DE Vol. 1 pt. 64

Year 1, Days 22 – 23 pt. 1

The dawn of the 22nd day brought with it the completion of our unit build queues. While I was never one to focus on what was basically a zerg rush in the early game, I had to admit that they were effective, and focusing on that was probably the only thing that could keep us alive against the Viking Elves.

All that was left was to move everybody into position. So, that was what I did. Just as planned, I split up a few of the stacks of Volcanic Predators so that I could send them to different positions on the map to make it look like we had a bigger military presence than we did.

Though, originally, I planned on getting the unit closer before splitting it up. I chose to split them up ahead of time, though, because I didn’t want to risk them seeing us do it. If they ended up getting to see it, then splitting them up was pointless. I also assumed there was some sort of reinforcement mechanic, which was a safe assumption to take after asking the others about it, so they would still get to benefit from their numbers if attacked so long as they started combat close to each other.

Before they actually left, though, I made sure to talk to them for potentially the last time.

There were just under a hundred Volcano Hounds in total standing before me. They were just the units made in the last few days who hadn’t left yet with each unit consisting of seventeen Volcano Hounds.

While there was a part of me that felt guilty about sending living people off to war, fighting on the frontlines while I could only stand back and watch, they didn’t look too bothered about it. If anything… they were excited. With wagging tails and ears standing at attention, each one of them looked at me with eyes full of an eager desire to head off already.

I didn’t even get to learn all their names. I tried, but not even I could remember the name of every single one of them when I had only a few days to learn them.

It didn’t help that they all looked pretty similar. Sure, they had some subtle differences here and there… but I was always horrible at differentiating between people. It was extremely easy with the Demons considering that every single one of them looked so different and unique, varying in sizes, skin color, horns and wings, body shapes, and so on, but the Volcano Hounds were all more or less the same as each other. Kaila only really stood out to me because she was always around me. It became easy to spot the subtle differences that made her stand out among the rest… such as the fact that she had the largest chest out of them all despite how modest in size it was.

She might have been tiny compared to somebody like Enna, but she had the biggest out of the Volcano Hounds.

The rest were all as flat as the men for the most part.

I made sure not to let anybody know that the only way I could spot Kaila out of the others was by looking at her chest.

That aside, I did my absolute best to recognize some of the others, and I could.

They deserved more from me, though, and I made sure to let them know that.

Looking over the Volcano Hounds in front of me, I started with those who I could recognize. “Refran.” He had a small scar above his left eyebrow. “Laiti.” She had one particularly long strand of hair that reached lower than the rest. “Zant.” His ears were always, always twitching for as long as there was noise to pick up with them. “And all the rest of you. I haven’t gotten to spend enough time with you. All you’ve told me is your names, and that’s not enough for me to get to know you. That’s why I expect you to return here. Alive. I regret that I have to send you before I get to know each and every one of you, because I don’t want to be a leader who sends a bunch of people he doesn’t even know off to war without ever knowing their names or faces. But, if we want to win and secure freedom for our worlds, we can’t spare any time. We have to act. We have to get this done. Then, once you’ve won, you’re going to return and have the greatest feast that you’ve ever been a part of. So, you have two orders. Your first order is to go and show our enemy just how sharp your claws are. Your second order is to survive and return to me so that I can get to learn every single one of you. Your faces are faces that I never want to forget for as long as I live, and that goes for everybody here. All of us—we’re all in this together. We might not be related by blood, and we might not even be the same species from the same worlds, but we’re all fighting for the same cause together. And it is by working together that we’re going to win freedom. Now, go show our enemy what your claws and fangs can do to anybody who tries to take our freedom away from us.”

While some of the nearby Demons clapped for my speech, the Volcano Hounds just looked—well, the same as before for the most part. Some of them wagged their tails even harder than they already were, but they were generally silent.

Then there was Kaila. As the Volcano Hounds’ representative before me, she stood at my side during the speech and stepped in front of me after it.

“Going with them,” Kaila said. “Not letting them fight without me.”

Part of me wanted to ask her to stay, but I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t going to show favoritism to her even if I was closer to her than the rest. It would have been wrong of me to ask her to stay while I sent everybody else to their potential deaths. If she wanted to go, she was going. Besides, I knew it was in her blood to fight. I wouldn’t deprive her of a good battle if that was what she craved. “We never got to ‘breed,’ so make sure you make it back here in one piece.”

Kaila smiled and licked her lips. “No escaping breeding when I get back. Will make Alpha howl all night, more than Enna.” She looked at Enna, who had also been standing at my other side that whole time, and flashed a smug smile at her.

Enna, of course, turned bright red in response to something like that.

“You’re going to make me moan even more than Enna did, is that it?” I asked, just to confirm what she meant. The way she talked got a bit confusing for me at times.

Kaila nodded and said, “Enna was loud, but I’ll make Alpha even louder.”

To my surprise… some of the Volcano Hounds behind her actually cheered a little for her when she said that.

That made me realize something—or remember something, rather.

They loved to play.

They loved to have fun.

Even though they had bodies that looked like they were purposely designed for war given just how deadly they were, they were… in many ways, like dogs. They didn’t want to fight for survival, they wanted to fight for fun. Their dream life would be playing, running, eating, and sleeping before repeating it all over again every single day.

And their ‘playing’ just so happened to involve fighting and hunting.

Now, despite my social anxieties, I felt a bit proud of the speech I gave them.

But it was a horrible speech for the audience I was talking to.

They didn’t care about fighting for our freedom or anything like that.

That was just me being selfish and giving the sort of speech that I would want to be given. What they needed was a speech that would really speak to them, not me.

So, looking over Kaila’s short stature to look at the other Volcano Hounds again, I said, “You know, those wannabe Viking Elves don’t know how to play. They just want to throw sticks at you from a distance instead of get dirty and wrestle in the mud with you. I think they haven’t learned what it’s like to really play. So, as experts on playing, shouldn’t you go and teach them what it’s like to really play?”

Kaila turned breeding into a competition with Enna to see who could make me make the most noises.

That earned cheers from the others.

So, I turned the entire battle into a play session.

And that earned me cheers from the Volcano Hounds.

“And everybody who stays alive can come back here for head pats, chin scratches, and belly rubs!” I added on.

Then I remembered… they weren’t literal dogs. They were Volcano Hounds, but not… dogs. Canid, but not canines.

I might have stereotyped them too hard. The way that they all stopped to blankly stare at me made me feel especially worried.

Then they cheered even louder with tails wagging so fast that I thought they were going to break.

“Alpha, Alpha,” Kaila said, grabbing onto my arm. “Alpha should demonstrate. Make me want to survive more. Inspire others.” She was already lifting my hand up to her head as she said that.

“Fair enough,” I replied, letting her place it on the top of her head for me to pet her between her ears.

Her hair felt unbelievably soft. I wanted to keep my hand there and pet her all day.

And as I pet her, it didn’t matter whether the Volcano Hounds behind her were men or women. It didn’t matter whether they looked younger or older. They all looked on with jealous, wanting eyes.

“Everybody who returns to me will earn unlimited head pats redeemable on demand,” I said to them. “And all you have to do to earn them is go play with our neighbors, then come back alive.”

Admittedly, it was a big strange seeing older Volcano Hounds, some being men with greying hair, get motivated by something like that.

But it worked.

They might not have been canines, but they were still canid enough to never get tired of head pats regardless of gender and age.

I was half tempted to offer them unlimited walks as well, but that would have been silly considering that they already had free roam of the place and were running around all day.

Back to Kaila, I lifted my hand off her head and said, “Play hard. If you want more, you’re going to have to play as hard as you can with them.”

Kaila brought up her claws to show them off and said, “Sharpened them last night. Ready to play and shred.”

“Just don’t let their arrows shred you before you get a chance to shred them.”

With a nod, Kaila ran off to join the others. Given that there was a specific unit size, though, and that she couldn’t just join them without going over that cap… one of the Volcano Hounds had to get kicked out of the unit. They basically swapped roles so that Kaila became a member of a Volcanic Predator unit while the one she replaced became a member of the general population to work in the camp.

I made sure to pat their head since they lost their fight to earn it.

Thanks to the movement buff the Volcanic Predators had within volcano regions, they made it into the next region in the same day. They were already split up, too, and they began to spread out once they actually reached the savanna. It would just be one more day after that for them to move into position and get within view of the Viking Elves. As far as I knew, they had to be within three tiles of their border to be seen unless a stray unit on their side spotted us outside their border, but we would spot them at the same time in that case.

We didn’t, so I assumed our plan was still good.

Meanwhile, our stack of Volcanic Predators at Mount Hound was ready to attack at any time. They could easily reach the enemy settlement over there within a single day of travel from Mount Hound. I just wanted to try and bait any potential defenders out of there first before committing to attacking it.

On the next day, the Volcanic Predators advancing toward the Viking Elves’ capital spread out to create a wall of units around the west of their border. The wall extended all the way from Hylrmenel to almost between the Viking Elves’ two settlements. Given that by the end of the day, I noticed several of their units show up on the map where there were previously none, they took the bait just as I hoped they would.

One of their units was also seen coming from their southern settlement—our main target—going north. Unfortunately, it was smart and stopped before going too far from the settlement that it could probably still be used as reinforcement units.

But if those reinforcements had to start outside of their camp and arrive even just a little bit later, then that was still better than them all getting to start in defensive positions.

Unfortunately, there was no way to tell just how many potential units might have been garrisoned in their settlements. It was entirely possible that we were going to attack only to find out that they had garrisoned units ready for us. If they had fully stacked garrisons, then those on top of their reinforcements might cause us serious issues.

There was also the fact that they might have already produced some weapons using that Living Wood.

All of this meant that we needed to attack them soon before they might potentially get more units or better equip their units.

That meant it was time to attack them.

So, I sent the stack of Volcanic Predators at Mount Hound to attack their southern settlement during the later hours of the day. The Viking Elves already moved their troops around earlier and I didn’t want to risk giving them another day to get anything else, so it was time to act.

Movement was a bit silly in that way. Whether a unit was ordered to move at the start of the day or the end of the day, they could always cover the same amount of ground. That meant it was best to order units to move at the end of the day since, hopefully, any potential enemies nearby would have already moved.

With enemies nearby, it was better to move early before they could.

Without enemies nearby, it was better to move late so that there was a higher chance of bumping into units who had already moved rather than running into units that hadn’t moved yet while being out of movement points themselves.

But more important than that was a problem that I had no idea to expect, and none of the others knew about it, either.

When I looked at the battle screen to actually launch the battle against their southern settlement that controlled the Living Forest tiles—when we attacked Hylrmenel, the screen showed me how many defending units they had. This time, it simply said unknown.

That meant it was impossible to know how many potential defenders they had, even when launching the actual attack.

I could have been sending the Volcanic Predators in to attack an empty settlement or in to attack one stocked full of defenders.

If there was one thing that never failed to worry me, it was sending my forces against unknown threats. Getting ambushed in other games always cause me the most worry for the same reason.

I had no idea what to expect, but we needed to proceed with the attack. Breaking off would let them know our true intentions and we wouldn’t be able to pull that sneak attack off again.

I just had to hope that our surprise for them was greater than whatever surprise they had waiting for us.