PenguinKills
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Chapter 99 - Plan
🕑 Added 2024-08-02 20:18:48 +0000 UTCOur trek there took most of the afternoon and we arrived just before sundown. We stayed a distance away from the camp and made sure Kathy scouted the area so we remained unseen.
I didn't think we would remain hidden the entire time leading up to the attack but it didn't hurt to try. The longer we remained unseen the less time the Mindbreaker got to plan his response.
If he didn't know we were there, he wouldn't have as much time to prepare when we started attacking.
We were a pylon away for the night and would close the distance the next morning. It was unusually quiet while we set up camp and I could tell the nerves were getting to people.
This would be an assault on a heavily fortified position. The first time we had laid siege to a camp rather than defended one.
The only thing we had left to do was scout the camp with our own eyes and confirm our plan of attack. All we had intel-wise was what Kathy could gather from her birds.
They were great and were a massive boon, but for something like this, I wanted to see it for myself before cementing a plan of attack.
It was too dark for that tonight and we set up a watch rotation for the night before tucking in. Nervous jitters ran through the camp that night but I slept like a rock.
Tomorrow held nothing new for me. I had attacked a camp before and I had killed before. Tomorrow would just have more of it. I was confident in my strength and only grew more confident after getting my bloodline.
I was as prepared as I could be.
~~
"Attacking from the west gives us the high ground but there are no trees for cover like in the south," Hal said pointing at both areas on the map.
"The north and east are both suboptimal directions of attack. We would have to run up a hill to get there." Sam mentioned the other two directions.
"Brayden, how long will it take to set up the trebuchets?" I asked our resident builder. We couldn't carry the fully built siege weapons with us and had to break them down into pieces.
Scott and Brayden would work together to put them together which should speed things up.
We had been at this for close to an hour. Hashing out different plans of attack trying to come up with the best one since the sun had come up.
It wasn't only the 'council' participating either. Everyone was privy to the same information and we all stood around the map coming up with ideas. I was no war general and this would be my first planned attack. I wanted everyone's input.
If our 'army' was larger, something like this would be unfeasible but we only had 30 people. Hearing everyone's thoughts didn't create that much chaos.
People's lives were on the line and I wasn't going to deny their council, especially because I had no experience with planning a siege.
What Austin and I did shouldn't be considered a 'plan' and it wouldn't even be helpful for this camp. The gate was too strong for me to try that tactic again.
I had some ideas about an avenue of attack and one had started forming ever since I saw the camp. The camp itself was even more defensible than the one Tracy had down south.
The walls were higher at a towering 25 feet and it looked thicker as well. Numerous siege weapons were dotting the wall that all looked store-bought rather than handmade.
It looked like a fortress.
A heavily defensible fortress.
"I don't think I will be able to smash through the gate," I said.
No one had asked, but our usual method of attack wouldn't work on this camp. The gates here had the same metal portcullises that Tracy's did which made my ability to smash them open less than zero.
My hammer would break before I got through.
"Will the explosives we brought get through it?" Austin asked.
All of us couldn't help but look over at Kathy. She was the lead for the people that had tagged along and she knew the capabilities of the consumables best.
"I am uncertain. It would take more than one most likely but how many, I don't know." She said. The uncertainty in her tone was clear to all of us.
It went around like this for a while where someone would bring up an idea before someone else shot it down.
All the while, the idea I had before came back. It was something I had thought the moment I laid eyes on the camp and saw its thick walls and heavy gate.
"Why do we need to breach the walls?" I asked, "There are no civilians in there or people we need to spare. We aren't going to stay after we conquer it either. Why don't we just burn it to the ground?"
"Conner, do you have any poisons that would work?" I added.
Everyone got a bit quiet after that and thought it over.
"That's a bit... dark, Chris," Abigail said, "And I'm pretty sure that's a war crime."
Hearing it out loud made me see how dark it was. I suggested burning down a whole camp while people were still in it and in the next breath suggested gassing them.
"Well, um, it's not like there are any noncombatants. Everyone inhabiting that camp is an enemy, why should we risk attacking the walls when we can smoke them out?" I stuck by my idea.
"He is right, there's no one in there we intend to spare," Austin added with a shrug.
It took everyone a moment to skip over the fact it was technically a war crime. Now that I thought about it, there were no more war crimes anymore. If there were no countries, and civilians weren't held to the Geneva Convention, then there were no rules of war.
"All we have to do is make sure the man doesn't sneak away afterward," I said before looking at Kathy.
"I understand. I'll make sure he won't get away." She said resolutely. She gave a swift nod to match as well.
"Rachel, what's the range of your skills?" I asked.
"Uh, I'm not sure for something like this. I wouldn't really have to aim, just launch them as far as I can. I would say around 300 yards, maybe more. It would jack up the mana cost though to keep the skill together for that long." She said thinking it over.
"Connor, how much poison did you bring?" Austin asked for me.
"We have a few jars that we intended to use for traps and the like." Abigail answered for him, "It most likely won't be enough for the whole camp."
"I can make more but it will take me a minute," Connor added on.
"Well, if we're doing this," My Dad muttered, "Can you make anything flammable? Like some kind of aerosol that will spread the fire?"
Connor looked thoughtful before nodding, "Yeah, I can make something like that. It might explode though." The slight tug of a smile on his face was only a tad disturbing.
Connor's... experiments had the tendency to do that and it wouldn't be the first time he would need burns healed.
"If we do that, the monsters will stream out of all four gates and surround us." Jonathan pointed out.
Getting them out of the camp would make fighting them a lot easier but it would also bring their numbers to bear. We were grossly outnumbered and fighting on an open field would leave us at a disadvantage.
Well, they would be at a disadvantage. I would be fine.
"Do you think you can raise earth walls strong enough to block the other gates off? It wouldn't have to be too sturdy, just enough for them to decide going through a different gate would be faster than breaking through." I asked.
"I would have to get close to do it and I won't be able to get to all three gates in time. I would be lucky to get one." Jonathan said, "Plus, would that be before or after we launched our attack?"
That was a good point. If he ran around before we attacked, he would be the sole target and all the attacks would rain down on him. If he did it after, their attention would be split from escaping the fire and attacking the person running around the camp.
"What if I go with you? My Ice is hard to get through and I can help block off the gates?" I said.
"That could work but that still doesn't answer when we are doing it," Jonathan said.
"We wouldn't have to do it right away. We could open with long-range attacks and only rush to block off the gates when the person controlling the monsters orders them to leave the camp.
"We have to remember only one person is controlling them. They won't act like normal people would. They will stay and burn for far longer than you might think." Rachel brought up.
It was another thing I had failed to think about. We weren't planning a battle against beasts where their survival instincts would make their actions predictable.
This was all under the control of one person and it would be up to him for how the camp reacts. Normally, if a camp was on fire, people would run away to escape it. That wasn't necessarily the case now.
The Mindbreaker could hole up in the keep while his entire army burned around him not caring about their lives.
"At what point do you think he will decide leaving the camp is better than staying behind the walls? Even if he doesn't value their lives, he wouldn't watch his entire army burn." Scott asked.
No one had an answer for that.
"Kathy can warn us of any movement and we can rush to block off the gates after that. With her warning, not many should be able to get out before we block them off." Abigail said.
"That would make blocking them off harder. We would not only have to deal with attacks from the wall but have to fight through people in our way." Jonathan noted.
It would take longer to do it that way but it was the best we came up with.
"If we are getting them out of the camp, where do we plan on fighting them at?" Damien pipped in. He hadn't said much during the meeting and mostly kept to himself, but raised a good point.
I was just planning to do what I always did. Fight wherever my enemy was, moving to where they were rather than the other way around. It worked for me because I was so much more powerful than them. Usually, I didn't have to consider terrain that much.
"When they charge out of the camp, they will most likely go toward wherever we put the siege weapons. He would order them to attack them first to get us to stop bombarding him with them." Sam said.
"I can build up some fortifications around them but I'm not sure how strong they will be," Brayden added.
"We can line the way there with traps as well. Both store-bought and what I can make." Allison pointed out.
We spent the next few minutes scrutinizing the map for the best spot to attack from. We had to consider more than just the high ground.
Which path had the easiest places to plant traps, which path was the most defensible, which path... so on and so forth. It was a lot to keep track of.
I wasn't sure it would have turned out as well if I had planned it alone. There were too many things I didn't consider.
I saw monster, I smashed monster.
Everyone else here had a different thought process than me. The way they went about it was different and it made sure we had the best plan possible.
I was glad that it was all coming together so well.
We went over a few more details but the gist of the plan stayed the same. Smoke them out, lead them into where we wanted them, then decimate them.
It was the best we could come up with and I could only hope it would work.
We had contingencies in case things went wrong, which they no doubt would, but we couldn't think of everything. As my Dad helpfully pointed out, 'No plan survives contact with the enemy.'
We had things set up to mitigate that though. Kathy would keep everyone informed of what was going on and Abigail would coordinate everything.
All we had to do now was wait. Connor was brewing up nasties in his cauldron and Scott and Brayden started constructing our defenses.
In a few hours, we would be ready.
Comments
Baconwargod
A spirit anchor seems to be more like a cohesive Philosophy that you anchor with a symbol of some kind. Looking forward to when he hits that.
SoJoe
I hope you don't kill off his dad, I think he should sit down with his dad and go over his moral code to form his spirit anchor, and create some basic laws like Hammurabis Code or something.
Demonlord
Thanks for the chapter 😊 I hope there aren't too many losses on their side from the battle... But I guess fighting against so many creatures will take down some of them...
