Episode 150 Desert Battle/Tactical Selection
When the battle began, the desert warriors set a trap called Kagemusha.
Our allies are still shaken by the sudden attack.
At this point, I decided to set a new goal in an attempt to suppress the confusion among my allies and restore their morale.
"The enemies are spread out widely. If we hit them all together, we can defeat them individually! First, we'll aim at the one person on the left in the direction of travel!"
"Ha!"
Upon receiving my command, the mounted soldiers demonstrated the movements they had cultivated through training.
All of the allies, including Kamyuhoho, moved as if they were one living creature and rushed towards one of the desert warriors they were targeting.
"-- into fire-- a swarm of fire. Fuoco Mandra."
I hear a magical spell coming on the desert wind. The voices that can be heard are fragments, such as the breathing of allies and the footsteps of Kamyuhoho.
Even so, you can understand what kind of magic will come from the spell system.
"The small swarm of fire is coming again! Get ready!"
The surrounding mounted soldiers reacted to my voice and shifted to a defensive mode using shields. Of course, I didn't stop my rushing feet.
A few seconds after I finished my preparations, a group of ten small flames, like the flames of a match, came from the desert warrior I had targeted.
The small swarm of fire hit the shields and leather armor of the surrounding cavalry soldiers, as well as the body hair of Kamyu-ho-ho, and disappeared with a small crackling sound.
Despite receiving such little resistance, we continued our assault and eventually reached the desert warrior.
"First! Push it down!"
“As you say!”
Reacting to the command, the leading mounted soldier stabs the desert warrior hard with the stone thrust of his spear, knocking Kamyuhoho off his back and onto the ground.
The second enemy is now out of the force.
"Now, let's defeat them one after another!"
The moment I started off well and gave the command, a warning came from the mounted soldiers in the rear.
"Attack magic is flying! It looks like magic to destroy the fort!"
When I turned around at the sound of a panicked voice, something that looked like a brown stone pillar about a meter in length and about the size of an armful was flying towards me. That's three!
"Don't stop Kamyu-ho-ho! If you change your trajectory diagonally to the right, you won't hit that!"
As the mounted soldiers moved as one as per my immediate instructions, something that looked like a stone pillar flew towards the ground behind and to the left and landed.
Upon closer inspection, what appeared to be a stone pillar seemed to be made of hardened sand, and it began to crumble as soon as it hit the ground. If you follow the direction the sand pillar came from, you will see three desert warriors standing shoulder to shoulder. Those people were probably the ones who released the magic.
"Anyway, what kind of magic is that? When I lived in Nonette's home country, I must have learned a lot of magic, but I don't know the magic of that pillar of sand."
There are people using magic that I don't know about. Moreover, the opponent was not an empire that was at the cutting edge of magic, but rather the people who lived in the unexplored land of sand.
Just as I was feeling a bit defeated, a voice with a bitter smile came from a mounted soldier riding next to me.
"It's probably the kind of magic that the people of the desert have passed down from generation to generation while keeping it a secret. I guess it can't be helped that Prince Milimos doesn't know about it."
It can't be helped, but when you use magic you don't know, you can't read the opponent's tactics.
Oh but. If you look at it from a different perspective, there is a possibility that tribes like them who possess secret magic are living in secret on the continent. And the hidden magic is probably magic that even the empire doesn't know about.
Perhaps this hidden magic will be the opening for the ants that will destroy the empire's stronghold.
"Now I have one more reason not to lose."
I have to win and have the desert warriors teach me secret magic.
While I was secretly making this decision, I received warnings one after another from my friends around me.
"Front left! A desert warrior who seems to be provoking us!"
“Three enemy cavalry in the rear! They are now firing weak spells at us in rapid succession, trying to push us away!”
"Enemies are gathering in a slightly distant position! There is a high possibility that they are plotting to attack our side!"
A decoy is placed in the front, personnel in the back chase it away, and the others work together to aim for a deadly blow.
When I understood what that tactic meant, I couldn't help but click my tongue.
"Tch. Isn't it the same way you do it when hunting big game?"
That's what Nonette did when training as a soldier in her home country, when she was practicing hunting large wild animals.
If the opponent is a herbivore, chase it from behind to limit its escape route, and place bow and arrow holders or traps in the area where it escapes. If it's a carnivore, have a fast-running decoy running around and guide it to a position where you can surround it and fight.
The desert warriors are fighting against us using the best of both worlds.
“In other words, they are fighting us while assuming that we are giant monsters in the desert.”
I nod in response to the question from the mounted soldier next to me who picked up my voice.
"The desert warriors' main job is to hunt desert monsters. It's a rational decision to use the tactics they're familiar with. These are giant sandworms wriggling on the sand. It's not inconceivable if that's the case."
Even though there were 50 knights, there was only one commander. If you take out the commander, the battle will be won.
So if you think of the mass of fifty knights as a monster's sandworm, I'd say it's the heart of the vital point.
"Then what should we do? Were we just going to continue using the same tactics?"
"I know that it's the same as continuing to fall into the enemy's spell."
There are countermeasures.
It was a distributed attack divided into several horsemen.
If you fight in a distributed manner, you can force the enemy to change their tactics, and if you do it well, you can create an advantageous situation on the battlefield where your allies are three and the enemy is one.
However, the problem is our side's proficiency in distributed attacks and the enemy's ability to respond.
As for training, I have had my mounted soldiers do something similar during training.
The original purpose of training for distributed attacks was to quickly and widely inflict damage on the enemy when attacking enemy camps during night raids. The practice was based on the assumption that a sudden battle would occur within the camp, so there shouldn't be any problems with coordinating between several horsemen.
As for the enemy's response capabilities, we can only make predictions.
How will the desert warriors behave if we choose a distributed attack?
I wonder if they will choose to fight in groups of several horses like we did here. No, considering that we are using a hunter's tactic of using Kagemusha in the first move and using decoys and chasers in the second against us who move in one group, there is no ``proper'' fighting method as described in the strategy book. It shouldn't come.
In that case, it would be more natural to think that even though he is used to fighting, he uses amateurish tactics--he makes choices like a hunter.
"If you're a hunter, you'd probably choose to focus on the prey you're sure to get, rather than trying to target the entire herd that's running away."
If you think about it in this battlefield, the only prey the enemy wants to target is me, who will be victorious if I capture him.
In that case, if I choose a distributed attack, the desert warriors will all come after me when I'm exposed from the group. If we can counterattack, we will have a strong chance of winning.
“…With a maximum of one to fifty—no, forty-eight horsemen—I wonder how long they can keep running away.”
I quickly put together a strategy and gave instructions to the mounted soldiers around me. This is so that they will serve as the core that will command each platoon when they are dispersed.
I was worried that my tactic of using myself as a decoy would be acceptable if I was defeated, but the mounted soldiers easily accepted it.
“Prince Milimos, who has been trained by the knights of the chivalric kingdom, will easily be able to escape even against fifty desert warriors.”
"I'm just worried that he's going to have too much fun and fall off the Camu-Ho-Ho."
I decided to issue a dispersive attack, thinking that Ambitose's cavalry soldiers were also saying the same thing.
“Before that, I will defeat the decoy of the desert warrior who was an eyesore in front of me!”
We quickly increased the running speed of Kamyu-ho-ho, closed the distance, and pushed the decoy who was moving in a meandering motion from above Kamyu-ho-ho.
While the man acting as a decoy was rolling on the sandy ground, we divided into several horses and began to disperse.
As I began to run away from the battlefield alone, I heard the continuous footsteps of Kamyu-ho-ho approaching from behind.
When I turned around, the desert warriors who had gathered at a certain point were all running toward me.
Apparently, they were preparing for a concentrated magic attack if I continued with group tactics, and a quick follow-up attack if I chose a dispersed attack.
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