179 A Brilliant Plan
[Like that monster we fought when we first met?] Angelica asked as she referred to the hybrid monster I killed before.
[Yeah, think of them as this brutal one] I found this comparison to be the closest one to the situation here.
“Come forth!” I instantly called all my scattered warriors back and then resummoned them here. Even if they brought such a deadly army of monsters to kill or delay us, they didn’t bring any aerial monsters at all.
“Kill them,” I pointed towards the ground that was now covered with a carpet of running monsters, “use all of your AOE attacks and try to create wide gaps in their ranks.”
I was speaking to my fallen gods, drags, archers, and magicians. Among all my forces, they were the ones able to do that.
“Take control of these weapons… Just pull the trigger and they will launch the grenades all over the place,” I turned to my Bulltors, dragolves, and Selvagiters and added while pointing to the armoury down below:
“As for you, you’ll carry ammunition to make sure these weapons won’t stop firing.”
I said this to my shield warriors. That left only my soulers behind.
“Use the rope to descend… And you know what you shall do.”
“Roar!”
Everyone roared while the drags flew away as they started attacking. As for my fallen gods, they started using their ultimate attacks while I took out enough shards of essence to replenish their used stacked attempts.
“You want to kill my army using monsters? Humph! What a joke!” I turned to watch the brutal fights that started all over the place, even before the two armies would arrive and clash with each other.
I alone was enough to be called an army of my own!
*Rumble!* *Boom!* *Rumble!*
The sounds of explosions started massively from the start. My chariot led the counterattack over those monsters while the rest of my army behind was approaching without fear.
My show of might right now played a great role in removing any speck of self doubt inside my forces’ souls. They were trained by the hands of Selvators, but lacked any actual fighting experience in battles.
Not to mention these forces came together from the rescued humans from cages. Their spirits were shaking deep down even if they didn’t admit it.
That was why I went all the way alone to the front and showed such a big opening. I had to raise not only their morale but to inspire courage inside their souls.
And it worked!
Just the first clashes that erupted between the two frontlines were enough to make me heave a sigh of relief.
The clashes revealed how strong my forces were. Just in the first few minutes of this battle, the enemy frontline crumbled and the death toll was simply astronomical.
The gears I gave them also played a great role in this. At this point I didn’t need to lean towards cheat tricks like pointing out each monster’s weaknesses.
They didn’t need that! They simply crushed them using brute force. In the face of such force, nothing mattered.
As for me, I started to roam the entire battlefield, trying to help in every possible way. The best way to help my forces here would be by killing the backlines of the frontline.
This way I’d relieve a big pressure over my frontline boys, delaying reinforcements to replace any dead monster.
Just attacking like this in a zone or two wouldn’t really make a difference. But I activated the full power and used my chariot’s insane speed to flash right and left, crossing the entire battlefield in a matter of minutes.
During this my newly added grenades helped so much in clearing many zones from monsters. Big empty circular areas began to spread, looking like an old piece of clothes that had many holes in it.
Even if the enemy came with such grand numbers, this wouldn’t really matter if they couldn’t utilise their number advantage at the frontlines.
Like this I turned this gigantic army of monsters into a weak and unorganised army that could be easily kitted down by my ground forces.
So it wasn’t a surprise that after two hours of constant fighting, the enemy started to show signs of breaking. I saw many monsters turn around and started to flee this place.
Monsters weren’t smart like races but they still kept their sense of danger within their souls. The higher the monster’s rank was, the stronger this became.
So in the face of such an organised and strong army that was aided by my actions from midair, they started to feel true fear.
It started with a few groups running and in the span of the next hour, almost half of the monster army dispersed.
The only monsters that remained here were either the ones with strong bloodlust and those dumb ones who didn’t have any sense of danger at all.
Such monsters were like hyenas, who would simply charge forward no matter what. In the face of such monsters my forces were enough without my help.
“Time to scout the front,” as things turned out in such a way, and as I got confirmation from Fang and Wryly that both were less than one hour away from the main battlefield, I had to scan the unknown lands beyond here.
The big mistake that illusionist made was to save his own forces and races and only sent his monster army after me. Monsters could crumble like this. And without intellectual races to overrule them, things would turn ugly in this way.
But the uglier it became for him, the better it was for me. I still didn’t let such victory overwhelm my sense of cautiousness. After all, we wasted almost three hours fighting here, enough for that bastard to take other precautions or even send reinforcements.
Yet after going forward for almost half an hour, I finally spotted the grand towers appearing from far like a painful thorn.
That dude was really acting like a true illusionist! He was a coward and appreciated his life over anything else.
In his eyes, keeping his strongest forces by his side was a must. Even if this led to losing the numerical advantage he had, he still didn’t hesitate to do it.
“So you decided to keep your trusted forces around the tower… Let’s see how well that will end for you!” I snorted while sending a message to Karoline, asking about the updates from the battlefield.
[We already killed everything and our boys are clearing out the place] ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
[No time for that!] These humans were still caring about monster materials at such a crucial moment. Getting greedy and overconfident was expected. Yet I was here to correct this deadly rookie mistake for them.
[Bring them over… After we destroy that tower, they can go back and claim their rewards]
[This…]
[Just let them come… Monsters won’t miraculously disappear like that! Plus they have fine grade weapons! They won’t need to change these even after ten upcoming quests]
[Alright… I’ll bring them over]
[The road is clear. Let them march and recuperate during this period. There is a more violent battle waiting for him here]
I closed the chat with her and checked over Fang and Wryly’s situation. It was a surprise to receive info about them facing armies of monsters.
Unlike my case, the monster armies they faced were smaller and not as fierce. They guaranteed their ability to catch up in a span of an hour or two.
“My army would take roughly an hour to be here… So you threw away more fodder in their ways to delay their approach… Interesting!”
I read through the plan of that illusionist here. As he failed to crush my army or even delay us until he finished with his tower, he had to delay the other two armies heading towards here.
Even if my army was strong and held such high morale and confidence, their numbers still showed a great gap between us and that bastard’s forces here.
In my estimate, the number of monster armies sent to stop the three of us reached a million and half up to two millions. That meant there was only one to one and a half million forces in that tower zone.
Such an army might pale in comparison with our three forces combined. But with such a tactic, that dude tried to separate us and would eventually face the three of us one army at a time.
With a simple move he neutralised the loss he gained by throwing away his monster fodders. Interesting idea indeed, but who said I had to fall for such a trap?
[Do you know how much they built that tower so far?]
[F*ck you! Didn’t I warn you not to contact me at all!!]
[Just answer the question… Things are a little hectic over here!]
[As if I was having a nice time, taking a nap inside my glorious chariot all this time!]
[Dude! You could have answered already from the first message instead of wasting all this messages over whining like chicks!]
[Screw you!]
[I’ll keep nagging you if you don’t give me an answer right away!]
Despite knowing how dangerous it was, I had to contact him. He was the closest one to the tower and the one who was following the building process all this time.
If anyone could give me an estimate about the remaining time then it would be him.
[Well… They faced a stepback after destroying their ovens but they started to bring the melted ore in a final form almost an hour ago. The building process just paced up and they might be able to finish it within the next four to six hours]
Five to six hours?! That was just a narrow window to be honest.
I clenched my fists and made a reckless decision. That bastard was pushing with all his might towards this tower completion. I had to up the game and match his rash with recklessness.
Even if it was risky, even if it was a trap, I was forced to accept it. But…
[Are they bringing those melted ores from the nearby gates in the three cities?]
[They are sending the ores in big caravans from three directions so it must be from these three cities] he sent before returning to his old self, [Stop nagging me then. I have to go now and stop messaging me for now or they’ll catch me!]
I closed his chat and instead of thinking about the risks of walking directly into this trap, I started to consider something else.
I first flew around the area, taking a wide detour away from the place of the tower. In ten minutes I saw the scenes of destruction and ruins in one city with a big hovering single gate there.
“So you are trying your best to force me into this trap? Let’s see how well you are prepared to fight and defend these cities then!
His scheme was really smart and creative, but it had one major flaw here; the gates in these cities!
Everything depended entirely upon luring my forces to hit the tower. But in fact the tower in itself wasn’t important at all. What was important instead was the melted ore brought over from these mega gates.
So instead of walking blindly into his well designed trap and facing his prepared forces head on, why wouldn’t I react with something different?
Attacking the cities and claiming the mega gates would deal a deadly blow for him. In return he wouldn’t sit idle and watch me take over the gates and shutting down his crucial supply of the melted ore.
He would be cornered to one option; sending his forces outside the well prepared trap zone and risk a head on fight with me.
In fact this didn’t seem bad to anyone. He still held the upper hand in numerical advantage over my forces.
But putting his cowardly nature and his fear to die, he might hesitate to send out his entire forces and would lean towards sending a smaller army instead.
If he did so, then I’d be granted a big chance to kite his forces bit by bit while delaying his building process speed by one third at least.
After all, it was guaranteed for me to take over one single mega gate.
Even if he tried to increase the supply from the other two cities, I still had other options here.
Those caravans the jumper spoke about were a perfect target to hit. But I wasn’t planning to burn all my cards from the start. I’d first head to that city by my forces and claim it. Then I’d fight a war of attrition with him over the caravans of his precious ore.
The only path he would have would be by spreading his forces all over the place, creating more chances for me to ambush and annihilate them with few losses.
Alright… Let’s do it!