Chapter 54

Honor or Victory

It went perfectly.

So perfectly, in fact, that Asher was a bit regretful that he hadn’t done it on a much larger scale.

No, he chided himself immediately, realizing that the only reason it went as well as it did was because the scale had been all but crippled. Were it any bigger, it would have been likely impossible to either close the line as quickly and efficiently as they did, encircle the trapped forces, or perhaps something that Asher hadn't even considered might have gone wrong.

It all unfolded rather rapidly, even if in his perception it was as though the time had slowed down. He inspected greatly every minute movement, every change, every difference between the plan and the execution, waiting with bated breath for any tiny thing to go awry so he could step in in a desperate bid to fix it... but it never came. It was clean.

Rather, it was as though he was a giant hand in the sky with strings latched onto the soldiers, moving them as per precise instructions. Once again, for but a moment, he felt regret that he hadn’t tried doing it on a larger scale.

But it didn’t matter, really. Even if, somehow, he managed to execute the strategy perfectly on a much larger scale, there was a definite cap simply because of the terrain. Wedding uphill was virtually impossible, even if it wasn’t a particularly steep hill. Furthermore, the entire point of the bulge was a full-scale encirclement, something impossible at this level. It was best used as a trap... and now he simply had to wait.

He leveled up a few times, but none of the upgrades were particularly good--he ended up maxing out General’s Mettle, upgrading his base stats twice because those were the only offers, and just as he thought he’d be blessed by a Calling... it never happened. He sped past Level 10 and had reached Level 15 even, and no offer of a Calling came.

Though he was tempted to throw a fit in the middle of the battlefield, he simply sighed away the anger. If this were a game, he’d long since concluded it would have been demolished and review bombed into irrelevance. There were simply too many inconsistencies and tiny details that made it a hard sell, and the more he entangled himself with the world, the harder it was to truly see it as a ‘game’.

The battles, he picked up on after the first day, were fought in the bursts of two hours before taking a roughly eight-hour long break. The length, as he suspected, was predicated entirely on the mages and priests and their ability to use spells. If they were drained, the battle ended. It was strange, really, for an endless array of souls to be going back and forth for just a couple of hours, though, to them, it likely felt much longer than that, being in the thick of it all rather than just an observer from a safe distance.

Just as the day before, following the battle’s end, he went to the central building where everyone had already gathered. There were no losses, it seemed, today as he recognized all the faces that had been there yesterday.

"Reporting," the woman, whose name turned out to be Tera, from yesterday spoke out first today, her voice drawing the attention of everyone in the room. "We have suffered around 44,000 casualties, one Order of the Magi, and no Holy Sons or Daughters. They have suffered close to twice the number of casualties, and we have managed to take out nearly ten Orders of the Magi in the midst of the confusion," the chatter turned to cheers that she quieted with a single gaze. "Thus, despite us exhausting our own Mages rather rapidly, they were forced to retreat at the same time to recuperate as well. There was no news from the Capital today, either. Things seem to have quieted down after the Princess' assassination attempt. Commander," she turned toward him. "Do you think they will try to replicate the strategy tomorrow?"

“No,” Asher replied rather quickly. He worried how entranced everyone seemed to be with today’s victory, and doubly worried that they’d force him to use the strategy again since it had worked so well. “They’ll probably need a few days to do it again.”

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“Won’t they wonder why we aren’t attempting it in the meantime?” one of the people present asked.

“Possibly,” Asher assented. “But even attempting it falsely is too risky now that they’ve experienced it. We can just hope that the hubris takes over and compels the enemy Commander to try it. In case they don’t, I’ll think of something else. However, if they do,” he added. “We also need to be prepared.”

"..." The room remained silent, waiting for him. It was a strange and empowering feeling, having the attention of otherworldly creatures, some of whom could undo a mountain it felt with a flick of a finger. And yet, there they were, seated, calm, and silent, waiting for him to speak. He held the silence as though it were a blade hanging over their heads, in part because he was straightening his thoughts and condensing them, but in part simply because... he enjoyed the sensation. It had to end, however, before they ripped him apart to see if the letters would fly out of his cracked skull.

“I can’t be certain at which point will they try and execute the strategy,” Asher said. “It could be one of the two points we did it at, or it could be something else entirely. For the next few days, every General will have to be stationary and have an assigned Mage that can communicate through long distances. As soon as you see a shift happening, you will inform me. Chances are, however, that they will escalate it grandly--I suspect at least three points of failure that they will open, each at the very least a mile long, possibly larger. So, I won't be able to be at all places at once to command. As such, every General will be responsible for that part. I will still be in communication with you, but you also need to be prepared."

He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. He was nervous--of course he was, he mused. There had never been a time in his life quite like this. Even if false, even if fabricated, even if entirely conjured up, he held in his hands the lives of the millions of people, both 'his own' as well as those of the enemy. Those numbers, to his mind, didn't mean anything, not really. The death of one was a personal tragedy, the death of a thousand a national catastrophe, and the death of a million just a number on the page that nobody could possibly fathom.

“When the break in the rank happens,” Asher continued, their attention still glued to him, eyes wide and ears perked. “We need to press. Immediately and with a reckless abandon. Mages won’t conserve their Mana in any capacity--they will need to immediately unleash a salvo of spells aiming at the rear of the gap as well as the flanks. Their destruction is secondary--they just need to be big. They need to be flashy, disruptive, possibly even to our own men. We need to create chaos on such a scale that it is impossible to either control or confine it. At the same time, instead of just rushing through in the same line, soldiers will splinter into two groups--those who will be attacking the broken flanks and expanding the size of the rank against the Commander’s wishes, and those who will press onwards.

"What we need is for a brawl to break out where the enemy's frontline is entirely disconnected from their Commander, where they have to make their own choices rather than just obey commands. They will also have reinforcements hidden, probably in hundreds of thousands, that will immediately rush out to try and salvage the situation. This... is inevitable. People will die. By tens of thousands. But the rush cannot be halted. Every time a soldier falls, ten need to rush in to replace them. Even if they are exhausted, terrified, and at the brink of being broken, they need to march on. If they don't, the line will close, and it will all have been for naught, even if we eke out a victory in terms of numbers.

“We need to break them," Asher said with a belated gravitas. "Their soldiers will feel twice the terror of ours, and thrice the pressure to endure. Because they will know if the rank falls apart and the frontline crumbles... the battle will be over. There will be no recovery. Even at the points where the line will be standing, we will be able to pressure it from three sides and collapse it.

“Once we ‘stabilize’, as it were, in the chaos, we won’t press up the hill toward their encampment. Rather, we will branch out toward the flanks and kill as many as we can. They will start retreating, and we will chase.”

“--isn’t that... dishonorable?” one of the men in the room asked, and judging by the expressions, most thought the same.

"I don't believe in honor nearly as much as I believe in a victory," Asher said. "When the war ends, who will chastise our honor if we write the history? We can be as honorable as we wish. Perhaps you find it off-putting, and if you do, there's a very simple solution," he said, pausing for a moment as their ears perked up further. "Blame it all on me," the words split the silence like thunder, but he didn't let the silence return once again. "I am your Commander. You have no choice but to obey me. And I command you all--show no mercy. Show no honor. For if the chance is given to us, we must use it to end this war... even if by any means necessary."

“... can you bear that burden, Commander?” Tera asked abruptly. “The Lords and Ladies will not be happy.”

“The Lords and Ladies?” Asher arched his brows and smiled as he stood up. “Ah, the Lords and the Ladies. Quite frankly,” he said as he was exiting the building. “The Lords and the Ladies can eat my shit. It’s more than they deserve, anyway.”