Harem Legion: Queens of the Apocalypse-Chapter 74 The Promised Place Is Gone

Where’s the Ice Regiment?

Magnus leapt from the truck, staring in disbelief at the ruins of the lumber mill. Then he charged in, frantically digging with his bare hands -

One corpse after another. Female Ice Regiment fighters, torn and broken.

Familiar signs - motorcycle helmets, shovels, flaming torches, modified nail guns...

The customized sleeper bus. The water truck. The SUVs. Refrigerated vans...

He couldn’t believe it. Magnus roared in fury, clutching an assault rifle and blindly firing at the surrounding abominations.

Is this how it ends?! The Ice Regiment I built with my own hands - gone, just like that?!

After who-knew-how-long, his strength gave out. He dropped onto a piece of charred lumber, pulled out a cigarette and lit it with trembling fingers. His throat was so raw he couldn’t speak a word. He tilted his head back and stared at the stars.

No... the Ice Regiment wasn’t wiped out - not completely.

The cigarette helped clear his head. Magnus grabbed his flashlight and meticulously searched through the wreckage.

Only one sleeper bus was destroyed. Three modified SUVs. A single refrigerated truck. One fire truck. As for the bodies -

He counted about a few dozen Ice Regiment corpses. Some dead were clearly villagers. Others looked like soldiers.

That meant... the loss wasn’t total.

Then he spotted a section still smoking. Burned timber, still warm. This happened recently - within a day.

Remembering the fallback rendezvous he arranged with Emily and the others, Magnus pulled himself together and sprinted back to the Humvee. Sunvale Village - in case they ever got separated or couldn’t return to the lumber mill, that was the backup point.

*****

Ironvale County sat between Springvale City and Rockford City. A county with 430,000 souls. And just outside it, in Sunvale Village, the remnants of the Ice Regiment had regrouped.

Inside the battered sleeper bus, Emily, Sophia, and the others looked drained, covered in grime. Sophia yanked off her helmet with a gasp. A chunk of hair was tangled in it. She ripped it free, wincing in pain, her expression twisted.

"Liana! Got the numbers? How bad was it?"

Liana bit her lip, eyes red. "Lost one hundred and fifty-three fighters. A sleeper bus down. Five-ton fuel tanker - gone. The fire truck too..."

Since Magnus’s departure, the Ice Regiment lost over a third of its force - more than two hundred wounded or dead. Now only 399 remained. That included over twenty seriously injured.

The main cause - bombers from the Seventh Sovereign Vanguard.

"Bastards!" Sophia cursed, slamming a map down. "Charlotte, with me! Check the damn coordinates for the Ironvale fallout shelter. We move everyone there tonight."

It was nestled between Ironvale County and Springvale, but Charlotte and Sophia only had a rough idea of its location - they’d never been there.

"But..." Sarah leapt to her feet, panic written all over her. "This is the meetup point with Magnus! If we leave now, how will he ever find us?"

"Sarah! Your precious Magnus is dead!" Sophia spun on her, voice like a whip. "You think he’d still be alive?! If we hadn’t waited for him, do you think we’d have lost so many sisters today?! Sarah! Emily! Grace! This is on you too!" 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Sophia shouted at the three of them, "Get your heads straight, all of you! Stop acting like lovesick fools! Your man is dead! And if he’s not, who knows where the hell he’s fooling around right now! Snap out of it already!"

Emily suddenly stood up, voice cold, "Sophia, I’ve had enough of your crap. Let me ask you straight - without Magnus, would this team even exist? Without him, would you have ever seen your sister again? Let’s be real here - every single one of us is alive because of him. Without Magnus, even if we’d made it to that shelter, we wouldn’t have lasted a week. If the army rolls a damn tank to the door, what’s your plan then?"

"You..." Sophia flinched, stepping back, hitting the bunk’s iron frame with her back. She clenched her jaw and forced herself to stay tough. "He helped us - helped Grace - because he’s a pervert! He’s been eyeing us from the start! You two - I caught you right in the act!"

Emily scoffed, "Now? You’re bringing this up now? And even if he was some pervert, wouldn’t your precious sister have been his first target by now? Maybe she’d eat him alive instead."

"Shut your damn mouth, Emily!" Grace jumped down from the top bunk, furious Emily dragged her name into it.

Emily shot back, "Shut up? For what? Don’t act like you weren’t ready to spread your legs and screaming ’welcome aboard.’ What, am I lying?"

Before the shouting could go on, a storm of gunfire echoed from outside the truck. All the women’s expressions shifted in an instant. Sophia cursed loudly, "Liana, get me a Metal Crystal! I’ll check it out!"

*****

It had been over two weeks since the world fell apart. The fifteenth day was always a breaking point for survivors. No water, no power - the food they’d stored was running out. And more importantly, most had given up hope on getting rescued.

By now, nearly everyone understood - no one was coming to save them. Waiting at home was just waiting to die.

Across Northreach Province - and all of Sinovar - survivors had started heading out, desperately looking for safe zones or refugee camps.

Springvale City was no exception. Especially the road to Rockford. There, the 21st Division of the Seventh Vanguard had already run out of supplies, and more than ten thousand soldiers had turned rogue. Hundreds of armed groups, big and small, were roaming the roads looking for food, water, any chance of staying alive.

With the chaos, plus tens of thousands of desperate civilians, came the rise of small militias - some fifty, others a few hundred strong. On the road between Springvale and Rockford alone, there were already hundreds of such bands.

Even in Magnus’s past life, before the second meteor shower, the area north of Springvale was crawling with these groups - every village was taken.

Now, Magnus sped toward Ironvale County. In just two hours, he’d run into two waves of rogue troops. Alongside Emma and Abigail - both also second-phase Awakened - they poured Metal Crystals, jumped out, and took down over a hundred enemies. They seized five military jeeps, packed full of weapons.

He was less than a kilometer from Sunvale Village - his agreed rendezvous with Emily and the others. Another 700 meters down the road, gunfire cracked through the air again. Magnus snapped his head forward - something was going down.