Ch.70Guerrilla Warfare

“The knights will take the lead.”

“May I ask why?”

“Because you won’t die even if you fall into traps.”

“That’s a reasonable explanation.”

A Sword Master can detect hostility from living beings or intelligent entities.

Mere machines performing assigned tasks without intelligence—traps and snares—cannot be detected by a Sword Master.

Of course, having reached the Master level, he could identify most traps with his sharpened perception, but this also meant that without keenly focusing his senses, he couldn’t discover them.

Originally, a Master’s role was frontline combat, and such matters should be handled by specially trained individuals, but the problem was that not only traps but elves were waiting in that forest.

A race with such incredible archery skills that they could target gaps in plate armor and kill knights with a single shot.

So the decision to simply let the knights absorb the damage from ordinary traps was quite rational.

Traps that would merely hurt knights could sever the limbs of regular soldiers.

“We’re moving in.”

“Yes, sir!”

And soon, following the Master’s command, the troops began entering the densely wooded forest.

Thwack! Thwack!

“Arrrgh!!!”

“It’s those pointy-eared bitches!!”

“Shields up!”

The elves’ barrage had begun.

The knights at the front showed no concern, while the elves, systematically picking off the regular soldiers in the rear, remained hidden behind the forest undergrowth. All that could be seen was the faint outline of their longbows’ strings.

Thwack! Thwack!

“Aaaagh! My arm! My arrrm!!!”

“Maintain formation! Keep advancing forward!”

In a forest spanning 5 million hectares, the only way for an army of merely 20,000 to survive was to keep moving forward.

At the non-commissioned officers’ orders, the uninjured soldiers hastily raised their shields, blocking incoming arrows while continuously advancing.

Thud! Thud-thud-thud!

“Uwaaaaah…!”

“Don’t drop your shields! The knights are ahead of us! Keep moving! If we stop, we all die!”

As the NCOs said, moving forward offered a chance of survival, but stopping out of fear of the arrow rain would mean instant annihilation.

It was fortunate that the elves numbered only a few hundred; had there been thousands, the soldiers wouldn’t have even had a chance to raise their shields.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

After an hour of arrow barrage, the elves, having depleted their arrows, retreated deeper into the forest without any specific order.

This was partly to replenish their arrows and partly to tend to casualties caused by arrows shot from the Fahrenheit army’s reformed shield wall.

Although the engagement was one-sided for now, continuous fighting would occur until they exited the Western Forest. If casualties continued to mount among the few hundred elves, gaps would appear in their firepower, allowing the Masters and knights, with their explosive mobility, to begin hunting the elves.

*

“Three dead and five wounded.”

“The dead can’t be helped… what about the injured?”

“Fortunately, they’re only minor injuries, but the wounded areas make it difficult for them to use bows.”

“…I understand. Can the wounded walk on their own?”

“Yes, that much is possible.”

“Then order them to return to the forest keepers’ outposts. They’ll be able to care for the wounded.”

“…Understood, Captain.”

Throughout the Western Forest, outposts of forest keepers established by Tiberius were scattered.

The thousands of forest keepers had not yet participated in the battle, as their mission was to support the elves, conduct rear reconnaissance, and block the retreat path when the Fahrenheit army reached the Amurtat Plains.

Moreover, despite being forest keepers, they were still humans. No matter how stealthily thousands of armed humans moved, they would inevitably be detected by the Fahrenheit army. To maintain the element of surprise, the forest keepers remained hidden in their outposts, keeping quiet.

Of course, there were paths leading from the main road to these outposts throughout the Western Forest, but the Fahrenheit army, frantically fleeing from elven fire, either didn’t notice these side paths or dismissed them as insignificant. Thus, the forest keepers were unlikely to be discovered.

When conscription occurs in cities where people have never seen trees except as cut lumber, awareness of natural elements tends to be remarkably low.

Although their alertness was currently heightened due to the elven ambush, this was vigilance against attacks, not awareness of nature itself.

But from now on, they would learn just how hellish forest terrain could be.

*

Crack!

“Huh?”

The knight riding at the front uttered a confused sound.

Instead of the dull thud of solid ground, he heard the sound of dry branches and undergrowth breaking beneath his horse’s hooves.

Crackle-crack!

“Neeeiiigh!!!”

“Aaaaargh!”

Crunch!

This meant the ground he stepped on had collapsed, and following the inescapable law of gravity, he and his horse were impaled on the sharp spears waiting below.

“Damn it! A knight is down!”

“Another trap?!”

“Search thoroughly! There must be more traps!”

The unfortunate knight, despite his thick plate armor, was pierced through by the spear-like spikes enhanced by gravity’s pull. He was quickly forgotten.

Irritated by his death, the soldiers hurriedly began searching for more potential traps in the vicinity…

Snap!

“Huh?”

Whoosh!

“Aaaaargh!”

Crack-crack-crack!

“What the hell?! What now?!”

They triggered a tripwire just in front of that trap, and five soldiers became victims of a lightning trap.

“Quickly clear the bodies and disarm the traps and snares! We don’t know when another ambush might come! Hurry!”

“Yes, sir!”

There was no time for mourning.

If they didn’t quickly recover the bodies and clear the path, the elves would launch another ambush, and these unfortunate soldiers, now stationary, would once again become pincushions for arrows.

After about 40 minutes, the path was finally cleared, and the Fahrenheit army began moving again.

With extreme fear of another ambush, and under severe fatigue.

*

“Hehehe. They must be tasting hell right about now.”

I snickered, imagining the Fahrenheit soldiers dying at the hands of the elves.

Five million hectares per sector… I had thought this unrealistic scale would improve now that it had become reality, but after calculating it myself, it seemed the regions were indeed set according to that scale.

The area I currently controlled was 15 million hectares… equivalent to the entire South Korea plus half of it again. With such a sparse population, it was hard to grasp the reality of it.

But whether I could grasp it or not, what mattered now was that they were experiencing a living hell in the Western Forest, becoming pincushions in real-time. By the time they reached the walls of Amurtat, the Fahrenheit soldiers would literally be in tatters.

If they tried to save their troops, they would lose their supply wagons; if they tried to save the wagons, they would have to sacrifice troops.

They might forcibly try to preserve both in a mediocre state, but the elves weren’t amateurs. They were career professionals who had been erasing merchant caravans and covering their tracks for literally over a hundred years. How could they fail to eliminate a single supply unit?

“Hehehe… no matter how powerful a Sword Master is… in all-out war between nations, swinging a sword alone will only get you killed.”

He might deflect one or two ballistas, but what about six?

He might dodge three or four catapults, but what about twelve?

He might cut down hundreds of arrows, but what about thousands of archers?

What is strategy? Strategy is deploying more resources than your opponent can handle.

And right now, by my own assessment, I could pride myself on having quite a strategic mind.

I don’t remember who said it, but isn’t there a saying that knowing yourself and your enemy ensures victory in a hundred battles?

And now, I know myself and my enemy, relentlessly exploiting their weaknesses. So no matter how great a Sword Master might be, escaping this killing field I’ve created would be extremely difficult.

“By the way, is Ignatz still training?”

“Yes. He’s even skipping meals to focus on training. At this rate, he might actually reach the level of Master…”

“Well, we’ll see. Even if he becomes a Master, Fahrenheit’s Master is a seasoned one. A newborn Master wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Then is it possible to defeat a Master with regular soldiers…?”

The aide let his words trail off as he looked at the soldiers checking the ballistas on the walls.

To someone who has lived his entire life beside superhumans, the efforts of ordinary people might seem trivial, but…

“Trust me. We can win.”

As long as these ordinary people were under my command, they were no longer ordinary.