"Of course! We frequently detonate ours ourselves with ranged attacks," Puck continued gleefully, "Did you have something in particular in mind?"
"Sort of. Why don't you switch back to marking each one? I think I want to try something different with these," Emory advised him. Puck nodded slowly and bowed before walking over to the circle of caltrops to begin marking them. Emory too started marking the middle section of the defenses, moving in the opposite direction as Puck. The work was slow at first, but once they found a good rhythm, they began moving through the defenses quite quickly. Still, all of these rings encompassed the entire camp, including the temporary tents for the army, so it took two hours for Emory to finish her section. Seeing that Puck was only two-thirds of the way done, she went over to help him since she didn't know the pattern for the next section. However, with her Arcane Sight, she could clearly see the symbol on the caltrops.
After another thirty minutes, they finished the outer ring as well. Once Puck marked the first outer wall, the two split up as they circled the last ring around the outpost. With two people, it only took them an hour to finish the circle, though Emory did more than Puck did. When they finished, Puck immediately sat down in a meditative pose and breathed deeply. "I've never marked that many objects in such a short time," Puck wheezed, "But you did spectacularly. I was amazed how quickly you picked that skill up."
Emory smirked, "I learn very quickly. Let me help you recover." With a single tap on his shoulder, an overwhelming surge of magik shook Puck's body that filled his reserves immediately. His eyes grew wide as he looked up at Emory as he sat in disbelief at her action.
"Thank you, Great Ancient One," Puck prostrated himself before her.
"It's no trouble," Emory blushed as she pulled him up, "We all have our own gifts. Let me take you back to the camp." Her wings popped out as she took his hand and flew him over the wall. They landed gracefully behind the training platforms before Puck thanked Emory again and ran off to switch with Clarine. After he left, she walked through the crowd and looked for Innes. It only took fifteen minutes to find a mountain of a man with short brown hair; surprisingly, she found him at the very back of one of the training groups. Once he explained that he was just getting some extra training done, he followed her to the edge of camp to see the improved measures.
For a few minutes, Emory explained what each marking was on the different types of defenses. The semi-permanent and temporary walls they made were covered in simple marks, so she easily described those. However, the caltrops were a different story, so she thought it would be best to show him instead of talking about them. They walked up next to one when Emory lightly gripped an edge and chucked it fifty feet away. As it crashed into the ground, it exploded with such force that debris shot back towards them. Luckily, they crashed into Innes's shield that he had erected as soon as the caltrop touched the ground.
Emory grinned, "They're a bit more destructive than I initially guessed. But I was thinking that instead of using them defensively, your group of defenders could use them as a ranged offensive weapon. What do you think?"
"It's ingenious," Innes smirked, "The Apleem will see flying caltrops and assume that we're just backwater hillbillies. Of course, it'd be best to use most of them at the beginning of the attack, so we don't accidently injure our own people."
"Good. I came up with this idea as a spur of the moment plan and was hoping it would work out," Emory commented. She walked with Innes back to the base before she excused herself, formed her wings, and flew off into the distance away from the outpost. Landing in one of the areas designated as a battlefield, she smiled before sitting in her meditation position. Once she was seated, she spread out her Chaos sphere as far as she could, reaching a diameter of one mile. Next, she began to spin the magik like a top with herself as the center. At first, the disk of dark magik turned slowly, just inching across the ground.
Then Emory growled and dug deep into her mana pool. As she did, the disk began to spin faster like a strong gust of wind blowing through the grass. But it wasn't strong enough, causing her to dig even deeper. Now the magik was spinning so quickly that it began to cut the grass like a scythe. As she continued to spin it faster, the sky above her started to darken and fill with angry clouds. A few minutes later rain sprinkled on the ground in the area above her disk. The sprinkle turned into a downpour within a few minutes, drenching Emory as she continued channeling her magik without stopping. Suddenly, a pair of lightning bolts struck both behind and in front of her which jolted her out of her concentrated state. Immediately, the rain stopped, and the clouds parted.
She took a moment to survey the incredible scene she had caused in only thirty minutes. Every blade of grass had been cut to just a couple of inches above the ground, but that was only the beginning. The grass seemed to be melting wherever the rain had fallen, almost like a fast-acting acid rain. And the impact of the lightning looked more like an asteroid crater than a scorch mark though all the grass within ten feet of it had been burnt as well. Satisfied with the area there, Emory teleported to the next location.
Unlike the last battlefield, Emory only spread out her aura about ten feet. At this size, she could spin the disk much faster which caused much more damage to the grass. In a minute, she shredded the blades all the way down to the ground. So, she moved to another spot on the same battlefield and did the same. In a way, as she continued to repeat this process, she was repeating the training process she had used before. In thirty minutes, she had also flattened this battlefield like she had the previous one.
Finally, she teleported to the last battlefield and once again stretched the disk as far as it would go. Slowly but methodically, she spun this disk through the grass again. At first, it only blew like wind over the field when something strange happened. Plants in the area began to shrivel up and die. First, it was just a few feet here and there, but as time continued to pass, the effect multiplied and grew out from each of the smaller patches. Miraculously, when Emory stopped after thirty minutes, everything in the field had died just like the two previous battlefields. Though it wasn't as clean as the second one or as damaged as the first one, the dead stalks made the area somewhat of a difficult terrain.
Emory stood up and stretched with a smile on her face since her testing had gone well. Even if she didn't move onto level three, she did feel closer to the third level than before. Realistically, as long as Laxtros didn't join the field, she was more than strong enough between her Arcane Sphere, her gauntlets, and the crown which boosted her effective level to nineteen. Combined with her large reserves of stamina and infinite magik, she was particularly confident as she returned to the outpost.
Back at the camp, she found a small, secluded area to continue practicing her Chaos sphere since she didn't know what would happen if she used it around someone else. She trained until the star began to set over the horizon. As it got dark, she headed to the mess area for some food and water. Clarine, Innes, and Nephenee were there getting food as well.
"Emory," Innes called, "Where did you wander off to? You were gone all afternoon."
Emory shrugged, "I needed a wide area to test my Chaos sphere, so I tore up the ground a little near the battlefields you all picked out."
"With the Chaos sphere and your power, is there anything even left of the battlefields?" Clarine teased, "I bet not much if at all." Emory blushed but didn't reply because she knew how destroyed the battlefields now were.
"So, what's the plan for tomorrow? I know you said we should just rest, but I didn't know if there was any more prep work we could do as well," Nephenee prodded as she shoveled the food into her mouth.
"Did the Elandrian bring anything with them when they came?" Emory asked, "Specifically some crates or totes. They would have had the same things in them that I brought before Selena came last time."
Innes nodded, "They're all in the Command Center since I wasn't sure what to do with them."
"Good," Emory replied, "Then tomorrow, we need to build some supply kits. Some for those with the Healing sphere, as they'll be designated as a medical team. But some of the pills need to be distributed to all the troops. After dinner, let's go see what we have and decide how we're going to set this up tomorrow."
After they finished eating, they headed to the cargo bay and found the crates of medical bags that the army brought when they landed. Emory used her magik to carry the crates since there were more crates than people. Carrying them behind her on a caravan of magik hands caused quite a stir among the troops that saw the little magik train following her. It almost looked like a mother being followed by a collection of babies except these crates were big enough to fit a full-sized person inside. A thumping sound echoed through the stairway as each crate flopped up each stair like a salmon climbing a staggered waterfall.
When they all reached the command center, Emory left the medical bags next to the Elandrian crates while the others split up to do other tasks. Clarine and Innes brought over some tables and chairs as Nephenee pulled up a list of all personnel with the Healing sphere on the screen. Cracking open the first of eleven crates, she found what looked like a box full of millions of red hard candies. The second, third, fourth, and fifth crates contained similar small orbs in blue, yellow, green, and orange respectively. When she broke open the sixth and seventh boxes and saw larger black and white pills, she shut them back up and moved them to another part of the room. Finally, hundreds of jars with red, blue, yellow, and black liquid filled the last four chests, but like the big pills, she moved the black liquid across the room. By this point, Clarine, Innes, and Nephenee had finished and began to look at the different pills and liquids.
Clarine estimated, "By the number of pills we have in these crates, we probably have enough to give everyone a couple of each."
"That was my thought exactly," Emory agreed, "Let's make two bags, one with pills for everyone and one specifically for the healers."
"Once we know how we're distributing these, we can tell Gatrie's team. His setup should be similar to ours," Innes pointed out.
"Good point," Emory nodded, "Jask, can you record our plan and send it to Vostea?" Without saying a word, a camera popped out from the back of one of the screens and pointed towards the group. She took two of each kind of pill in a small medicine pack as well as 10CCs of the red liquid in a syringe. Then she put five syringes of red liquid and two syringes of blue and yellow liquid in a different bag. Emory explained, "The pill bag is for every soldier, packed with health, mana, and stamina pills, a couple boost candies, and an injection of a health potion. The other kit is for the healers specifically with several health potions, a couple mana potions, and a couple stamina potions. To make things easier, we're going to laser a legend on the bags."
Since there were only a thousand people with the healing sphere, the group decided to make the healers' kits themselves. It was midnight before they were finished, but they weren't done yet. In order for the next day to go smoothly, they split the pills into six boxes each. Then they could set up six stations for the soldiers to go to build their own emergency packs. By the time they were done separating the materials into different stations, it was one thirty in the morning. They were all exhausted and headed off to bed. Emory made her way to the barracks and plopped down on the first open bed she found. She drifted off to sleep within a few moments, knowing the next day would be just as long as today was.