The leader of the living soldiers cradled his head within his palms, absolutely horrified and beyond disappointed at how poorly he and the units under his command were and had performed since the very start of their mission, the only thing that had gone well was finding a hideout and from there, it had only gotten worse and worse.
Sure, there were plenty of things they had managed to accomplish properly, but their main mission, the core of their presence here had not advanced at all, they had repeatedly and utterly failed to infiltrate the towns or towers of the enemy, never even managing to get through their strange barrier of light, moreover troops that were sent out to patrol would rarely even show back up, and if they did, never would they bring news of victory or anything good like that.
Honestly, the leader did not know how he had not been demoted from his position already, sitting before one of those glass things, it could project the sight of many surveillance items that had been hidden in many places, they tended to eventually get found and destroyed, but the information that could gathered thanks to them was invaluable, the way they worked made it difficult for them to be discovered quickly.
So perhaps this was why he remained the leader, he had indeed managed to plant tools of surveillance and gathered much intel even if none of his soldiers had ever been capable of properly entering what lay beyond the great barrier.
And also proven himself capable of leading a variety of troops, the regular soldiers respected him greatly, his personal strength, whilst far from being even remotely stellar, had been acknowledged by the 'forcoids' placed under his command, as the powerful livings from Lord Herlbe's assigned realm were now called.
He could even deal with the many sorts of beasts, monsters and other puppet-looking persons that would often emerge from the portal, of course, he tended to just put it all on the fact that they were already made loyal to the undead regime, but still, an innate talent at leadership was still within him and his undeads rulers as well as fellow living soldiers had already recognised it.
'I have to succeed… But how can the barrier be bypassed? I have already tried to find a weakness or even anything remotely exploitable and failed to find anything…' leaning back in his seat, he suddenly stood up and moved around the room to other images being projected upon dark glass, this place was like a miniature, less refined Cognitio, he had managed to pick up on how this all functioned very well and had thus been granted more equipment as time went by, having gone as far as to set up his living quarters in this very room to monitor things as much as possible.
Unfortunately, he was not an undead just yet, he had to sleep and his attention wasn't all-grasping, it was probably that he was missing elements and intel every single day.
'Maybe finding solutions to other issues could help me see more clearly?' he wondered to himself, the list of problems the living soldiers encountered was rather lengthy, one of them being that even without counting the emeraldfolks and inhabitants, the local flora and fauna was already too much for them to handle.
The creatures of the Emerald Realm were awfully powerful, cunning, swift and such, even their equivalent of rabbits could raze them all to the ground as they seemed to have the disturbing ability to charge as a group, resembling flowing water arranged into a brutal tide, leaving only bloody messes covered in thousands of bites in their wake.
Some other beasts were such incredible predators that it wasn't surprising that some people of this realm would worship them, even groups of forcoid could not bring down some of them.
'Urgh…' he didn't see anything that could be done, they could only try to learn the behaviour of those creatures and such, but the difference in power was startling, simply too wide to be breached by some fancy tactics and numbers.
After pacing around for a dozen of minutes, he slumped back in his chair, turning his attention back to the images being shown, some of them could provide sight beyond the barrier and into the towers and towns of this realm's people, they did not appear too worried, he could not recognised looks of worry upon their faces or spot signs of it in their body language, they were not afraid.
'Dammit!' he brought his fist down on the desk before him 'We are in service to the great undead empire! How can we fail so badly?!'
The equipment jumped up ever so slightly under the force of his strike, as though startled by the sudden outburst of rage.
'I need to find a solution and fast, otherwise-' his thoughts came to a halt as the sound of someone entering the room reached his ears.
"Is something the matter?" he asked, one of his brows rising up in confusion as what followed was the door being shut down and then the key turning inside the lock.
"Leader Irtop, I have been sensing that you seemed stressed lately, such emotions aren't conducive to our mission so I wanted to ask if everything was alright" as often, it was the voice of the female soldier who had entered the realm with him the first time that greeted him.
"Ayelah… I am fine, there is no need to worry…"
"Sir, you shouldn't put yourself under such scrutiny, our undead leaders seem satisfied with your performances"
"I know, but there is no hiding the fact that our main objective has remained stagnant since the very beginning"
"Perhaps they deem it impossible to fulfil under the current conditions?"
Irtop did not reply to that, still staring at the images before him, his attention only diverted when he heard something be unclasped.
"Leader, I just so happen to know a way for you to get rid of all that stress…"
He spun around on his seat to see her taking off her mask and helm, revealing her slightly tan complexion and pointy elven ears.
"I am not sure that I follow" he said, despite clearly getting it.
Next, it was the chestplate and all the other bits of armour that came off, the leader just watching in silence.
Of course, it did not end there as she rid herself of all possible additional weight and walking up to him.
"This isn't appropriate, we can't- We can not let our living nature speak as soldiers of the empire…"
"Neither should we allow our emotions to get the best of us, Leader Irtop, we are simply going to solve that problem"
He swallowed his saliva, Ayelah, taking his own mask off as she climbed onto his lap.
"...Makes sense, I suppose…"