The Rise of the Black Plain

"15,000 enemies, huh?" Eduard repeated that information as he watched each of the people in that office forming worried expressions on their faces.

"That's truly a lot of people..."

"It seems that King Brown thinks quite highly of our army."

"Hmm, looks like they are not playing this time."

Some of them commented among themselves, as they realized how serious the Brown family thought the threat from Minos was.

After all, sending such a large group to Maritime City was impressive!

Even considering all the additions of personnel in the Black Plain Army since its creation, this organization only recently passed 17,000 soldiers.

But without much ado, the Brown family had already dispatched a group almost as numerous as the army's numbers to this city alone!

Not for nothing were these administrative soldiers negatively surprised by the seriousness Thomas Brown was using against them.

Eduard then said. "It's truly a larger group than we expected for this start of the war. Still, we were already counting on such large groups in the future anyway, so we'll merely have to speed up our preparations."

This post in Maritime City was originally going to be used at various times during the war to disrupt the enemies of the Black Plain.

And they would only act in a, shall we say, more flashy manner when a large group of enemies arrived in such a city.

However, since things had developed differently, they had no alternative but to skip most of their plans and go straight to their main movement.

"Yes..."

"As such, let's adjust our plans with the arrival of this group of 15,000 individuals."

"I want all the arrays and traps we have positioned around the city these past few months to be prepared for use as soon as this group finishes arriving here..." He said, looking at those individuals, and then stopped his gaze under a middle-aged woman.

"These groups will arrive little by little, right? Will they establish themselves around here first before they start acting?"

"That's right, Lieutenant Eduard."

"The groups responsible for transporting war resources and some troops were already arriving in this city in the next few days."

"But much of the enemy force will not arrive until later, close to that 20-day deadline."

"However, I must say that we cannot wait until the entire group is in Maritime City before we act." That woman said, looking thoughtfully at her boss and the other co-workers there in that office.

"Oh? Why is that?"

"The leader of the Counter-Revolutionary Army is likely to be coming here after the preparations of that group of 15,000 individuals are ready."

"Such a person, as you already know, is other than the supreme elder of the Brown family, who is supposedly at level 58!"

Upon hearing this, those people were silent for a moment until someone gave his opinion.

"Then we have to finish these enemies as soon as possible, or we will have a lot of trouble if that person gets here in time..."

"Indeed. A person at that level, plus the naval fleet which is more numerous than ours, can complicate our situation a lot, even considering the traps."

After watching those people talking about it, Eduard couldn't help but agree. "All right, let's do as Sergeant Hazel suggested. We'll attack a little earlier than scheduled."

"We'll do that as soon as the number of enemies in that city reaches 15,000!"

"With that, make the necessary preparations so that everything will be ready when that happens. All arrays, traps, and soldiers must be prepared for that moment."

"All right, Lieutenant." They said that simultaneously as they felt a slight chill run down their spines.

This action they intended to use against the Brown family was quite bold. After all, with less than a thousand individuals at the 5th stage, they intended to exterminate 15,000 enemies close to this range of strength!

Some Spiritual Warriors were coming to this city with those groups or were already with the numbers of royal guards here in Maritime City.

But they represented a small part of the enemy numbers.

In any case, this was a tremendous difference in power that the differences in terms of the quality of their techniques to those of the enemies could not overcome!

Hell, suppose they could eliminate 5,000 enemies without external help. Then that would be such an impressive achievement that the army would probably have to tell legendary stories about each of them!

But 15,000, or even more than that, was impossible for them to handle such a large group with their forces alone.

That's why they would use strategies to reduce their opponents' numbers before the actual confrontation!

For this reason, explosive arrays, mental confusion arrays, defensive arrays, restrictive arrays, and so on were already spread around the Maritime City.

They would help eliminate or facilitate the elimination of these enemy groups when the time came for the forces under Eduard's command to act.

But if this went wrong, that would be the end of them. Hence, this whole plan was quite audacious!

"Good." Eduard then thought of a problem and asked. "What about the population? Have we finished all the preparations?" 

They knew that by going ahead with this plan, to surprise attack the troops of the Counter-Revolutionary Army, it would throw this city into the turmoil of war.

After all, hardly all the enemies would die in this place without at least fighting. That is, some of them would undoubtedly succumb to the local traps, but others would survive to fight.

And with that, something similar to what happened in Persephone could occur in the Maritime City!

"Regarding this, of the original 300,000 inhabitants of Maritime City, 60,000 have already migrated to Dry City. And in these next few days, before this problem bursts, we will probably be able to send another 40,000 people to our city."

"As for the rest of the inhabitants, those notified about the possibility of travel to Dry City have already moved to the residences further away from where we will act, just as planned."

"But almost half of the population have not yet received any contact from us..." One of those soldiers said as he talked about the situation of the local population to Eduard.

However, another person there waved his hand, asking for a turn, and said. "I've been working on this recently with the undercover soldiers, and I think we can launch a war effort program."

"War effort program?"

"Since there are so many individuals coming to Maritime City to fight in the war, we should use this to ask the local population to stay in their homes as much as possible. Or even migrate to regions further away from the city during this period."

"With that, at least we can demarcate the human-free buildings and protect, if possible, those that we know there are people there."

"Oh?" Eduard said in surprise, already thinking about this plan. 'That might decrease the number of casualties among the citizens of this place!'

The plan was not bad. After all, as much as there were traps scattered all over the town, this was a city of 300,000, a place with a considerable area.

So, even fighting here, only a portion of the local infrastructure would be damaged during the conflict since a good part of the enemies were expected to die before the battles took place.

Because a portion of the population had already relocated and more people could do so through that program, the buildings closest to the traps could be left empty for this confrontation.

And even if some people were unwilling to make this effort, the army could make some markings in such places, avoiding taking the battles to those locations.

By doing this, they would somehow manage to save more lives in this place, whom they would allow joining Dry City soon after this daring act.

After that, they would have to abandon this place since such an area would have already lost its great advantage.

Defending two places was more complicated than one, after all!

"All right, start this as soon as possible!"

After that, it was not long before this occasion was over, and each of those people headed towards the places where they could settle these matters.

That would determine their life and death soon and their opportunities for wealth if they were successful.

So, each of them was in a big hurry to get this sorted out!