Tristan

You know, when using [Knowledge Transfer] and [Spread of Knowledge] to share the intel collected by Genghis Khan, I hadn't really internalized much, if any, of it.

Right now, though, watching the ancients gather in the tent that sat at the center of the camp, mentally running through the various pieces of information I had access to … Fuck. Me. Sideways.

Apparently, the current plan was to let the Fomorians gather and concentrate their forces and then crush them in a single burst of overwhelming power, while giving them minimal data points to base their own strategies on between then and now.

I mean, I could see the logic, the goal was to make the most of our advantage as an "unknown factor" by minimizing engagements that would give them information they could work with, or hammering home the fact that their current arrogance wasn't a winning strategy until we could outright eviscerate their forces.

In that sense, a major, major engagement was the best thing for us. But that did not make the prospect of fighting at a massive numerical disadvantage any less daunting.

"How large of a force are you envisaging us facing?" Charlemagne asked, looking at the Mongolian conqueror responsible for making most of these plans.

"Somewhere between four and five hundred thousand," Genghis Khan said bluntly.

Well.

Shit.

That certainly was one hell of a difference in numbers.

Not one that had proven entirely insurmountable, historically speaking … but still rough as hell.

Plus, in most of those battles, the outnumbered force had typically had some kind of massive advantage in other ways.

In the battle of Roark's Drift, for example, a hundred and fifty British soldiers against several thousand Zulu warriors, the British had been armed mostly with firearms, facing down men with spears and cowhide shields.

Their victory had still been far from guaranteed; in fact, even after starting with twenty thousand bullets they'd nearly shot themselves dry by the time the Zulus retreated.

The battle of Agincourt, meanwhile, had been won through a combination of the superiority of the British longbowmen, the muddy ground fouling up the ability of the French cavalry to charge, and the sheer greed of the noblemen eagerly charging in to take the credit for the victory that had, initially, seemed inevitable.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Or several battles during the Winter War of 1939 between Russia and Finland, in which Finland had won despite being heavily outnumbered … but at the same time, that had been a battle on familiar ground for the Finns, in extremely rough terrain, fought more as guerrilla campaigns than actual battles.

Point was, winning wasn't going to be impossible … just very, very hard. And even harder to win without crippling losses. Not to mention that, considering the situation, the threshold for "crippling" wasn't even that high, considering the overall odds we were facing, the problems further exacerbated by the fact that any tricks used to win this fight were unlikely to be usable in the next one. So if we had to dig deeply enough into our bag of tricks, we'd be in deep shit.

"We could go straight for the commander," Miller offered. "Split the army, force them to respond, wait for an opening, focus on cratering their morale, and inflict however much damage we can when they run. We certainly have quite a few powerhouses that could easily handle a strike like that. It certainly worked for Alexander."

Right. I usually thought of Miller as "Patton reincarnated," which was true, but simultaneously incredibly incomplete, seeing as Patton had also been a reincarnation of someone far older, someone who had, among others, served under both Hannibal Barca of Carthage and Alexander the Great of Macedon.

And, incidentally, going for the enemy commander was exactly how Alexander had won the battle of Gaugamela, while being outnumbered by as much as five to one, which was nearly as bad as our current situation. Well, as much as ten or even twenty to one, but only if you believed some truly biased sources.

Genghis Khan shook his head.

"That sort of thing only works when a figurehead has been sufficiently built up. If their loss isn't sufficiently impactful, we might suffer serious casualties among whatever group we sent to target them.

"Furthermore, considering the size of the enemy army, even if we do manage to take down a sufficiently influential target, there is every possibility the information won't spread quickly or far enough to properly destabilize their force.

"Also, I need the general in charge alive, because then we can do the following …"

***

Miller

This was going to get ugly.

Or a victory of legendary proportions that would become the Cannae of the world under the System, a legendarily effective use of magic that would set the standard for creativity and strategic brilliance all future battles would be measured against.

Though unlike Cannae, something as simple as encirclement wasn't going to earn them victory, they quite literally did not have enough men to even properly take advantage of it, even if they somehow pulled it off.

That being said, there were a handful of big advantages that they did have. For example, choosing the site of battle, the absurd powers of their various "ancients," and finally, that gate between worlds sounded like one hell of a chokepoint if properly leveraged … if.

The plan wasn't bad, in fact, it was borderline genius, but even though it was a lot less complicated than most "genius tactics that couldn't possibly fail," it was obviously still far from guaranteed to work.

And if they failed here, they'd fail hard.

To the point where those left behind on Earth would likely be forced to keep lobbing nukes through the portal until they ran out of bombs or the Fomorians ran out of troops, and with the existence of various Ascendant Capstones, chances were the former would happen.

Even so, playing it safe could very easily wind up being the very thing that doomed you … and as far as he was concerned, this was the best chance to even the odds they'd ever get.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.