Hellmode ~A Hardcore Gamer Becomes Peerless in Another World with Retro Game Settings~
chapter-202

The exhausted elven soldiers left the fighting to the newly arrived soldiers and went down the stairs to find another squad of soldiers waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

After fighting for eight hours straight, the exhausted elven soldiers headed for a resting place near the center of Fortress LaPolca.

They ate quickly and went into a temporary building with baths set up for field use.

(That's a good sign. The elves are puzzled, though. Well, the magical beasts are definitely not going to let the elves rest this time.)

Allen was using E-rank Bird to check if the elves were following his strategy.

And over the course of many hours of battle, he had analyzed the strategy of the Demon King's army based on the movements of the magical beasts.

The movement of the Demon King's army was clearly different from the Tiamo siege where they came with a large army before.

Magical beasts advancing southward across the ocean had been ordered to not let Allen rest, while those not participating in the battle had been resting. That was an effective strategy against humans and elves, who were more easily fatigued than magical beasts.

He analyzed that it was a strategy that was possible because the Demon King's army had millions of magical beasts in tow.

With so many of them, the number of magical beasts who had to fight all the time would only be a fraction of the total number.

If the non-participating magical beasts rested, they could continue to attack the elves all day and all night long.

Twenty-four hours a day, millions of troops were constantly on the offensive, trying to bring down Fortress LaPolca.

(One thing the Demon King's army disappoints me is that they took the same strategy in the ocean as well as in Fortress LaPolca. If I hadn't known about this strategy, it might have been pretty tough.)

Allen, fighting on the ocean, started the battle two days earlier than the siege of Fortress LaPolca.

Thanks to that, he was able to predict that the Demon King's army would follow similar strategies.

The Demon King's army was very quick in executing strategies. That was probably due to the fact that they had a strong chain of command and a small number of people who served as executives.

However, that was also the reason why the army was following the same strategy with little change and thus Allen was easily able to predict how they would attack Fortress LaPolca this time.

Allen's strategy was to divide the 300,000 or so elven soldiers in Fortress LaPolca into three groups.

A group in battle, a group in reserve, and a group who would rest, were to be rotated every eight hours.

Eight hours after the battle began the first change occured.

Allen had introduced a three-shift shift system war in this world.

The role of the soldiers waiting in reserve was to respond if ever the formation of the fighting soldiers' group were to be broken.

Some of the soldiers looked quite anxious, wondering if they could manage with only 100,000 soldiers fighting at a time.

In order for the 100,000 soldiers to be able to hold their own, I decided to use my Commander summons and [Blessing of Heaven] more than ever before to compensate.

After taking a bath, the soldiers went into buildings that had been converted into temporary resting facilities.

(Okay, everyone's sound asleep.)

"It's wonderful. As expected of Master Allen."

Ellie checked the inside of the building and said.

The soldiers, who had been excited by the deadly battle just an hour ago, were already sleeping soundly.

The day was bright and fierce battles were being fought on all sides, and the roar of magical beasts and other sounds of battle were coming into the thin-walled temporary resting place.

However, as if it didn't matter, the elves were all asleep.

And in the middle of this large resting area, there was a single tree about 2 meters tall.

The Tree was F-rank Grass' awakening skill [Herb].

(Hmm, I brought 100 [Herb]s. Will it be enough?)

(Allen POV)

I had sent 100 [Herb]s along with 2,000 [Blessing of Heaven] with the B-rank Bird/

[Herb] turned F-rank Grass summon into a tree about 2 meters tall.

And if someone were to smell the scent of the said tree, their natural recovery rate of mana would be reduced from 6 hours to 3 hours. The scent could reach a radius of 100 meters from where the tree was planted. These 2 meter tall trees were planted in the temporary resting  places throughout the fortress.

The woody smell of [Herb] had a strong restful effect. My father, Rodan, would have slept soundly even when he had a huge hole in his stomach, and was suffering from great pain.

The soldiers were skeptical that they could sleep under such circumstances, but as soon as they hit the floor, all their fatigue melted away and they fell into sound sleep.

(Things are going well on all fronts so far, but the southern wall can't defeat many magical beasts, since there are only a few summons and they don't have long-range attacks. Well, I guess it can't be helped.)

The battle was also being waged on the south wall.

4 B-rank Stones were outside the south wall.

Since they were outside the wall, the Insect-type magical beasts were clinging to them.

""...""

Commander Mirror was 20 meters tall whereas the Soldier Mirrors were 15 meters tall and couldn't speak.

Without a word, Commander Mirror trampled a magical beast under its giant feet.

(With that much [Endurance], I will be surprised if those attacks had any effect.)

The [Endurance] of the Commander Mirror was 7000.

The [Endurance] of the Soldier Mirrors was 5500.

In addition to that, they had received Fish buffs to increase their evasion rate and damage reduction. They had also been buffed by elves' Support magic.

Most B-rank magical beasts had [Attack] of around 1,000, so the difference between that and the [Endurance] of a B-rank Mirrors was more than 5 times.

With such a large difference, the magical beasts couldn't damage Mirrors.

I had been examining the relationship between [Endurance] and [Attack] since my days in the Academy City's dungeons.

Someone with an [Attack] of 3,000 didn't deal 3 times as much damage compared to someone with as [Attack] of 1,000.

Because the [Endurance] of the receiver also had to be calculated, the damage received was directly proportional to the receiver's [Endurance] and the attacker's [Attack].

If one were to attack an opponent with high [Endurance], whether they had 1000 or 2000 [Attack], they might only deal 1 damage, but if the attacker had an [Attack] of 3000, they might deal 300 damage.

So the damage was never completely proportional to the [Attack].

(Some magical beasts can use their skills, too. You have to be careful about that. Also, there's about 1 A-rank magical beast in every 100 magical beasts.)

Some magical beasts had piercing effects in their skills that nullified and bypassed the receiver's [Endurance], or had skills that lowered [Endurance].

I was overconfident that they'd be absolutely fine, so the 4 Mirrors were regularly subjected to Recovery Magic by my elven recovery team.

The Commander Mirror uses its round shield to peel off the magical beasts that were crawling up the wall, which was as tall as it, by force.

In response to Commander Mirror's attack, a robed skeleton pointed a staff with a red jewel on its tip from behind.

At the tip of the staff, a huge circle of flames was created by magic, and it flew to burn down the elves on the wall.

(Oh, lucky. Use [Internal Reflection].)

"..."

The flames bounced on the circular, shiny shield of Commander Mirror flew back and spread over a wide area in front of the skeleton who had thrown it.

The flames released by the skeleton were tripled to burn the Insect-type magical beasts to ashes.

(It's still important to reflect all A-rank magical beasts' skills. The speed of annihilation is slow, but the west and east aren't originally designed to be defended by elves. It's all about balance here.)

Fortress LaPolca, built to protect the north and south, was not ready for an east-west attack.

Therefore, I left those sides to B-rank Dragons and B-rank Insects to defend. For that reason, the number of elven soldiers in those walls was smaller than in the northern and southern walls.

More time passed.

The sun was setting, but the magical beasts did not stop fighting, using magic and lighting large torches to see.

As I had predicted, the Demon King's army didn't stop the siege after the sunset.

After 16 hours, the soldiers who had been standing by as reserves climbed the wall and stood on the front lines, and the soldiers who had been fighting up until then descended from the stairs to take a rest. The change of positions proceeded swiftly.

More time passed, and it was midnight and the day changed.

"Now let's go to bed."

"Yes. Please take a good night's rest, Master Allen."

Ellie picked up on my monolog.

I was also on my second night of battle against the Demon King's army in the ocean.

I cleaned up the magical beasts on top of the Sea Dragon looking magical beasts that had already been defeated after having their heads crushed and returned to bed for the night.

I took off my clothes, moved the Grimoire over my head and took a shower using the water inside.

My Grimoire contained a pool full of water.

I had a change of night clothes and plenty of food.

(I think I killed about 150,000 of them today. I told them I'd be back in five days, so I need to be more efficient. Since the magical beasts are coming at me with all their might, my goal for tomorrow is 200,000. I guess I'll have to fight my way into the center more.)

After the shower, I reflected on the second day's battle while eating Mormo nuts, and thought of more efficient ways to destroy them.

I always found thinking of new plans and verifying them through practice the next day to be the most enjoyable.

Then I moved to the back of Commander Griff. Even though I was on top of a large Sea Dragon magical beast, it was not safe because there were also magical beasts in the ocean and they could attack at any time.

Allen took a brief nap on the back of Commander Griff.