The extra labor and tools really only let us keep up the pace over the next thirty days, as the trees we were cutting got further and further from the beachhead. The incidence rate of running into higher level demons is decreasing, so we think we're getting close to a point where we may be able to have our stronger soldiers spread out into wider search groups, rather than staying in smaller clusters for safety. The stronger demons can easily hold their own for the short while necessary for help to arrive, should a small ambush happen. The weaker soldiers will still stay in larger groups, however.
Between clearing the trees and combat, quite a few military personnel have prestiged or evolved, which is nice. It's an interesting aspect of this world that militaries have an extra axis to measure their power level against each other. Normally, you'd compare military size, equipment, discipline, and veterancy. With an added scale of individual power levels, the gap in power between two forces can be even larger. Even including that, however, equipment still plays an outsized role at a certain point. Take our ship, for instance. Outside of leviathans or some elves, it's so advanced that no other force can really hope to stand a chance. If you factor in that the elves would need to ambush the ship to actually get in range to take it down, and it shows just how powerful technology is.
Compared to Earth, however, I can see why military technology would stagnate to a degree. With the extra axis to improve power on, minor equipment improvements don't have as large of an impact on military strength. Some individuals during the Rathland invasion were capable of holding their own against the steam cannons for a short amount of time for example. When you can send in high level troops capable of breaking a fortress, it's hard to argue for spending resources on improving cannons, which is why they seemed to mostly be relegated to attacking over water where an individual may have trouble reaching their target.
In any case, if our military is gaining both combat experience and individual power, that's a good thing moving forward. It should make clearing the last two islands much faster than this one. I expect that we'll have confidently cleared this island in about two months time, possibly a little less if we can recruit even more laborers on the return trip to our island tomorrow.
Finally, after a total of 55 days, and an additional round trip to our home island, we've declared this island cleared of invaders. We also found no evidence of any large lizards remaining, which was quite unfortunate. That likely marks the point of their extinction. Since we had a little over 500 individuals on the island, we were able to do a thorough job of making sure there weren't any remaining demons over the final 15 days of our occupation.
The cargo hold is almost completely full of wood again, meaning we're going to have to really pack the soldiers in to get everyone back on the ship. The good news is that it's only a few hours journey back, so they won't have to be packed for too long. All in all, we'll have brought back about 3300 tons of wood, which should keep our industries going for quite a while without needing to touch our own forests. The plan is to give the soldiers ten days to recuperate before we head out to deal with the next island.
The ten days we'd initially planned turned into twenty after I decided that it would be a good idea to do a full inspection of the ship and make the changes to the turrets to allow for finer controls. There were a handful of minor issues that we were able to resolve, and I updated the various design documents to reflect the changes so that future ships would hopefully no longer experience the same issues. The reason I made the call to delay for that extra time wasn't because those problems were actually pressing, but rather because some construction has started on parts of the second ship, and I wanted to make sure that it didn't get built with any flaws we were aware of on the first one.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
I also took the time to evaluate the island hopping campaign so far. Our island is about 400 square miles. The one we just retook was probably close to 300. The next one is probably close to 150, but the terrain is quite a bit rougher. It's all craggy valleys with no good beaches. That island also has a smoother gradient with a much lower maximum height than the first two islands. Finally, the last island is probably only about 40 square miles, if that. After we clear the 150 square miles of the next island in our campaign, we'll plan on directly going to the last island. In all likelihood, there will just be one or two big battles on the last island, followed by a day or so of running down any demons that try to flee, then we'll be done with our island hopping campaign.
For this next part, I'm leaving the military construction corps on our main island, and having them construct a standalone facility for storing artillery shells. It will be roughly the same as the other explosive storage facility, but the silos will be closer together, and each silo will be a bit larger in size. There will overall be fewer silos, but we'll try to have enough storage to fill two ships' worth of cargo bays. If they finish this construction project before we return, I've designated that they should further expand the harbor area, including better roads and loading and unloading equipment. The next island just doesn't have a good opportunity for them to assist in any meaningful way. I can personally help reinforce wherever we decide to land as a beachhead if necessary.
There were a few differences in our strategy with this next island compared to the first one. Call it callous, but we've decided that we shouldn't attempt any kind of negotiations this time. Instead, we've opted to use what scouting we can with the ship to pinpoint enemy positions, and then surround and ambush them. In doing so, we hope that we'll start the process of fully clearing the island from a much better position.
In the ocean around this island, the ambient mana levels seem to have almost returned back to normal, though they're still hovering at about 90% of what I'd expect. The total trip time from our island to this one was 6 hours, with a large amount of said time being spent in the slow travel through the lowest mana level areas. Once we reached the next island we waited until nightfall to circle the island to spot out any potential positions that enemy demons might be camping at while drafting up some rudimentary maps to help guide subdivisions of the army.
The plan this time is a bit of a blitzkrieg. It's the middle of the night now, and with the most recent eclipse occurring only 2 days ago, there is little light with no moon. With a lack of new fluorite to process, some of the demons who would normally be working that area had a lot of free time, and one of them came up with something of a flashlight design. It is fairly low light, as it relies on ambient mana, but it doesn't need a power source and is fairly compact. It uses a piece of zinc fluorite a few inches in size positioned ahead of a polished piece of metal to reflect the light back out the front where a glass pane sits.
While we only have a handful of them right now, I've given them instructions on how to electroplate silver onto the metal to make it far more effective moving forward. They had made a few dozen of them, and the demons who live in the research compound were using them for walking to and from the city after the suns set. Of course, back on our island, they shone much more brightly due to the higher ambient mana. Here, however, they're effectiveness will probably be limited to preventing major injuries due to cliffs or similar hazards.
We're going to send out the first group of about 100 soldiers now, and once the landing boats are returned, we're going to move the ship a little ways, and repeat the process. None of the campsites seemed to be exceptionally large, so we aren't expecting large resistance from any singular location.
