Chapter 108 – Monster Train

When the Epic Quest came, I was quite taken aback for a small while, but this turned out to be quite advantageous to me in the end. As the players joined the war, the scale rose quite a bit and the battle also got more fierce, making it a lot harder for any side to pull back, as the losses they took quickly grew far more than they originally expected them to. There’s no way they’d give up after losing this much.

Though it was curious to see how much the all-out warfare here was similar to Earth’s. I thought it would be more of a knightly battle thing, but the soldiers quickly started digging trenches and positioning mages as artillery to attack the other side, which led to a situation very similar to what you’d see in World War I. I never expected them to be able to completely nullify the usage of cavalry… I suppose they might still be useful in smaller battles where they don’t have as many mages on both sides though.

That said, while the tactics employed by both sides were similar, the Empire still had a clear advantage. To being with, the battlefront was too close to the kingdom’s capital already, so the kingdom’s soldiers didn’t really have the option of retreating, differently from the Empire’s.

Also, the Empire has a stronger naval presence than the kingdom. Even if the Beginners’ City and the Belzenstock City do have large ports, they still can’t compare to how many ships the Empire’s ports can hold… If the Empire is able to cut off the kingdom’s supply chain while also pressuring the capital, they’d surely get an overwhelming advantage.

Moreover, Yuu told me that the Empire only borders three countries, and the other two happen to be pretty small, so the Empire only needs to keep a token force at home while fighting this war… And judging by how many troops they sent, they definitely decided to put everything they had in this.

It’s a risky bet on their end though. A bet that I’ll make sure they regret… Time to make my move!

Let’s send a message to Maria and ask her to record the battle… She already replied!? That was fast.

“Well then, princess, please drink this.” I told her. Though she not only gave me no reply, but also clearly had no intention of touching the bottle I just showed her, “You don’t need to be so wary of it. It’s just some medicine to prevent nausea. You’ll need that as I’ll be moving pretty quickly.”

She still seemed to be against it, but she understood my point and reluctantly drank it.

“Then, let’s run!” I said as I dashed forward while carrying the princess with me.

As I ran, I also used some concoctions I created on myself to make me easily lure monsters. It seemed to be quite effective, as the mobs were quickly gathering around me.

Satisfied with the result, I decided to go through the forest, since it had a bigger monster density, to lure even more monsters to me. I also asked the familiars I got from the goddess, ‘Hanako’ and ‘Takeo’, to help out on the monster collection task.

Hanako had the power to control monsters who are weaker than her, so she was excellent for this job… As for Takeo, he could put fire to the forest in order to make monsters naturally move away from it, which would get them closer to me as I leave the forest, which would make them also get lured. They were certainly nice gifts that I could make good use of.

… And it’s a good thing the maximum number of tamed monsters was raised to 10, as I would be unable to control them together with my original familiars otherwise.

By the time I left the forest, the horde of monsters behind me was quite big, so… How about visiting the Empire for a bit?