Chapter 184
Chapter 184
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 184
Chapter Title: How to Flip a Turtle (2)
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*
In the dark night, Fernandez was charging through the underbrush. Time was always a precious strategic resource—one that could be shortened simply by running faster, a resource easy to conserve. There was no reason not to run.
“Huff, huff. Huff.”
Abel was barely keeping up with Fernandez’s strides, his breath coming up to his throat. Until recently—before unsealing Einherjar and upending the strategy—they had needed to stay covert to preserve Abel’s condition. But the situation had changed now.
Tactics always shifted with the enemy’s movements. Trees blurred past like afterimages. He kicked off a branch, stepped on the trunk of the next tree, twisted his body, and pushed forward. Forward.
-Poof!
A purple flower bloomed on a distant tree trunk. In this dense thicket devoid of moonlight or starlight, that was their sole landmark. Freyja’s aura permeated the entire north. The path was clear.
‘The enemy has been aware of Freyja’s presence from the moment they sensed it, so they’ll be on guard against Einherjar.’
-And Einherjar is a bluff. Its true nature is…
‘Precision strikes on dispersed forces.’
Reorganize the coalescing resistance forces completely, scatter them widely—some retreat, some advance, some launch guerrilla attacks. It was a tactic possible only because they had the means to simultaneously gather intelligence from across the battlefield, allowing them to rearrange the enemy’s dispositions to suit their tastes. That was the first move.
*
“Yarl! Yarl!”
A warrior came panting up to Erik as he mounted his horse in full armor and dropped to one knee. Erik turned his head to look down at him, and the warrior stammered out in a choked voice.
“The enemy! The enemies have appeared!”
“Resistance forces?”
“Y-Yes! Right now, from all sides… beacons are rising from all directions!”
Erik turned his gaze toward the horizon shrouded in darkness. Just as the warrior said, white smoke was rising in straight lines all around.
“A shallow ploy.”
Bard smirked. Seven were visible to the naked eye. With such a long front line, his forces were spread out just as thinly as the enemy’s. No matter how many scattered raiders struck sporadically along this endless front, it would ultimately be a self-inflicted wound.
“The fools are making a mistake. Kaldaris.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Lead the cavalry. If these dispersed vermin dare poke their heads out, wouldn’t it be better to crush them one by one?”
Bard had fortified every camp thoroughly in preparation for this scenario. They couldn’t be dismantled overnight. Erik’s forces had shrunk due to internal strife, but their cohesion was stronger than ever.
Every allied camp had at least one demon lurking within. If the enemy concentrated their forces to break through that, and those forces collapsed… For enemies already outnumbered, it would be a brutal burden.
“Don’t disappoint me. Go!”
“Yes, my lord!”
The lizard-like demon bowed and withdrew. Bard cackled as he eyed Erik. Tonight, blood would form rivers. Perfect.
The legion began marching from Erik’s camp. Toward the camps with rising beacons. The enemies raiding those camps would collapse the moment they realized they were surrounded.
Launching a siege with enemies at their rear meant willingly stepping into a perfect anvil-and-hammer encirclement annihilation. And the fools lacked the morale, will, or numbers for it.
“You’ve exhausted yourself, Freyja.”
Bard snickered. Why not wait for Einherjar instead?
*
-If they deploy forces to counter this, sow confusion by making it look like we’re preparing for a full frontal assault…
The moment the enemy concentrates on a protruding allied position to pick off our dispersed troops. In the exact area and manner they desire most. Leak information suggesting a ‘massive legion’ is assembling. Drawing their gaze there—that was the second move.
Fernandez halted, gazing at the scattered red lights dotting the distance. Abel, panting heavily, soon stood beside him, regulating his ragged breath.
“H-Have they all arrived?”
“Almost.”
Fernandez smiled as he watched cavalry charging toward the vast camp.
*
“The enemy is retreating!!”
The camp’s warriors raised victory cheers. Their casualties weren’t heavy, and the sudden raiders who had struck from the darkness withdrew all at once.
The enemy vanished into the forest as swiftly as they’d appeared. They must have panicked. Seeing a remote outpost on the front’s edge so thoroughly fortified, they couldn’t afford the time sink.
“Haha, stupid bastards!”
The Kazalid clan warrior laughed heartily at the darkened forest. They’d wanted to shake Hazat Kazal’s increasingly solid front line somehow, but it was too late.
“Chief! Someone’s coming!”
“Ah, reinforcements from our side. What a shame! We could’ve swept them away in one go!”
The warrior bellowed with laughter as he eyed the approaching troops. Sure enough, demons mixed in—they were Erik’s direct forces. The scale-covered demon leading on horseback shouted up at the warrior atop the camp’s palisade.
“The enemy?”
“They fled ages ago!”
“How many were there?”
Darkness made an exact count impossible. But estimating was simple arithmetic. This camp had over two hundred warriors, and from the attacker’s view, toppling a fortress required at least three times that.
So, even lowballing it, over four hundred must have emerged from that forest. The warrior declared proudly.
“About five hundred!”
“Five hundred… five hundred…”
The warrior had inflated the number slightly to embellish his feat. He’d seen fewer than a hundred with his own eyes. It was all due to the darkness, dense woods, and sudden raid…
The demon stroked his chin atop his horse, deep in thought.
‘Seven sites with beacons, and assuming at least four hundred per front line…’
It meant the enemy’s full strength was launching raids everywhere now. In other words, they had no reserves left. No manpower for other tactics.
Without a central legion to hold the middle, they were just scattered guerrillas. They’d never imagined Erik reacting this swiftly. The demon flashed a sinister smile.
“You—report this to Bard. We pursue the routed remnants into the forest!”
Erik’s forces weren’t few, and every one was an elite deeply blessed by demons. Even with some losses, rooting out the enemy stragglers was the priority.
It wasn’t a wrong call. Perhaps the best initiative a frontline field commander could take.
*
“They’ve begun the pursuit.”
Kirhas gazed at the small flower buds blooming on her wooden plank. Every warrior held a similar small plank.
Even a goddess couldn’t micromanage every troop’s specifics without exhausting her mental energy. But simple directives were feasible.
Purple flower: enemy pursuing. Red flower: about to engage enemy soon. Yellow flower: escape nearby. Blue flower: advance.
Warriors across the fronts had received these types of planks, allowing Kirhas—out on the line herself—to conduct highly precise command.
She whispered to her plank.
“The time has come, Freyja. You may expose the legion.”
-Poof!
As if in response, a blue flower bloomed on the plank. The troops arrayed behind her numbered about thirty—raiders who’d just tapped one camp before fleeing en masse.
Such groups were prodding Erik’s entire camp network bit by bit. For vicious information chaos. The enemy was wavering, even if invisible—even without sharing divine sight, she knew it plainly.
All their forces? No. Not at all. The enemy thought so, but those touching Erik’s camps were mere small bands incapable of retaking even one.
The full resistance force gathered over days—every deserter from the north they could muster—was by now…
“Advancing to flip the turtle.”
*
Erik was moving to inspect the front. The enemy remained phantoms, but having exhausted themselves to poke here, unearthing their roots was only a matter of course.
Hunt them down and massacre, or clean up the remnants bold enough to attack. Either way suited Erik fine. Moment by moment, the enemy was cutting their own lifelines and marching into snares.
Then, a cavalryman galloped up to Erik’s side and prostrated desperately.
“Yarl!! The raiders number four hundred, they say! Every raided camp reports the same enemy count!”
“Their full force.”
Around four thousand. That was likely every last resistance fighter they’d scraped together. Barely over half his numbers, and factoring in the demons mixed in his ranks, their tactics were limited to scattered raids. No grand maneuvers possible.
A pity. Bard licked his lips. But their resistance was as futile as ever, and they wouldn’t survive the night.
“Yaaarl!!”
Then, a cavalryman from outside the camp came galloping in, shouting.
“What is it?”
“The enemy—the enemies are approaching!!”
“What…?”
The cavalryman drew near, bowed deeply, and yelled.
“They number two thousand! The patrol sweeping the front was crushed—I barely escaped alone!”
“What… did you say?”
“It’s a trap.”
Erik said coldly. He glared at Bard with contempt.
“We’ve been played. The raids were to divert our eyes.”
“Splitting their meager forces and now gearing up for a counterattack? Even with our dispersion, how many demons do you think are in this area? They’re marching into their graves!”
“Enough.”
Erik cut Bard off with a scowl.
“Freyja’s information war is sharper than expected. We can’t keep being toys. Summon demons.”
“…What?”
“At this point where we dominate in quality and quantity, their only weapon is information. If we match their intel level, they’re nothing.”
“How…?”
“Summon demons, kill them, summon again.”
Bard fell silent at the words. Right, there was that method. Demons were spiritual beings. When a manifested demon was ejected to hell and resummoned, it could relay its last seen intel regardless of location.
Those blessed by demons inevitably became hell’s eyes. And demons summoned from hell would know what their material-world minions had seen and heard.
Time was the key resource in information warfare. This method could slash it drastically. But summoning demons consumed human lives.
“With the enemy almost upon us?”
“No matter their numbers, they’re still dispersed. And our forces will return to camp at dawn. You don’t think we’d be wiped out overnight, do you? We’ll see to the aftermath.”
“True, that might be better… to root out their remnants completely.”
Bard quickly regained composure at Erik’s words. Even sacrificing a few warriors, his total forces were merely scattered. They still overwhelmed the enemy’s full strength. If the enemy numbered two thousand now, his camp had at least that many.
*
‘Demons don’t consume resources like time or distance for intel sharing. They’re thoughtforms.’
At summoning, they carried hell’s knowledge; at banishment, they took earthly intel back. Exploiting this enabled astonishingly swift intel gathering.
It was a tactic he’d used in his past life. Scatter demons widely for max intel—zero loss on sacrifice anyway—reverse-summon them to hell, then resummon at his side to extract data.
If they weren’t idiots, they’d use it to match allied intel speed. But the difference was…
-Back then, we controlled one hell gate.
‘And they must expend sacrifices per summoning.’
Unlike the future, this era’s demons were exquisitely asymmetric assets. Producing them cost human lives. With a hell gate, mana sufficed, but the north had none.
Their war aim was the gate opening toward Sadarkelia’s seal. Meaning, to match allied intel infrastructure, they’d burn equivalent manpower.
-While they devour their own flesh to grasp our true form…
‘The third move.’
Yet they wouldn’t stop. Even if blood formed rivers and corpses piled like hills. They’d see it as fodder for building the hell gate.
And they’d be right. Their victory path: shatter allied depth, open the gate, annihilate the north. Any precursor losses were ‘acceptable.’
-When cornered, Bard and Erik will appear on the front.
‘The final move to draw out the turtle’s head.’
Bard’s original plan—secure sacrifices via grand battle, pacify north sans resistance—fails then. Gate opens, but Hazat Palan’s resistance endures.
Second-best for them, not worst. More hassle, but they’d think, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Once the gate opens and demons pour, resistance loses meaning. Struggling against one or two demons, how block a gate’s horde? Annihilation inevitable. Or so.
‘Gates are two-way.’
Fernandez smiled, thinking of the Religiosa Demonica brethren. The war’s sole unexposed allied asymmetric force. Holy Pantheon’s spear, humanity’s beacon…
-Wait, Sadarkelia.
Feizashi cackled. Fernandez mirrored the smile. Their final gambit: open the gate to Sadarkelia’s seal.
From the start, Bard and Fernandez shared the same strategic goal. He to summon her, Fernandez to slaughter her.
Demon cultist and demon hunter were but a paper’s width apart.