Chapter 229 - No Time (9)
The plan had been a success. Not only did it make the enemies pull away from their forces on the other sides of the wall out of fear, but it also made the northern wall hold out and ended up defeating almost one thousand enemy soldiers while losing only about two hundred. There were more wounded among them, but even so, it had been one hell of a victory.
"Should we use my students that can use earth magic due the same on the other battlefields?" Sarah asked.
"They probably won't be able to do much during the day if they focus on that, besides, the enemies will be cautious of others attacks like that," Billy replied. "So, it isn't a good idea."
Billy probably could make other tunnels like that, but the enemies were bound to find out the secret and lay some traps to him. Since he couldn't see things above, it was hard to tell where it was safe to appear. In any case, thanks to Billy's ambush, now the enemies knew that night raids would be dangerous to both sides.
Although Billy wanted to sleep a little, he helped the wounded since few people had the necessary skills. So, the work kept going until sunrise.
"We have a message for you from the old geezers," Marie suddenly appeared alongside Pierre.
"You never break the character, do you?" Pierre asked and then sighed. "Nevertheless… Natalie, your special unit is to take a break today, focus only on recovering your strength and helping the wounded. We will send more medical supplies if you need it."
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Natalie asked. "It is just the second day, we aren't that tired yet."
"No, it is a good idea," Billy said. "We need to be in tip top condition all the time and if we don't show up on any battlefield, the enemies will be wary of us appearing and ambushing them. Even if we don't do anything, we will psychologically bother the enemies."
"I don't think those geezers thought that far ahead," Marie said. "Maybe Gustav and Gerald are just scared that your group will be the stars of this war as well."
As if anyone had the time to worry about that… Nevertheless, the group got the message, and aside from Lily's unit, the others would rest for the day. Billy slept for quite a while, but then he stayed awake through the entire night to recover his mana and to make other tunnels as well. He could use them aside from ambushes, and this time, he had the help of some people from Sarah's squad.
"I heard the stories, but I didn't think there was someone who could use magic so freely, even more like you, Captain," One random recruit said. At the same time, he watched Billy doing the same job that the other twenty recruits were doing by himself.
"Well, this is nothing for Billy," Sarah said. "You should know by now that people like you only can use magic because of him. My people can learn it naturally, but we never managed to pass it down to others. Billy did it. It is almost a pity that he never focuses on a single path… in order to follow and reach absolute mastery."
"He is rather greedy, isn't he? My apologies if that sounded offensive…"
"There is no problem in being greedy, as long as you don't take from others and are willing to share the knowledge that you obtain," Sarah said. "Nevertheless, Billy probably won't mind hearing that. He will probably laugh at it, but if his future wives hear that… Well, I wish you good luck."
Sarah was just joking, but those who heard that decided to be cautious about mentioning their thoughts out loud when they were related to Billy. Nevertheless, they could say that because they were relaxing since the enemies didn't send many forces to attack the walls. Despite that, they noticed the enemies moving their camps at least one kilometer closer to them. At the same time, the soldiers began to move between the camps.
"It seems they want more variety on all three sides," Billy said.
"That will make things more complicated for us, since they won't show many openings that way," Alexander said. "Not to mention, the beast tamers had yet to use their monsters."
The tamed monsters hadn't been seen yet, so Billy wondered if they were sent to target another place. The weakness of an army of monsters was the fact that they couldn't do complex tasks and that they couldn't be substituted by others, at least not near a battlefield. Still, even with that many problems, Billy would gladly use an army of monsters to cause confusion in the enemies' ranks… he would use them on the very first day. So, he couldn't understand how come the beast tamers were so conservative when it came to them.
Nevertheless, on the morning of the third day, everyone saw some large movements in all of the enemy's camps. They probably realized that Jean just used a mind game to keep them on their toes on the previous day, so the next one would be an attack in earnest. Just as everyone had predicted, the enemies had mobilized one thousand barbarians, one thousand riders of the former Toles state, and five hundred infantrymen armed with shields and crossbows… they did that in all three battlefields.
"This might be bad…" Billy thought.
By using the same tactic on all three battlefields, the enemies will put a lot of pressure on all of those, so Jean wouldn't be able to make many moves to help one of them since they will most likely face the same problems.
"We will have to go all out this time, don't think of saving even a bit of energy," Billy said to his friends. "Defeat as many enemies as possible from the very beginning."
"That doesn't seem the type of tactic you would come up with usually… is our situation really that bad?" Alexander asked.
"It might become if we let the enemies control the flow of the battle today," Billy said.. "If you have any trick up your sleeve, now is the time to use it."