Eyes That See Through Stratagems

“Saria, are you ready?”

‘No problem, sir! But does this war of words really have any meaning?’

“If it is the custom in these parts, then it cannot be helped. Besides, while it has nothing to do with us, perhaps it is necessary to raise the morale of one’s own army.”

‘I see! It has nothing to do with us, but now that you mention it, it does feel necessary, sir! As expected of Lord Fels, sir!’

I was using Hawk Voice to speak with a very energetic woman… Saria.

At present, I was in the main camp of Saria’s army, which was invading the Est Kingdom. While, as usual, using Hawk Eye to look down over the battlefield, I was leisurely chatting with Saria, who had gone off for the exchange of challenges.

Since this battle was probably the final decisive clash with the Est Kingdom, I had come all the way to the battlefield, but if I used Hawk Eye, I could have watched this battle even from inside Einheria Castle.

However, Saria had said that everyone would feel more fired up if I came to the battlefield in person, sir! And so, I ended up coming here.

Or rather, I myself had only intended to come here as a spectator, but…

“Still, Saria. Is it really all right for me to take command?”

‘Of course, sir! If Lord Fels takes command, not just me, but everyone will be happy for sure, sir!’

“Hm…”

Saria says that, but… we had pushed the invasion of the Est Kingdom this far with Saria as supreme commander, so I felt bad about it, as though I were swooping in and snatching away only the final decisive battle… but she insisted that it was precisely because it was the last battle that she wanted me to take command, sir!

“Well, if that is what all of you want, then I shall command this battle.”

‘I humbly ask for your leadership, sir!’

Well, it was the request of Saria, who had worked hard as supreme commander all this way, so I might as well enthusiastically take command.

This was the simultaneous conquest operation against the three kingdoms, but Saria was the first one to bring a country to the brink of collapse, so I ought to prepare some kind of reward… or commendation? Maybe I should give her something from the treasury?

For Saria, it would probably be a spear, but… I already have her equipped with the best spear available.

If I wanted to give her something beyond that… it would have to be exclusive equipment, but… as the name suggests, that sort of thing is equipment exclusively for the fixed characters in Sword and Legions. If anyone other than the intended person equips it, they get debuffs, curses, and all sorts of other nonsense piled onto them, making them drastically weaker.

The Overlord Sword I use is like that too…

Hmm, in that case, what could I give her… no, this isn’t the time to be thinking about that.

“This opponent’s scale is fairly large this time.”

I switched gears and spoke to Kiriku, with whom I was sharing vision as usual.

“The enemy army numbers fifty thousand… as an opponent in this world, that is the largest scale we have seen yet.”

“The enemy’s main force is… a crane-wing formation, isn’t it?”

A formation arranged like a V against us… if I remember right, that’s a formation suited for defense.

And since they have the advantage in numbers, they can absorb our attack while wrapping around to encircle us… that’s the idea, right?

Well, since the enemy is on the defensive side, and crane-wing is advantageous when you have greater numbers, it’s only natural they would choose it… but that isn’t the issue.

Diagonally ahead of the enemy formation… to the west, on a rather large hill… the enemy has also deployed troops there.

“The force on the hill numbers about five thousand… but our side of the hill seems to have been fortified.”

Just as Kiriku said, fences had been erected here and there on the hill, and it looked like countless soldiers with bows at the ready had been stationed there.

“Mm… that is a hill that looks difficult to attack and easy to defend. And those are… catapults?”

I shifted my bird’s-eye view slightly and zoomed in on the area around the hill.

There I could see large catapults set up, aimed toward our side, but the catapults themselves had been placed so that they could not be seen from our position.

“So it would seem. The purpose of placing siege engines there is…”

“Well, no matter how one looks at it, they intend to fire on us… but they don’t seem likely to be that effective.”

There were three catapults… sure, having rocks hurled at you would definitely be scary, but… they probably can’t fire repeatedly, so they don’t seem like that great a threat, right?

“They are siege engines, not anti-personnel weapons… they may be able to aim roughly, but I imagine it would not be unusual for them to miss the mark by several meters.”

“…I thought perhaps they intended to target the main camp, but they do not have that much range, I suppose?”

“That is correct. Even taking the difference in elevation into account, I do not think they can reach this far. However, the things a catapult launches are not necessarily limited to rocks.”

…I see.

Now that he said it, that made sense.

They might very well be planning to launch fire pots, gravel, or other things that can attack a wide area.

Even so, they probably can’t fire rapidly, and I have no idea how much attack power they have… but, well, how much damage would my people really take from them?

Surely if they take a hit capable of breaking a castle wall, they won’t come through it completely unharmed… but then again… Lynferia knocked aside the Ground Dragon’s tail attack, and Jōsen grabbed the dragon’s attack and tossed it aside like it was nothing… yeah, let’s capture one of those catapults.

We need to investigate how much of a threat those things are to our people.

In that case… how should we attack?

Should we leave the hill attack for later and first defeat the ones deployed below?

Well, thinking about it normally, I believe that is a fairly troublesome formation.

If we clash with the force on the plain, we will expose our flank to the army on the hill, and if we attack the hill, we will be caught between the troops above and those below.

If we had more soldiers, we might have been able to split our army and wage a two-front battle against both the hill and the plain, but unfortunately, we are the smaller force.

We are in a situation where we only have one-fifth of the enemy’s numbers, so we cannot very well divide our army even further.

Well, the quality of our troops is different… so even if we split them, we could handle it, but there is no need to go out of our way to disperse our strength.

The reason I can leave the army on the hill alone is that even if they fire arrows down on us from high ground, they will do almost no damage to the summoned troops. That was already made perfectly clear in our previous battle against the Lumoria Kingdom.

If they come down from the hill to launch a flanking strike, then I can simply leave that to our left wing, and if we charge into the enemy main force and they receive us with the crane-wing formation, then if the hill force moves to seal off our rear… the reserve troops left at the main camp can then strike the descending force from behind.

Well, it’s only possible because my people have overwhelmingly absurd specs… but that’s our strength, so there’s no problem.

“I want to capture at least one catapult.”

“If it is something of that level, I could make one myself.”

Kiriku said that in response to my remark.

“No, I want one that they made. I want to investigate how much power it has, how much range it has, and how much of a threat it can pose to us. If you made one, Kiriku, it would end up being something far higher-performance than those, would it not?”

I shrugged, but when I thought about it, Kiriku was sharing my vision, so he couldn’t actually see me.

Lynferia, who was in the tent as my guard, would have seen it, though… that was a little embarrassing.

“So that is what you meant. Then we shall proceed with capturing a catapult for testing purposes… in that case, what we must be careful of is whether the enemy, fearing capture, will destroy them.”

That was true too. If the catapults were seized here, the natural assumption would be that they’d be used against the royal capital. Of course the enemy would prioritize destroying them.

“Well, let’s try to take one without overdoing it. In the worst case, even if they are destroyed, we can simply have them make new ones. Whether they obediently make the same thing for us or not… that may depend on what happens with us from here on.”

Whether a defeated nation would obediently listen to our words… that might be rather difficult.

Normally, I don’t think they’d be able to switch gears cleanly the way the nobles of the Lumoria Kingdom did.

“With Lord Fels’s glorious authority, I doubt it would be difficult at all.”

That really isn’t true, you know?

For a moment, Kiriku’s baseless trust made me feel faint, but then I saw a person carrying a flag step forward from the enemy army, and I braced myself.

It looked like the exchange of challenges was about to begin.

Saria was the one going out from our side, but… would she be all right?

I’ve heard Lynferia do this sort of thing before, but I wonder if Saria can really say things that overbearing…?

Saria is, if anything, the straightforward sort of girl… though, well, I was the one who nominated her.

Let us give careful ear to what kind of taunts she offers…

“Lord Fels. It seems the enemy has placed an ambush in the forest to the rear of our right wing.”

Just as I was about to listen closely to Saria’s verbal clash, Kiriku informed me of the existence of an ambush.

“The rear of the right wing… this forest here? Can you tell how many?”

“Roughly one thousand. They do not yet seem ready to charge us. Also, separate from those men, there are enemy soldiers continuing to move while hiding themselves behind our army… three hundred. They too are likely planning to launch a surprise attack.”

At Kiriku’s warning, I shifted my focus to the rear of our army.

…There they were.

There really was a small group moving while trying to keep hidden from us.

From the bird’s-eye view, they were completely exposed, but I hadn’t noticed them until Kiriku pointed them out.

Three hundred men doesn’t feel like much as an army, but it’s still a decent number of people… they were moving quite well so as not to be found.

As for the ambushers in the forest, though, I couldn’t see them at all.

The trees blocked everything, so I couldn’t see inside the forest in the slightest.

The reason Kiriku, who was sharing the same view as me, could notice the ambush was probably because of his ability Stratagem Insight.

Back in the game, if you made someone with that ability your strategist, it would tell you in advance what stratagem the enemy was planning to use during the war phase. Since stratagems generally needed time to activate in exchange for having large effects, being told in advance made them easy to handle.

Of course, whether it could be seen through accurately depended on that character’s Intelligence, so even if a useless strategist had the ability, it would hardly be of any use, but our strategist Kiriku’s Intelligence is at the maximum value of 125.

A little below one and a half times that of a fully grown Overlord.

Well, with equipment bonuses, it’s actually even higher.

In any case, that’s the sort of thing Hawk Eye is like. For Kiriku, who shares it, it lets him see even more than I do.

“For the thousand in the forest, let’s send about three hundred of ours. As for the three hundred behind us… once they charge at the main camp, we can intercept them and that will be enough. Judging from the look of them, they don’t seem to be cavalry, so if we blast them with magic when they get close, that should be sufficient.”

“Understood. And whom shall we send toward the forest?”

“Have Rio go. In the forest, sword troops are better than spearmen, and everyone else is at the front lines. Any objections?”

I designated Rio, who was defending the main camp.

Normally it would be unthinkable to send out the person responsible for the defense of the main camp, but the main camp had me and my guard Lynferia there, and the two of us had each brought three hundred summoned troops as well, so there was no problem even if Rio left.

“I have no objections. As for the defense of the main camp, there should be no issue.”

Now that I had Kiriku’s approval, I should give Rio the order right away.

“Rio, can you hear me?”

‘Yes, sir! I hear you clearly!’

When I called out, I heard the voice of a girl who sounded serious and diligent.

Back in the game, she was a swordswoman I had raised as a war-phase character.

She had not made it into the first-string unit, which was made up only of ace-class members, but I had trained her thoroughly, so it was not as though she were weaker than those first-string characters.

Incidentally, unlike Jōsen, she can’t use weapons other than a sword, but he was a character for the RPG phase, so it couldn’t be helped that his development path differed from war-phase characters like Rio.

“Do you see that small forest behind the right side of our army?”

‘Yes! I have confirmed it, sir!’

“There appears to be an ambush of one thousand there. The moment the exchange of challenges ends, take three hundred and crush them.”

‘Yes, sir! Understood!’

“Capture the officers if possible. The other soldiers do not particularly need to be taken prisoner, but disable them. Try to keep deaths to a minimum.”

‘Yes, sir! I will subdue them without a single death!’

“…I’m counting on you.”

Well, if Rio says she can do it, then she probably can.

For now, the ambush in the rear is dealt with… then let’s turn our attention back to Saria…

Just as I thought that and was about to move my gaze toward the front line, a warning came from Kiriku.

“Lord Fels! The hill is launching an attack with catapults!”

The moment I heard Kiriku’s voice, I immediately sent my voice out to everyone on the battlefield!

“All forces! A catapult attack is incoming from the hill to the left! Brace yourselves!”

Only a moment after my warning, countless stones came raining down upon the Einheria army’s vanguard.