“What is it, My Prince?” Duke Alfredo asked.
“I want to join the shock troops team,” the prince answered.
??
“Out of the question!” The duke rejected immediately. “Such operation is too dangerous. Your safety will be at stake.”
“Didn’t you say that this expedition is for me to learn? This will be the perfect chance for me to learn!”
“No!” The duke was adamant.
“Sorry, prince, I can’t agree as well,” John said. “if something wrong were to happen, I can’t afford to be distracted to keep you safe. I need to prioritize the success of this mission, so I can only send disposable people on this mission.”
#@#*, Jack wanted to curse out.
“You need to stay with the main troops,” commander Quintus added. “The orcs might know you are here if it was true their information came from the other princes. You might even be the primary target of the orcs, so you must stay safe. I even need to add more bodyguard details to be with you at all times.”
“Bailey alone is enough,” prince Alonzo said.
“Unwanted things might happen, I will assign more people for your protection.”
Suddenly a voice came from the side, “allow me! It will be my honor to protect the prince.”
Jack turned to the voice and found that he recognized this soldier. It was Ronnie, who had come to him with the odd request in Thesewal.
This guy was still trying to get close to the prince? What was his angle? Jack wondered. Jack had detected that he was lying when he made the request, but he was not sure which part the lie indicated. Probably he lied about his desire for the prince’s safety, perhaps he was just trying to befriend the prince to promote his career.
“I can vouch for him, he had been following me for some while,” Samuel said. “His family is also a strong supporter of the prince.”
Commander Quintus looked at Ronnie, he was the aide from Samuel’s side. “All right, Bailey will pick the remaining bodyguards. When the Duke and I are absent, these bodyguards should never leave the prince’s side.”
“Yes, sir!” Lieutenant Bailey affirmed.
Commander Quintus turned to John, “let us talk more in detail about your plan.”
Jack was bored as they were discussing the details on the preparation, timing, and positioning of the troops. He just stood there helplessly. He wished he could practice his spell formation here, rather than wasting time in boredom like this. But the ones in front of him were bigshot NPCs, so he did what he had asked from John, he behaved himself.
He ended up chatting with Peniel about trivial matters. None of the military talks were entering his ears. He only took notice on the few occasions where John and Samuel butted heads. Afterward, he zoned out again. After a torturously long time, the 3D projection was shut down and everybody finally seemed to be leaving.
Jack happily bid everyone farewell as he walked out with John. He said to him, “you seemed to be enjoying the discussion just now.”
“I did,” John replied. “And you seemed to be awfully not in sync throughout the discussion.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“It is, the duke even felt bad about it and was about to dismiss you.”
“Then why didn’t he?”
“I told him not to. You looked to be so in peace in your reverie, so I think you would want to be left alone.”
“You are the one to be left alone, you bugger! You know how bored I am inside there?”
John chuckled at his response. “Don’t worry, will be plenty of action tomorrow morning.”
Not considering the guy’s irritating attitude, Jack was again impressed by his ability to provide a plan that could move even those bigshot NPCs. He said, “that was very impressive of you. You just took a look at the 3D map one time and you knew already exactly where the troops are to be placed.”
“It’s good that you are impressed with me, but I have known where to place the troops before I entered the tent.”
“Huh? How do you know without looking at the map?”
“It’s always better to look at the real thing. What do you think I have been doing for the few hours since we started camping?”
Jack remembered now that John had not been around the camp. He had strolled off with two soldiers borrowed from captain Salem. “You have been surveying the terrain?” He asked.
“You think?”
“There is no need to be sarcastic,” Jack said.
“How do you think I know where the wind blows at that spot otherwise?” John then said in a serious tone, “we will need to get everybody up to speed since we will be departing very early tomorrow before the sun was up. We will have to organize everything today before we rest. The commander gave me the right to choose any soldiers for the 480 shock troops. So I will go and sort out the soldiers, it would need some proportion of tank, melee, ranged, and healer in each team. You go and informed the others while I do that.”
When they arrived at where the players camped, Jack called for everyone to assemble as John went to assemble the soldiers. Jack told them about the plan to raid the supply at the enemy’s rear line, and that each of them will head a team. They were rather anxious to be put in charge of a team, but Jack assured them all they need to do was pay attention to party messages and gave direction to the soldiers based on John’s instruction.
They were still nervous when John came with the assortment of soldiers, as they would be heading to the enemy’s back, far away from the rest of the allies. With their low-level state, they could easily get killed.
John picked up from there and said to them, “there is no need to be worried. The soldiers will keep you safe. You will be at the center of the team. When there is fighting, the soldiers will be the ones that do the fighting. You just need to make sure you give them the direction I send to you in the chat message. Trust in me, I will pick a route that prioritizes your safety. You can take Storm Wind here as an example, he will also be heading one team. If he didn’t feel that it is safe, he wouldn’t have done it.”
Jack looked at him, he wanted to kick this guy. Who said before that he will be prioritizing the success of the mission and will only send disposable people? He was practically lying to them blatantly and using him as a guarantor some more.
Jack did not expose John’s lie as he knew the importance of this mission. However, he was also not that heartless to give them a complete lie, so he added, “still, things might go wrong no matter how well we planned, so everyone should make sure that you wear the Amulet of Rebirth at all times during the mission.”
“Unnecessary, but you can wear it for an extra sense of security,” John proclaimed.
The urge to kick the guy returned.
John then assigned each of them to a collection of twenty soldiers he had sorted out. Each team roughly consisted of a composition of five heavy armor melee soldiers with shields, five medium armored melee soldiers, two mage soldiers, five archer soldiers, and three healer soldiers. All of them were around level 35 to 40, and each team had a squad leader which was elite grade with a level of at least 45.
This batch of soldiers was above average in the army. Since the shock troops would be cut off from the rest of the army, they would need to be strong enough to handle themselves, the commander had basically given him the cream of the crop.
All the melee soldiers were equipped with blunt weapons, like hammer or mace. Such a weapon gave more effective damage to the supplies. While the archers were equipped with flaming arrows. The mage and healer units were only for supports, that was why there were only a small number of them in the team.
Each of these soldiers was also given better mounts. This was one of the details that John discussed in the war meeting. The shock troops needed high HP mounts as they would need high mobility. They would continue to use their mounts even when enemies attacked. Only until they reached the supplies that they unsummoned their mounts, hence the mounts would need to be able to weather some damages.
For the player themselves, they kept using the mounts that were loaned to them. Since they would be at the heart of the team, it would be unlikely for their mounts to receive attacks.
John also assigned Alphabets to each team and asked everyone to memorize them. He was not going to call out names as it would take too long. At first, he was thinking about dividing the map into grids and asked the players to memorize the grid numbers, but then he looked at The Man’s team. Remembering the past fiasco, he told them he would be giving them directions following clock bearing as was used in their world’s military.
After making sure that everyone was familiar with their own teams, and that everyone knew what they needed to do tomorrow, John dismissed everyone and told them to rest early. They would need to be in their best condition very early tomorrow.
