FB: Chapter 85 – Firestorm

We raced into the other camps, making a mess while the elite teams stayed behind to bombard the enemy camp in the other direction, creating a panic. They were tossing smoke grenades to hide what was happening. Combined with the overcast sky, darkness, lack of communication, and surprise this night attack was quickly turning into a disaster for the enemy forces.

That was the danger with such a large army, responding to threats. Quantity was only useful when you had a clear enemy to attack. In the middle of the night while everyone wanted to take a break from the carnage and the lack of visibility, it was chaos.

People were running about, using skills, and attacking their own guild mates in panic. During the day they mostly had to rush towards the star fortress and attack. It was fairly simple. Now, it was a complete and utter mess. That was why having a strict hierarchy, and lines of communication were important. It was why my side was able to hold together under Kill Blade while the enemy forces only had two options. Attack or not attack. Right now, they were not attacking our fortress and against elites rushing right through their forces during the night, it was creating mass confusion.

If they had kept attacking, they would have won, just from keeping up the pressure. But it was dark, and the people didn’t want to hit their friends. Also, the leaders most likely wanted to be seen reorganizing their forces and plan out a new strategy after the failure of the first day. Just sending in human waves would be embarrassing at a strategic level. Also, humans didn’t like fighting at night. People’s Perception stat wasn’t high enough yet for fighting when it was dark.

Now their organizational disadvantage was coming into play. This kind of attack was a major reason why having a central command was important. After rampaging through the second camp we retreated back to the star fortress along with the elite teams coming from the other direction. The fire had grown enough that there was no way to easily stop it now. All my troops were gathered up on the wall watching the inferno spread around us.

Thankfully it didn’t get too close due to the destroyed ground leading up to the star fortress. The command staff and I went to the top of the hexagon tower to watch. “You think it will sweep through the entire combat zone?” Kill Blade asked me.

“Perhaps,” I replied while our troops fired from the walls at the groups of enemy forces who were rushing towards the star fortress. We were surrounded by a sea of fire in the shape of the letter ‘C’. Enemy troops were either running away or running into the gap towards us. With only one direction, the amount of magical gun fire we were unleashing was overwhelming. Even more so when people could easily be rotated out to keep up the suppressive rate of fire.

“Well, the observation teams are now in play, hunting and killing down whomever they find,” Kill Blade stated, and I nodded at this. Any people running away in the dark would be disorganized. The observation teams hiding in stealth would target these people, hopefully killing a lot more while creating even more chaos.

“Is there an edge to this battlespace?” Quant Z asked.

“No. But if a person goes too far away from the main area of fighting, they are counted as lost in regards to a percentage win. If they go even further, then they are removed and returned to the mustering area,” I replied.

It allowed armies to recover from a rout if it did happen but punished them at the same time for running away. If they kept running, then they were considered as having abandoned the battle and were removed entirely.

“There have been requests to head out after the fire starts dying down. That should be around dawn,” Kill Blade said.

“You can send out half. The remaining half have to stay here. We can’t risk sending all our forces away due the possibility of an ambush. They still have a lot of numbers on us. One of our two remaining Champions can head out if they want to, but I think they are done for this battle,” I replied. Kill Blade nodded and began issuing orders to his staff.

“Well, I did a great job. The star fortress held up quite well and the trap was near perfect,” Quant Z said. I chose to ignore him while watching the fire close off the gap to the star fortress and spread outwards. If the other side was organized, they just needed to gather up and destroy the grass in front of them to create a fire break.

But that wasn’t going to happen with how poor their organization was and how much the fire had spread already. When dawn hit, the fire was spreading out in the distance and a horde of my people rushed out of the star fortress to hunt down any survivors. They were the blood thirsty maniacs. With all the smoke in the air, it was too hard to tell if anyone had survived and the battle space was quite large.

By mid-day the fire in the distance was dying down and reports were coming in. The enemy had lost about 100,000 people to the panic and the fire. The stealth teams killed another 20,000 approximately. The teams that had left the fortress had killed another 50,000. That left around 250,000 people on the opposing side.

The survivors of the night attack had managed to create a firebreak and reorganize before they left the battlespace, but it was a close thing. My teams returned and the observation teams went back into hiding. That was the power of having a proper communication system in place. The enemy force had come together into a singular mass and marched back to the star fortress early in the afternoon. They only had until sunset before the battle was declared over.

I watched as they organized themselves for a final assault on our position and the ramp of the collapsed wing of the star fort. It was a massacre as they rushed forward. Since they were only attacking from one direction and we still had a small amount siege equipment and consumables left, their front ranks were decimated while our magical gunners rained down fire on the enemy troops rushing the ramp.

It was a killing box as wave after wave rushed forward to their deaths. The people on the walls of the star fortress were efficiently rotated out while lines of skilled melee players with large shields held the ramp. We lost another 7,000 while they lost around 190,000. I was content to watch for the most part, ready to intervene if things looked dire or the enemy forces pulled out a surprise.

When the battle was finally over, we won with 49,000 remaining troops to their 60,000 remaining troops. A crushing victory in our favor. That was why you didn’t bring mass numbers to a battle like this. Since the only strategy was to constantly attack in the hope of wiping out the enemy force. Since once the percentage of troops lost was against you, you were forced to attack otherwise the enemy force could just turtle up and win.

In the future the preferred strategy was to construct a heavily fortified base and then send out elite teams to gain the percentage advantage in terms of kills. That was why Champions were so important. If you didn’t have elites, then you would quickly be on the backfoot and have no other choice but to attack the fortified position. Once that happened, the problem would only compound as losses would mount and you would have to keep attacking in the hopes of wiping out the enemy position.

I logged out once our victory was confirmed. While I ate my prepared meal, I turned on the news to watch the coverage of the battle and the aftermath. Both sides had agreed to allow ENN reporters with a half day delay. So just as I sat down to enjoy my food, the coverage started up.

The Coalition of the Righteous, as they were calling themselves, had come up with a general plan, but basically split everything up by area. They would let the crazy people rush in first to wear down our defenses and then attack as they saw fit.

Watching the battle from an outside perspective, the frustration of the enemy troops and commanders was easily seen. No reporters were allowed in the command area, but they had one up in the tower and two on the walls. Each enemy guild had one reporter as well.

ENN had even put up a strategic map with the steams from the reporters and a main stream which cycled between the most interesting viewpoints. The enemy commanders’ only option like I suspected was to just attack, sending wave after wave to their deaths. There were even people who mentally broke and began running away screaming from the intense fighting that was occurring. When body parts go flying past you, it is hard to run directly into the explosions and death. Even if it was virtual reality, it was still traumatizing.

Those broken people were sent back in to die, or they did an emergency log out. About a fifth of the kills weren’t from the people dying, but them mentally breaking from the hell that my guild unleashed. In comparison my guild looked highly professional with organized rotations of soldiers and coordinated defense and attack. Having my guild all wear the same uniform was quite eye catching, compared to the hordes of enemy players.

When the firestorm hit, it was absolute chaos. Three of the reporters even died during the chaos. Being an ENN reporter was a risky job. From what I could see the general consensus was that the Fanged Fox guild was god tier even without me interfering. I got some credit for messing up the back lines and siege equipment, but most people were far more impressed with the organization that was shown.

My phone was blowing up with congratulations and the share price of the Fanged Fox Corporation had increased by 23%. HeroTen had lost 12% of their current valuation. They had too much government backing to fall apart at such a loss, but it was a huge hit on their reputation and valuation. Already the memes of me crushing China, Russia, India, and Europe were exploding everywhere.

I smiled to myself. Just one battle at this point in time could turn everything around. In time that wouldn’t be the case, since no super guild would fully commit all their resources like we both had to this battle. Losing out on that 3,000 platinum was going to make some people very unhappy. I had no doubt that some poor soul who had set everything up for the HeroTen guild was getting a bullet in their head for their failure. In fact they were probably committing seppuku, Japanese ritual suicide, to spare their family and friends from the massive fallout.

It wasn’t just the money, but the sheer embarrassment of losing so badly. We were outnumbered 15 to 1 and still won the battle. The battle was too large to point to any one individual being able to swing the entire thing. Sure, I had made a large impact, but I had only killed a couple of thousand people and a bunch of siege equipment. Even if I had killed one person every second the battle was ongoing, that was only 36,000 people.

The loss of reputation was absolutely brutal. I had no doubt that I was on the assassination list of a bunch of other countries at the moment. My win had also impacted the general sentiment in the US. The prestige of winning had garnered a tremendous amount of support, and my spokespeople were pushing the message that guilds were better handled by corporations and gamers rather than governments with my guild and myself being the highlight example.