“Enter,” said the old voice – now sounding more chipper than Alissa ever recalled hearing – from within the tent. Alissa entered the large tent that temporarily served as the new fort’s command center to find both Sir Inolet and Sir Marsten seated next to a large map of the surrounding area, the two old knights seemingly pondering the situation presented on the map by way of a multitude of tokens placed on it.
Three days had passed since their victory and the former demon encampment had changed to an unrecognizable degree already. Groups of engineers from Fort Ixlay had already created the foundations of what would later be a new fort in the location, and were just waiting on more engineers to be sent from the back lines to set up the walls.
Unlike what Alissa would have expected, the construction focused entirely on the defenses of the new fort to be, instead of amenities for the people living inside it, other than some basic needs like latrine pits and the like. The people who lived in the fort lived inside tents and the few structures the demons had left behind, at least the ones that weren’t damaged too badly from the fighting.
Not even the high-ranked commanders were exempt from this, though as the [Heroes] Alissa and the rest of her party were assigned a few of the remaining buildings which were in better shape as their place of rest. It was clearly a favorable treatment compared to most everybody else, but none of the rank and file seemed to begrudge them the favoritism.
“Nadine said you asked for me, Sirs?” asked Alissa after she stepped into the tent. Most of the base’s current inhabitants had been busy one way or another in the past few days. She herself – along with the rest of her party – had helped out with the construction efforts, and while the camp would be turned into a fort soon, they still erected wooden palisades for the time being that encircled the entire area.
“Yes, we did,” replied Sir Marsten, still looking rather comical with the tiny bit of fuzzy hair that had regrown on his head after his close encounter with the demon [Champion]’s explosion just days ago. The old grizzled knight then gestured towards the map on the table and invited Alissa to peruse it, which she did, though she remained standing as there was no extra seating around the table. “Tell me, Miss O’Connor, what do you see when you look at the situation on the map before you?”
Alissa took a glance at the two old knights first before she turned her eyes towards the map. Sir Inolet seemed to be hiding a smile behind his hand, and had a look of confidence tinged with amusement on his features. On the other hand, Sir Marsten looked as if he had given up on something, yet with a look full of hope as his eyes turned to Alissa.
As for the map itself, she was familiar enough with the notations used in this world already, and knew that it depicted the eastern half of the frontline between the humans and demons. She was similarly familiar enough with the tokens used to represent military units and what they meant, so the picture presented by the map quickly translated itself in her mind into the overall situation on the eastern front.
She immediately noticed that many of the human positions were notably further ahead – often encroaching into formerly demon-held territories – compared to before. It had only been three days since their victory in the far east end of the area depicted by the map, and she knew that even with the fastest courier available to the military it would have taken at least half a day for the news to spread over the front.
Similarly any news they received would likely be half to a full day out of date, which meant that the positions she was looking at were from the day before. Based on that, she quickly came to a conclusion from the information available to her.
“A successful coordinated push along the eastern front within the last two days? Probably after news of our victory had spread out?” she asked, earning herself a satisfied nod from Sir Inolet and a sigh of relief from Sir Marsten. “Considering the delays for communication… they must have initiated the push the day after we won here then I assume?”
“Good observation,” praised Sir Marsten. “I know they didn’t exactly teach you [Heroes] that much about army tactics and strategy since that’s not what you’re meant for, but it still annoys me greatly that out of your entire party only three people, including you, managed to note such nuances from the situation on the map.”
“Only three?” asked Alissa with some surprise.
“You, Mister Greene, and Her Royal Highness the Fifth Princess,” replied Sir Marsten with a shake of his head, while Sir Inolet just openly laughed at him from across the table. “I didn’t expect much from the temple kids. They only ever get scriptures and dogmas crammed into their heads other than their skills and whatnot, and as for the maid and the guard, I hadn’t expected them to be well versed in this field either,” he explained.
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“But for a noble scion and a confidant of a prince to have no such knowledge is just inexcusable! What the hell have those brainless idiots back in the capital been teaching their young!?” yelled Sir Marsten as he continued his tirade. “And they blame us old folk when things go poorly at the front lines while they pamper and fail to educate their young! Bloody self-serving assholes…”
“Do excuse old Marsten,” said Sir Inolet while still chuckling in amusement at his fellow old knight’s ranting and tirades. “He has never been happy with how the Kingdom has been preparing for the next war despite how we had been losing the last three wars to date. He was always of the opinion that we should have implemented much harder and stricter training programs, especially for the youths, nobility or otherwise.”
“You know it yourself, Inolet!” yelled Sir Marsten from across the table. “The youth these days are mostly pampered flowers who knew of no world outside the garden they were raised in! Did you even see the face that young de Jardine made when we were cleaning up the corpses!? He looked as if he was about to vomit at the sight while in dismay at being made to do a job that was beneath him at the same time!”
“Point taken,” replied Sir Inolet nonchalantly at his old friend’s tirade. “Anyway, Miss O’Connor, did you happen to notice anything else about the situation on the map? Something outside what you have already said thus far.”
“The west end didn’t seem to be making much if any progress,” replied Alissa almost immediately to the question. “I’m not too familiar with the situation further west, but wasn’t that where the other two [Champions] had been spotted at last?”
“Correct, and now it’s all three, actually. We received reports of another possible [Champion] present during the assault on this base,” said Sir Inolet as he pointed towards a demon base far on the western end of the map using a stick. “They also reported the demons present there to be fielding an elite strike force with artifact weapons and armor of a style not seen before.”
“Weapons and armor of an unknown style? Is it possible that the [Champion] is a craftsman of some sort then?” asked Alissa in turn with some surprise. She had thought that [Heroes]and [Champions] would mostly be of a combative bent, so she hadn’t really expected a craftsman to be one. Even the history books she had read hadn’t noted examples of non-combative heroes either.
“It isn’t too unusual. We had a [Hero] who could turn our soldiers fearless with just his words many generations back, one who excelled in speech and motivation rather than combat,” explained Sir Inolet. “Unfortunately, that lack of combat ability proved to be his downfall, and to the present day he was mostly excluded from most records, with the few that recorded his existence using him as an example of an ineffectual [Hero].”
“Huh,” noted Alissa as she pondered about that bit of information. If they could hide one [Hero]’s existence then they could likely hide more, like some who might not be… cooperative with the Kingdom or the Temple, for example. “What about the western front? Did we receive any news from there as well or are we still waiting for information?”
“They didn’t have anywhere near as much success as we had here in the east,” replied Sir Marsten, his tirade expended for the time being. “The two suspected [Champions] we noted before could pretty much be confirmed as [Champions] now. Each of them had overturned the battlefield on their own when they were last seen, also the main reason the western thrust of the offensive met with more failure than successes.”
“That Ma’Varok [Champion] we pegged as a brute earlier on turned out to have a keen strategic mind. He had been spotted in command of a demon horde where he directed them into a series of rapid hit and run maneuvers, keeping themselves out of our reach each time we reacted to their attack only to hit us somewhere else. It is frustration itself to fight against his army, supposedly, and that’s while discounting the devastation he caused us when he led charges in person,” explained Sir Inolet with an annoyed sigh.
“The demons he led are supposedly praising his names at this point. We mistook a general who leads from the front as a mere brute in our assumptions before, and are now paying the price for that mistake,” said Sir Marsten with an equally loud but wistful sigh. “The other demon [Champion] also proved to be a general, though instead of clever tactics and maneuvers we mostly noticed a greatly increased morale and courage amongst the troops they led.”
“Aren’t the demons always courageous to begin with though?” Alissa asked as she failed to comprehend what the old knight meant.
“To a point, Miss O’Connor,” said Sir Marsten in reply. “The demons under this [Champion]’s leadership exhibited such high morale that they willingly went into suicidal charges, even when they were grossly underpowered compared to their opposition. Their army had been noted to have more older and weaker demons amongst their numbers, but those weak demons had been putting up a fight far more vicious than any of our strategists had imagined, and that’s not considering the elites with them.”
“The demons under that [Champion] went for a war of attrition on us, sacrificing weaker soldiers to grind us down, and there was little we could do to counter her, at least not without some major reshuffling of our forces at the moment,” continued the old knight. “If your party was at the western front, I have little doubt that you could likely defeat any of those [Champions], but with them being spread out like that, it also allowed them to cover far more ground than your party could.”
“Before you ask, we considered doing the same in reply to their tactics, but we have our worries about that as well,” said Sir Inolet before Alissa could say a word. “For one, you yourself have fought one of the demon [Champions]. I believe you have noticed that she was quite powerful, did you not? Would you have been able to take her on in a one on one duel? Maybe with a few of your party members aiding you?”
“Depends a lot on how many of those undead abominations she had with her,” replied Alissa after some thought. “If she just had two or three, then with around the same number of people we should be able to defeat her. The woman herself didn’t seem to have much battle prowess and is completely reliant on her undead to fight for her.”
“The problem is that there are only three of you, and four of them. The demons would have their own equivalents to your [Companions] and [Associates] as well, so this is an issue we are still debating about.”