Read Novel Full Chapter 464: It's All According To My Plan (Trust!)
Chapter 464: It’s All According To My Plan (Trust!)
I was seated on the grand throne in Ebony Castle, thoughtfully rubbing my chin. I would need a shave soon.
Day seven of the Mock War had begun.
On day four, one of my Bishop Sectors fell. But I wasn’t too worried about it. It was a sacrifice. A gambit.
Everything was going according to my plan.
…Okay, mostly everything.
I also lost my other Bishop Sector.
Yeah…
It was my fault, really.
Thalia had sent two separate units to capture my two Bishop territories. And while I did predict something like that would happen, I mistakenly assigned three of my most competent fighters to the wrong bloody Sector.
Reiner Tovak, Veyna Rosen, and Roy Noname. I had sent them all to the western Bishop Sector when I actually wanted them in the eastern one.
Whoops.
Look, in my defense, Kang didn’t draw a compass rose on the map! He said he didn’t because it was obvious.
And honestly, he was wrong! It was not obvious! East and west are entirely relative depending on which way you’re facing!
Now one could argue that I should’ve remembered the position of my Sectors without needing a damn drawing on a piece of leather.
They could also argue that I should’ve remembered the names of all my heavy-hitters instead of just pointing at a group of broad-shouldered kids and saying, “You three, go left— no, my left— and kill whatever crosses the stream.”
To those people, I say: try running an army and see how exhausting it is!
Also, I am ultimately a big-picture thinker.
Details like cardinal directions and basic nomenclature are for logistics officers.
Anyway, because of my innocent mistake, when Thalia’s strike team hit my western Bishop Sector, they didn’t run into a sparse skeleton crew as I’d originally intended for them to easily overrun.
I didn’t know if Ivan was with them. If he was, he must’ve lost his absolute mind trying to figure out why a tentacled body-horror monstrosity was tearing his covert infiltration team to shreds.
I felt a little bad for the guy.
Because of my slight navigational mix-up, the eastern Bishop Sector — the one I actually wanted to be heavily fortified — had been left guarded by a skeleton crew of about eight Cadets and a guy whose innate ability was making his voice sound like an echo in a cave.
Needless to say, the voice-echo guy didn’t hold out very long against an army. Poor guy.
I sighed to the empty air, sinking deeper into the oversized obsidian seat. “…I should’ve let Juliana handle the logistics.”
“You definitely should have, my lord,” Terry chimed in cheerfully.
The boy was currently sitting cross-legged right beside the throne, looking like a human-shaped lump of marble.
He seemed very content, wearing a pair of plush, fuzzy slippers while lazily flipping through a comic book that he had, for whatever reason, brought into the war zone.
“Quiet, King Terry,” I warned, gesturing vaguely with a hand. “A ruler should project quiet majesty, not offer commentary on my operational oversights.”
“I’m just saying, Lord Samael, my legs haven’t felt this rested in years. If this war ends early in your loss because you don’t know your left from your right, I’m going to be very sad about having to stand up again.”
I rolled my eyes. The nerve of my proxy.
But he wasn’t wrong. I really should’ve let Juliana handle the map assignments.
Maybe it was hubris. Maybe I wanted to prove to myself that I really was better than my sister in every single aspect of kingcraft — personal combat prowess, influence, war strategy. Everything.
She could hide behind her friends and use all sorts of shrewd tricks, but I would eventually win. I would have the last laugh.
“Also,” Terry brought my attention back to him, turning a page of his comic, “if both your Bishop Sectors are gone, doesn’t that mean Lady Thalia now controls both the center and flank of our side of the Great Divide? If she manages to lock them down, it’ll be really problematic for us. More than it already is, I mean.”
Yeah, yeah.
The current situation didn’t look good. On paper, I was losing. In reality, however… I was only kind of losing.
“Sure. But that’s a big if,” I said. “I’ll not let them cross the waters now.”
My answer was interesting enough to make Terry look up from his comic, lowering the colorful pages to glance at me with one raised eyebrow.
“My lord, with all due respect,” Terry said, pointing a finger toward the model of a massive map carved onto the table before us, “they hold the keys to both beachheads. Unless you plan on personally floating across the Great Divide and single-handedly wrestling more than seventy Cadets into submission, how exactly are you going to stop them from consolidating their lines?”
Again, Terry wasn’t wrong.
To get into a winning position, Thalia needed to smuggle just two of her Bishops into the conquered Sectors on my side. Once she did that, the Sectors would be locked down. The enemy would seize them.
I would be forced to break my blockade over the river in fear of being sandwiched.
After that, she could keep bringing more and more of her troops here. And because she held superior naval capabilities, doing that wouldn’t be too difficult.
Slouching against the high backrest of the throne, I steepled my fingers. “I guess I’ll just have to conquer some Sectors of my own.”
Understanding seemed to dawn on my proxy’s face as he blinked a couple of times. “You’ll dispatch troops through the air? But for that you’ll need to remove your aerial blockade over the Great Divide, right? Y-You can’t do that, though. Lady Thalia’s forces would get the supply crates. The war of attrition you started would backfire on you.”
“Meh,” I shrugged. “Let them. Because I’m going to cripple her navy too.”
•••
Michael was riding a ginormous, winged manticore-like ethereal creature.
Michael was screaming for his life as artillery spells tore through the clouds all around him.
Holding the beast’s bridle in front of him was a boy named Alan.
Alan was a summoner, his innate ability allowing him to call upon this lion-headed monstrosity with leathery dragon wings and a scorpion tail.
Alan was laughing like a lunatic as he steered the beast into a gratuitous barrel roll.
They narrowly avoided slamming into a searing-hot flame lance that sizzled through the space their heads came to occupy a second later.
“Isn’t this exhilarating, Michael?!” Alan roared over the howling wind, his face split into a manic grin. “Our Supreme Lord Samael told us to cause a distraction, and by the Monarchs, we are causing a distraction!”
“I AM GOING TO THROW YOU OFF THIS DAMN BIRD, ALAN!” Michael screamed back, his single good eye squeezed shut as he hoped his hands wouldn’t slip off the beast’s coarse, matted fur. “HE SAID DROP ME BEHIND THE ENEMY LINES, NOT DROP ME DEAD!”
Behind them, in a tight V-formation, several more Cadets were soaring through the smoke-choked skies above the Great Divide.
Some were being carried by gusts of pressurized wind, others had grown wings, and a few were mounted on various avian constructs or familiars.
And they were all currently dumping every long-range, area-of-effect spell they had into the waters below.
This specific unit’s destination was Thalia’s western Knight (K1) Sector.
Another platoon that included Alexia was making a simultaneous drop on the western — or was it more toward the center? — Rook (R1) Sector.
This had caused the skies over the Great Divide to devolve into madness.
Below Alan’s riding manticore, the churning silver waters of the river erupted in towering geysers as fireballs, lightning spears, plasma beams, crackling energy spheres, and compressed air bullets rained down from Samael’s aerial strike force.
For six straight days, the Ebony army had maintained a strict, defensive blockade over the skies to destroy the supply crates and starve out the Ivory forces along with themselves.
Now, on the seventh day, Samael had completely abandoned that strategy.
And he hadn’t just removed the blockade either. No, no! He had taken his entire aerial division and launched an all-out, suicidal, kamikaze blitz straight over the river into the heart of Thalia’s territory.
There were going to be traps and landmines and all kinds of snares. Samael knew it. Michael knew it. Everyone with a working brain cell knew it.
Which was precisely why none of them planned on touching the ground until they were directly inside the Sector’s command perimeter.
Of course, exposing them like this meant that the majority of his aerial troops would be wiped out by enemy fire.
But did Samael care? No.
Did the soldiers being sacrificed care? Well, judging by the bloodcurdling screams echoing off the cloudline, some of them definitely cared.
“Brace yourselves!” Alan yelled, yanking hard on the reins.
The manticore flared its leathery wings, catching an updraft just as a volley of silver ice spikes shot up from the riverbank behind them. One of those was sooner or later going to impale the creature.
The Ivory defenders stationed along the shore were panicking. But they were ready.
They had spent days preparing to catch falling supply crates or intercept stealth swimmers. And while they had not exactly expected an airborne armada to come screaming out of the clouds above their heads, they had adapted quickly.
“Drop me now! Now!” Michael barked, snapping his eye open as the translucent, dome-shaped sapphire barrier of Thalia’s Western Knight Sector curved up to meet them.
“Okie dokey, have a nice flight!” Alan cackled, rolling the manticore onto its back.
Michael unclasped his grip on the beast’s fur, letting gravity take him.