Chapter 136: Four Separate Front

Chapter 136: Four Separate Front

The next assessment warning appeared while Viridian was still clearing rubble from the provincial city. Noah expected another red marker to form somewhere within the southern continent, but the interface split into four separate points scattered across his world instead.

One burned over Viridian territory, another appeared inside Varkesh, a third formed across Skargrim’s northern lands, and the fourth hovered above the distant continent ruled by Luminous. The information beneath them was brief: Round Four, Difficulty Five, one thousand invading personnel, and four separate invasion points.

Noah looked from one marker to another and understood the changes immediately.

The first airships appeared over Viridian before he had finished studying the locations. More followed over the other continents, four separate formations descending into regions that had never fought the same war under the same conditions.

Noah widened his planetary sight until all four invasion zones sat within his awareness.

He sent a broad divine warning. Foreign armies had entered all four empires, their weapons were extraordinarily dangerous at range, and every nation was to defend its territory.

Viridian responded before the first transport touched the ground. The landing zone appeared along a broad agricultural corridor where several roads connected smaller towns to a larger military center, yet goblin troops were already leaving the obvious approaches by the time Draeven began unloading.

Draeven reconnaissance vehicles moved cautiously from the landing zone and found almost nothing waiting for them. Noah felt a trace of satisfaction.

The first Draeven column reached a narrow road between orchards before the attack came. A ballista bolt struck the lead vehicle from behind a stone wall, and crossbow fire followed from both sides while the infantry scrambled for cover.

Draeven soldiers spread out immediately and returned fire, but the attackers had already withdrawn through irrigation paths hidden between the fields. The damaged vehicle remained across the road, forcing the column to stop and reorganize after advancing only a few miles.

Noah shifted his attention toward Varkesh and found an entirely different battle beginning. The inland district contained larger settlements and wider roads than the Viridian countryside, while regional garrisons had gathered quickly enough for several substantial formations to begin moving toward the landing zone before the Draeven perimeter was fully established.

The first Varkesh advance halted farther from the enemy than a traditional goblin army normally would have. The officers had clearly received some warning about Draeven’s range, so their troops spread wider and avoided marching directly along the central road.

Their precautions were still insufficient. Rifle fire began before the goblins expected it, and the leading ranks broke toward ditches and buildings while a machine gun forced another group away from an open field.

Noah saw hesitation move through the formations as soldiers tried to understand an enemy still barely visible in the distance. They had been told Draeven weapons could kill from extraordinary range, yet hearing that information was very different from watching comrades fall before anyone could answer.

Varkesh recovered through discipline rather than experience. Orders to move backward, formations approaching behind the first contact stopped before entering the same killing ground, and messengers redirected companies toward neighboring roads.

The initial attack ended without becoming a rout. Within hours, smaller Varkesh units were moving through villages and fields on several approaches instead of trying to push one organized formation directly toward the landing zone.

Noah moved his attention north and immediately saw Skargrim choosing the opposite response. The invasion site lay in a long valley bordered by forest and broken slopes, and Draeven had barely secured its perimeter when several thousand northern goblins began descending from two directions.

The exposed ground between them and the landing zone made the result predictable. Machine guns opened fire across the lower slope, bodies scattered across the approach, and several Skargrim groups continued forward until rifle and mortar fire finally forced them toward rocks and tree cover.

The attack failed quickly enough to prevent even heavier losses. Skargrim did not repeat it in the same form, and the surviving troops disappeared into the surrounding terrain rather than reforming for another charge.

Within an hour, the fighting fragmented across wooded ridges and narrow ravines. Draeven vehicles remained close to the few usable roads because the slopes around them were too rough for easy movement, while goblin soldiers began appearing above those routes, attacking briefly before withdrawing into terrain the machines could not follow.

The battle had changed from a failed assault into a struggle over valleys, passes, and high ground. Skargrim had paid for that adjustment with blood, but the northern terrain was now forcing Draeven to fight a very different war from the one developing in Viridian.

Noah turned west toward Luminous and found the strangest response of the four. Draeven had landed near a coastal road connecting two port towns, and although infantry and vehicles were already moving inland, Luminous had not attempted to contest the landing.

No large army approached, and even the roads ahead appeared almost empty. Noah searched more carefully and found small groups watching from hills, wooded ground, and settlements far beyond ordinary rifle range, while larger formations waited deeper inland.

The enemy advanced almost unopposed and entered several abandoned villages. Noah could not immediately tell whether Luminous had become too cautious or whether its commanders were deliberately trading space for information.

The answer became clearer when a Draeven reconnaissance vehicle pushed well ahead of the main column and entered a narrow road bordered by low cliffs. Nothing attacked it on the first pass, and the vehicle continued until it disappeared around the next bend.

Luminous troops moved only after it had gone. Heavy barriers were dragged across the road behind the vehicle, and when it returned minutes later, crossbow bolts came from the cliffs while the trapped soldiers searched desperately for cover.

The engagement ended before the main Draeven force could arrive. The vehicle was abandoned, the goblins disappeared, and the blocked road remained as the only obvious sign that a fight had occurred there.

Noah’s attention lingered over Luminous because its commanders had refused the obvious battle entirely. Instead of defending the coast, they had allowed Draeven to move inland until the terrain produced a better opportunity.

Four empires had faced nearly identical enemies for only a few hours, yet none of the wars resembled the others. Viridian treated the invasion as a familiar threat, Varkesh corrected itself through organization, Skargrim learned after an aggressive mistake, and Luminous appeared determined to study the enemy before committing its strength.

The four empires shared one species and one god, yet thousands of years of separate political development had produced four very different military instincts.

The wars continued moving as the day advanced. In Viridian, Draeven began leaving the main roads and sending infantry through fields to avoid repeated traps, while goblin groups responded by targeting supply vehicles rather than the leading soldiers.

The two hundred and fifty invaders could still dominate direct exchanges, but they struggled to force Viridian into those exchanges. Every attempt to pursue retreating goblins risked another ambush or roadblock farther ahead.

Varkesh’s second attempt looked nothing like its first. Formations no longer approached as one body, and smaller units moved through villages on both sides of the landing area, forcing Draeven to divide its attention.

One Varkesh group suffered badly when mortar rounds struck a concealed assembly point.

Another reached a machine-gun position through an abandoned workshop district and destroyed it at close range, showing Noah that the empire was already creating its own answers even while suffering mistakes Viridian had experienced earlier.

Skargrim’s battlefield became increasingly difficult to follow from above. Smoke appeared between trees, rifle flashes answered crossbow volleys from slopes, and goblin groups crossed ridges before disappearing again ahead of pursuing infantry.

Draeven still controlled the valley floor and its main road. Almost everything beyond those narrow strips, however, belonged to terrain that reduced the value of vehicles and long-range fire.

Luminous continued yielding land with unusual patience and fighting guerrilla warfare. Draeven occupied another settlement and pushed toward a larger road junction, but the goblins were not simply retreating ahead of them.

Bridges farther inland were being prepared for destruction, warehouses were emptied, and exposed boats disappeared from rivers and small ports. Luminous was stripping useful resources from the enemy’s path while gathering strength around terrain it had chosen in advance.

Messages between the empires had already begun their journeys, but Noah gave them little attention because none would decide the battles unfolding today.

Riders leaving Viridian for neighboring territories would need weeks to carry anything useful, while reports sent toward Luminous would cross ports and oceans before arriving months later.

Noah watched one group of couriers leave a Viridian military center carrying sketches of Draeven weapons and notes taken during the previous rounds. By the time those papers reached another capital, the recipients might already have produced their own answers through direct combat.

The limitation became visible through repeated mistakes rather than any abstract problem.

Varkesh had to discover the danger of mortar-directed fire even though Viridian already understood it, while Skargrim lost soldiers crossing open ground to a lesson that had been paid for several rounds earlier.

Luminous had never fought the urban battle Viridian survived, so its commanders were inventing solutions based on coastal roads, ports, and inland chokepoints.

Every empire possessed useful experience that could eventually help the others, yet distance prevented that knowledge from arriving when it mattered most.

Noah could have prevented much of that repetition through divine revelation. A message sent through every temple could carry Viridian’s lessons instantly, but doing so would make them overrly reliant.

He resisted the impulse and kept watching. If the four empires could only cooperate because their god constantly transmitted military information between them, then the weakness would remain hidden rather than solved.

The wars expanded through the remainder of the day. Viridian began pushing its Draeven force away from nearby settlements, while Varkesh gradually enclosed the landing region from several directions after abandoning its initial large approach.

Skargrim gave up the valley floor and made every road leaving it dangerous. Luminous allowed its invaders farther inland while preparing successive obstacles around the next major junction.

Noah moved his attention among them without interference. For the first time since the assessment began, one battlefield could no longer represent what his civilization as a whole was capable of doing.

Viridian’s experience did not automatically belong to Varkesh. Skargrim’s terrain offered no help to Luminous, and Luminous’s patience would have been unnatural to the northern armies that had attacked before the Draeven transports had fully settled.

Every empire was being forced to reveal its own strengths and mistakes. The invading forces were also changing in response, turning four equal detachments into campaigns that increasingly differed from one another.

The Viridian contingent became cautious and reluctant to pursue apparent retreats. Varkesh’s invaders concentrated around defensible positions and relied increasingly on mortar support, while Draeven forces in Skargrim kept their vehicles near the valley and sent infantry into the surrounding terrain only in groups large enough to support one another.

The Luminous detachment continued advancing because it encountered less direct resistance. Every mile carried it farther from its original landing site and deeper into territory that appeared increasingly prepared to receive it.

By the end of the day, the academy’s neat division of one thousand soldiers into four equal forces had become four completely different wars. Noah widened his view and watched smoke mark the Viridian countryside while Varkesh troops moved between settlements surrounding the Draeven perimeter.

Farther north, Skargrim soldiers occupied ridges above roads held by modern vehicles. Across the ocean, Luminous formations waited deeper inland while foreign machines advanced through territory deliberately emptied before them.

No central command connected any of those battles, and no meeting linked their generals.

Messages were already moving across roads and seas, but many would arrive only after the fighting they described had already ended.

Noah had entered Round Four expecting the academy to test whether his armies could handle several invasion points.

Instead, the assessment had exposed a more fundamental weakness: his planet contained four powerful empires, but distance still prevented them from behaving like one world when war arrived everywhere at once.