Gaius wanted to tell his father that it wasn't time to try to be the king of the depression. It couldn’t be helped that Gaius was calm; he had some plans of his own, but he also had lived a lot more than his father had imagined he had. Thanks to his power, he had more cards than most, so there was that as well.

Getting fearful wasn’t going to help, but Gaius could understand his father’s point of view. The idea of risking the life of his eight-year-old son in such a war was more than a little bit depressing. It seemed that Zairus only had a single thing to tell his son…but he didn’t want the last thing he said to him to be to run away.

“Don’t worry, father,” Gaius declared. “Things will be fine… as long as you are alive, and I have arrows, we will keep on fighting until the enemies give up and realize that it will be too costly to try to take our lives… even with massive numbers.”

“… I guess you are skilled enough already to cover my back for as long as necessary, but still… I have friends that I don’t want to lose here, and I don’t want to see them die without trying my best to help them,” Zairus explained. “Loyalty toward my friends who watched my back for years and loyalty toward my son who is watching my back now… it is a tough choice. Ah, why am I sharing my worries with an eight years old kid? Do I even have the right to lead all these people like this?”

Morally saving his friends would be the correct choice, but who does he save? Zairus also had some issues of his own, but at least they were all mental. Gaius wondered how he could help his father in that aspect, but most of the time, mental battles needed to be won alone... as it was already happening, hearing nice words from his son would only make him feel worse.

At the end of the day, he isn’t powerful enough to just snap his fingers and immediately be able to protect everyone. Gaius could tell that his father wanted to run away with his son… living with such a disgrace seemed a lot more appealing than letting his son die in such a stupid war. Still, he also had to worry about his own troops, who could get killed if he decided to run… it was a tough choice.

Zairus didn’t say anything after that… he wanted to teach his son that his life was more important than his pride. In the end, fighting like that while fighting someone else’s war wouldn’t help him; it would help some rich assholes. Still, running away and showing that kind of life to his son wouldn’t do it… he would never feel worthy of respect that way. In the end, night came, and Zairus involuntarily made his choice… he could show his son that it was better to die as a warrior than to live as a coward.

The scouts noticed all the enemies moving, and it was the first time since they crossed the border that such a thing happened… thanks to that, the mood got heavier in the whole area. The commander of the armies didn’t issue any orders that night; everyone only had the option to stand their ground. Still, Gaius knew that the main army would run away once the flanks were wiped out.

Gaius talked with Herac one more time to confirm what the orders for the higher-ups were, and Herac only confirmed that… Ekirenton won’t run away, but he will fight only from his base. Unless the enemies take down his city, the war will never end, and to take a walled city, forces like that will need more.

Gaius could almost hear the relief in Herac’s voice since he didn’t force him to come and help… Herac felt that it would be suicide, and he also felt that he would be free from Gaius if he died. Too bad for him, but he didn’t know that he was going to die if Gaius died.

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The defenders assumed their positions as well, and it didn’t take long for the enemies to begin to move. Gaius couldn’t confirm it, but it looked like they split themselves into twelve groups of one thousand… around one thousand of them would stay behind… things were going just as Gaius had expected. Still, it would take a while for all the forces to move to battle.

“No problem…” Gaius thought. “Anyway, assume your positions.”

“Roger that, little master,” Relia said.

The first army began to move, and then the next four began to move soon after… They were planning to finish the battle as soon as possible and then turn to the side and flank the main army. Still, even before the first army reached them, some screams began to echo on the battlefield… all the armies moved at the same time, so that was suspicious since the battle hadn’t started.

The armies slowed down all at once to wait for further orders since they didn’t know what was happening… until they saw several flashes of light suddenly emerging behind them. All of their camps were suddenly burning…

“Archers! Fire!” Zairus shouted.

The enemies had barely reached the range of the archers when Zairus noticed their hesitation and the fire… still, that was their best option, right… make good use of the chaos and confusion among their ranks.

Dozens of arrows reached the enemies, but at least half of them were blocked by shields… the enemies responded quickly, and they increased their pace since they would win no matter what as long as they wiped out the flanks… too bad for them, but the fire on their camps began to spread even faster than they had imagined, and Gaius saw his experience bar increasing at an astonishing pace.

The order that Gaius gave to his army was simple… They only had to gather materials during the afternoon that would help them set the enemy’s tents on fire. Since they split their forces and did that in broad daylight, they believed that surprise attacks coming from behind would never happen again. They were wrong…

Relia split the forces into three groups to attack the three camps under the enemy’s control. Thanks to that, dozens of tents were under fire even before the fight could actually start.

On the right flank, Relia was using a small force of archers with arrows embedded in vegetable oil and lighting them with the flames of a campfire. The flames weren’t spreading that fast, but Relia, who was using the ability of her knife, was also carrying a bunch of oil and set the tent of the commander on fire with it. When she finished her job, she stealthily began to cut the throats of the enemies that were charging toward the archers.

Behind the main camp on the enemy’s side, Rein and a bunch of melee fighters created several bonfires after chopping down some trees… they barely had time to assemble those for the fire, but it worked wonders when the Desert Wolf began to use his Wind Spheres on the fire… the wind projectiles passed through them and then flew toward the enemy’s back like massive balls of fire that flew for hundreds of meters before hitting the enemy’s camp and exploding.

Their left flank was a bit more troublesome when it came to the fire… the archers on that side didn’t have a high level yet, but they had high numbers to cause some mayhem. Their fire arrows reached the tent, but that side responded quite fast, and dozens of armed soldiers with shields and spears moved toward them… still, they looked too much in the same direction and didn’t see the giant slime on their side. It looked like a rock in the middle of the darkness… and the rock attacked their backs with its acid attacks… making them scream until they died.

“I have to keep an eye on their parameters and use them whenever possible since we are heavily outnumbered and we can’t afford to lose a single one of them,” Gaius thought while firing arrows furiously toward the enemies.

“Haaaaaaahhhhhh!” Zairus shouted with all his might before swinging his sword with all his might and splitting his target in two.