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Right after logging in the next day, I set up a meeting and warned everyone to try their best not to interact with the press. Then Katalina commented as if they would be fired immediately and killed afterwards if they were to ignore the warning, making everyone look anxious.

Since they wouldn’t think of leaking any important information unless they were truly stupid, they now understood that the interview that they had with the press without much thought in the past could come back to stab them in the back in the future.

I also gave a warning to the press as well. This was done unofficially, giving an ultimatum that if they were to approach anyone in the guild through an unofficial route they wouldn’t be given any information about the Camelot guild at all, to which most of the broadcasting companies agreed and accepted the terms.

But for that, they asked for a few interviews after the war was over, and I judged that it wouldn’t be too bad to do so, which ended with me accepting their offer.

And that was how I stopped the leakage of information from within and outside the guild, while keeping an eye on enemy status in real time.

“It seems they decided to push back and hold a defensive position, they aren’t showing any will to attack at all.”

“I guess they’re thinking of having this prolonged. What do you think about this, Ellie?”

“They’re probably trying to play the long game here. The enemy side still has most of their castles, and even if their forces have been weakened they still have a huge number of troops.”

“What will you do then?”

I thought deeply of my next move for a moment. I was wondering how it would be advantageous for the enemy side if the war is prolonged. To me, they were trying to threaten us with a war of attrition with the pretext of server unification. They would be at a higher position to bargain and put up offers which would end up with both sides winning instead of only one side.

But there was one thing that they were misunderstanding. The moment they threw aside the Chaos guild was the moment they lost their trust. If the enemies were willing to throw aside even their own allies, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t do the same thing when we fell into danger in future. I felt that instead of being worried about backstabbing in the future, it would be better to just subdue all the threats even if we were to suffer a bit more damage.

On top of that, Katalina absolutely detested the Tempest and Majesty guilds. Of course one of the biggest reasons was because one of them was led by the woman named Stella, but the two guilds have also kept getting in the way of the Volcano guild several times before too.

“I guess it’s about time we show them how tiring it is to fight a defensive battle.”

Their absolute advantage over troop numbers was now gone. On top of that, the quality of our troops were several times better than theirs, with small scale attack squads ready to be deployed at any time and the enemies would be too busy trying to defend their castle.

It may be different with big cities but for castles located in medium to small sized territories, I felt that even just a small scale elite team from our troops would be enough to do a sneak attack and conquer such castles with ease. Following that thought a great idea came to mind.

I opened up a holographic map of the land and spoke to Katalina.

“I’ll make this place my first priority and assemble the troops at Montgomery.”

“You’re thinking of conquering Newport as your first priority? The distance from there to Montgomery should be quite big though.”

Katalina was right. There definitely was quite a distance.

“I’ll use the instant teleportation scroll and bring the troops to Newport from Bath in only an hour or two. In addition, I’ll also conduct a night assault together with you.”

“Night assault?”

“Yeah, since either way, the battle at Montgomery will be fine with just us appearing and announcing our presence. Then we’ll make sure to economize fatigue as much as possible, leaving the frontlines to Lucas or Esther, while we and the elite team that we will be picking later log out together.”

“What if the enemy notices?”

“That doesn’t matter anyway. What I’m aiming for is to split the enemy forces and then to destroy them one by one”

Of course, this would be a completely impossible plan if Katalina or I weren’t there. We also had to bear with a small amount of danger, but I believed that if I was going Katalina would definitely come with me so I had no doubt.

“You’re definitely right… It’s the best tactic to make sure that the war is over quickly.”
“You’ll be coming with me, right?”

I asked Katalina hoping for confirmation.

“Tsk, how could I say no to you when you look at me with those eyes.”

Being a plan that was already approved by the lords AKA me and Katalina, the guild leaders couldn’t raise any complaints and my suggestion was unanimously approved.

But we experienced some troubles while considering the troops that would be advancing to Montgomery as well as the troops that will be assisting Katalina and me.

In the end, we left each of the frontlines with a minimum amount of troops for defense, while bringing enough troops. That meant that the total numbers for the battle in Montgomery would reach around 100,000 troops, which was the biggest amount in Blue Sky history.

All of the press rushed in for this exclusive scoop, and naturally the surveillance over other territories was relaxed, which was completely understandable since this battle was reaching 100,000 in numbers.

Unwilling to lose, the enemy side also scraped up as many troops as they possibly could to defend against ours, which amounted to barely 60,000 troops, but since we were over twice in number, they had to set up in a defensive position instead.

“It’s pretty small…”
“Yeah, it’s small.”

That was the impression that Katalina and I had when we saw the castle in Montgomery. Considering that we were always looking at castles located in giant cities like Edinburgh, it was obvious that smaller territory castles like Montgomery would look tiny in comparison.

It seemed like they weren’t able to accommodate all 60,000 troops properly since they had been placed in a ring surrounding the castle completely. It certainly wouldn’t be an easy battle to conquer the castle in a short amount of time, but I wasn’t planning to completely conquer it or be victorious in the battle so I was feeling a bit at ease.

Thinking of that, I was curious as to whether the thing I requested from Katalina yesterday was done properly or not.

“Did you all receive your pizza last night?”
“Yes!”

A loud chorus came as a reply to my question. I was satisfied with their loud reply. At this rate, it felt like we could simply just go ahead and charge directly at the castle and easily conquer it.

However I still wanted to stick to the existing plan, so I pushed aside that impulse and gave the position of leading the battle to Lucas.

“Platoons fall in formations and charge!”

Finally, the allied forces started to move, and when they got into a stance for the attack, the enemies also strengthened their defensive position, looking anxious for the battle.

However, most of our troops didn’t attack directly and instead started to exchange ranged attacks with the enemies. The enemy forces understood that this was just a way of surveying the situation, and didn’t think of it as anything strange. Honestly, the way I carried out siege battles was extreme, and doing it this way was actually the normal way for siege battles to go.

The battle was progressing slowly, and I moved in the backline where the enemy’s ranged attack wouldn’t reach me while maintaining a half-online state. To just log out right now was too dangerous because too many people were focusing on me.

Of course, I was always ready to reconnect whenever I needed to.

The battle continued to progress at a snail’s pace. The battle which began a little late in the morning continued until the sun went down, and both sides of the battle met the darkness of the night while still in battle.

In consideration for the soldiers that had been battling on the frontlines since morning, I ordered them to have some rest in the temporary barracks that had been built. Then I gave the control of the frontline over to Esther, Lucas and Terror. If each of them were to control around 30,000 soldiers each and alternate between each other as they battled the enemy forces, they would be more at ease than the enemy forces. Because in order to defend against us, the enemy forces would need to switch around their troops with the same amount of people, and since they had half the number of troops that we had, it was natural that their fatigue would build up much faster and more than ours.

It would have been different if the castle was huge like the one in Edinburgh, but this castle was a medium to small-sized castle located in Montgomery.

“All right, we should move over to Bath now.”
“I’m ready.”

I’ve gathered around a thousand elite soldiers that I hand-picked around the military camp located on the backlines. As they had been picked before our troops had left for battle, they were the top of the elites belonging to the top 10 percentile of the Camelot guild troops. I’ve also separately set up a platoon of mages and healers as well. The number of people was small but it was definitely a force to be reckoned with.

Since it was night, I made sure to be as quiet as I could as I gave orders for the plan that I had given to them ahead of time with a hand signal.

Soon, the group of soldiers started to march towards Bath while following me.

“You’re here!”

As the commander who was in charge of defense for Bath came towards me and Katalina, he bowed to us in greeting.

“How is the current enemy movement?”

“There was no movement among the patrols since it’s deep into the night, and only a minimum number of soldiers have been placed around the castle.”

I nodded, hearing that their movements were exactly as I had predicted.

“How many minutes are left until the next patrol group change?”
“There’s only 10 minutes left now.”

There could definitely be some kind of spy in each of the cities. The tactic in which you would make use of a persuaded neutral user to monitor the situation is something that even we use. Just because they’re the enemy doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t do that as well.

Since there was no way that they wouldn’t notice if a thousand troops suddenly started moving together, we planned to disguise ourselves as patrol groups, gather together at the border and just directly enter Newport that way.

As opposed to the enemy which had scraped up every single soldier as they could, we were able to place large amounts of soldiers in each base that we had, meaning that even if a patrol group reached a hundred it wouldn’t have been weird at all. On top of that, not only Bath but large cities like Liverpool and Bermingham all used the same amount of soldiers for their patrols, so they would definitely regard it as a regular movement of forces.

“The patrol group will soon begin their patrol.”
“Thank you. Please make sure that this place is defended properly.”
“Do not worry about that, my lord.”

Katalina and I gathered together with the elite troops who had already disguised themselves as patrol troops, and changed into Robes of Concealment that patrol troops always use.

Then we slowly cut across Bath city, moving towards the border location. I did feel a number of people keeping an eye on me as we moved, but that was predicted beforehand so I didn’t really mind it.

Since in the end, their movements are limited to the inside of the city after all…

So after we escaped to the outskirts of the city, we increased our marching speed. As expected of high level users, their movement speed was fast since it didn’t even take an hour before reaching the hill where we would be able to see the castle of Newport from.

“Phew…”
“Hoo…”

Since we had been moving at a rapid marching pace, we not only wasted quite a lot of stamina but our fatigue was building up as well which was something we couldn’t avoid. The way to safely conquer the castle was to sneak in and take over the enemy teleportation circles as well as the military grounds located within the castle as fast as possible.

“For now let us rest for a moment until all the troops gather in place.”

As soon as I gave the order, everyone started to sit down where they stood one after another and focused on recovering their stamina. As opposed to fatigue, which rose just from being logged inside the game for a certain amount of time, your stamina immediately returned to its maximum even if you rested for only a moment.

Though newbies often confuse the two systems as the same thing, after playing Blue Sky a bit you’d come to realize that there was a clear difference between the two systems. In simple terms, stamina is for movement and initiating actions, while fatigue is basically like the limit of your mental strength.

Not long after, a number of teams started to join one by one and it didn’t take long before most of the hill was covered by allied soldiers.

However, it was extremely quiet as if the enemy forces still hadn’t found out our movements. Again, when I looked over at them with my Eagle Eyes, the number of soldiers standing by on defense looked to be smaller in number than what I had predicted as well. It couldn’t have been better news for us though.

“Miss Tiara?”

I called for the legendary assassin that I won over to our side, who had already cut off the heads of four enemy head leaders since I hired her.

“Though I don’t prefer to do so, it is under my contract…”

As I had already assigned a few high level assassins from our alliance to her side, I assumed that it would be plenty enough for them to get in and open up the front gates of the castle. It seemed to me that for that reason, Tiara did sound as if she found this bothersome but nevertheless spoke confidently.

Soon I quietly watched as the team of assassins disappeared into the darkness. Our platoons were ready in position to be able to siege the castle as soon as possible just in case Tiara and her assassin team were to make a mistake and fail their mission.

After waiting anxiously for a few moments, Tiara’s whisper message arrived in my ear. It was the first time I was actually thankful to hear her unique cold tone of voice.

As the castle gate slowly opened, the enemy forces didn’t even notice it happening. In such a perfect situation, Katalina and I started to charge towards the opening castle gates. And behind us, a thousand hand-picked elite soldiers followed close by.