Chapter 140: A War of Attrition

Chapter 140: A War of Attrition

Viridian’s scouts followed the armored column for two days before anyone attacked it. From Noah’s view above the southern front, the restraint was obvious because several opportunities appeared and vanished while the goblins remained hidden among orchards, drainage channels, and low woodland.

A tank passed within range of one concealed ballista without drawing a shot, while another patrol crossed an exposed road and returned safely.

The scouts continued marking the movement of the vehicles behind the spearhead until the target they actually wanted finally appeared on the third afternoon.

A long supply convoy entered a wooded stretch several kilometers behind the armored column.

Fuel trucks occupied the center, surrounded by ammunition wagons, food transports, and armored escorts positioned at the front and rear.

The first obstacle appeared only after the lead vehicles had passed through the narrowest section. Trees fell across the road behind them while another group of goblins blocked the rear with timber and stone dragged from the surrounding forest.

Crossbow fire began almost immediately, but the escorts quickly realized that most of the volleys were not aimed at the soldiers spreading toward cover.

Heavy bolts flew toward the unarmored trucks in the center, with the fuel carriers receiving the greatest attention.

One struck the side of a fuel vehicle and tore through the outer tank. Liquid spilled beneath it before a flaming projectile struck moments later and sent fire racing across the road.

The first explosion engulfed the truck and threw burning debris against the ammunition vehicle beside it. A second blast lifted part of the road beneath the convoy and forced the remaining Draeven soldiers away from the center.

Viridian withdrew before reinforcements could arrive. By the time additional Draeven troops reached the area, the goblins had already crossed the irrigation channels and disappeared along prepared routes leading away from the road.

Noah shifted his attention toward the armored column farther ahead. The effect of the ambush became visible before sunset because the formation had stopped at a defensible crossroads instead of continuing toward the next provincial center.

Tanks gathered around the temporary position while engineers inspected fuel reserves and officers redirected supplies from another base.

The machines themselves remained intact, yet their advance had stalled because the logistical chain behind them had been damaged.

Viridian repeated the approach elsewhere over the following weeks. Raiding parties struck repair crews after vehicles broke down, burned small fuel dumps outside major bases, and targeted road workers whenever Draeven tried to create safer supply routes.

The enemy answered by strengthening every major convoy and moving more troops into logistical security.

Infantry began securing stretches of road before fuel trucks entered them, while armored vehicles patrolled routes that had previously been guarded only by ordinary soldiers.

That response created pressure elsewhere along the front because men assigned to convoy security could not reinforce the forward units.

Viridian’s generals noticed the change and began probing thinner positions around the advancing columns without committing to large battles.

Noah left the southern front when Varkesh entered its most difficult battle of the round.

The regional city under attack had already lost sections of its outer wall after repeated bombardment shattered towers, collapsed a gatehouse, and opened several large breaches.

Varkesh did not mass troops at those openings. The first tanks entered streets that appeared nearly empty while infantry followed behind them, checking buildings and clearing rubble from roads wide enough for armored vehicles.

Resistance began several blocks deeper inside the city. Crossbowmen fired from upper floors while heavy bolts struck vehicles from narrow courtyards, and goblin infantry appeared briefly from side streets before disappearing along prepared routes.

Draeven responded by bringing artillery fire deeper into the urban area. Several defensive positions vanished under bombardment before their troops could be fully committed, forcing Varkesh commanders to shorten their occupation of each prepared sector.

The city gradually became a sequence of temporary battlefields instead of one fixed defensive line.

Draeven captured an outer market district and spent the night fortifying several intersections, while Varkesh prepared new positions farther within the city before the enemy could resume the advance.

By morning, the roads behind the Draeven spearhead were already crowded with guards, wounded personnel, ammunition carts, vehicles, and soldiers assigned to search buildings.

Varkesh began attacking those rear positions instead of challenging the tanks moving at the front.

One supply depot disappeared after goblins entered through warehouses connected by back alleys.

Another checkpoint was overrun after its supporting machine gun was drawn toward fighting two streets away.

Draeven reinforced both areas and continued advancing more slowly. Noah watched the same pattern repeat as every district captured required more soldiers to remain behind and every group left behind became another possible target.

The fighting stretched across weeks instead of days. One street changed hands three times in nine days, while a government building became a Draeven command post, returned briefly to Varkesh control after a night assault, and was abandoned again before artillery arrived the next morning.

The city was not being defended according to the older idea of holding every wall and street until the last soldier.

Varkesh was turning the urban area into a place that continuously consumed Draeven manpower, time, ammunition, and attention.

Far to the north, Skargrim had changed the rhythm of its war entirely. The mountain roads belonged to Draeven during daylight, when engineering crews worked beneath armed guard and artillery observers watched the slopes for large concentrations of goblins.

The northern armies increasingly waited until darkness before moving. Small groups descended from trails that Draeven maps barely acknowledged and attacked road sections, isolated sentries, engineering camps, and supply stores before sunrise.

One night, a Skargrim raiding group reached a fuel storage area built beside the mountain corridor. The depot had been positioned behind two checkpoints and surrounded by fencing, but the goblins approached from above instead of following the guarded road.

The first sentries died before the main alarm spread across the camp. Another group cut through the rear barrier while raiders carried containers of pitch toward the storage tanks and surrounding equipment.

By the time searchlights swept across the slopes, flames were already moving through the compound.

Machine guns fired into the darkness while the Skargrim raiders withdrew uphill and disappeared into broken terrain.

Draeven rebuilt the storage site farther down the corridor and strengthened the nearby patrols.

Three nights later, another Skargrim group destroyed part of the road leading to the replacement facility.

The struggle became repetitive without becoming meaningless. Draeven repaired during the day while Skargrim damaged roads, bridges, stores, and equipment during the night.

New guard towers appeared, so the goblins approached through different trails. Patrols increased, and another bridge was burned before the week ended.

No decisive engagement occurred, yet the corridor demanded increasing amounts of manpower and material simply to remain open.

Noah could see that Skargrim had turned maintenance itself into part of the war.

The western front drew more of Noah’s attention as the months continued because Luminous had nearly lost its connection to the major coastal port.

The inland Draeven army had moved close enough to threaten the final major road linking the port with the interior while the coastal force pressed from the opposite direction.

Luminous attacked before those lines fully closed. Thousands of goblins moved after nightfall through plantations, drainage routes, and abandoned settlements toward a narrow section of the inland Draeven front.

The attacking columns avoided the main highway and converged on several smaller positions guarding the corridor. Their first breakthrough came near a vehicle park protected by infantry behind earthworks.

Crossbow volleys struck the outer sentries while infantry entered through adjacent workshops.

Machine guns answered from the prepared defenses, but Luminous soldiers had already reached close enough to force fighting inside the surrounding structures.

More troops entered from the side before Draeven reinforcements could arrive. A roadblock fell, and several armored vehicles were abandoned when their crews became trapped inside buildings on the wrong side of the attack.

By dawn, Luminous had opened a narrow route connecting the port with the interior. Supply wagons began moving through immediately because the commanders knew the passage might remain open for only a few hours.

Medical carts left first, followed by food stores, civilians who had remained behind, ammunition wagons, and damaged equipment that could still be repaired elsewhere.

The attacking formations reinforced the corridor long enough for the evacuation to continue while Draeven reserves gathered beyond them.

Armored carriers appeared along the northern road before the movement was complete. Tanks followed behind them while artillery batteries farther inland began adjusting their fire toward the reopened route.

Luminous commanders held the passage until the final major convoy passed. They then conducted a tactical retreat before daylight allowed Draeven artillery to pin the attackers in exposed positions.

The last formations destroyed sections of road behind them and abandoned the corridor as armored vehicles approached. The route closed again before noon, but the operation had already moved thousands of people and large quantities of supplies out of the threatened port.

Months accumulated after that without producing a sudden conclusion. Viridian continued striking the machinery and logistics behind Draeven’s offensives while Varkesh turned streets and districts into temporary defensive zones that cost the enemy time and manpower.

Skargrim’s mountains remained a nightly contest between repair and destruction, while Luminous fought around its port through raids, tactical retreats, short breakthroughs, and attacks against whichever section of the encirclement appeared weakest.

The front lines moved, but they no longer shifted according to one decisive battle.

Draeven occupied more settlements in some regions and lost isolated positions in others.

Roads reopened, closed, and reopened again while bridges were destroyed, replaced, and damaged once more.

No single victory altered the war by itself. Each success simply changed the conditions for whatever happened next.

The research institutes continued working behind those fronts, although Noah checked them only occasionally.

One Viridian workshop had produced a more precise measuring instrument, while Varkesh had improved the consistency of a steel alloy used in several military workshops.

Skargrim researchers had created a propellant mixture worth further testing, and Luminous engineers had mapped more of the captured airship’s internal structure.

None of those developments changed the battlefield yet, and Noah no longer expected them to do so quickly.

The useful result was time, because every month the armies avoided destruction created another month for researchers to make mistakes, repeat experiments, standardize tools, and eliminate failed ideas.

Progress that looked insignificant during one season could become the foundation for something far more important years later.

The war itself also began changing the societies behind the fronts. Varkesh converted several inland towns into permanent military supply centers while Viridian dispersed food stores across smaller depots so that one Draeven strike could not destroy an entire regional reserve.

Skargrim expanded mountain roads connecting settlements far from the enemy corridor, and Luminous moved workshops away from the threatened coast while establishing new production centers deeper inland.

Entire regions were reorganizing around the need to survive a war that no longer looked temporary.

Noah returned to the Varkesh city one evening as Draeven artillery began another bombardment. A defensive district near the current front had already been emptied before the shells landed, and goblin troops were carrying wounded soldiers through connecting buildings while engineers prepared obstacles farther back.

By the time Draeven infantry entered the shattered streets, the main defensive formation had completed its tactical retreat toward the next sector.

The enemy captured another block, but Varkesh preserved the soldiers needed to defend the next one.

Far away, inside a Viridian research hall, two goblins argued over a newly machined component that still failed to fit the captured weapon beside it.

One measured the part again while the other adjusted the tool used to shape it and recorded another failed attempt.

Noah watched both scenes because the connection between them had become increasingly clear. The soldiers did not need to win the war in a single month if they could remain capable of fighting while the civilization behind them continued changing.

Round Five had stopped being a contest over who could destroy the other side fastest. It had become a test of which civilization could continue functioning while the war consumed time, lives, material, and attention.

Noah looked across the fronts and understood that patience had become part of the strategy.

Every tactical retreat, delayed convoy, repaired road, failed experiment, and surviving army bought another fragment of the future his civilization needed.