CH 239

“Then, this way-”

“Is it better to move the 6th and 7th division?”

A man with a slender mustache and the woman sitting in front of him moved their chess pieces. The only difference is that it was not a normal chess piece, but it rather represented the troops drawn on the Marchich Plains. (ed: The bad guys are so over the top with the chess pieces ( ͡► ▭ ͡◄).)

“Hmmm, that’s right.”

“Of course, what you’re thinking of right now is not a strong line of defense, now is it?”

The man’s eyes narrowed at the woman’s words.

“Do you really know what I’m thinking?”

“Rough~ly? So this division should be moved- and these troops should be in the frontlines…. I wonder if the picture the commander wants will come out.”

The woman moved the chess pieces once again while getting the gaze of the ‘commander’. The commander burst out laughing as he moved the pieces and wooden boards on the map. 

“Uwahahaha,  this is the one. Are there any other foxes beside you?”

“I’m flattered. I’m just guessing what the ‘fox of the meadow’ would be thinking. And wouldn’t it be better if there were two foxes?”

“Heu, yes, that’s right. We need two foxes in order to deal those that foolish Fibielians.”

The man was the Minis’ commander-in-chied, the fox of the meadow, Ewin. And he had a long-standing rivalry with Fibiel’s Pillar, the commander-in-chief Granville.

‘……wasn’t that the setting?’

The woman covered her mouth with a wide-sleeved clothes and smiled softly. As Ewin, who was sitting opposite of the woman, laughed, a commotion broke outside their field camp.

“Commander! Commander! T-there’s an urgent report!”

“Urgent? What is it?”

The soldier who came into the tent looked at the woman for a brief moment, then saluted to Ewin and answered immediately.

“High Ground 130 has been over taken.”

“What!?”

Ewin, as well as the woman, frowned. However, it was only for a moment, so no one saw it.

“What happened? Didn’t you say it would be okay? I heard that you have deployed that rock magician or something? I believed those words and turned the troops around!”

“Really, commander-in-chief, there will always be variables during a war. You’re flustered about that.” 

The woman looked at the soldier for a moment and asked the soldier.

“Is there anything known about who Fibiel sent, soldier-nim?”

“T-that, there’s none. We would have known if it was someone who had a high reputation…. Ah, I know the name of the group that succeeded in the surprise attack.”

“What?”

“They’re called ‘Byeolcho’-”

“Byeolcho! Huhu~, I see. Master Kay, Tale, and recently Biyemi…. If that’s the case, they should be able to break through high ground 130.”

The woman covered her sleeves again and smiled. Ewin tilted his head and asked her.

“Do you know something? Are those guys good? How did they break through?”

“I know about them. I am interested with the person who is affiliated with them.”

“Who is it?”

The commander tilted his head, but the woman walked back toward the map while listening.

“The one who broke through the rock magician, lead the special unit, and climbed the detour was Ha Leeha-”

The woman took a small piece of wood and moved it on the map.

“-The guild members of Byeolcho protected him…… and Ha Leeha fired his guns. It must have taken sometime for the frontline to go up the hill- most importantly, Ha Leeha must have had a lot of people. Huhu~, I get it now.” (ed: Bloody hell, this women is annoying just shut up already.)

Ewin played with his mustache and asked, after hearing her mutter as if she was watching the scene.

“So? How?”

“This is better. The commander’s plans will be carried out even faster now.”

“Hmmm, I know what you mean. I guess it can’t be helped for a while.”

This time, the woman’s eyes widened a little. Although her remarks did not have any hint, was he able to guess the strategy from her words? As expected of the NPC with the highest level of AI

“Okay, don’t panic and move to the next operation. For high ground 130, first, evacuate and treat the wounded!”

“Understood sir!”

The NPC soldier left, and Ewin went back to his table and sat down.

“Now, Chiyou, what kind of troops should we move?”

“Don’t you think the commander knows better?”

As the 7th in the rankings, the dancer walked, and her perlvic line and kimono-like outfit shook enchantingly. Sitting next to each other, they moved the chess pieces on the complete map of the huge battlefield.

****

“Then our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd platoon will pursue them.”

“Please. We have suffered too much already……”

Users who were granted the regiment commander’s authority talked. Those were the people who have been granted the authority to look at the whole map in the camp or ‘order’ the members of the same regiment.

Needless to say, they were special in this war, but there were people in this camp that made even them wary.

“I’m sure you did. and……. I’m sure you have something to talk to them about. Well then, I will leave now.”

“See you at the next battlefield.”

It was, of course, platoon 54321 that made the regiment commanders cautious. The elites of Byeolcho, including Leeha. Having a zero death toll in the midst of such an intense high ground batle, was proof of their survival skills and combat abilities.

‘Hmm, we are the same division, but there was no plans to coordinate with each division? Don’t we have a bunch of commanders? Is the authority given to users only until the regiment commander leaves? Well, it would be hard even if we had one.‘

Logging out was inevitable anyway. A tightly-knit command system can be rather poisonous in a game. It is probably better to give the users the appropriate privilege and let the NPCs set the direction of the bigger picture.

‘Like the NPCs who gave the high ground quest. No, maybe that NPC is the division commander. Something like a division captain’

When Leeha got a rough idea of the Middle Earth war, the conversation between regiment commanders ended. The 4th regiment commander walked towards Leeha’s unit and held out his hand to Kijeong.

“You have worked very hard, Master Kay-nim. I have heard of your fame, I didn’t expect you to pull off such a surprise attack…. Regardless of the number of people, it is clear that you are one of the strongest guilds in Fibiel.”

“Heym it’s nothing special. Are you Ron-nim, the master of the Rush Guild?”

“You know me?”

“I have seen your raids a few times before, when Hyein-nim was the guild master of Byeolcho. And it wasn’t done with the power of Byeolcho alone.”

Ron nodded his head as he listened to Kijeong’s words. Kijeong shyly shook hands with Ron.

“Then……?”

As Ron tilted his head, all the heads of the Byeolcho guild members turned to one direction. From there was Leeha who was looking at the map placed on the table.

“It’s all thanks to him.”

“Excuse me, but who is he……?

“Ha Leeha, don’t you know about him?”

“Ha Leeha?”

“Hmm, the Cloud Magician! The one who destroyed Rising Sun in the past……

“Rising Sun! It’s been a while since I last heard that name. Are they still here?”

There were many large guilds in Fibiel.

There were guilds that are mostly based around small elites like Hwahong and Byeolcho, though they only had more than a few hundred people, but they were still guilds with strong economic and combat power, but there were also guilds like Hwangryong, that have an overwhelming amount of memebers.

Rush is one of the large guilds that have a large number of American and Canadian users. It was a typical gaming guild whose main purpose was to hunt monsters, explore, adventure, and socialize, rather than accomplishing anything in the game.

Rush never collided with the Rising Sun, and its guild master did not have much interest in Leeha’s achievements.

“He was the one who killed Igor when Hwahong fought our guild.”

“Ah! [Matan’s Shooter]!”

“That’s right! He is the Matan’s Shooter! That person is.”

Kijeong was delighted and pointed at Leeha. Leeha was listening from a distance, but he couldn’t join in because of embarrassment.

‘Really, they will find out sooner or later. Kijeong would be embarrassed, he would be embarrassed, and I am currently being embarrassed.’

They have been talking for a while as if he was a famous person, but now he could barely understand. The speaker, the listener, and the subject were all so embarrassing. At the same time, he realized that his fame was still quite low by Middle Earth standards.

Ron had difficulty speaking as he looked at Leeha and the Byeolcho members.

“It’s a little hard to say this from the get go, but may I ask you to do something for us in the future?”

“Something-”

“Maybe because I arrived at the battlefield early, but I have the authority. If it’s not to rude to the Matan’s Shooter, would you please consider?”

Ron called Leeha and took something out of his bag. When he clicked something like a crystal ball, a huge holographic map appeared in the air.

“Waa……. Is this the complete map of the Marching Plains?”

“Yes. You probably received a battlefield map because you’re only a platoon, but regiment commanders have maps like this.”

Everything, from Fibiel to Minis, was shown. Of course, the information of the Fibiel’s army was incredibly accurate, while the information about the enemy forces needed to be confirmed.

Leeha took a quick look at the map floating in the air.

“It was a successful invasion from our side, so I thought we took over a lot, but…”

“That’s right. The resistance was stronger than we expected. We have not yet crossed half of the Marching Plains.”

He could see the other divisions.

They were struggling, but their forces were similar to the enemy. In other words, it would be difficult to penetrate everywhere like we did with the high ground 130 before. As Ron swung his hand across the hologram, red arrows appeared. 

“This is the quest I received. Reach the end of Marching Plains within 60 days. If you watched the footage of todays battle, you know that-”

“It would be difficult to get a couple of the high grounds within 60 days. There are more than 10 mountains to climb.”

Leeha succinctly said. It might have offended Ron, but he just took it on.

“It’s not wrong, so……. Hmm, how did you do it?.”

Ron hesitated for a moment and stopped moving. 

Ttrrring a new notification window appeared in front of the members of platoon 54321.

[Field battle – March Plains – Platoon 54321 – Special Operation-1]

Description: I beg you.

Content: Support for securing the marked points within 5 days

Reward: War Contribution +150

Failure condition: Fail to secure the marked points

Penalty for failure: War Contribution -200

– Would you like to accept??

“I have to ask you guys for a favor.”

They were not able to react quickly at the newly created quest because of his calm and gentle tone.

“No way!”

Kijeong shouted after about 5 seconds.

“W-what is this, Ron-nim? Are you going to tell us to do that crazy stunt again? High ground 130 had a decent detour, escape route, and they weren’t vigilant against us, so we were okay! But isn’t it different this time? If the information ever gets leaked, we would have no way to retreat!”

To stop an entire army with only 30 people.

If you look at the number next to the quest or the route to be taken by the 4th regiment floating on the map now, there were at least 10 such marks.

I other words, it was natural to speculate that no matter how well they did this time, they would be asked to do more than 10 quests in the future.

“That’s right, Ron-nim. My name is Tale, the vice guild master of Byeolcho. I know that Ron-nim is a regiment commander, but it’s not appropriate to send us to that kind of situation.”

“I don’t know how to say this, but your team has a good track record. I am sorry as well.” (ed: They’ve only done this once, not much of a record now is it.)

Ron shook his head.

Seeing that, Biyemi crossed his arms.

“Kiskis, this, it is said that you don’t get too far in the military. It’s a big deal.”

“Is there such a saying in Vietnam?”

Someone from Byeolcho asked Biyemi, but he did not answer.

“What happens if we refused?”

“If you refuse-”

“……Can you adjust the figures or ratios?”

Just as Ron was about to answer Kijeong, Leeha stepped forward.

“Hyung?”

“What do you mean by adjustment?”

“Additional contribution for success, and deduction for failure.”

“W-well yeah, it’s possible.”

When everyone thought it was not possible, everyone looked at the reward and penalty for failure that Leeha was touching.

‘Is it because it is a quest that users can create? It’s different. It’s a little different than the usual.’

The reward is really generous this time! Furthermore, considering that the ratio for failure was normally 1:2, this time, it’s a wopping 1.5:2 If they were successful, they can get a lot more.

‘In the fierce battle at the high ground 130, the contribution I got was only 400 points. Kijeong, Tale, and Biyemi should be around 150 to 200 each. And the rest of Byeolcho is around 100.’

I should also consider the cooldown of Soul Link and Force Barrier. I only gained 400 points even though I used skills that could only be used once a day. But what about this.

If we succeed, we could get 150 contribution points. In addition, what about the distribution of additional individual contribution points based on performance?

“How much would it be if you raised it to the maximum?”

“If you modify it to the maximum-”

(To be continued…)