Damon's Ascension-Chapter 52: Frontal Assault 1

"Argh!"

The final British soldier in this squad was taken down by Damon. The Worldly Essence from their bodies floated up and infused itself into him. Checking his balance, it was exactly as expected, a net gain of 200 units.

Pressing his hand to the ground to refill his first stomach, Damon checked his produced Worldly Essence within his third stomach and saw that he currently had 620 units, indicating that only 20 minutes had passed.

This meant he needed 60 more units of Worldly Essence, which equated to waiting an hour or finding more enemies. Naturally, Damon chose the latter, as he did not come to these Augmented Reality Instances to experience history firsthand.

Damon stood up and left a wake of dead earth that stretched for around a hundred meters around where he had been centered. He glanced towards the direction the British soldiers came from and estimated that the main conflict should have been underway long enough.

It was time to start fulfilling his other objectives. Helping his entourage survive was just one of his four options, and with the limited time he had in this instance, there was no way he was going to devote all his time to that alone.

Damon glanced behind him to see that his entourage had long left, along with the chased Ashanti warriors who hadn’t even turned back to see what was happening or who saved them. It wasn’t that they were cowards, but against someone who had a gun, any distance you created was a precious resource that could guarantee your life.

Damon picked up a loaded matchlock and began moving forward in a light jog, moving at a speed of 8 meters per second. That’s right, Damon’s current jogging speed was the same as the full-on sprint of an average person with only 1 point in Mobility!

Coupled with his increased Fortitude, he was not feeling troubled at all even after he crossed around 15 kilometers in just a minute over half an hour, reaching the outskirts of the main battlefield. Already, he could hear the shouts of men, the sound of guns being fired, and the screams of death.

Damon halted but was not too cautious.

Firstly, he wasn’t the type who was overly cautious or planned too heavily before taking every single step. The young man was at most proactive and often tried to cover loose ends, but he was perfectly capable of taking risks and acting on the fly, like his actions during the opening of the Golden Savages.

Secondly, inside localized Essence instances there was no such thing as true death. It was more like typical RPGs, where you would end up facing a death screen and lose some Worldly Essence as a penalty while being weakened slightly, before being allowed to resume where you left off.

The number of deaths allowed were infinite and the penalty remained the same no matter how high your death counter rose.

Thirdly and most importantly, this was an Avatar. Ever since he split himself back when testing his Avatar ability, no one had actually seen his real body in person. This was more prevalent once he returned to Earth, where his real body was located in a safe place, practicing other skills and reading up on information.

On a side note, Damon was actually behaving more careless on purpose because he had no reason to fear death, in fact he would welcome it, though perhaps not necessarily on this run.

After all, there were two things to test out: the effects of the death of an active Avatar in any situation and whether the death of an Avatar in the localized Essence instance would function in the same way as that of a regular person, allowing him to ressurect it on the spot and perhaps more importantly whether it would result in a penalty to his real body.

The first was important because Damon planned to leverage a semi-reckless style of action by utilizing Avatars to explore the Chaos Realm among other things. He could harvest more Chaos Essence and strengthen himself faster if he mixed Devour with Probability Manipulation through an Avatar, but if an Avatar dying caused him to suffer a backlash, then he would have to factor that in.

The second was also important because, as an EX ability, Damon felt that Avatar should be able to skirt certain rules and penalties, just like how Devour skirted rules of Worldly Essence production being solely for the Universe Will to do.

After all, if his Avatar died, it was not he who died, was it?

If there was any point of sadness, it was that his Devour ability was linked throughout all Avatars. In other words, any and all Avatars shared the same three stomachs, otherwise he would most definetely have turned one or more of them into dedicated energy farms.

Damon carefully held his Energy Flintlock, as his plans had changed extensively due to the existence of this weapon, not just because of its power, but also because he could fire it without risking his own physical weakness by exploiting the power of Devour.

Damon immediately pushed through the small shrubbery in front of him and was made to see a large road clearing that came from the coastal areas. However, this rather well-maintained road that had little potholes – as it was frequently filled with sand by passersby – was reddish-brown due to the sheer amount of blood.

Just so you know, Sir Garnet fielded around 2,500 men to crush the Ashanti Empire once and for all. Of them, around 1,500 were pure British troops who were either regulars or from the famous West India regiment, while 500 were the carriers and support personnel for logistics.

No army could move without food, after all.

Finally, Damon’s lips curled as he sported a group of ill-equipped auxiliary troops who were conscripted from the northern tribes. That’s right, a part of Sir Garnet’s army meant to crush the African resistance here – specifically 1/5th of them – were Africans themselves!

But this was not surprising. This kind of move, being utilized by a superior force in order to control an area with weaker military power, was not a first in history and would definitely not be the last.

Damon glanced at the Ashanti side and saw a sea of men, nearly ten times that of what the British brought. Their warriors should roughly number around 20,000 to 25,000, according to what Damon remembered in the history reports and looking at the people, it should be the case.

A force nearly ten times larger than their opponents should be an easy victory, but this was exactly why Sir Garnet’s war was well remembered in local history. He overturned the common assumption of locals that a superior numerical force would win, utilizing the advanced weaponry (at the time) to mow down all opposition.

So what lay before Damon was the sight of countless Ashanti corpses, their number rising by the second as the warriors charged recklessly across the road towards the British firing lines who occupied hills and advantageous positions to rain down fire.

Their method of firing was standard warfare. The soldiers remaining in their lines, taking aim and firing together after an orderly three-count, then calmly passing their matchlocks backward for the support crew to reload while an already loaded matchlock was presented to them to repeat the process.

So, in a way, they replicated what Damon could do with the Energy Flintlock, only that they used actual resources and logistics to achieve it while Damon used... well, magic?

Damon’s eyes roved over the hillocks and encampments spread about and knew that even if the Ashanti Warriors broke through, they could only take down a few of them. However, they would face a brutal rout.

It was one thing to hear about it in grade 8 history class and another to see it live for himself. Damon, as a youth, had shaken his head and felt that the fighters of this era were too dumb, unable to even form a strategy to use their superior numbers to swarm the foe.

Well, it’s not that they didn’t try, but as proposed before, the current fighting system in Ancient Ghana was nothing compared to the fighting system the British developed. Without any external help, this once glorious empire was about to face its most brutal defeat and subsequent century of humiliation.

Damon did not much care about the original outcome, he only cared about the fact that his objectives for this instance required him to be that external help. As such, from a rather safe position, he circled towards a location around 500 meters away from one of the encampments where the soldiers were firing in an orderly manner.

This was as far as he could go without being spotted because, unlike stealth in games, tall grass doesn’t do much to hide one’s figure when the bright sun was bearing down, not to mention that there were stationed guards to protect their soldiers.

Damon entered a running stance and charged forward at full speed, causing the wind to whistle in his ear as he sprinted towards the nearest encampment. His current maximum speed was 27 m/s when he went all out, three times his base speed of 9 m/s.

This was equivalent to around 98 kilometers per hour or 60 miles per hour, a speed that one would see on a car moving quickly on a highway. In less than 20 seconds, Damon had covered the distance from his position towards the back of the firing position, causing the guards stationed there to be confused at what they were seeing.

Was this a human-shaped cheetah or a cheetah with human traits?