The next team was led by Luis and Drake, taking the rear areas, and they were still doing their best to get through to the walls.
Although Althea couldn't make System announcements as this wasn't her territory, she could still send them through aether letters. However, she opted not to do so after a few moments of thought, even if it risked winning the war prematurely.
She didn't ask anyone to slow down their pace because she couldn't risk lives just to get the token. In the worst-case scenario, they'd just have to prevent him from gathering strength for revenge by barraging him with wars until they get it.
This was why all three teams were still going strong, barrelling towards the walls as fast as they safely could.
It was fortunate that this place was basically a maze. The widest street was 3 meters wide and the rest were super narrow and the wayfinding was rarely straightforward. Worse, the pathways near the various shanty areas were just as wide as one person to go through at a time.
However, while Luis' team was small enough to traverse and avoid most of the chaos, they did encounter conflict. Fortunately, Luis and Drake were there to deal with relatively stronger enemies, assisted by the others through guerilla tactics, among many other things.
Another convenient aspect of this place was that anyone who was taking advantage of Fargo's power was all in the interior territory. That was to say: Every citizen here was victimized to some degree and abhorred Fargo and his men to death… and they would do what they could to bring them down.
The amount of assistance they received was mild but they never lacked it during this time. For example, when a group of guards was nearing where they were, someone would make a cheesy bird sound to warn them.
Their only gripe was that the places—especially the narrow alleyways—were disgusting. Shanty houses were all manually built and had no toilets. For those who couldn't be bothered to even make a chamberpot—unlike proper, well-raised, modern Terrans—where would they throw their stuff?
In public places of course!
There was also the frenemies Troy and Fred on this team, so it wasn't easy to be low-key with these two bantering all the time. Imagine someone suddenly bursting into cackles when the other one accidentally stepped on shit.
Fortunately for them, the duo did work nicely when it was time to fight, which was why they were placed in the same team in the first place.
Anyway, after some sneaky traveling, they eventually found the spot Santos and Leon mentioned (via aether letter) to be a good place to enter through.
They picked it for various reasons. One, it was naturally a spot where the sparse sentries wouldn't reach. Second, it was on a slight incline so they were a bit harder to spot compared to being in the depressed area. They would also be able to see if there were battlement guards who spotted them and therefore be able to react aptly.
Although a few battlement guards were kept in other areas, they were definitely not as dense as Fargo would've preferred. This would allow them to deal with the enemies they encountered as low-key as they could.
Finally, the spot was directly opposite to where Miss Althea and the others entered. This meant that they had very little chance of encountering guards (at least on the interior) at all!
They settled down under it and immediately crafted their 'stairs'. The earth users they had in this team weren't particularly amazing, so they opted on them just handling small boulders each.
They would then tie sturdy ropes on each of the rocks to serve as weights. The ropes were quite sturdy. Every guard and many citizens had lots of sturdy coated ropes, as instructed by Garan. This was something inspired by what happened in Guia with the goblins.
In any case, the two earth users coordinated well with their limited capacities, lifting the rocks over the 3-meter wall, creating a nice little ladder for them.
It was stable enough to support one or two persons at a time, and their people had started to sneak inside in hopes of contributing to the numbers. Based on what had been reported via aether letters, the other two teams had yet to traverse the wall.
Every one of them counted in this war, and there was no time to waste!
One by one they entered, with Luis standing on the wall to guard in case people would come from the battlements or below it. Drake was also on the foot of the ladder, prepared to face whatever could block their way.
While it was relatively smooth sailing the first few minutes, their movements still alarmed guards in the end. Despite the ladder being made of camouflage colors, it was hard to miss a consistent line of people jumping down the wall from the other side.
A couple of battlement guards soon found them, yelling at the top of their lungs to alert the guards nearby.
"ENEMIES!! ENEMIES!!!"
They yelled at the top of their lungs, though they didn't dare attack head-on, allowing a few more Alterans to go through. Luis had been aware of the Fargo guards' cowardice and took advantage, throwing a ball of fire in a direction, making the guard scream.
Obviously, they wouldn't bother sacrificing themselves for Fargo, so they were waiting for more allies to deal with them.
Fortunately, the enemies' communications were still very archaic and there weren't a lot of them alerted.
However, even if there were only a few dozen enemies that arrived, it had to be noted that Luis' team was predominantly on the other side already, so those left behind had to deal with the newcomers.
Luis narrowed his eyes, but he wasn't too worried.
After all, for three months, he had handled strong monsters. What could these humans with lower levels do to him?