Chapter 178: The Supply Route

Chapter 178: The Supply Route

Noah opened the full mission briefing as soon as he returned to his room. The first page displayed a planetary map covered with occupation lines, supply routes, settlements, and a front stretching across the northern region of a large continent.

The planet was called Karthis, and a single Imperial planetary lord named Darius Kane was conducting the invasion. Noah enlarged the operational information and checked the command structure.

Every invading formation on the map belonged to Darius’s own civilization, with no second planetary lord sharing responsibility for the campaign. Darius’s primary species was the ogre. ℯℯ𝑙.

Images attached to the briefing showed massive humanoids in heavy armor moving through captured streets, fortified positions, and military camps. Their equipment had been designed around their size and physical strength.

Even ordinary infantry carried weapons that looked oversized beside the captured arms stacked in several of the photographs. The campaign history showed a steady advance from the southern regions of the continent.

Several fortified settlements had already fallen, and the current front had moved hundreds of kilometers beyond the original invasion area.

The native inhabitants were a humanoid tiger species known as the Tigrans.

They possessed striped fur, feline features, tails, and organized armies that had attempted to stop Darius during the early stages of the invasion. Those early battles had gone badly for them.

When the Tigrans concentrated enough troops to hold towns, roads, bridges, or defensive positions, the ogres eventually broke through. The larger invaders were difficult to stop once they reached close range.

Several defensive reports described Tigran formations abandoning positions after the ogres breached walls or pushed through prepared barricades. After repeated defeats, the Tigrans changed their approach.

Noah moved into the occupation records and found far fewer conventional battles. The reports instead described ambushes, sabotage, disappearances, infiltration, and attacks against targets scattered throughout territory Darius already controlled.

A supply convoy traveling through a forest had encountered felled trees blocking the road. Tigran fighters attacked the column while the ogres attempted to clear the obstruction, then disappeared into the surrounding woodland before reinforcements arrived.

Another convoy had been divided after false road markers directed several wagons down a secondary path. The missing vehicles were discovered later with their cargo removed and the escorts dead.

A bridge had been damaged during the night while the nearest ogre garrison remained untouched. Repairs took most of a day, and another section of the same route was sabotaged before traffic had fully returned to normal.

The attacks were rarely large, and they did not need to be. A small group could delay dozens of wagons by destroying one bridge.

A few infiltrators could burn supplies that had taken days to gather. The Tigrans were using those advantages repeatedly.

Noah continued through the reports and found that many guerrilla groups operated close to their own villages. Some appeared to be surviving soldiers from units that had withdrawn before the ogres occupied the region, while others had formed locally after the invasion passed through.

Their knowledge of the area made pursuit difficult. Forest trails, farm roads, river crossings, and paths between villages gave them ways to move without using the roads guarded by the ogres.

Large patrols frequently arrived after the attackers had already dispersed. Search operations sometimes continued for hours without making contact, while another attack occurred somewhere else along the supply network.

The occupation itself created another weakness. Darius had kept most local populations inside the captured settlements, allowing farms, workshops, and markets to continue operating.

That also meant Tigrans continued working around the roads and facilities supporting the invading army. One warehouse employee had been caught recording convoy departures, while another report described two laborers who disappeared shortly before a supply building burned during the night.

A trader had traveled through several occupied settlements using forged documents. When ogre soldiers finally arrested him, they found messages intended for multiple guerrilla groups.

The most concerning incident involved a convoy whose departure time had been changed shortly before it left. The attackers still knew when it was coming.

Noah opened that report separately and read through the timeline. The convoy commander had changed the schedule after receiving warnings about possible activity along the original route.

Less than an hour after leaving, the column entered an ambush at a location the attackers would have needed time to prepare. The report concluded that someone with access to the revised schedule had passed the information outside the supply base.

Noah returned to the campaign map. Darius’s army had already pushed the front deep into Tigran territory, leaving a long occupied region behind it.

Every new advance stretched the distance supplies had to travel before reaching the troops still fighting. The ogres had responded to the attacks by increasing security throughout that route.

More soldiers guarded bridges, while larger escorts accompanied convoys. Additional posts appeared around warehouses, road junctions, and captured settlements.

The number of rear-area deployments kept growing. Noah changed the display to show troop distribution and saw garrisons occupying dozens of positions between the main supply base and the active front.

New detachments had been added after nearly every successful guerrilla attack. Darius still had enough troops to continue his campaign, though his advance had slowed as more ogres were diverted from the main force to secure territory behind it.

The briefing identified the supply network as the primary concern. Food, replacement weapons, equipment, medical supplies, and other necessities were still reaching the front, though delays had become more frequent and convoy losses were rising.

Several forward units had already postponed planned movements because expected deliveries arrived late. Darius could continue the invasion as long as the route remained functional.

Noah opened his personal assignment. The title displayed across the terminal as Secure the Southern Karthis Supply Corridor.

His assigned area began at a major occupied city used as Darius’s primary supply base. From there, the main road traveled north through occupied settlements and rural territory before reaching a forward distribution point serving the invading army.

The route extended more than four hundred kilometers. Several villages sat directly beside it, while other settlements were connected through secondary roads, farm paths, and smaller trails that did not appear on the main military maps.

Three major bridges crossed rivers along the corridor. Warehouses, rest points, checkpoints, and ogre garrisons had already been established at key locations.

Noah’s responsibility started when cargo left the main supply base. Darius would provide the supplies, and his forces would determine what the front required.

Noah had to make certain the cargo reached the forward distribution point. The assignment did not require him to take part in battles at the northern front.

Territorial conquest remained under Darius Kane’s authority. Noah could operate beyond the road when necessary to protect the supply network, but he was not being given a second invasion zone to conquer.

The mission conditions were straightforward. The corridor had to remain operational, required deliveries had to reach the forward positions consistently, and major logistics facilities could not be abandoned.

Cargo losses also had to remain within acceptable limits. The Academy gave Noah wide freedom in how he accomplished those objectives.

Escorts, checkpoints, patrols, road security, bridge protection, convoy schedules, and pursuit of guerrilla groups were all left to his judgment. The threat assessment made clear that large Tigran formations were not expected inside his assigned region.

The danger came from fighters who deliberately avoided becoming large formations. That changed what would actually matter on the ground.

Hundreds of soldiers gathered around one depot would accomplish little if a different group destroyed a bridge fifty kilometers away. Heavy weapons offered limited value against attackers who disappeared before those weapons arrived.

The infiltrators presented a separate problem. A Tigran walking through an occupied town was not automatically an enemy because the majority of the population consisted of civilians simply continuing their lives under foreign occupation.

Guerrilla fighters could move among them while messengers carried information without weapons. Workers could observe convoy schedules while performing ordinary jobs around supply facilities.

Noah opened the map of the main base. The city contained thousands of local residents, several markets, labor districts, warehouses, administrative buildings, and roads leading into surrounding villages.

Darius’s ogres controlled the important facilities, though they could not watch every person moving through the city. The same issue appeared farther north.

Every occupied town created more movement around the road. Farmers brought produce into markets, laborers traveled between settlements, and traders used the same roads as military convoys.

The guerrillas needed only a few people inside that traffic to keep track of the ogres. Noah understood why simply increasing the convoy escorts had not stopped the attacks.

The enemy could choose the location and the time. They could also decide not to attack at all when the security was too strong.

The same fighters could then strike another part of the route. Noah changed the map to show all reported incidents from the previous two weeks.

The markers spread across the entire corridor. Several clustered around forests, others appeared close to villages, and a few occurred inside occupied towns.

There was no single position that controlled the problem. The mission required the road to function as one continuous network.

Noah was not being asked to destroy every Tigran resistance group inside the occupied territory. He was being asked to prevent those groups from interfering with the movement of supplies.

That distinction affected everything. A guerrilla band hidden far from the route was not automatically Noah’s problem, while a group preparing to destroy one of the three major bridges was.

An infiltrator watching warehouse movements could threaten the entire corridor without ever carrying a weapon. The mission reward reflected the narrower responsibility.

The base reward was six hundred Mission Points. Additional rewards were available for reducing cargo losses, maintaining every major logistics position, increasing the amount of supplies reaching the front, and disrupting hostile activity against the corridor.

Noah studied the map for several more minutes. The ogres had already built the basic network he would inherit.

Roads existed, warehouses were functioning, guards were stationed at important points, and convoys were already moving. Something inside that arrangement was failing.

The Tigrans were learning how the occupation worked. They knew where the ogres traveled and which roads the convoys required.

In several cases, they appeared to know when the cargo would move before the escorts themselves reached the road. Noah opened the incident timeline and arranged the attacks chronologically.

The pattern showed convoy ambushes, bridge sabotage, a warehouse fire, a missing courier, false road signs, and another convoy ambush. The locations changed constantly while the targets remained connected to movement, communication, or storage.

Noah finally closed the incident list and left the main corridor map on the terminal. The northern front remained far above his assigned area, while Darius’s ogres continued fighting beyond it.

Noah would work behind them, keeping the route functioning while the Tigrans tried to interrupt it. His second mission had nothing to do with breaking the main Tigran army.

It was about keeping more than four hundred kilometers of occupied territory from strangling the invasion that had passed through it. Noah looked once more at the road stretching across the map as another cluster of attack markers glowed beside it.

Somewhere along that route, Tigran fighters were already watching the ogres and waiting for another convoy to move.