I watched the assembled legion. Even now they looked quite impressive, but the numbers were still quite low. Most of the soldiers were in the regular legion unit with a spear and a shield. There were 40 archers and four ballistae operated by 20 soldiers. Currently, they were the only ones that had horses so they could take everything they needed with them. Everyone else was just bringing their own supplies.
The reason the current operation was even possible with so few supplies was that we were only going to march about a day and a half away from the village and only be there for about 5 days.
Currently, the legion could barely move to the borders. We didn’t have significant staying power as we don’t have the logistics up and running to supply even our current numbers for the long term. Everything will come with time, but logistics are incredibly important and I will have to take some time to make myself knowledgeable on this world’s advantages when it comes to logistics.
Just the expanded backpacks will change so much but with carriages that can bring months’ worth of supplies for a huge army, everything is different. I can also see the disadvantages of those strategies as losing even a single carriage would be a devastating loss. This means that there need to be new strategies to deal with opponents’ supplies. Castles and fortresses can probably keep going for decades without any problems if well-provisioned.
The military history enjoyer inside me wants to learn more but I simply don’t have access to this world's detailed military history at least not for now. Hopefully, we will soon get the items we need to be a little bit more connected to the rest of the world and from there we can continue to expand that connection. Not everyone wants a deeper connection to the outside world, but they are blinded by fear.
Of course, there is a good reason to fear the more powerful countries and organizations out there but putting your head in the sand solves nothing. Then there is the problem of our nation’s citizens. The area that we currently live in is low ranking so everyone who wants to keep advancing will need to go and seek new challenges in more dangerous places. If we don't have a connection to the outside world, then they will have to cut their connection to our nation which would be quite bad.
I want everyone who ventures out to know that they have a safe home to come back to. I think the job building can be a good reason as we can always be giving out missions that would hopefully make them come back.
It will be a difficult balance to keep as you don't want to make them stay here where they wouldn't be able to advance but you also don't want them to never return. It would be best if they would use other places' resources to level up and advance as we will have enough trouble trying to level up our soldiers with the current resources we have access to.
While I came up with the mission to fight the undead, I am not the one in charge. The current command is in the hands of promising commander Helwid. He is a bit of an older man to be learning to command soldiers, but he has the talent for it at least with the current number of soldiers. Unfortunately, he will not be good enough to lead an entire legion. He was currently giving a speech before we march. It was a decent one for this mission at least. With his final words, he gave the command for everyone to start moving out.
I stayed back a bit, so I wasn’t so visible. I also tracked where Keldric Veilstrider the assassin was. Not knowing his name for so long I was kind of apprehensive about asking him, so I learned it from David. His job was to stay hidden and make sure none of the legionnaires died during this training exercise. While the chances were low, losing someone on a training mission is unacceptable.
While everyone marched, I also spent quite a lot of time training as I still needed to keep up with my body’s growth. If I wasn’t doing this I could already tell that I would be a lot slower and less flexible. Thankfully it seems that I have succeeded and even improved my body's overall capabilities. I have already needed to stop wearing the Gambeson and the Brigantine as they simply don’t fit me anymore. It’s an unfortunate situation but someone from the Vikings is happy as I donated my useless armour pieces to them.
Not wearing armour kind of makes me feel naked especially when I’m headed towards a fight, but I am still wearing my plate leg and arm guards. Otherwise, I’m just wearing thick leather clothing. Its defence was mostly nonexistent but with my abilities it was passable.
What I was glad about was that I finally found a good way to store my two-handed sword, so I don’t have to carry it on my shoulder. For that, I need to thank my tattoo storage. Inside the storage, I also keep a short bow and some arrows. There are a lot of throwing knives as well so I can keep my options open in a fight.
When we finally made it to our destination, I was glad to see how fast everyone started to work. Fresh water was brought over from a nearby stream, many started to prepare the campsite and others went out and started to chop down trees so they could start building defences.
There were mistakes but they were still learning but eventually, they will be a well-oiled machine. Frankly, the biggest mistake I could see was that they were rushing too much which caused unnecessary mistakes. I quickly went to Commander Helwid and pointed out his mistake which he quickly fixed.
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Within half a day a rudimentary wooden fort was built. It wouldn’t hold up to proper assault, but it would defend against wandering animals. The four watchtowers would make sure that no enemy can approach without being noticed. Of course, there were scouts and patrols for further security. I continue to observe and write down some places where we could improve and some other remarks that were necessary to be passed on.
The next two and a half days went by quickly as I continued to observe the legion as they prepared for the battle. They were going to face almost 700 undead but most of them were at a low level so they shouldn’t pose too much of a problem. The prepared defences that the legion has set up will also help quite a lot.
They have spent quite a lot of time digging trenches and pits to slow down the undead and kill some of them. There are a lot of wooden spikes all around the battlefield that will hopefully skewer some of them as well.
The legion was in standard formation with six-row-deep battle lines. Behind them on a small hill were the archers and ballistae ready to rain down death upon their enemies. While this was training it was still going to be quite a difficult battle as I wasn’t going to give my boosts to them. The reason being that I might not be around all the time, so they need to learn how to fight without that significant advantage.
About an hour later scouts finally ran out of the forest giving the signal that the undead were coming. Only a few minutes later the first zombie ran out of the forest stop for a moment when it saw the number of living creatures then started to rush towards them. This one was quite fast as it was already halfway into the prepared traps when the other undead started to emerge from the forest. They all copied the first undead with eerie accuracy.
Finally, the first zombie's luck ended as it fell into a pit that had spikes in it ending its mad charge. Although it might still be alive as you need to kill the brain to make certain that it died. The undead were now running out of the forest like a flood and more and more of the traps were being triggered. Some of the trenches closer to the forest were already filled making them useless for further defense. The trapped field was quite large so only when a large portion of the undead reached the halfway mark did I hear the commands for the archers to start.
I watched in slow motion as the arrows made their arched flights and started to land amongst the undead. A lot of arrows missed but with the angle they were landing a lot of the undead heads were hit killing them instantly. Many of them kept running even when they had arrows buried into their chests, but some also lost their footing from the impact of the arrows making them fall and be trampled by the other undead.
Then loud thumps of the ballistae shooting their grape shots sounded out. They were effective but they would be a lot more effective if they were against living targets. Still, all the attacks and traps meant that the undead didn’t hit as one mass against the shields of the legion making defence a lot easier. Spears continue to flash out from behind the shields killing undead in an efficient manner.
As more and more undead reached the pressure built on the front lines but the shield wall didn't buckle. The legion continued to hold their ground, but the undead were a bit different from humans. While humans knew that in battle it was better to keep a firm line and not just rush at mass to surround the enemy. Well, I am not saying that rushing in mass is a bad idea, it’s not when you have a lot more numbers than your enemies. Meaning that you can surround while keeping a decent defence giving you the win quite fast.
The undead were doing the same thing although I didn’t think that there was any conscious decision. They were more like water following the path of least resistance. That meant that even with their low numbers they were starting to surround the legionnaires.
This was something that we had practised but not for this specific situation. Just in case I prepared to act but I could hear commands being yielded out. Instantly the sides of the formations were strengthened, and the back line turned around just in case.
The ballistae stopped firing as they had no clear targets left. Archers quickly change targets and started to shoot the undead that were at the sides of the formation. That made some of them focus on the archers, but they were quickly targeted and killed before they could rush the archers.
Still, I wondered if the commander would do anything about that. I was pleasantly surprised when the ballista crew picked up their shields and spears and quickly formed a line in front of the archers while making sure that they were far enough away that they didn't interfere with the line of sight.
From the start of the battle about 15 minutes have passed but it took another hour for the legion to break formation and start to kill off the remaining undead and hunt down some that tried to run. Only a few stronger and smarter undead tried to do that and soon after the battle was finally over.
Near the forest, I finally saw Khris, the person who sent the undead here and his party overlooking the battlefield. They slowly started to approach as they were also going to be a part of the after-action briefing.
When the field was looked over the second time and it was confirmed that all undead were dead every soldier was given one hour of rest before the cleanup began. Every commander and leader, however, was in the command tent discussing the battle and how we could have done things better. It was a standard meeting as there weren’t too many problems.
As for Khris and his party, I gave them an order. Their duty was over for the year, so they won’t have to go out to collect new undead for the rest of the year. This came as a surprise to them, but I quickly explained that it won't be long before winter comes and we are already starting to pull our influence back as almost every operation was impossible during the winter.
I didn’t stay for the cleanup as I had another important mission. There was a need to go and check out the little problem of beetles we have at our southern border and investigate outside our lands a bit more. For that, I will need to bring my two-handed mace and hopefully, I will find enough first-rank opponents so I could level up a bit.