“Everyone!” I called out. “The enemy is threatening our allies! They’re as savage as they are strong, and many of our comrades died at their hands! But we will not submit! We will crush our enemies and defend our allies’ land! That’s the might of the Arachnea! Of the Swarm! That is our power!”
I continued my speech, calling out to the Swarms in attendance.
“That’s right! We are the Arachnea! All who hear us cower, all who see us tremble, and all who speak of us are cursed with nightmares! We submit to no enemy! We shall not besmirch our name with surrender or retreat! Prepare for battle, for the enemy is nearby! We have no time! We cannot allow the enemy to do as they please!”
“All hail Her Majesty!” The Swarm praised my passionate speech.
My Swarm would fight to their last breaths. You’ll get what’s coming to you, Nyrnal!
“I’ll explain the plan, then. It’s simple, really. Very simple. We’ve done it so many times, it’s almost hackneyed by now.”
I transmitted the outline of Nyrnal’s operation through the collective consciousness. The time of battle was fast approaching...
♱
We began by setting a twofold defensive line. The first line was intended to separate the lindwyrms from the infantry, and the second was to dispose of the lindwyrms. The most important thing was taking out the troops accompanying the lindwyrms. Much like war elephants, charging lindwyrms were bad at taking sudden turns. If it was just a force of lindwyrms, we could find ways to handle them.
I recalled reading in a magazine somewhere that no matter how powerful tanks were, without infantry to accompany them, they were little more than large targets vulnerable to heavy weaponry. In other words, unit composition mattered. The lindwyrms would be vulnerable as long as we cut them off from their infantry.
To that end, I set up our first defensive line behind Baumfetter. The Nyrnal Empire had already seized the village and were heading north. In the end, I hadn’t been able to defend it. We were simply too late; I’d failed my duty.
It was beyond frustrating. Intolerable, more like. Baumfetter’s elves were the first locals to welcome me to this world. I felt like such an ingrate...and a liar.
“Your Majesty!”
As I was stewing in self-loathing, Lysa came up to me.
“Lysa, how are things in Baumfetter?” I asked.
“Well...many of the warriors died. The sick and elderly failed to escape, and they were hurt. But the women and children are fine and are evacuating north.”
So it was as bad as I thought...
I’d hoped the enemy might just kill the warriors and spare the rest of the elves, but they did no such thing. I peered into Lysa’s consciousness and saw memories of burnt households and severed corpses. It was an act of barbarism.
We didn’t make it, and it was all my fault.
“You’ve done everything you could, Your Majesty,” Lysa assured me. “None of us expected the enemy would try to march through the elven forest.”
“No, we didn’t.” I shook my head. “This forest doesn’t have a road for them to march through or cities to resupply in, so we assumed they wouldn’t pass through the forest with a large army. But we did know about the lindwyrms, and we knew they’d be able to plow their way through here. If only I’d connected the dots sooner.”
I should have predicted this. Large units couldn’t cross forests in the game, but this wasn’t a game anymore. These monsters could level the forest, knocking down the trees. Just like how Worker Swarms could chop trees... I should have seen all this coming, but I’d read the situation entirely wrong.
I was too focused on the Phros River and thought the enemy’s attention was fixed on the Eastern Trade Union. In my eyes, the Dukedom was only a secondary front. And in that thought process, I’d gravely misjudged the situation. Instead, the enemy decided to topple the stalemate by shifting their target to the Dukedom of Schtraut, our most vulnerable flank.
“He outplayed me. I played right into Emperor Maximillian’s hands. But it’s not over yet. If they kill ten of our allies, we’ll massacre a hundred of their men.”
As I said this, I took a look at the operation. The enemy had overrun Baumfetter and would soon clash with our first defensive line. There, the Worker Swarms had set up a basic palisade. Based on the direction the lindwyrms were headed, the enemy would soon enter the densest region of the forest. If we attacked them head-on there, the lindwyrms wouldn’t be able to advance. That would be our chance to turn this around.
“Lysa, you go to the second defensive line with Sérignan,” I ordered. “Leave the first line to the Toxic Swarms, the Genocide Swarms, and the new units.”
“Understood. I’ll give it my all, Your Majesty.” Lysa offered a curt nod and headed to her position.
“All right, time to teach those despicable louts a lesson.” After that, I began maneuvering the Swarms.
I’d already decided—they would pay. They really pissed me off this time.
♱
The Nyrnal army continued its steady stampede through the elven forest and approached the Popedom. The lindwyrms led the charge and paved the way for the rest of the army, followed by rows of infantry and cavalry. If they were to find themselves under attack, they would either move in to defend or send out a unit to pursue the enemy.
“The elves’ resistance is getting more and more bothersome to handle.”
“Agreed. We can’t ignore our casualties.”
The elves had been attacking Nyrnal’s army using guerrilla tactics, hiding in the trees to pelt them with arrows. Nyrnal had sent out a force to pursue them, but the elves had caught the soldiers in a series of ambushes.
In this fashion, the Nyrnal army had gradually lost over two hundred men. As such, the invasion army adopted an approach of simply ignoring the elves. Even if they were attacked, they would disregard the elves and continue their march. A few soldiers would die in the attacks, but at least they wouldn’t lose an entire unit while chasing after them.
A pessimistic strategy, to be sure, but the elves’ tactics were passive in their own way. They didn’t try to stop the lindwyrms’ march. Or rather, they couldn’t stop it. The elves didn’t have any ballistae or catapults, which meant they lacked any means of stopping the Nyrnal army’s advance. They never needed siege weapons in the past, after all.
“The elves’ attacks are irritating, but we must ignore them,” said the commander of the invasion army. “Dealing with them will just cost us needless losses. Forget them, just continue the march and—”
But just as he said this, something like an arrow skewered his face, sending him tumbling and thrashing off his horse.
“Attack! We’re under attack!”
“Look out, look out! Enemies ahead!”
More arrow-like projectiles zoomed through the air, and the soldiers crouched down in terror. Countless arrows—no, poison stingers were raining down on them.
“Gaah!”
“Help m—”
Soldiers pierced by the stingers swiftly melted into puddles of liquified flesh.
A relatively calm officer took over for the dead commander. He shouted, “Dammit, it’s not just the elves! The Arachnea are here! These aren’t anything like the bugs we’ve seen before! None of them fired off stingers that big!”
Indeed, the stingers that flew through the air were not those of the Toxic Swarms. They were as large as stakes and thick enough to pierce a heavy infantryman’s armor. The ones to fire them were the newly unlocked units that cost the Arachnea much of their resources—Chemical Swarms. These Swarms inflicted greater poison damage than any other unit, and they were even capable of healing their allies. They were a complete upgrade of the Toxic Swarms.
“Have the lindwyrms move ahead! Infantry, keep your shields up until you have to attack! Move through those stingers!”