“Looking at all those demons, sure made me glad we helped pitch in to get this fort done early,” commented Alissa as she stood on the fort’s completed battlements and looked at the recently-built camp belonging to the demon army in the distance. The demons had arrived just the previous evening and had apparently spent the night building a camp for their soldiers to rest on.
A massive camp to accommodate the tens of thousands of soldiers that they had sent to the region. By Alissa’s best guess the demon army outnumbered the people gathered in the new, as of yet unnamed fort, but around two to three to one. Fortunately, on their side they had the completed fortification to help their defenses, and the fort’s location on the valley’s mouth meant that it would be harder for the demons to try assaulting them from above unless they took the circuitous route around.
Which happened to be a route that would leave them wide open to archers from the front while they traversed it.
Most of the defenders of Fort Ixlay had moved to the new fort, along with the ten thousand or so reinforcements that had trickled in from deeper in the kingdom. Despite being greatly outnumbered, they were prepared to fight the demons to the bitter end if need be, and morale was high due to the previous victory and the presence of the [Heroes]’ party amongst them.
“Think they sent this much because they suspect we’re all still here?” asked Ethan from beside her. While the Kingdom had indeed sent lookalikes to several locations along the frontlines, the fact that Alissa, Ethan, and Joshua had been present when they fought and beat the [Mother of Monsters] was something the demons were bound to notice, as the [Champions] could [Respawn] just like the heroes.
“Possible,” chimed in Nadine from the side. The Fifth Princess was probably the one who Alissa and Ethan are closest to amongst their party members, other than Moira. She got along with them nicely, and unexpectedly given her royal background, was neither arrogant nor pretentious. Then again, she was far enough down the succession line that she had to fight to have something for herself rather than being able to just have everything handed out to her. “Many of the lookalikes are people who either had similar natural looks to the three of you [Heroes], or people who had [Disguise] skills. Either way, none of them are likely at our level of power, so if they ever fought it might be noticeable right away.”
In comparison, none of the three were that close to the group who belonged to the Temple Guards, as they tend to get rather… ideological and preachy at times. Similarly, they weren’t that close with Osmond or Glenn either, who they knew were likely working for Nadine’s siblings and might have ulterior motives. Of course, there was always the possibility that Nadine herself had set things up so the [Heroes] would be more favorable to her. If that was the case, then she was good at it.
“We haven’t seen any sign of the demon [Champions] as of yet. Think they’re hiding in that camp so they could surprise us?” noted Alissa. She mostly looked for signs of the large undead abominations she knew the [Mother of Monsters] used heavily last time. Due to their size, those would be difficult to hide away from prying eyes.
“There are ways to hide things even when they’re that big if it’s just to mask them from a distance, Miss O’Connor,” explained Moira. “My late grandfather used to tell me stories on how we’d use such techniques to mask the advance of siege engines and the like during the previous war. If it could hide a siege engine on the move, then it likely could hide the sort of abominations we fought.”
“Dammit. That means she could be down there preparing a group of those things and we’d be none the wiser,” cursed Alissa at the obvious implication of Moira’s words. It was an annoying feeling to know that the enemy might be preparing an unpleasant surprise to use against them but be powerless to do anything about it.
“We could probably get a closer look if we pull off a night attack, but I think they’d be expecting that. They kept their encampment well-lit all through last night,” noted Nadine as she looked over the demon encampment in the distance. Both the demons and the humans mostly kept the fighting to the daytime out of pragmatic reasons. Neither side were nocturnal, so fighting during the time when they were usually awake was better for both sides.
While it was true that the demons had better vision in the dark than humans did – with the various kinds of demons having different ways to do so – it also rendered their eyes more sensitive to abrupt changes in brightness. For that reason, all human armies brought flares with them that would cause a glaringly bright source of light to form for a good while. Something that would turn the demons’ advantage in the night into a disadvantage as they would be blinded for long periods if exposed to such glaring light while actively using their dark vision.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
It was something the demons adapted to by keeping their encampments well-lit at night, something that would reduce the effectiveness of such flares to a notable degree. In turn, the humans rarely dared to pull off night attacks because the demons were already naturally advantaged by the dark, and if they were in their well-lit camp, not even using flares would be able to turn that situation around.
The accidental equality born from one side’s advantage and the other side’s abuse to counter that advantage meant that night attacks were generally only done when it was considered worthwhile, or as a surprise maneuver. Given how the defenders were all in the fort and the demons had them observed closely all the time, though, it was unlikely that they would be able to pull off a surprise on the other side.
Though the same also applied to the demons themselves. The defenders of the fort kept a close eye on the demon encampment all day and night long, so it would be difficult for either side to surprise the other. With such maneuvers mostly out of the question, that only left an open, up-front battle as the remaining option, where the demons’ numerical superiority would be pitted against the human side’s fortification.
“It’s not in the cards, Your Highness,” said Sir Marsten who walked up to the group while they talked and apparently caught the last bits that Nadine said. “They are too well-prepared to risk it, so for the time being we are working out a plan on the assumption of the worst case scenario instead. That way we would not be caught red-handed either way.”
“I assume that meant planning as if the demons have a bunch of abominations hidden in their camp?” asked Ethan with some curiosity at the old knight, whose hair still resembled a military buzz cut after the mere few weeks of growth.
“Those, and siege engines too, Mister Greene,” replied the old knight with a nod. “We are preparing contingencies for most plausible scenarios, though we would be a bit troubled if some of the other demon [Champions] were also here as we lack a comprehensive knowledge of their skill, and thus can’t plan as well as we liked around them.”
“I mean… I thought we had knowledge about the brute one now, and the [Mother of Monster] we fought back then too, no?” queried Ethan in turn.
“Some knowledge, yes. We simply don’t know if they still have other ways to do things that we simply haven’t seen as of yet, maybe something they held back as a surprise. It has been documented for [Heroes] or [Champions] to do so in the past and only spring the surprise in order to capture their opponent.”
“Dammit, I’m going to end up paranoid if I have to think about that sort of stuff all the time,” cursed Ethan with a shake of his head. “And of course the gods wouldn’t give us a guide or walkthrough on how to do things either, despite this setting being pretty game-like,” he grumbled. “Should have expected that sort of shit unless it was literally our cheat, though, I guess.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Sir Marsten with some confusion as he didn’t understand the meaning of what Ethan said.
“Just something from our previous world, pay no mind to it,” explained Alissa quickly. “Anyway, Sir, since these demons are still building their camp do you think they would start the attack before it was finished? It might not be a bad idea to rest properly for a couple days while we wait for the attack rather than be too tense waiting for it.”
“Orders to that nature were already passed down, Miss O’Connor. It would be folly for the demons to fight when they don’t even have their camp built yet to begin with,” replied Sir Marsten with an approving nod. “Still gladdens me that you thought of it. When I was young I once suffered under commanders who didn’t understand such basic logic and demanded everyone stay on high alert for days on end.”
“Oh? What happened then?” asked Alissa with some curiosity of her own. Sir Marsten and Sir Inolet rarely spoke much about their younger days for some reason, so her interest was piqued now that one of them was speaking about it on his own.
“We were defeated horribly, and the man who was in command at the time even tried to blame it on the soldiers for ‘not being vigilant enough’, the rotten cur,” replied Sir Marsten with evident disgust at the situation. “Maybe we would have been properly vigilant if we weren’t suffering from frayed nerves and lack of rest because of his idiotic orders.”
“And how did that situation resolve itself?” chimed Nadine in from the side, with as much curiosity on her face as on Alissa’s. “I don’t think I’ve heard of this sort of incident before.”
“Makes sense that they’d wrap it up and pretend it never happened. The commander we had was… I think like a cousin thrice removed to the royal family of that time? Something like that,” said the old knight with a sigh. “What happened at that time was that fortunately we had testimonies from others who happened to have witnessed the whole thing and made a big commotion out of it. It nearly led to a schism between the knights and the royal family, even.”
“The knights wouldn’t stand for their people to be punished out of a false accusation to spare the feelings of some distant member of the royalty, while the royal family naturally stood on the side of their relatives. That being wartime, you could probably guess that it could have ended in a very ugly manner,” he continued. “Hell, if that had gone on for longer we might have had to deal with a coup in the middle of a war against the demons.”
“And what prevented that sort of outcome from happening?”
“One of the [Great Heroes] of the time played the role of the mediator between the knights and the royal family. She had also been present nearby when the incident happened, and spoke on our behalf as well. In the end, a compromise was reached and we went back to the frontlines, under commanders we trust with our lives, while that commander who caused the issue practically vanished. Nobody knows what happened to him in the end. We were also asked to stay quiet about the incident.
“You’re speaking of it now, though?” asked Alissa curiously.
“It’s been long enough that it shouldn’t matter either way. Anyway, that incident is also why many of the old knights like me and Henri tend to be practically unattached to the royal family. Many of us lost our trust in them after such an incident,” said Sir Marsten.