Alan in fact did know that Army Arrays existed, but he didn’t know how they worked. When he had earned an achievement for building his house back in the tier two zone, he had also become the founder of a Town. This had given him access to a Town Array.

  After that he had researched arrays in the wiki, but it had only contained details on the one array he had access to, the town version. It didn't contain much information, though. With Tamee’s help and some trial and error, however, Alan had been able to play around with it some.

  The array was a way of letting him manage the town, kind of like in SimCity. Alan had fond memories of playing that game while growing up. At the moment, his options through the town menu, which allowed him to interact with the array, were limited since his town was a tier zero village.

  The wiki had told him about another type of array, and that was the Army Array. He had zero details, but at least he knew it was a thing, and could make guesses about what it did. Luckily he wouldn’t have to, because Pixel was currently giving him the cliff notes.

  “In a broad sense, an Army Array is like joining up with a party.” This was probably supposed to be meaningful to Alan, but other than his ersatz version with Tamee, he had no experience with parties. “By being part of the array you are automatically flagged to all other members as a friendly. In addition, unless you are the leader of the array, you will be designated as part of a group. For example, we are Scout 2, the second of five scouting groups that our General can maintain.”

  This explained the other half of the note he had been given. “When you say maintain, does that mean there is a limit on how big the army can be?”

  “Yes, depending on the Rank of the leader, their level in the Array, and a few other things, there is a maximum size. We are lucky to have both a powerful General, and a good group of officers. I myself am ranked as a Sergeant, so I can command my own squad.”

  The structure sounded like his old military days, so that was easy to adapt to. However, she hadn’t really explained why such a thing existed. There must be a benefit to it.

  “You might be wondering what the point of it is.” Pixel was a sharp one. “In the normal course of events, you and I should never fight each other. I am so far above you that it would be almost unthinkable for you to defeat me in battle. Even if you brought ten friends, there is little chance you could take me.

  “However, if you were part of an array, even one by a mere Corporal, those ten friends could tear me apart. The array is able to elevate everyone who is a part of it. There aren’t any hard and fast numbers since there are so many variables, but in general, a force under an Army Array could easily defeat a foe three or four times their size that lacked one.”

  Alan was curious how that worked, and Pixel did her best to explain with the help of Mikael and Jordan. An Array was similar to the siege weapon in the sky above. They were ways of allowing the Network to do some of the heavy lifting for them. In terms of the clouds, it allowed the Network to provide the energy and all they needed was someone who could direct it.

  For the array, it allowed the Network to infuse the soldiers, allowing their stats and abilities to work better than normal. It somehow used the ambient mana around them to accomplish this, which meant there was a limit to the boost. The Ashford Hills were located in a region whose mana level was in the mid to high red grade. Alan could guess at what that meant, so he didn’t ask for further clarification.

  What that meant for the Army was that even a soldier like Alan, who was normally at the quartz level, would be a worthy soldier once included in the Army. He would in practice end up having the strength of someone just on the edge of evolving to red. For someone like Pixel who was already red, she would gain a more significant boost, putting her at the peak of red, or possibly low orange grade.

  It seemed to operate similarly to a percentage handicap in bowling. Everyone below a certain level got a boost, but that didn’t put everyone on an equal footing, merely a closer one. Those with a higher starting level would still end up being stronger, but by a smaller degree than before. Those who were significantly above the ambient mana level would only receive a few benefits, like a shared chat ability and some administrative effects.

  The effect of the array, though, and why they were so important, is that if you could collect enough people, even if they started out much weaker, you could overwhelm a smaller group of more powerful foes who were not part of an Army. The trick was, usually both sides had an Army Array, and so then it was about maximizing the benefits and hoping your leader was better.

  A successful battle would still come down to strategy and tactics, but the leaders array could give their soldiers a much needed edge when it came to meeting the enemy. After they had explained the concept to him, Pixel invited him to join her squad.

  Army Array Invite:

  [You have been invited to join a Protian Faction Army as a member of the Squad Scout 2, under the command of Sergeant Pixel. Would you like to Accept?]

  Alan accepted and swayed slightly. All of his senses went ballistic and his body suddenly felt both uncoordinated and incredibly powerful. He closed his eyes and slapped his hands over his ears and waited for his brain to stop spinning.

  He couldn’t see the smirks the two other members gave each other, but his Sergeant’s words appeared in his mind. She must be using the chat feature of the army to speak to him. It seemed to be similar to the party chat he and Tamee shared. He appreciated that she wasn’t speaking normally, sparing his hearing somewhat. She still had to speak the words out loud to activate the chat, but she could whisper them and they would still be audible to the whole squad.

  “It’s a bit much at first, I know. Especially the first time. Just wait for your body to adjust.”

  When he had closed his eyes, Alan hadn’t just been shutting out outside stimuli, he had focused his senses internally. Perhaps his single greatest advantage over the others in his tutorial was a skill called Aura Reading. He had gained this skill far earlier than most and he had been able to use it to help himself many times.

  His pathways were currently in turmoil. These were not physical constructs, but they were like a second set of blood vessels flowing through his body, delivering energy throughout. Usually, his aura, that was the technical name of the pathways, was fueled by his soul. Souls were a verifiable and semi-quantifiable thing in his new universe.

  Under the effects of the Army Array his aura was being flooded with external mana. It was more than his pathways could truly handle, even though he regularly spent time cultivating to improve them. However, he could detect some kind of effect that was helping them hold together. Without that, his pathways, and then his body would most likely have exploded.

  After about thirty seconds, he could already notice a difference in the chaos. The pathways were still overloaded, but the internal and external energies were moving together better, no longer swirling angrily together. Almost a minute after accepting the invite, he felt comfortable in his body again and opened his eyes.

  A couple of deep breaths later and he was back under control. “That was intense.”

  Mikael clapped him on the back, “not bad rook, you didn’t even pass out or vomit.” Alan hadn’t known that had been a possibility, and was glad to have avoided it. He couldn’t imagine what the reek of vomit would have done to his improved sense of smell.

  Taking in his squadmates he noticed a few changes. Pixel had a pleased look for the first time since he’d met her. Jordan also was smiling warmly at him. It seemed he had passed some kind of test. He also saw a blue tag floating above their heads. Trying to inspect it closer led to a game message informing him of each of their names, the squad designation, and the fact that they were a friendly.

  He also noticed a new series of silhouettes in his peripherals. They were smaller than his own, collectively the three took up about the same space as his one, and they corresponded to his new squad members. This would be helpful in letting him know their status even if they were separated.

  Speaking out loud again, Pixel explained some more, “Since you have no Army Array ability of your own, you will have fewer benefits than others. For example, as a sergeant I have options for organizing my squad, or selecting certain benefits. Because of my class Shadow Walker I can boost the stealth abilities of our group. You will find it easier to sneak and blend into shadows, and there is a chance that casual gazes will slide right past us as long as we are at least partially concealed.”

  These arrays were useful indeed. Pixel told us to suit up and get ready. We were leaving shortly. Mikael and Jordan donned sets of leather armor, they too had some kind of storage that allowed them to instantly equip their gear. They both had shortswords strapped to their belts, but Mikael also carried a recurve bow.

  Alan was already geared up, so he had little to do. Instead he took out some blueberries and had a snack. The others grew interested in what he was eating, and he ended sharing with the rest of his squad. They thanked him before snarfing them down.

  Then it was time, and the party was out of the tent. Pixel was in the lead and they followed her through a twisting path out of the camp. They entered the forest as a group. Until they got closer to the front line they would stick together. There was no point in splitting up until they approached enemy territory.

  That didn’t mean they could travel openly. Both sides had spotters and scouts combing the battlefield, searching for targets. At any opportunity the siege mages on either side would bring lightning down on anyone who was spotted. This meant they had to stick to the valleys between the hills as much as possible, but also try to use the partially blasted forest for cover.

  There were areas that were completely blasted. These had obviously been targeted by strikes before, and the trees and other plants had been leveled or burned out. As much as possible they avoided or went around those breaks, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. It was better to be momentarily exposed at the bottom of a hill, rather than risk going through even a full forest on the top.

  At first, Alan was aware of the rest of the squad’s attention. They were all studying him to determine if he was going to be a liability. He could tell that they were better at moving silently and blending into the shadows, but they must have decided he was good enough, because they soon stopped watching him. Their entire focus was now directed to the surroundings.

  About twenty minutes into their mission, Pixel held up her hand, and most likely for Alan’s benefit, whispered “hold” through the squad chat. Alan had a high perception, but that was most likely nothing compared to these three higher leveled, scout-specific soldiers. He hadn’t seen anything, but when Pixel pointed into the trees, both Mikael and Jordan seemed to lock onto targets.

  With a few more hand gestures, the other two broke off and went in opposite directions. Pixel didn’t look back at Alan as she sent his role over chat. “You stay here and stay low. There’s an enemy squad about twenty meters ahead of us. We’ll take care of them, but be ready to back one of us up if we seem to be in trouble.”

  As an untested warrior, in their eyes at least, he understood keeping him out of it. However, he was itching to prove himself, but orders were orders. He was already crouched low, and he made his way over to some bushes against a nearby tree.

  So far he hadn’t seen what weapons Pixel used, but she now pulled them out of her storage. The giant woman held a tomahawk in each hand. Her large hands made them look like toys, but their edges appeared sharp and he could make out engravings carved on the blades. They were obviously lethal.

  What happened next maybe shouldn’t have surprised him, but he wasn’t ashamed to admit it did. A large patch on the back of her jacket opened up. He hadn’t realized it could do that, and then a pair of dark brown wings appeared. Not like a bird’s wings, more like a butterfly's. They were not that large, no more than a meter across, but with a few flaps she quickly rose off the ground and was soon hiding in the treetops.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Her class had said earth fairy, but for some reason that hadn’t really sunk in. It made sense she could fly, but his brain was still adapting to his new reality. It was just as well that Tamee didn’t bother him in dungeons, otherwise she would probably call him an idiot again. Alan was getting tired of hearing that, he had been a doctor for goodness sakes.

  The wait was less than two minutes before he saw the enemy squad. They were humanoids as well, but like the rocky behemoth he had seen in the gladiator arena, they were very solid looking. Rather than being formed from rock, though, maybe these guys were made from clay. More durable than flesh, but probably not as tough as the Bodarian he had seen in the gladiator arena. That thing was made of muscles and they had seemed incredibly dense.

  There were four of them and they all were at least as tall as Pixel, and their arms were much more massive than his squad leader’s. For all of their bulk, they moved through the foliage well. He noticed one with a single bladed battleaxe at his side, and another with a spear. A third had a crossbow and the last had what looked like a wand. Curious what they were up against, Alan used identify on that one.

  Thorp: Untar[W], Green Mage, Threat level: severe

  Suddenly the mage looked around intently and somehow found Alan through his cover. A whispered hiss sent his companions scattering and he pointed his wand at Alan. He wasn’t sure what had happened to give him away, but he was ready to adapt to the tactical change. Depending on what spell came his way, he was poised to dive for cover or try to counter, but nothing happened. He caught a flash of mana coursing down the mage’s wand, but after there was nothing.

  Then he felt something crawling up his foot. Looking down he saw a root creeping out of the ground and it was wrapping itself around his left leg. Soon a second one appeared and coiled around his right. Trying to pull free, he found himself stuck fast. Reaching down he found his strength unequal to the task of tearing them away with his hands.

  The mage’s companions were closing in on Alan from several directions, and the one had his crossbow pointed straight at Alan’s chest. It was at that moment that a gleaming comet plummeted from the sky and buried itself in the crossbowman’s head. It was one of Pixel’s tomahawks and she herself followed it down and yanked it out of his head.

  Jordan appeared from Alan’s right and engaged the enemy with the axe. The only sign of Mikael was a wooden shaft suddenly appearing in the spear wielder’s torso. The green mage found himself under the glare of Pixel as she sprinted towards him. He lowered his wand and tried to escape.

  The roots stopped crawling up Alan, but they didn’t let go. He took out his new axe and started chopping at the base of the roots. After a couple of blows to each he was able to pull the rest off. Looking up again, he found the fight almost over.

  A second shaft had joined the first one and the spearman was dead. Jordan, on the other side of the fight, had a gash on his shoulder, but it seemed his opponent had swallowed Jordan’s sword. Silly of him, those things were sharp. That only left Pixel, who was bent over the mage, pulling her tomahawk out of his back. When she stood up and turned back around, Alan stopped breathing.

  The look she threw him promised pain, hurt, death, and despair. “I told you to stay down, what the hell was that? You could have gotten us killed.”

  Alan finally sucked in some air and tried to explain “I don’t know what happened. I identified him as a green mage, but then suddenly he knew I was there and it all went to hell.”

  She started stalking towards him, but diverted towards Jordan when she saw his injury. “Idiot! Don’t you know that some people can tell when they are being scanned. As soon as you did it, he knew there was someone here.”

  After snapping at Alan, she placed her hands on her injured squadmate and Alan saw healing energy encase the wound. It quickly stitched together. So she was a healer in addition to her other class. He belatedly realized he should have offered to do it, but he had been shocked by Pixel’s anger.

  In fairness, there was no way Alan could have known that some people could sense the identify skill. No one had ever told him about it, and he had never experienced it himself. But it didn’t matter. He had been hoping to prove himself, and he had, but not in a good way.

  After seeing to Jordan’s injury, she walked over to Alan. “When I tell you to do something, you damn well do that, and nothing else. Got it?”

  Alan felt like a green recruit back in basic. “Yes mam.”

  “Now it’s mam again huh?” Mikael had been standing nearby and chose that moment to enter the conversation.

  He wasn’t certain, but Alan thought he caught a slight tugging at her lips as Pixel turned away. “Let’s check the bodies and then get moving.”

  Other than their weapons and armor, each had some type of spatial storage device holding a few items. They didn’t find anything crazy, and they all went into a pouch on Pixels belt. It was just a regular pouch. You can’t store spatial storage items inside of spatial storage, apparently the universe frowns on that.

  As they made their way across the battlefield, his Sergeant stayed close. “Look, I may have been a little severe, I get a little amped up from combat. However, I need you to understand that you don’t know anything. Next time, follow your orders, and don’t improvise. And just so you understand, when you identify something, it works by establishing a brief link between you and the target. The stronger people get, the easier it is for them to sense that connection. So be careful who you try to identify and when.”

  Alan kept his head down, figuratively speaking, for the rest of the trip to the line. They didn’t run into any more scouts, but they did pass by a squad returning from a skirmish. That squad was made up of over a hundred soldiers. These were the solid melee types. They had engaged a similar sized unit, and were actually doing well in the battle, but they had needed to pull back. Someone had communicated the location to a siege mage on the other side, and lightning bolts had started raining from the sky, killing a third of their unit.

  None of the Protian mages could respond in kind because they were busy elsewhere on the battlefield giving similar treatment to another enemy unit. It highlighted for Alan the importance of staying under cover, but also that all units were not the same. Technically their General could have a certain number of units, but specialty squads, like the one he was in, required more effort for the Network, so it greatly reduced the size of the unit. It meant that while his squad only had four people in it, the more basic one had almost two hundred.

  Now that they could see the frontline in front of them, Pixel had them pause and take stock. The area wasn’t what Alan was expecting. He had thought to find two masses of soldiers hacking into one another, like something out of lord the rings. Instead, there was nothing to see but devastation.

  The ‘frontline’ was more of an imaginary boundary dividing the hills. It was kinda like a capture the flag game. Nothing special happened here, but once the line was crossed, there would be repercussions if you were spotted. Mikael tried to explain something about range of enchantments and passive effects of the arrays, but Alan was having trouble following.

  His key take away was that soon after crossing this imaginary line, the enchantments and buffs provided from the enemy HQ to its soldiers would become stronger and stronger. These were in addition to the normal benefits the enemy received from their own Army Array.

  “This is where we split up,” Pixel began, “Jordan, Mikael, you take the left, don’t get too far away. You know what to do. Alan, you stick to my ass like a puppy to its bitch of a mother.”

  “Does that make you the bitch, Pixel?”

  “Next time Jordan, maybe I won’t heal you.”

  “Yes mam,” he said with a wink to Alan.

  They watched as Mikael and Jordan slipped through the forest. Alan lost sight of them after thirty meters, but Pixel was able to track them a little longer.

  “He does have a cute butt, and a good amount of sass. Too bad he’s not a little shorter,” she mumbled.

  Alan didn’t think he was supposed to hear that, as Pixel’s gaze lingered on Jordan’s departing form. Then she turned to Alan.

  “Ok, remember, this is a recon mission. If we see a large force, I can call in some strikes, but our main objective is to find that HQ. We do that, we can end this charade a whole lot faster. No heroics, killing a couple guys here or there won’t make a difference, but finding their base will.”

  They started off, and Alan didn’t notice any difference between the previous skulking and what they were doing now. They were on the enemy’s side, but he didn’t see anyone. A couple of times Pixel rerouted them, but Alan never saw what they were trying to avoid.

  Suddenly he heard Pixel’s voice coming through his head again. Rather than risk being detected by having a normal conversation, she was whispering through the army chat, and he could still hear her loud and clear.

  “You don’t have access to the array menu, so I’ve switched chat over for you. Right now, when you talk, I’m the only one that can listen. We’ll still be able to hear the rest of the squad if they try to contact us, but for now we don’t want to distract them with our chatter. This is the time for you to ask any questions before we get in the shit show.”

  Alan thought through what he could ask her. The problem was, there were a million things he probably should ask, but he didn’t know enough to know what he needed to learn.

  He went with the first thing that came to mind. “Won’t the enemy have spells or wards or something, around their base. How do we avoid tripping those?” Network forces probably wouldn’t have motion detectors and surveillance cameras, but there were magical equivalents.

  “Those kinds of things do exist, but they are hard to maintain in a hectic area like this. The lightning blasts do more than take out the forest, they also blast apart any enchantments in a wide area. So yes, they probably have some of those things active, but they are constantly having to be reset, so they are only used in a limited capacity.

  “If we run into one, that will just be our bad luck. On the other hand, assuming we live long enough to report it, that’s a pretty big clue as to where their base is.”

  That didn’t make Alan feel any better, but they don’t say ‘war is hell’ for nothing. Even though she had downplayed the danger of hidden surprises, she was moving methodically through the foliage. If he had thought they were moving slowly during the first part of the trip, they were now crawling like a glacier.

  When he asked why, Pixel told him it was to look for traps. They were also rare, for the same reason as the wards, but more people were capable of setting them, so they weren’t quite as rare. Also, and he liked this bit, “I can actually see traps, so it’d be my fault if I got killed by one. Also, it makes me feel like I’m being careful instead of blundering into the enemy.”

  Alan didn’t mind all the sneaking, as his skill was sure to shoot up after this. He also was enjoying watching the way his Sergeant moved. Not because of how good she looked doing it, well not just because of that. He was learning about how he should be moving.

  You would think that over a decade in the Army, and most of that in the Green Berets, would have taught him how to move stealthily. And you’d be right. But his body was not the same as it was then, literally. It was now capable of moving in ways a non-Network human simply couldn’t.

  This towering woman was slipping through the trees far better than he was. She was less than a shadow creeping through the forest. Alan was sure that he would be spotted long before she was. But, it was while he was watching her that he learned she was not infallible. Raising her hand to push through a bush, an iron bolt suddenly tore through her shoulder.

  Her silhouette showed that her shoulder was red, but there was also a purple halo around her whole image that Alan had never seen before. In his real vision, she dropped to the ground and they were suddenly surrounded by the enemy.

  Without moving a millimeter, he scanned the area with his eyes. He counted eight individuals, and none was wielding a crossbow, so there was at least one more out there somewhere. Surprisingly enough, they actually hadn’t spotted Alan, but it was only a matter of time before they did.

  He could try and make his escape, but chances were that they would spot him as soon as he moved. Also, he didn’t like his odds of getting all the way back to his own area, even if he could get away from these guys initially.

  So what could he do? He couldn’t even ask Mikael and Jordan for help since he couldn’t switch his chat channel. He had been locked into a two way setting with his unconscious leader. Pondering his options, he only saw two. He could try to run, but Pixel would surely be killed and Alan would probably not last much longer. Or, he could try to engage their ambushers and take them out. As possibly the lowest leveled soldier on the battlefield, he would almost surely die, and then Pixel would follow shortly after.

  “Alan, what’s going on?” As if sensing Alan’s dilemma, he heard Jordan’s voice in his head, but he was unable to respond. Alan realized they too must have seen the change in Pixel’s silhouette.

  Again Jordan spoke up, “Alan…damn, he probably can’t answer us. If you can hear this, stay close, we’re gonna try and find you.”

  That was a possibility, but the enemy had managed to find Pixel well enough to ambush her, what chance did Alan have of not getting caught when they started searching the surroundings. That gave him an idea though, what if he surrendered, and then waited for the right time to get away, most likely when Jordan and Mikael managed to find them.

  That always works in movies, but the bad guys here were a little better at their jobs. He caught one of them giving orders to the others. “Search the area, she probably wasn’t alone. Porter, finish her off and search her corpse.”

  It didn’t look like they wanted prisoners. Surrendering was out. He also couldn’t run away, he would never be able to live with himself. Trying to fight them here was suicide, so then what did that leave?

  He really wished he had his MK 46 right about now. Few things in life couldn’t be solved by the judicious application of hot, high-velocity, lead applied in rapid sequence. Or, at least, few things on a battlefield.