The Magician of Sound

"Have we finished all of them?" Yuki was panting as she asked Kai.

Kai was also slightly out of breath. "Yeah. We have another thirty minutes from our original time." 

"Let's go back and rest first." 

They had been roaming around for two and a half hours in a pair without having anyone's help. Yet, they had killed five hundred magical beasts out of the original five thousand, showing how hard they fought this whole time. 

Knowing there was nothing to do, they decided to go back to rest on the meeting point. However, he suddenly had a bunch of people coming toward him right outside the meeting point. They looked a little familiar, but Kai couldn't remember who they were.

"Sir!" They suddenly saluted him.

"Eh?" Kai obviously was astounded. At first, he thought they were coming from Yuki's army, but when he heard their voices, He remembered a certain unit. "Are you from the Reserve Army?"

"Yes, Sir. We were the first thirty people, albeit half of us fell in battle."

Kai looked down and apologized. "I'm sorry."

"We are also angry and sad for our fallen comrades, but we will direct it to the magical beasts here. Sir had an even more dangerous fight than us, no one would actually think badly about you Sir. In fact, we are ashamed to have you, a student, led us in the front and completely obliterated the enemies."

"I see… I'm sorry that I can't talk too much right now." 

"I know you are busy, so we will support you with anything."

Kai didn't know what to do and only nodded. "Thank you."

He and Yuki then walked toward the meeting point.

"I need a status report…" Yuki said on the way.

"I tried to listen to it earlier and realized that we have at least lost four hundred soldiers in this battle… And a few students from Magic Academy and Military Academy." Kai let out a long sigh. 

"We are fighting for speed this time, so I expect that the loss is quite serious… Yet, it's still lower than my expectation." Yuki nodded. "It must be the capability of the commander. Before coming here, how many people do you think have died from our original six thousand or so people?"

"I don't know the exact details." 

"A prediction then."

"Around a fourth of them."

"One thousand and five hundred… It's quite big, considering our loss wasn't that big yesterday." Yuki furrowed her eyebrows. They only lost around four hundred people for the past two days, but to think they had lost more than a thousand on today alone. "Still, we might lose more if you didn't notify us and took charge in the situation. In fact, the group inside might annihilated, and we wouldn't know until we went inside." 

"Teacher said we would have at least three thousand and five hundred people alive."

"I see. More than half, huh… Considering we were ambushed and now need to kill them all while being exhausted. It will lead to high casualty." Yuki thought for a moment. They might be able to pull back first in this situation… However, the thought about being ambushed and so on would dampen the soldiers' spirits, and the longer they prolong this fight, the harder to finish it. That was why Ria also suggested finishing this battle as soon as possible. "That's good enough, I guess."

Kai nodded. "Of course, we are trying our best to avoid it. I hope we can have more than four thousand people in the end."

"Indeed. We can use our number to strike the Northern Region while the Southern Region will have Alicia, Sherwin, Sir Nathan, and General Ria. They should be able to minimize the casualty. Then, we can pincer them from two sides."

"Two sides? We can do it from three sides." Kai smirked. "I'm sure my Teacher is planning the same."

"Well, I don't know the extent of your strategy, so I will just follow your instruction and lead the soldiers to the best of my ability." 

Kai and Yuki stopped talking for a while until they had arrived in their position, waiting for the others to come.

Following the timing strictly, more than ten people came in front of him, including Yuki and Alicia. Each of them was responsible for the life of a hundred people and to ensure they didn't stray too much.

Kai stared at them sharply. Yet, before starting the last briefing, Kai turned to one messenger and said. "Tell the Middle Army they can proceed with their plan. The time limit is…"

Kai calculated the time they and Henry needed to eliminate the four thousand magical beasts as well as how long Ria and the others needed to deal with their situation. After calculating for a few seconds, he declared. "The time limit is two hours." 

"Yes, Sir!" The messenger saluted and left.

He then turned to the leaders in front of him. "We only need to deal with four thousand beasts in the Northern Region and eight thousand in the Eastern Region. However, the last one will be together with all of our forces. So the time and difficulty are around the same. I know that you have fought continuously, and every battle must be hard. Even so, this situation forces us to end this battle today. I want you to bear with me for another few hours. I assure you that we will be victorious within five hours."

"Yes, Sir!" No one had an objection toward him, knowing that he was the current acting general. Although the age quite confused them, Kai didn't give an aura of ignorance, and the two commanders also didn't state anything, so they believed in Kai for the time being. 

"We are going in five minutes!" 

…

Approximately one hour later…

After entering the Northern Region, the soldiers were raging because they knew the magical beasts that ambushed them were coming from him. These remaining magical beasts only had themselves to blame and died just like that. 

The same applied to the insects in the Southern Region when they were obliterated by four people. However, there was suddenly a shift when Ria met Nathan. 

They locked into each other's eyes, planning the same thing in their mind. Nathan suddenly said, "You should go back to the Middle Region and help the commanders that have been holding the magical beasts there." 

"No. You should go." Ria shook her head. "Your strength is how you can utilize formation and strategy to sweep the enemies while I have the strength to penetrate any kind of formation in magical beasts. That's why you are going to help them, not me. We have Alicia to replace your soldier positioning while Sherwin helps the power aspect."

"But if you go to the Middle Region, you can meet your student easily."

"No. It will be hard to meet him since I don't have his hearing ability, so I won't know his position, especially in this complicated underground nest. It will be better if I stay here. After all, I can lead the group to penetrate the enemy rank deep. At the same time, Kai has many capable commanders behind him, so he might also do the same, penetrating deep into their ranks and spreading his soldiers. We will win this in a few hours." Ria answered with a solemn expression. 

Nathan didn't immediately reply to her. He pondered for a minute and said, "Alright. I will go according to your plan. Still, I am pretty lucky to have you joined this fight."

"I participated because of Kai, not you. Besides, I have another objective myself which has been completed." Ria snorted.

"Fair enough." Nathan nodded before beginning to walk away. "Then, I'm going."

They only had another one hour before the last battle, but most of them had cleaned up the enemies, so they were pretty relaxed. Kai would also check the nest after this to make sure no beast remained alive.

Meanwhile, Kai's group also had almost finished their battle as there were only one thousand magical beasts. Their number was even higher than them at this point, and the soldiers had the luxury to relax while killing the rest of magical beasts. Of course, Kai needed to confirm whether they had cleaned up the entire Northern Region or not. 

In the end, Michelle ended up coming together with him since Ayaka and Tasha, who were watching the passage, followed Ria Ross instead of coming to him. Michelle had been acting alone this whole time, so she could move freely. Yuki was the one who actually asked her since she couldn't accompany Kai this time.

The first destination for Kai was Henry's place. Kai might not be able to pinpoint it, but it was different if he got closer. Henry agreed to push forward and matched their pace with Kai's group. Henry was one of the Attacker Army commanders, so this situation allowed him to release his pent up stress from defending.

With the addition of his group, their number almost reached two thousand soldiers, while the magical beasts only had four thousand. It was an all-out slaughter that even made Kai have little action. 

Finally, after the valiant effort of the soldiers, the Northern Group and Southern Group had closed in, ready to win the war at any time.

The three leaders of their respective forces stood on the border leading to the Eastern Region after completing their own task. Only a few seconds left in the clock and the situation tensed up. The soldiers could also see the timer, and they were ready for the last fight, hoping it would end soon. 

Kai furrowed his eyebrows, and the moment he saw the time reach zero. He, Nathan, and Ria shouted at the same time. 

"Begin!"