Book 2: Chapter 42: Earthbreakers

Read chapter 128 of Aetherios System [Slow Build OP MC, Isekai LitRPG/Cultivation] by TTReynolds on NovelPedia.

Book 2: Chapter 42: Earthbreakers Book 2: Chapter 42: Earthbreakers War, it turned out, wasn’t just about strength. It was about patterns, and utilizing advantages. Advantages that you can craft yourself if you know how to do it. Which meant that eventually, even the worst hellscape started to look… familiar. The enemy attacks came in waves. Predictable, and rhythmic, like watching a dumb dog keep ramming into the same sliding door, except the dog had lightning spells, swords, and sometimes the door exploded. They’d survived four skirmishes in three days, barely. Something had to change. The planning started at the trenches in a lull between attacks, in a shallow dugout behind the ruins of an old watchtower. Rain drizzled over canvas tarps held up with spears and snapped-off tree limbs. The ground squelched with rainwater and blood beneath their boots, and their breath fogged in the air. Alex crouched beside a crude, half-melted map of the region etched into the mud with a sglyph tylus. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked and that’s what mattered. “We’ve got to stop fighting them where they want us,” he muttered, brushing off a clump of bloodied moss. “Let’s flip the terrain on them.” “Guerrilla style?” Kate asked, one brow rising. Alex nodded. “Elevation, bottlenecks, bait lines. We make the field work for us.” “ Finally , some asymmetry,” Eric rumbled, rolling one shoulder and cracking the joint like a tree splitting in winter. Devon knelt beside them, working on a prototype glyph array on a disc of flat stone. “Say hello to the Mobile Anchor v3,” he said, eyes sparkling. “Temporarily stabilizes a 10-meter zone of ambient aether, locking energy movement in place. No spellcasting for anyone bellow middle stage Adept Tier. Don’t bump it too hard or it’ll explode.” “Don’t bump it?” Kate asked. “Please don’t bump it.” “You can set those in the field and remote activate them?” Eric asked. Devon clicked his tongue in thought, “Yeah, I will have to design a new trigger, but I start on that now. Should be ready in a few hours.” “Good, focus on that, shout if you need any help,” Alex said. Meanwhile, Cole and Allie were organizing the medics into something resembling a trauma ballet. She rotated between medical stations every hundred meters along the trenches, each marked with glowing red powder and tri-layered glyphs for faster healing effects. They were setting up standard protocols for all the medical teams. Streamlining their jargon and communication and giving very basic germ theory lessons. Something this world seemed to have lacked up to this point. “If they can walk, they patch. If they can’t, we drag them. If they’re screaming…” Cole sighed, tightening a bandage. “Well. Screaming is still good.” “Means they’ve got time,” Allie muttered. Other medic mages stood around them as the two performed a mock display of some wounded coming in from a battle. Many nodded as they listened, some taking notes. One of them eve held an aether-slate, recording the event for others to see later. As the day went on, they started developing strategies and attack plans. Things inspired by their knowledge of wars back home, public-education-level history knowledge coming into its own. Alex scribbled a few new plans onto the back of a parchment paper. All of them ideas from Earth, updated for magical warfare: Buried IEDs formed with enchanted aether-crystals etched with Alex’s [Flare] spell, and anything else Devon could come up with, became almost commonplace. Illusory regiments placed in key locations, either to draw attacks, or scare squads into moving in less advantageous positions, showed themselves in every new battle from then on. They spent large amounts of energy to create artificial ridgelines and cliff faces. Crafting new elevation used to launch attacks at tighter curves, steeper, harder to dodge. Decoy aether mines rigged to bounce and release smoke sigils mid-roll, colored smoke showing up to mark locations and signal enemy movements aut