Three days and just as many abominations later, the party was once again gathered in a room with the commanders of Fort Ixlay, with Sir August Marsten himself at the head of the gathering. All the fourth tiers in the fort were present, as they discussed their observations on the abominations they had faced over the past week.
“It’s the stitches,” pointed Nadine out to the gathered crowd. While the [Companions] and [Associates] technically possessed very high status due to their classes, most of them weren’t too comfortable with openly speaking in a meeting with so many senior commanders. The [Heroes] themselves naturally had no such discomfort. Neither had Nadine, due to her status as one of the Princesses of the Kingdom. “The parts where it looked as if the crazy [Necromancer] behind these abominations put together parts from different bodies. They’re notably weaker than any other part I’ve hit.”
“It is a weakness we have also noticed, but in the long run, at most it would help with disabling such an abomination. It would still be difficult to kill them quickly if we run into any of the large-type abominations like on the fourth and sixth day,” countered a fourth-tier warrior – the husband from the pair the party had fought with on the fourth day, in fact – as he shared his own opinion to the assembled group. “We must assume that since the [Necromancer] we faced had shown themselves capable of producing a new abomination every day, they might have created more beforehand and kept them nearby as guards.”
“Forget ‘might’, I’d say that’s pretty much a certainty, unless they’re stupid or something,” said Ethan with a shake of his head. “If the [Necromancers] of this world tend to walk the route of focusing on their summons like the stories in our world usually depicted, they themselves would be on the weak side, and any such person with a brain would likely keep some of their best creations to guard them at all times.”
“[Hero] Greene made a good point,” pointed out an old woman. The woman was the highest leveled person in the room, even if her class quality was on the low end. She was an [Eternal Soldier Lvl15], a veteran from the previous war like Sir Inolet and Sir Marsten. Her name was Violet, of Ruden Village, a commoner who had been a soldier for longer than most of the presently gathered people had been alive.
While she had a low rank in the army’s hierarchy, everyone respected her decades of experience and seniority, even if despite her high level she was actually one of the weaker fourth tiers within the room.
“If we intend to strike at this… [Necromancer Champion], we cannot afford to make a mistake, lest the plan falls apart. We have faced one abomination a day in the past week. On the assumption that our foe could create one a day, even if they had not created new ones here, they might have brought some from the previous battlefield with them. Horton, what do you think? You should be more knowledgeable about this topic than us, given your class.”
The man named by the old lady was Horton Karonis, the third son of a minor noble house in the Kingdom, who had made his name as a career soldier instead. He had a rather rare class of [Veteran Golemancer Lvl4], a subtype of the [Mage] class that he started specializing in since the third tier. His main skill was to create golems to fight in his stead, not too unlike what a [Necromancer] does, just with different material.
“Well, my class isn’t that high in rarity, so if we are indeed facing a [Champion], or worst case, a [Great Champion], even in the third tier their mana pool and regeneration would eclipse mine by a large amount. [Necromancers] are also known to be more efficient to boot, so with all that considered, I’d expect our foe to be able to create two abominations of the level we have faced so far every day, at the least,” he said with a grim look. “With the assumption that our foe kept those abominations close by for defense, and possibly with more from a previous battlefield, I think we should prepare ourselves to face at least ten, if not fifteen of creatures at that level.”
“If we put that together with the number of demon fourth tiers likely present in the demon’s camp, it would be a very close fight, assuming they haven’t fully replenished their losses from our previous ambush,” continued the man after some thought. “That said, I do not believe they have replenished those losses yet. Otherwise with all that power they should have had enough force to directly crush our defenses by this point.”
“We have received reports from our spies that there were apparently some disturbances amongst the demons’ supply lines,” announced Sir Marsten to everyone in the room. “Supposedly, three of their supply bases several days behind the frontlines had been attacked and razed to the ground in quick succession one after another. It is likely that they devoted some of their people to search for the ones responsible for those attacks.”
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“Those attacks aren’t our doing, then, sir?” asked Alissa with some doubt in her voice. Murmurs of agreement from others in the room followed her question. Everyone present in the room at that moment had the authority to know about relatively secret things like the existence of human spies and even a few covert strike teams in the demon territories, so the topic wasn’t something they couldn’t learn about.
“That is what has puzzled our strategists and tacticians as well. They swore that they hadn’t activated any of our few strike teams in the demon territories, and even then, only one such strike team was in that area’s vicinity,” replied Sir Marsten. “That strike team ended up having to lay low for their lives to avoid the demons that combed the area in search of the perpetrators, even, and besides, they didn’t even have the power to make such an attack on their own, so it was definitely not them.”
“Could it be infighting amongst the demons, then?” asked Joshua as he raised his hand, once more gaining murmurs of agreement from some of the gathered people. “I believe we were taught that the demons were not that united as a whole, and often fought amongst themselves. Could this be a case like that?”
“We have considered the possibility, but deemed it unlikely. While the demons were often fractious and regularly fought amongst themselves, they always worked together with one another, all bad blood put aside, when war between us and them begins,” replied Sir Marsten with a shake of his head. “Even when they were at their most confident in the past, when they had taken more of the Kingdom’s land than now, they never showed any case of infighting during the wars, so it’s possible, but not likely at all.”
“Either way, the situation is a beneficial one to us, and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth,” continued Sir Marsten. “We have also discussed the possibility of the demons staging those attacks to feign weakness, but considered it low in plausibility. For one, they too would know how implausible those attacks looked to us, so we doubt they’d try to fool us that way.”
More murmurs filled the air of the room as the fort’s many fourth tiers – by definition also the commanders in charge even if their ranks stated otherwise – talked to one another and discussed the odd situation on the demons’ side. Some were still worried that it might have been a trap, while some others claimed that it might be an omen from the Gods that it was the right time to strike down their ancestral foes. Naturally, the two sides couldn’t come to any agreement even after a long discussion.
“Enough!” shouted Sir Marsten over the din. “I have heard and considered your worries, but I, along with the rest of the strategists, believe that this situation remains an opportunity for us. If we manage to capture one of the demon [Champions] this early in the war, it would greatly boost morale and could likely tilt the situation to benefit our Kingdom, so we aren’t going to let this chance pass us by due to excessive caution.”
The murmurs died out at Sir Marsten’s words, with most of the room nodding in agreement. A few of the cautious fourth tiers still looked unsatisfied, but held their words. They understood the logic of the old knight’s argument, and couldn’t fault it. He was right, after all. Even if it was a trap and they knew of it, if there was truly a chance to capture a demon [Champion] so early in the war, it was one they must take.
“We have decided that we will make the attempt tomorrow. Everyone here will participate. We will hide ourselves amongst the soldiers and allow the battle to proceed as normal at first to lull the demons into a false sense of safety before we make our strike,” said the old knight right afterwards. “Our objective is the demon [Champion]. Their capture takes main priority, but should the target manage to kill themselves, everyone must be prepared for an immediate retreat. Ideally we should break our way through the demon camp and back out before they could react.”
“Should the mission prove to be a failure, the safety of the [Heroes] are paramount. We cannot afford to let any of them get captured. Should that happen, even if you had to sacrifice your lives to do it, make certain that the demons would not capture them alive,” added the old knight, to the grim nods of everyone present.
Alissa naturally felt the weight on her shoulders, that people would sacrifice their lives just to allow her to [Respawn] in safety back in the fort. That said, she also understood the difficulty of the mission. It was always harder to capture something alive compared to killing them, and their opponent played under the same rules. They could and likely would kill themselves just to avoid capture. Preventing that was the hardest part of the mission.
In theory, if they managed to strike fast and hard enough to the point that the enemy [Champion] failed to react on time, they could do it. It was a slim chance, but it was that sliver of opportunity that the fort’s defenders chose to gamble on. Quietly, she whispered to Ethan, asking him whether it was a wise thing to make such a gamble so early in the war.
He replied equally quietly that it was because this was an opportunity that allowed them to affect the entire course of the war from so early on that they likely made the gamble. He made an analogy to someone seeing an opportunity to take the opponent’s queen on the third turn while playing chess, which Alissa felt was probably not too bad as analogies went.
Still, she pointed out that losing a queen on the third round would be an acceptable gambit if it meant gaining a checkmate on the fourth turn.
As it was, their party would join the operation in their full capacity. Their presence practically meant that the garrison at Fort Ixlay possessed a dozen more combatants who could fight at the level of a fourth tier, and if the lookalikes had done their job well enough, the demons wouldn’t have an idea whether it was truly them at Fort Ixlay at the moment or just another group of such lookalikes.
Or whether all three groups were all lookalikes while the real [Heroes]’ party had already left for another location where they could strike at the unprepared demons. All those were possibilities that the demons had to consider during this war. The way they had their [Champions] act individually rather than together seemed to hint that they fell into the ploy, though it might also be an act of confidence as they had more manpower than the humans.
Still, only time will tell whether this cast of the die will prove to be one that favored the humans or the demons.