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The outer walls of the castle were taken over, and I rounded up the troops again in formation. I remembered that I shouldn’t just continue on to conquer the inner castle as well, since the 1st platoon was greatly fatigued from just completing this battle.

“We will now swap between the frontlines and the backlines of the formation.”
“Move quickly!”
“Change rows!”

Though their expressions had shown that they were sure to win this battle soon, none of them moved sluggishly or with too much lax. Even if we were to win in this battle, we still needed to subjugate dozens of territories afterward.

I wasn’t expecting this massive-scale battle with tens of thousands of participants would be heading towards completion so quickly. It was probably due to the fact that I was in too much of a hurry to complete this campaign in the limited amount of time.

“Hey, give ‘em hell for me!”
“Great work out there, just leave it to us!”

As the rows exchanged from front to back, each of the soldiers reassured and encouraged each other for the coming battle. The inner walls of the castle were much bigger and taller than the outer walls of the castle after all.

If the outer walls were like the great wall of China, then the inner walls are like the walls of those impenetrable great fortresses in Europe, as the walls themselves were part of the building.

Thankfully it meant that there are limited ways for the enemies to make a counterattack from the walls. Since the castle is laid out in a way that makes it very narrow and small, it was very effective to use large-scale fire attacks against it.

“Aaargh!”

The moment any enemy came out to retaliate against us on the walls, they would be melted away by our mage corps as well as Katalina, so though there were still a few who would shoot their arrows at us, there was very little resistance otherwise.

In truth, the surroundings of the castle were basically captured before we even climbed the castle walls. The defending forces usually wouldn’t bother bolstering their defenses in the inner wall, but since the castle was overcrowded, some people were forcibly pushed out to defend the inner castle walls despite their reluctance.

I could tell since more than half of those that remained had logged out rather than trying to die defending it.

“My lord! Considering that there is a minimal amount of resistance coming from the top of the inner walls, we have basically conquered the castle completely.”

One of the platoon commanders knelt before me and reported the situation. Even though I was already aware of the overall situation, I still thought it would be rude to outright dismiss him.

“I see. Let us now assemble the troops that will be raiding the castle.”
“Yes, my lord! I shall volunteer and pick out the advance party.”
“No! I shall be part of the advance party myself. Please pick out a party to feint a siege.”
“A party to feint a siege?”

Hearing my words, the commander asked with a curious expression.

“That’s correct. We will send them in to make it look to the enemies that we are commencing a typical siege attack, but instead, I shall be heading in first.”
“Ellie, that’s dangerous!”

The enemy forces could definitely be prepared for this. If I headed in and caused chaos to the enemy formations, they could surround me and take me down while I was isolated from the rest of the troops. But I also had a clever idea as well, so I whispered to Katalina for a moment.

I simply asked for a few confirmations, as well as whether the plan I had made up in my mind would be effective or not, and thankfully Katalina nodded her head, as if to say that my plan would work out.

“If things work out as you say, then it certainly is a novel and groundbreaking new plan, but…”

That’s right. The whole plan I had in my mind was one that would only have me as the active person in it. The problem was how long I would be able to survive the attacks that the enemies surrounding me would dish out, and how many areas I would be able to secure.

But if we were to go with the standard tactic, it would take a whole day just to break through the defenses and enter the castle. It may work out somehow if I were to spam high power skills like Requiem and whatnot, but not only was there a long cooldown, there was also the problem of fatigue so that was impossible.

“Please just believe in me for a bit. Have I ever failed so far?”
“Be honest, it all just worked out better than you thought. It’s not like you had planned all those things to happen in advance.”
“Mmmh…”

I was trying to persuade Katalina but I was the one who became persuaded instead. However, it was a shame to back out from this plan when I had already come so far, and there was also the matter of nice kill points being dangled in front of me.

“Honestly, you’re just doing this because you want to raise your kill points, right?”
“?!”

Her expression immediately changed to one of annoyance.

“Ugh, why don’t you just deny it if you knew how to act sneaky like that? You are like an endlessly repeating computer at this point you know.”
“In any case, I’m going to follow through with this plan.”

Whether she believed it or not, I did my best to express my opinion.

“Who’s going to stop you anyway?”

‘Then you should just let me go already’, is what I really wanted to say. But if I were to accidentally anger her, my life could really be in danger so I didn’t push my luck.

In spite of everything, Katalina was one of the two important characters for this plan to work out, and the greatest assistant I could have.

“We’re charging in!”

Just as the commander promised me, each platoon positioned their highest leveled and best-equipped tankers to the front of the line, while putting support on the backline which was very reminiscent of typical siege battles.

In the meantime, I hid behind those large-sized tankers as if I was playing hide and seek and made myself undetectable by the enemy forces. Even if they disabled Real Mode to search for me, there were so many IDs displayed above me that they would be hard-pressed to find me among the sea of IDs.

“Let’s move!”

The commander gave orders to move in, and the platoons began to advance towards the castle entrances. I walked briskly at the same pace as them, trying my best to stay hidden the whole time.

The inner castle gates were already destroyed by Katalina’s magic, which meant that it had lost its function to block our troops, and we started to march into the entrance without much resistance.

Wooosh…!

But not even a few footsteps in, I clearly heard the sound of something slicing through the air as it headed straight towards us. This was definitely a wave of arrows aimed at us.

T-T-Thoom.

But before any orders were shouted out, the allies seemed to have predicted it as there was no sound of screaming at all, with only the sounds of something heavy hitting against metal shields ringing out repeatedly before dying down.

“I guess they were planning to make us look like a beehive…”

One of the people defending in the front spoke in an exasperated tone, as if he was sick of arrows already. Only then did I realize just who this wave of arrows was aimed at.

‘So they were aiming for me.’

That’s right. They probably already researched my pattern of actions, and thought that I would be standing in the front lines, to which they gave the order to rain down a hail of arrows thinking that I will be standing in the front.

If I had really stood in the front of the lines like they had predicted, by now I could have suffered at least one or two critical wounds from the arrows.

“Protective Magic~!”

Even though the commander yelled out suddenly without any signs, the mages from our allied side reacted right away as they put up a magic shield around us.

B-B-Booom!

Sounds of explosions equivalent to large-scale fireworks rang out as fireballs fizzled and ice spears broke into pieces against the shield.

The barrage of attacks slowly withered down the shield, it became thinner and more transparent as it lost its power and effectiveness. The moment that has been promised has now come. Just as I had planned, the troops that were in front of me moved to the sides as much as they could and gave space directly in front of me. This was repeated by the troops that were further ahead, again and again until finally, I came to the front line of the allied force formation.

I couldn’t hear anything the enemies shouted as they finally saw I had come forth.

It was because I had already begun the activation of the skill which had been deemed ‘cheating’ by the Blue Sky community.