A few hours had passed since the strategy meeting and I was currently stuck guarding Maria. She seemed to be the most scared out of all of us, at this point. After spending years alone in a tower, with nothing but the guards’ murmuring to keep her company, she was having trouble adjusting to the rapidly changing situation. She seemed lost in the busy camp, our numbers now having grown to about ten thousand.

I suppose Maria wanted to help out, but couldn’t. Even if she could, nobody would actually let her. Even the less sane warriors that had joined our cause knew the possible consequences of making their ‘princess’ do chores.

She had thrown a few small temper tantrums since our departure from the main tent, usually concerning some mundane thing. In the end, the issue came down to the fact Maria was powerless in this situation. As an unawakened, she could only serve as a burden at this point. To make matters worse, the outcome of this war could easily shatter what little hope she had left to live with her father again, something she had missed for who knew how long.

Still, I had to commend the girl’s mental fortitude. After all she had been through, she was holding up remarkably well. It would undoubtedly take a long time for her mental wounds to heal, though. We were all here to give her that time.

I spent the next little while comforting Maria and keeping her calm, until, eventually, the warhorn of the army blew. Ash had explained this situation to me a few hours earlier. Apparently wars, even ones as sudden as this one, usually started with a few initial skirmishes before the main armies faced each other.

Essentially, the three generals intended to send out war parties, each a few hundred strong and made up mainly out of necromancers to prevent permanent losses. These parties would cross over into hostile territory and engage the enemy, distracting them and slowing down their marching speed. In this war, our main goal was to buy time. That meant that we stood much more to gain from fragmenting the battlefield like this than the abyss watcher did. Furthermore, our army was quickly outgrowing the accommodations the carpenters were building, so we had to send out some of our numbers.

Honestly, this tactic left a sour taste in my mouth. From a practical standpoint, I could see why these tactics would be employed, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were just sending these soldiers out to die, in some kind of hail-Mary attempt to slow down the abyss watcher’s army’s advancement.

If all went according to plan, the main battle was set to take place three days from now. Unlike unawakened, classers of a similar tier took ages to kill each other, especially when there were healers, undead ones, in this case, nearby. In other words, Ash expected the main battle took take several days by itself. When... no, IF the dry lord overcame his trial, whatever that entailed, then the war would be won. If not, then the dry man would die, and we would perish with him. A grim thought.

Thankfully, our numbers continued to increase exponentially. At this rate, we would be able to hold out for months, let alone a single week. I assured Maria of this, and explained my reasoning, but she remained skeptical. It was like she was sure that she would be captured again. I suppose her circumstances might have tainted her worldview a bit.

Over the course of the next few days, I continued to guard Maria. Thankfully, no assassins had appeared yet, so Maria was fine.

Unfortunately, that also meant that I was forced to stay still while thousands of classers joined war parties and were sent across the border. Another group of 200 classers would be sent out every few hours, yet very few returned. When they did, they spoke of the abyss watcher, and how he hunted down every last party that crossed the border. Our losses were starting to rise, though not as quickly as new soldiers reached us from deeper into the territory. By now, they were arriving by the hundreds.

Still, this continuous loss of soldiers felt unnecessary. I felt like, at some point, we had to realize that guerrilla warfare wasn’t working anymore, right?

After the tenth war band had been annihilated, I sought out Ash for answers.

“Why are you sending them across the border? The abyss watcher can’t come here anyway, right? Aren’t we losing too many men this way?” I said through grit teeth, while Ash was slouched over a table filled with documents. He hummed noncommittedly for a moment.

“What do you know of war, Arthur?” he asked disinterestedly.

That kind of took the wind out of my sails, I had to admit. Wisely, I remained silent and waited for an explanation. Eventually, he finished signing off on documents and orders and raised his head until his eyes met mine.

“We need time, Arthur. Those men buy more time with every second of the watcher’s time they waste than they would by joining our already bloated army in the final battle. War entails sacrifice, manipulation, and trickery, Arthur. It’s about choosing the best out of a series of bad options, and not regretting your choice afterward. The indecisive die first.” He explained determinedly, more authoritatively than I had yet heard him. “What brought this on, anyway? I didn’t think you were the type to care about things like ethics?”

I stared at him for a moment, unimpressed. He had the wrong idea.

“I don’t. I just figured they would be more use on our side at the end than now.” I hastily explained.

Ash scoffed. “Then I suppose we have differing opinions on that front. In war, a soldier needs to be willing to sacrifice his life for his general, while a general needs to be willing to sacrifice his soldiers’ lives, as well as his own, to win. Does that make sense?” he added with a lazy smile.

I nodded, but stayed silent, before leaving him to his paperwork.

His explanation made sense, but it also spoke ill of our current situation. Ash was desperate to stall the invading army for as long as possible, to the point that he was willing to throw our soldiers at what could only be described as certain death.

-Scene transition-

Two days later, the time had come. Scout had been sent out early that morning and returned with the grim news that the invading army would finally cross the border by noon. Their army stood 35 000 strong, with another 2000 golems enthralled to their service.

Once they crossed, it would be a tall order for our 25 000 men to stop every last one of them in their tracks, but it was our only option. The dry lord couldn’t be disturbed during his ascension, no matter what.

Over the last few days, we had lost more than 5000 classers to hold them back, so our hope of fighting them with equal numbers had been dashed. Thankfully, our necromancers had managed to raise an additional army of about 20 000 undead, that were left near our fortifications to catch any stragglers. At the very least they could alert us of any intruders that tried to get to the dry man and Maria.

The rest of us had assembled into several massive columns of soldiers and started to march to the battlefield the three generals had prepared. The shortest path across the border that didn’t involve the dungeon went through a canyon that eventually opened up to a forest on top of a plateau. Holding the canyon itself was deemed to be too risky, since chokepoints didn’t hold up well against high-classers like the generals. That was a shame, too, since a canyon like that would have been perfect to offset our lower numbers otherwise. Instead, our armies had surrounded the canyon’s exit in a half circle.

For the next half-hour, all 25000 of us waited with bated breath. No war cries or songs rang out, the situation being too tense for stuff like that.

I was in the middle of one of the columns, where I was meant to wait until I saw the pseudo-tier 5. The moment I noticed his golden armor, I would attempt to distract him for as long as possible.

To aid me in this endeavor, I had been assigned a duo of tier 4 warriors. One of them turned out to be the latrine guy, who had a high opinion of me after I helped him out last time. The other guy was some kind of stoic swordsman. He hadn’t introduced himself and wore a neutral expression while he stood next to me. He seemed dependable, at least. In fact, even the latrine guy seemed dependable, when you were staring death in the face.

As the sun blazed high in the sky, piercing through even the densest cursed mist of these lands, a warhorn resounded. A moment later, ours was blown to meet it. Then, thousands of classers streamed out of the dark canyon, and the final battle began.