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“My Lord!”

Seemingly because of other people watching her, Esther called me using my title rather than calling my name affectionately as usual. I couldn’t help but feel slightly flustered from suddenly being hugged by her, but she seemed to be quite troubled due to insufficient sleep these days so I decided to just accept it.

“Hmm…”

Katalina watched us with an annoyed expression, but she didn’t say anything. She simply stared with an expression as if to say to get separated already.

“Must have been hard. Good work.”

“Hehe, it wasn’t that hard. Compared to you my lord, who had practically annihilated the Chaos guild with your own hands and come here right afterward to assist us, just this much is easy.”

“Now now, let’s move on from this, re-organize all the troops, and consider the other locations we should help out next.”

Since Katalina came in and interrupted our conversation, it seemed like she couldn’t handle us being together any longer. Anyway, she was right so I didn’t go against it. The Shining guild which is led by Lucas located in Birmingham, and the Empire guild that Terror leads is located in Bath. You definitely couldn’t say that both of the frontlines were in good condition.

“First of all, Esther, you stay here in Liverpool and defend it while resting. You need to recover from your fatigue to return to your peak condition after all.”
“Alright.”

Esther nodded her head to my order.

“Now, the problem is we still need to decide which of the two frontlines to back up first…”

Though I didn’t know the exact details, according to the general report that I received, it seemed like both of the frontlines were of equal strength against their enemies. It was obvious that if we were to choose to help one side, the other side would naturally end up having more casualties in comparison.

“It seems like there’s no choice but to split the army of the Volcano guild in half and each of you lead them to the two frontlines.”
“I guess so.”

Esther voiced her opinion just in time, and I also agreed that it would be the best course of action.

“Nnngh…”

Except that Katalina doesn’t look quite pleased with the idea…

“Katalina, could you take one-half of the army and lead them to Bath?”

“Sigh… alright, I will.”

She looked as if she hated leaving my side even for a moment, but apparently she was willing to endure it as she nodded at my request.

I barely held myself back from the overwhelming urge to pat her head to comfort her after seeing her expression. There were way too many people looking at us, so I didn’t want to treat her like a child in front of everyone.

“Then Esther, take care of this place for me. If anything happens, whisper to me directly, and if you’re tired, swap out with someone you can trust and go have some sleep or something.”
“Understood. I’ll take care of my body properly.”

It seemed like she noticed my worry for her in my voice as Esther tried her best to pretend she was fine by smiling broadly, but she probably didn’t know how pitiful she looked with the dark circles under her eyes.

I thought of saying something more, but then I gave up. I believe that she will be smart enough to do things well on her own. There were other things to do before that so I turned towards the allied soldiers who were resting and activated my ‘voice amplification’.

“We will now split the troops into two groups and each move towards Bermingham and Bath. The 1st platoon to the 19th platoon will be moving together with me to Bermingham, while the rest of the platoons will be moving to Bath together with the guild leader Merlin.”

“Yes, my lord!”

Even as they were resting, their reply was loud and clear. It felt like I was leading a properly trained platoon from the Korean army. Considering that they answered as loudly and energetically as they could in their state, I had no reason to complain.

I knew very well that they were completely tired and exhausted and were therefore resting to make sure they could recover from fatigue as much as possible before moving on. Not only for their character’s fatigue but their own as well.

Thinking about it, we had only just finished doing a battle. Even if the battle was completely one-sided, there was a clear difference between a high-ranked user and the average user. Whether it’s the difference of stats or consumables, so just because I was still fine with moving on, it didn’t mean that others would be like that as well.

For a moment, I felt that we should have some proper rest before going. Even if we were to hurry and join forces with our allies as fast as possible, an army that’s full of energy and spirit would be much more helpful in battle than those that are tired, so it felt like I may be rushing things too much.

There was an old saying in Korea which stated that the more you feel that you need to hurry, the more you need to be prepared. It seemed like there wouldn’t be too much of a problem to rest here a bit before moving on to join forces with the allies as well.

“We will have an hour’s rest here for now. Any member that requires consumable items should report to your respective party leaders and purchase them, and for anyone that needs to attend to something within this one-hour period, I’ll leave the party leader to make the final decision. Please make sure you are mindful of the time as well.”

“Thank you very much. We get to have our lunch thanks to y…”
“I haven’t even eaten breakfast yet, thank you!”
“I was about to die from hunger…”

Sounds of support for my decision rang out from all directions. Of course, many of them were exaggerating their claims but the users definitely skipped out on breakfast by joining this battle.

Thinking I may have been too rude in giving orders without considering the other leaders, I turned to look at the platoon leaders who all waved their hands at me as if to say giving the order was okay.

“I’ve also been so focused on the battle that I’ve missed the timing to have lunch as well. I apologize for making all the guild members skip their lunch unwillingly. And as a small compensation for that, I will be buying everyone in the guild pizza for today.”

“Whooaa!”

Just as I thought, there’s no one in the world that hates something that’s for free. Now then, as for how to take care of the logistics…

“E… Ellie, are you seriously…!”

I looked towards Katalina who looked at me with a bewildered expression and quickly turned her eyes away, to which I couldn’t help but smirk. One thing I knew was that the Wimbledon household owned a pizza franchise located in London.

Not only will there need to be a large amount of pizza made, but I also needed to hire a lot of people to deliver all that pizza, so to do that…

“I’ll pay for all the pizzas. Just make sure that all the pizzas will be properly delivered to each member of the guild by the end of today.”
“Ugh! You leave me all the bothersome work in the end. It’s easy to say things but do you know just how hard…”
“Hmm? You know, about that trip we will take after the war is over…”
“… I’ll take care of it as fast as possible then.”

Making full use of your connections is the best strategy.

After quite some time had passed, Katalina came back with a tired expression.

“It’s all done.”
“Really? Wow, amazing.”

I was wondering if it was possible, but Katalina’s way of organizing things was truly amazing. It took her less than 30 minutes to organize a gigantic order of pizzas that will reach over several tens of thousands of people all over London within today.

Right now, the majority of the guild members were watching me doubtfully. Though I gave them an hour of free time to spend, everyone was so focused on the Blue Sky game that they ate a quick meal within 10 minutes and maintained their half-online state.

Half-online state is a function of the game where a user’s character just stays within the Blue Sky game without the user completely logging out, and to be attacked in this state means that you’ll definitely receive the damage, so it’s a very dangerous state to be in. However, the guild members around them would take turns in keeping watch for others, and they can log back into the game whenever they want right away so being half online in the game was very useful.

Therefore I looked at the group of guild members all crowded around like children listening to their teacher and felt that I needed to inform them about the good news I received from Katalina.

“Now! It seems like you will all be able to enjoy that pizza by the end of today. But in order to have it without any worries, it’s best to achieve a swift victory in each of our battles, right?”
“That’s correct!”
“Let’s kill ‘em all!”
“Massacre them!”

There was still time left on the break that I’ve given them but most of them were still logged on, and even had high morale on top of that. If that’s the case, I didn’t feel that there was any need to wait any longer. It would be more efficient to quickly join up with the allies and destroy the enemies instead.

Considering all that, my decision has already been made.

“All troops return to formation! Each platoon will start marching to the designated battle locations.”
“Yes, my lord!”