Chapter 4: Progress and Reunion

I'll be honest I just realised how massive this story is going to be. I think I just made it 10 times harder by having three different countries but what's done is done so here we go.

Also, we have a discord server!

https://discord.gg/Ck5ANpCH

This chapter is a bit short but bear with me, I need a break from all the action. Chapters will be edited over time.

Day 1- Spring - Central Command Boardroom- New Fort Bragg

Sergeant Maxim

Maxim massaged his temples as the other's in the boardroom were under similar stress. It had only been one day since they had gotten here, yet they had already gotten into a battle and had met a king as well as their heirs.

The board room was in a rather pristine condition since the holidays had temporarily put a stop to the mass meetings that happened there. It had the standard projector and tables, only one of which had people seated.

"How, HOW do we get into so much trouble on the first day of being here!?"

Ben sighed, putting both hands up in a surrender position.

"I think having our whole base get teleported into a world that has killer beasts and a worldwide war is enough to do that sir."

Simon waved his hand

"Sir, I think we should just get on with the meeting. We did a lot of tests of our equipment and found some… interesting things to say the least"

Around the table directly in front of the projector sat

Sergeant Maxim, effectively the commander-in-chief of new Fort Bragg.

Private Ben, who had an extensive knowledge about fantasy tropes and isekai.

Corporal James, who was now in charge of handling the barracks and troops.

Specialist Simon, who took inventory of the weapons and machinery they had.

And Corporal Albert, the newly appointed head surgeon and Military hospital head.

Simon stepped up in front of the projector before turning it on, showing a whole ass powerpoint projecting.

"....Simon, when did you have time to do this?"

"An hour ago sir. Anyways let's go on to the basics, we all know that we were transported here by unknown/divine means."

They all nodded at this obvious fact, so Simon continued.

"We don't know the science behind this but as we can see now, the electricity is working even when we supposedly left earth. There are no transmission towers here and yet we can use it just fine."

This wasn't anything new to them. It was initially a shock (mind the pun) as many of them had attempted to use the military facilities' electronics expecting them to not work. The fact that the lights were still on and the projector in front of them was clear evidence that it was still working.

"The only conclusion I could come up with was when we changed planets or maybe even dimensions, everything in this base was teleported just the way it is with no difference. This defies logic but it is in fact creating matter from nothing at this point"

Simon then clicked to change the slides, showing pictures taken of the weapons storage and the vehicle bay and runway.

"As you can see, we have many of our weapons still here. We have a few Barrett M82A1's, Mossberg 500/590 shotguns, as well as many different heavy machine guns, mortars, and rocket weapons. The problem is that only a portion of our soldiers know how to use mortars and we barely have anyone who can snipe."

At this he took out a laser pointer and shined it towards the pictures of the vehicle bays.

"We have a large amount of humvees as well as the new LAV-25's we got as well. I think that many of these don't belong to the 82nd, but other corps as well."

He shined his light at a particular vehicle with the same color as a humvee but was armored with sloped armor and had a large turret on top.

"This, as most of us know, is an M1 Abrams. Nobody here knows how to use it or have even touched it because , pardon me, we aren't a fucking tank brigade. We drive lightly armored vehicles, and now we have Bradley fighting vehicles along with 5 of these things !"

Maxim winced at the loud outburst

"Alright Simon we get it, just...chill out "

"There are too few of them, so for now we are just leaving them where they are. Now we've got the planes in our inventory."

The 82nd airborne had airborne in their names for a reason. They had pilots among their ranks, junior pilots sure, but they could still fly a plane just fine.

"We have the C-17 Globemasters that were previously stationed here for training and we have a multitude of Chinooks, Blackhawks, and Apache attack helicopters that we regularly use."

As he finished, Simon sat down. This prompted the newly invited corporal Albert to stand up.

"Yes Sergeant..uh Maxim. No major injuries have happened so far and we are more than stocked for the future problems of at least two years. The problem we're currently seeing is that as we know, there is an immense number of MRE's that we have here. They won't expire and could provide for us for a few decades but the problem is that MRE's cause….a lot of problems if we eat them for too long."

Everyone in the room had lived off of MRE's for days before, and their previous lunch had been MRE's as well. This was quite normal, but none of them had eaten MRE's for an extended period of time, even when they were overseas whenever they could they would buy from local vendors or markets.

" The preservatives cause many problems, diaherra would be the least of our concerns. It could probably kill us before the enemies killed us if we ate them for the next two weeks from the lack of freshness and high calorie count. The hospital has limited vitamin tablets so we need to get fresh food, FAST, or even magic can't fix our toilets"

"....this is starting to sound worse the longer it drags on. Alright James, hit me"

"Alright, so I took a look at some of our other resources as well. I just need to say it now, WE HAVE OIL! We won't run out anytime soon. This base's POL was meant to provide for hundreds of thousands soldiers, not 2000 people. We have enough oil to run all the vehicles and more!"

Ben thrust both his arms in the air.

"WOOOOOO!!!!" (It's a joke don't flame me plz)

"....anyways that gas isn't going to last forever. Gas has a maximum lifespan of 12 months so we need to find an alternative. Now on to something else. According to what our stationed guards have spotted, there are many civilian buildings outside New Fort Bragg so I believe that we should have some guys go look for any civilians there."

Maxim thought back to the building he had seen when he delivered the injured prince Gawain and princess Elenoir

...I wonder if Eddie's there. I could do with a few shots after all of this.

"And this brings me to this!"

James slammed a picture on the table facing towards Maxim. The others peered over his shoulders as he squinted at the picture.

It was a picture of New Fort Bragg, the area noticeably smaller than what it was pre-Isekai but it was still very large.

"Sir, this is a satellite picture."

"....What?"

"A few of our military satellites got sent with us sir. We've managed to connect with three so far and these pictures were sent here"

He put more pictures on the table, some of these pictures were of what looked to be the kingdoms with their castles and buildings. Outside of them there were more fortifications, which meant there really was a large-scale war going on.

"I'd like to bring your attention to this picture"

James pulled a picture from the pile, taken from south of where New Fort Bragg was.

Maxim pointed to the picture, which showed a large military base that looked a bit like New Fort Bragg.

"Why are you showing us New Fort Bragg again?"

"Sir...that's not Fort Bragg. That's a different military base."

Maxim held the pictures next to each other, the unknown military base was larger than Fort Bragg. It also had a larger airstrip and even had what looked like highways going through the base.

" Do we know anything about them?"

"Negative sir, we've tried U.S radio frequencies to no effect. We'll test international frequencies tomorrow."

Maxim tore his gaze off of the picture, looking at it worried him. If others had modern weapons then this could either be a great help or could start another war.

"Alright, well everybody here needs to get a good night's rest. There will be rotating sentry duty but that won't involve us. Meeting adjourned"

(May have been kinda boring but provided insight to what's going on)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Day 2- Spring- New Fort Bragg

"Alright rise and shine guys, we've got work to do!"

The weather was still cold, with frost covering much of the grass and plants that surrounded the base but that wasn't going to stop them.

New Fort Bragg was scrambling with activity, everybody had been on edge during the first night but quickly fell asleep despite everything. The morning started with the familiar low rumbling of the Humvees as they headed out to do their patrols around the base.

Maxim got dressed in his regular combat uniform before heading out of his barracks. He had just been out chilling with the guys the previous night, and now he was somehow in charge of the whole, despite quite smaller, population of Fort Bragg.

He knew his duties even without his superiors being here to say them, his mission first and foremost was to ensure the safety of everyone here. This meant that he wasn't allowed to send them out unless they had a clear plan and goal.

Maxim thought about this while he was eating his daily MRE in the mess hall, scarfing down the meal like the rest of his men. He bit down on his filled French Toast, filling himself up quickly before brushing the crumbs off.

According to the sentries, nobody had come close to our base as of yet.

Maxim remained mindful that they hadn't secured a perimeter around the base yet, which meant that they were susceptible to attacks. The roaming humvees were there to ensure temporary security, but soon enough it'll be insufficient if threats really got large. They had to go check on the civilian residences and ensure a foothold.

"Sergeant Maxim"

Maxim turned to see James, who was now officially in charge of human resources and strategy. Maxim had assigned them official roles after seeing their effectiveness, and now they were the ones overseeing operations.

"The troops are ready to look through the civilian area, five humvees with supplies have been loaded up in case there are any residents"

"Alright, let's head out then"

The humvees generally held 5 people each, so this meant that there were around 25 soldiers fitted in the humvees as they left.

Maxim got in the driver's seat this time, and Ben in the shotgun seat.

"Ben, consider the area a green zone so keep your weapons on safe until you hear something that convinces you otherwise."

"Sarge, WHOA- can you drive a bit slower?"

The smooth roads back home were a godsend compared to the off terrain path they were taking now. They definitely needed to have a proper path created in the future to allow ease of transport.

As they sped through the open plains, they started to near the edge of the forest again. Suddenly, without warning, Maxim broke off from the main group of humvees heading towards the large residential houses and headed straight to what looked like the previous shopping and entertainment district.

"Sir!? Where are we going, I thought we were going that way!?"

"Sorry kid, I've gotta make a personal stop here"

Maxim put the car to a halt outside a building with the large letters Mike's Pub in clear, white print at the store front.

Maxim opened the door and got out, keeping the engine on

"This'll just take a minute, I just have to see if my old friend's here"

It was only a few days ago that he had partied like there wasn't a tomorrow but it felt like an eternity since he saw this place.

The outer wooden beams and windows were still in pristine condition, and although being near the forest had caused quite a few leaves to stick to the roof it wasn't anything a good hose down couldn't fix.

He peered through the windows to see a man sweeping the floor of the homey pub. The hardwood floors with the long wooden bar always felt like home to him, with confirmation he entered the pub with the bells above the door signalling his arrival.

The man paused momentarily before turning towards Maxim

"Eddie!"

Eddie cracked a grin at Maxim

"You bastard! I thought for sure you were gone after most of the town got screwed over! C'mere I'll fix up a drink for you."

"Maybe later Eddie, I've got a recon mission to do right now and I gotta drive. You still got enough drinks here?"

Eddie walked towards the cabinets in the back of the bar and opened one. He saw bottles of many different types, whiskey, vodka, wine, and all kinds of other drinks just stacked there.

"We just got a huge shipment the day before you guys came to the party. Don't worry about it, we're fine for a long while, we're still missing food though but we've managed with what we have so far."

Maxim smiled, being here made him feel like they hadn't even left. Maxim suddenly remembered their mission.

He started heading towards the door before waving back at Eddie

"We have a ton of MRE's in our humvees that we were going to give out. You should head to the town square, all the others are there right now."

"Got it, I'll get there after I have our inventory sorted."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Corporal James P.O.V

"Corporal James, we've got a situation right now!"

"We've been here for less than a day, what the hell type of situation do we have?"

James and the rest of the soldiers had started unloading the MRE's and other necessities off their humvee's. Although they still had water and electricity, other necessities such as food were running out.

With everything said, there were only a small number of people here. There were around 500 people situated here despite the hundreds of lodges and houses that were unused.

"Sir, there's a group of people coming towards us. Six horses with what looks like a wagon carried by two of them.

James pulled out his binoculars and climbed on top of the Humvee, in the distance he saw what the private had said. There were indeed a small number of people on horses that were carrying two large wagons.

"Don't they look like they're heading this way on purpose?"

"Alright, three of you come with me. We need to find out what's going on."

James pulled three of the privates aside as they as well walked towards the approaching group.

They were only around half a mile away so they started rapidly approaching each other. The privates had their weapons drawn and pointed at the group, who had stopped their horses. Three men jumped down from their horses, two of them in what looked like leather armor while the other wore what looked like a cotton shirt with a tunic over it dyed a bright green and red.

"*****, ### ### ### ##### #####?"

James looked at the men behind him, who all wore a confused expression.

"Dude, I can't understand what you're saying at all. However, behind us is U.S territory so you need a good reason to go in because there are military operations going on."

The man in the tunic looked like he had a moment of realisation, before he motioned to the man beside him who brought out a scroll from behind him. He opened it and the letters started to float off of the page and in the air.

At this point the four soldiers had readied their weapons at them, in case this was some magic attack they would fire at them the moment they attacked.

"Hold it private, wait until they do something. They aren't necessarily the enemy here."

It was however suspicious that they were arriving at this time of day. The sun was already starting to set, and James needed to leave soon for their dinner meeting.

The glowing words in the air dissipated, along with the scroll before the man started to talk again.

"Hello my good sir! We were just a travelling merchant group that happened to see this elaborate town by accident. As a merchant, it felt like my duty to introduce myself to the folks here and see if I could make relations here.

James looked at him suspiciously, still confused on why he was suddenly able to speak English, he shook his head

Magic I guess

"That's great and all, but behind us is the territory of the United States of America. You cannot enter, at least until the large-scale military operations have ceased"

"Oh! My apologies. I wasn't aware that there was another country's border here. Well, since your out here, why don't you take a look at my wares?"

He looked back at the men behind him, who shrugged.

This guy seems suspicious, but then again so do most businessmen. I don't think the sergeant will be too mad at me...

"...I guess I'll take a look"

James headed over with the three others in tow, watching intently at the two others standing besides the merchant. They had long spears across their back and scabbards attached to their waste, likely guards.

James peered over to see a multitude of items. He saw rugged ink bottles, an assortment of dried meats, fruits, and fish as well as multi-colored spices. There were many rough metal sickles and hammers.

One thing caught his eye however, the pile of scrolls in the corner. He had just seen the man use a scroll to talk to them.

"What scroll did you use to talk to me?"

" Ah, that would be the translation scroll. Allows you to understand any language but it only works if the unknown language speaker is speaking to you. These are quite expensive though."

As he explained it, he took one of the scrolls bound by a red ribbon and held it in one hand for James to see.

While he was explaining it, just one thought ran through James's mind

I have to get those scrolls.