Guerrilla Warfare
The knights, now fully aware of the situation, looked as though they could barely accept reality.
They must have wanted to deny it. They must have wanted to give up. Drowning in despair wouldn't have been strange in the slightest. But they didn't. Instead, they exchanged ideas, searching for any way to turn this around.
"What if we set fire to the entire forest?"
"Impossible. Starting a blaze of that scale isn't easy to begin with, and they won't just sit there and take it like fools. They're organized enough to rally around a leader, after all. Besides, all that would do is delay Mellid Castle's destruction by a little. Without the forest, how do we get through the winter? Where do we find food? We don't have enough farmland as it is."
"Even if every last soldier poured in, we couldn't win. Perhaps if we struck before they gather..."
"A pipe dream. Even if we rounded up every soul in the castle and every villager from the surrounding settlements, we still couldn't win. We lack the equipment, we lack the food, and you want to lead untrained civilians into the forest to fight goblins? Preposterous. Even if we somehow won, the territory's destruction would be guaranteed."
"Emotionally, I'd like to agree that we should at least try to fight. But as a solution, I can't say it's a good one."
"Shouldn't we be racing back to the castle instead of talking? If we inform the lord and start preparing..."
"...I honestly don't know if preparing would even let us avoid destruction. We have barely ten days. Can we hold with that little time to get ready...?"
The conversation was closer to brainstorming than anything else. Every one of them blurted out whatever wild idea came to mind.
The difference, perhaps, was that they kept rebutting each other. And even so, they endured it and kept offering suggestions.
Honestly, the fact that they were thinking at all struck me as remarkable. They weren't drowning in despair — they were using that time to search for a way out. That took extraordinary fortitude.
The problem was that we were so thoroughly outmatched to begin with that every so-called solution was equally absurd.
By this point they were even spouting nonsense about deliberately setting fire to one of the villages near the forest to block the approach, then using themselves as bait to lure the horde into another territory. Use Zeh and it might work, they said?
...Tens of thousands of goblins weren't a bunch of idiots. That would never work.
I cut into their earnest discussion. One of the suggestions that had come up happened to overlap considerably with what I'd been thinking.
"That last one doesn't seem half bad."
"...Which suggestion do you mean?"
They turned to me — the man who had just crashed their little strategy meeting — and asked for my opinion as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Were they that desperate to grasp at straws? Or did they simply respect me enough to listen?
"Guerrilla warfare."
"...Guerrilla warfare against tens of thousands of goblins with a force of barely three hundred... The odds of success are low and the risk is far too great. A defensive battle would serve us better. I appreciate the thought, but..."
Honestly, I couldn't care less about the castle.
The castle was an illusion anyway. In the tutorial, I just needed to look out for myself.
"Ah, I think you've misunderstood. The guerrilla campaign I'm talking about would be fought by us alone."
"...What?"
That only made it worse. Every knight wore an expression that screamed, What kind of bullshit is this?
But I was confident. If we used them to wage guerrilla warfare — a true hit-and-run campaign — we could harvest an enormous amount of experience and grow our stats at a blistering pace.
It was dangerous, yes. One slip and we'd all be dead. But if the knights and I combined our strength, I calculated we could at least keep ourselves alive.
That was why I'd asked the lord to lend me the knights in the first place. ...And besides, NPCs didn't absorb experience.
"Guerrilla warfare is only possible when you have collaborators inside enemy territory. The idea of us doing it alone, with no support whatsoever — it's impossible."
Ritaf, his expression grave, spoke on behalf of the knights, laying out why it couldn't work.
"Why do we need collaborators?"
"...Isn't that obvious? First, supply lines wouldn't function. Stamina is finite, so we'd need a place to rest when we're exhausted, and given the overwhelming difference in numbers, we absolutely cannot be discovered while resting. Those aren't things you can do in the middle of a guerrilla campaign. How do you resupply while you're fighting? How do you secretly create a rest area while you're running for your lives?"
I smiled at Ritaf's words and pointed at myself.
"Then supplies are already taken care of."
The knights looked puzzled for a moment, then their expressions shifted as understanding dawned.
Supplies. Meaning food. This wasn't the modern era — guerrilla warfare here didn't require ammunition or firearms. The most critical supply was food, and food alone. Even if we waged a guerrilla campaign, less than a month remained until we cleared the 7th floor. The knights had estimated it would take the goblins about ten days to fully assemble. So the only supplies we needed right now were food and water. And with a subspace inventory, we already had more than enough water and provisions — the kind of bulk that would otherwise be a nightmare to carry.
"We still have about two weeks of food from what we received this time. I packed extra of my own as well, so it'll last longer than that. Water's plentiful too."
And if we planned our routes well, we could resupply water along the way.
"...I admit, I hadn't considered that. But it's still dangerous. No matter how rigorously we've trained, we can't fight without rest for more than ten days."
That was true. Even in my first life, when I'd barely been strong enough to enter the Upper Floors, that had been impossible.
If they were pushovers, maybe. With physical stats, you could coast through somehow. But against enemies of comparable strength? Ten days? You couldn't even fight properly for a single day.
Combat ate stamina that voraciously.
But I had a solution for that too.
"While we were moving around last time, I noted quite a few places we could hide or rest. Here and here, for instance..."
I spread out a map at once and shared the information with the group.
"...There are really places like that?"
"Yes. If you're worried, would you like to inspect them all? I think we could cover them in about a day."
Running away itself wasn't the problem. Staying undetected for hours at a time was. If the enemy committed to a search, they'd send thousands at minimum. Even if we were discovered, we could run once or twice. The problem was when that accumulated — fatigue stacking until we were finally hunted down and killed.
I knew a few places that would let us avoid that.
Two from my memories of the first timeline. One I'd discovered while fleeing in this life.
Three locations, rotated between, didn't seem entirely impossible. The spot I'd used for three days in my first life was especially perfect. The odds of being found there were vanishingly low. On top of that, we had Na-yeon's spirit, which was excellent for reconnaissance. Most goblins couldn't use mana, so they couldn't even see spirits.
The fact that our enemies were goblins worked in our favor as well. Among monsters, goblins were a cowardly breed. Against prey they looked down on, they showed their viciousness — but if the opponent was strong enough that they couldn't win, or if death was certain, their selfish nature came out easily.
If we kept up a steady guerrilla campaign, slaughtering settlements and picking them off in between, sowing chaos — their searches would gradually grow more passive, and our chances of being discovered would drop even further. On top of that, the time it took them to assemble their forces would likely stretch indefinitely.
Go out there and you die. Leave a settlement empty and it might be wiped out.
If that kind of atmosphere spread, assembling their forces wouldn't take ten days. It could take twenty. Thirty, even.
The knights listened to my explanation, seemed to ponder for a moment, then nodded.
"It's certainly more plausible than the other impossible plans."
Honestly, this was one of the impossible plans too. It was only viable because of our inventories, because our level overwhelmingly surpassed the goblins, and because I had first-life memories that let me secure safe locations.
"Then shall we go confirm the locations I mentioned?"
"No. Coming from you and no one else, I trust it."
You really did have to rack up accomplishments. Revo immediately threw his support behind my proposal.
"...I never imagined we'd be waging guerrilla warfare with this few people, against a force of that scale... and on their home ground, no less..."
Even as he said it, he wore an expression of disbelief that guerrilla warfare was even possible in this situation — and that it actually looked promising.
"...Still, one of us has to go back. We have to deliver the news to the castle and mobilize everyone to defend it."
Tula immediately raised the issue with Revo.
He was right. From their perspective, the information had to be delivered. The guerrilla campaign was, after all, meant to buy time and sow chaos so the castle would have even one more day to prepare.
But it wasn't a major problem. We could start hitting the outer settlements. At my words, Tula added that he wasn't opposed to the guerrilla campaign itself — if this one issue was resolved, he was in favor as well.
"Then I'll go."
It was Cory.
"Aside from Sir Revo, I'm the fastest."
"Hmm..."
It was true, apparently. No one objected.
In the end, the knights agreed to the guerrilla campaign, and everyone moved to the outer region where we'd first entered.
"I'll be off, then. I'll return as quickly as I can."
"We'll rendezvous at the second rally point in two days. To be safe, we'll wait there through the third day."
"Understood. If I still haven't arrived by then, you're free to leave."
I handed Cory a map marked with the route from this location to the second rest site.
But Cory didn't leave immediately.
He hesitated a moment, then, as if he'd finally made up his mind, spoke to me.
"...I don't know if this will come across as rude, but if you wish, I could take a few of your people back to the castle with me."
A few people.
It was obvious who he meant. He was referring to my party members, excluding me.
I refused immediately.
"That won't be necessary."
"Well... I'll be honest. This operation is far too dangerous. The odds of dying are high. Frankly, what you've already done is more than enough. The original commission was only reconnaissance. To take on this much risk..."
I cut him off firmly.
"If my party members leave, our supply situation will suffer. That's four subspace inventories gone in an instant. And don't worry too much. Every one of them has awakened to mana. They can more than hold their own."
He'd probably said it knowing we'd lose those inventories. It would hamper the guerrilla campaign, but if we ate less, we could last five days or more. While he was gone, he could bring back some food besides water, so we'd be able to fight for ten days — one meal a day, resupplying water from the river along the way.
I understood. They owed us, and he wanted to repay even a little of that debt. That's why he'd made the offer.
But if I was going to hog all the experience myself, why would I have brought them along? I could just fight alone. I could take care of myself just fine. A month of guerrilla warfare against goblins? Entirely possible.
"...I didn't mean to look down on them."
"I know you meant it kindly. But it's all right. Don't worry about us."
A nod.
Cory didn't press the matter further. He turned and sprinted toward the castle.
Watching his back recede, I turned to the others.
"All right. We're short on time. We move now."
And so the seventh-floor NPC bus I'd been planning finally started its run.