Warfare's Ultimate Frontier 1

by Quasar Magellan

  The enemy camp turned into a mess as Baron’s men cast their disguises to the side and fought their way towards the command tent. Screams of pain, confusion, and curses rang endlessly in the turmoil that ensued.

  Still though, Baron’s troops were able to rescue him from the clutches of Xu Da’s camp. By the end of the day, Baron was safe and sound behind city walls, and Xu Da’s camp had shrank to just over twenty thousand strong in number, while Baron’s held an advantage of nearly eight thousand.

  This advantage had largely been carved by the morning attack on Xu Da’s camp, as well as the cavalry’s flank upon his soldiers sieging the southern wall.

  After that day, though, the simulation turned into a slow battle of attrition, which Baron naturally won with his advantage in numbers and natural advantage as a defender.

  ***

  Back in the training room, the spectators were confused to see that Xu Da hadn’t used any tactics to pressure Baron after the day he’d lost 16,000 men.

  It almost seemed as if Xu Da had been scared into submission. Of course, only Baron and Xu Da, who were taking off their helmets, knew the truth.

  Xu Da stared at Baron. “Remember what you promised.”

  “No need to worry, my friend.”

  Xu Da gave a curt nod, and left the training room.

  Those watching were shocked by the result. While Xu Da wasn’t an elder, he was still considered a high-level talent by the Chinese community. Yet, he, like Yue Fei, had fallen to the newcomer.

  It didn’t take long for Baron to receive another challenge, from a man by the name of Ban Chao.

  Ban Chao was someone Baron didn’t look too highly upon, so he accepted the challenge without much care. He knew Ban Chao from his historical research — his opponent was a cautious strategist who was famous for his administration and defensive strategies, rather than being a well-honed, creative strategist.

  As the junior, Baron was allowed to choose the parameters of the simulation. With an almost giddy smile on his face, he scrolled through the various possible scenarios.

  “Let’s see, the battle of Bunker Hill. Isn’t that from the American Revolutionary War? There’s also D-Day, from the World Wars. The siege of Constantinople… wow, just about every famous battle in history can be found here!”

  Even after a few minutes of scrolling, Baron was unable to choose a scenario, so he pressed on the “random” button. This allowed for the game to choose a random mode, troop count, and scenario.

  The game chose to have Baron and Ban simulate the Battle of Thermopylae, the one where three hundred soldiers and nearly seven thousand other Greek soldiers had held the gigantic, hundred-thousand strong Persian army at bay.

  One of the most famous last stands in history.

  The battle had contained both land and naval theatres, but for the sake of the simulation, it’d be confined to the land theatre.

  This particular scenario was typically favored toward the attacker. After all, they had access to a hundred-thousand soldiers. As such, the defending strategists usually used this scenario to test out and train their defensive strategies. Thus, the scenario was typically seen as a training simulation, rather than a balanced scenario for a serious bout.

  Despite that, though, the defending side was given an advantage of their own — they were given two weeks to specially scout out the nearby terrain and develop their strategies.

  Baron, though, was familiar with this particular battle, and knew what was needed to win the simulation.

  Chapter 16

  The Importance of Preparation

  There were two main things that Baron could consider an advantage for him. The first, was that the terrain was mostly flat and linear, which meant that there were a limited number of strategies Ban Chao could utilize against him.

  The truth was, Baron had neglected a vital resource in his last battle against Xu Da, and the same could be said for his first simulation against Yue Fei. They hadn't used the manpower that came in the form of civilians. Civilians couldn’t fight, true, but they could be made to create machines of war. The game couldn’t give strategists unlimited resources and weapons, of course. Therefore they provided civilians, capable of assisting with all types of non-combatant tasks.

  Immediately after entering the simulation, Baron headed for one of the city-states that occupied the land he was about to defend. The people who lived there were aware of the impending invasion, and knew that they’d likely be executed by the Persian army if Baron’s forces were to lose. Thus, they were keen to help Baron in any way they could.

  Baron was glad to hear this, and quickly drew up several blueprints for weapons he wanted produced. He gave one to the city governor, as was promised that they would be produced at maximum speed. Then, he handed the rest to his officers, and had them contact the other nearby cities.

  The importance of these weapons was so high that Baron even sent his soldiers to the cities to assist in their creation. Despite their best efforts, though, it was just simply impossible to create so many new weapons in the span of two weeks.

  He’d wanted metal tips on the bolts for his secret weapon, but there’d been an absolute lack of it — the only way would’ve been to boil down and re-use the metal from his soldiers’ shields, spears, and swords.

  Clearly, this was impossible. As such, Baron could only resort to using wood for all components of these weapons.

  For strategy, he had but three options available to him. He could preemptively attack Ban Chao’s troops with his limited supply of the secret weapons, or he could try and stall for time. Baron remembered that during the real Battle of Thermopylae, the Spartans had held an absolute advantage in terrain.

  He looked overhead. Yes, it would have been in this exact passageway that the spartans had decimated ten thousand soldiers with less than ten casualties on the first day of battle.

  With the secret weapon still in production, he only had three options available to him. He could fight the attacking army tomorrow without the use of this weapon, bring what he had managed to produce, or try to stall the enemy.

  In the end, he decided to try and stall.

  At the beginning of the first day of battle, Baron led the bulk of his army to the main passageway where most of the fighting was going to be, and sent two thousand of his seven thousand soldiers to defend the other areas Ban Chao might push through. Baron could not have asked for a better location to defend against an enemy, but even so there were still a few flaws.

  There were a few, tiny passageways that the enemy troops could sneak through, so Baron had to prepare for them as well. Just before the enemy arrived for battle, Baron turned to his troops, preparing to give them a rousing speech.

  The strategy for the defending side, Baron's, was simple. The passageway could only hold so many men, and so these men had to be the spartans. They would use the phalanx formation to defend the passageway. Their equipment consisted of large round metal shields, long spears, and an extra sword at their side if their spear broke.

  The phalanx formation was one where soldiers entered a square formation and held their shields to all open sides, in order to defend against swords and arrows. They would stick out their long spears through the gaps in the shields to kill enemies. The passageway was only wide enough to deploy two standard phalanx formation, so these men had to be rotated out on a normal basis to keep fresh men at the front.

  ***

  Ban Chao wasn’t pleased with Baron’s actions. He’d assumed that the reason Baron had chosen the random mode was because he didn’t think much of Ban Chao. He wasn’t happy with the random settings, either.

  As a great defender, he preferred to be on the defending side, even in this particular scenario that greatly favored the attacking him.

  With a hundred thousand troops at his command, he’d sent out countless scouts to survey the battlefield, just to see how many passages he could use to slide soldiers around to attack Baron’s flank.

  Unfortuna
tely, the answer was, not very many. The battlefield was hilly, mountainous, and filled with trees. Or at least, it appeared that the battlefield used to be filled with trees.

  On their scouting missions, some of his scouts had found that many of the trees had been cut down to stumps, which gave Ban Chao a very bad feeling. As of now, despite his few victories, Baron was still seen by most as a chump who’d won a few battles due to luck — but not Ban Chao. He’d fought against Yue Fei and Xu Da many times during his stay on planet four. Although he’d won most of the battles when he’d been on the defending side, he’d also been completely routed by the two in open-field battles.

  As such, he understood how impressive Baron was in order to achieve victories against the two — let alone victories as solid as Baron had achieved. So, Ban Chao didn’t dare to underestimate this opponent of his, even if he held the upper hand.

  He devised a simple strategy that his men would be able to follow without much trouble. He spent the majority of the preparation time drilling techniques and disciple into his army. As such, the two weeks quickly passed, and it was soon time for him to face off against Baron.

  As he and his troops approached the narrow passageway that was to be the site of the battle, he saw that Baron and his men were already there, waiting for him. According to plan, Ban Chao quickly organized his army and had his men shoot volleys and volleys of arrows. Soon enough, tens of thousands of arrows had been spent. Day turned to night as arrows covered the sky — but Baron had been expecting this, and his troops had long raised their shields towards the sky, taking minimal casualties.

  Ban Chao was a tad disheartened when he saw the results, as he’d been hoping that Baron’s lack of experience would mean that he’d suffer a few casualties before realizing how to counter the arrows. Ban Chao had used a similar assault from the sky to decimate several newbies in the past. It’d become a reliable weapon in his arsenal, but now… well, he was starting to see why Yue Fei and Xu Da had struggled against Baron.

  This was only the beginning though, as he wasn't completely convinced of Baron's prowess on the battlefield. So, he ordered his men to rush the enemy. Now, he knew that since the passageway would act as a bottleneck against his forces, his army would take heavy casualties if the enemy played their hand correctly. But if they didn’t his men would be able to easily overrun them and he’d obtain a victory in a single day. This tactic was meant to test how well Baron could command his given troops.

  As for Ban Chao, he had men to spare, so he didn’t mind if he lost a few thousand men on the first day. It was more important to understand Baron and his skill level.

  By the end of the first day, he felt that he had a pretty decent understanding of the newcomer — and he was impressed. Baron had taken only fifteen casualties on the first day of battle. He would’ve suffered even fewer, but he’d messed up on one of the tactical retreats that day.

  But, he’d still managed to resolve the situation in a matter of minutes. Ban Chao, on the other hand, had taken grievous losses, to the tune of fifteen thousand. For every spartan soldier they’d killed today, they’d lost a thousand.

  Ban Chao knew that he could no longer underestimate Baron any longer, and he decided to order his men to continue their attack long into the night until daylight in an attempt to tire his opponent’s soldiers.

  Chapter 17

  Preparations Are Complete

  The sounds of battle rang through the night, and by morning the attacking Persian army led by Ban Chao was still nowhere close to pushing through the narrow passage. However, Ban Chao didn't think this was of any issue. His army still vastly outnumbered Baron's and he had another trick up his sleeve. As the attacker, he actually had far more than the amounts of troops he’d shown so far. Legends said that the Persians had brought a million-strong army to Thermopyles, while historians said the number was closer to a hundred and fifty thousand to about three hundred thousand.

  As such, the system randomized the amount of troops the Persian side would receive in any given simulation, between a hundred thousand and five hundred thousand. And Ban Chao had lucked out, at four hundred thousand.

  So, he’d actually only brought about a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers to the small pass, and the others were lying in wait as his scouts tried to find passages to use to flank Baron. His army mostly consisted of infantry, and the terrain was just too rough, so he hadn’t found any that were easily usable.

  But he had time.

  Of course, Baron was not such a simple-minded fool to allow Ban Chao to do this freely. Before the battle began, Baron had strategically placed 2,000 soldiers along the many small passages that he had found to conduct guerrilla warfare. These soldiers were to rotate shifts, one group would wait for others to come while the others had to scout the area more to see if they missed any possible locations the enemy could exploit.

  Neither side made any big moves, and so a week passed without many developments. On the eighth night of battle, Baron’s soldiers were visibly fatigued. Although they’d managed to hold the passageway for now, their mistakes and casualties grew with each day.

  Seeing this, Baron’s confidence wavered. They’d managed to survive the last few days, but at this rate, it was only a matter of time before they made a fatal mistake and lost the battle for it.

  He still had about four thousand men in the passage, but Ban Chao still had about sixty-five thousand assaulting his men. This meant that other than the troops that were away from the main battlefield, Baron had lost about a thousand men while Ban Chao had lost about eighty-five thousand. This had greatly distressed Ban Chao’s expectations. He’d wanted to prove how capable he was to Baron, and to see if Baron could actually hold up in such a dire situation.

  But with Baron’s success, Ban Chao’s fighting spirit had been engaged. He finally sent out the word — all troops were to advance and surround the enemy. He’d even sent out the order in the middle of the night, so some soldiers had been sleeping. Regardless, they quickly armed themselves and set out to encircle Baron’s army. Many men even tried to scale up the steep incline of the rocks around the passageway Baron was defending, but none were able to.

  Baron was in the middle of ordering troops around when a messenger informed him that the preparations for the repeating crossbows were finally complete, and that a shipment had already been delivered to the two thousand men hiding around the other passageways.

  “That's wonderful news. With the enemy assault being so fierce, this news is a godsend. Have the remaining repeating crossbows distributed to groups C, D, and E.” Baron ordered with relief in his voice.

  “As you command, general.”

  Baron had groups A and B stay with shields and spears so they could provide cover and defense for those using the crossbows.

  With the new equipment, and Baron’s directions, Ban Chao’s late night assault was an absolute disaster.

  The obvious advantage of the repeating crossbow was that it was able to shoot quickly. It was basically the pre-modern version of the machine gun. It was also incredibly easy to use, especially against so many enemies. Baron’s troops had barely needed to aim in order to accurately down their enemies.

  By morning the result of the fighting was quite obvious. Due to the repeating crossbow, Baron’s troops had only taken a hundred casualties, while Ban Chao had lost thirty thousand. The two parties retreated back to their respective camps, leaving only a handful of men to keep watch on their enemies.

  As they rested, the morale of the two camps were like heaven and earth.

  Ban Chao was horrified at how effective Baron’s weapons were. He only now knew that he shouldn’t have given Baron so much time to prepare such terrifying weapons. If he’d just pressed his advantage as soon as he could, it wouldn’t have come to this.

  Ban Chao was actually quite familiar with the repeating crossbow, as he’d used the weapon extensively amongst his forces from when he was on earth, and he’d also used it several times in ma
tches on planet four. But, he’d never expected that Baron would know how to produce them — they were definitely not a weapon native to this battlefield.

  Ban Chao himself was unaware of the mechanisms behind the repeating crossbow — despite his extensive experience with it, he only knew its purpose and use, not its creation.

  He thought for a moment before calling for a messenger.

  “Messenger, give a message to the enemy camp requesting a temporary truce and a meeting between me and Baron. Be quick about it.”

  “Yes, sir.” The messenger rushed towards a nearby passageway.

  Within the hour Ban Chao and Baron were sitting in a tent, chatting.

  “What's with this temporary truce?”

  “You already know the answer to that question.” Ban Chao said unhappily.

  “Ah, the repeating crossbows?”

  “Of course it's about the repeating crossbows!” Ban Chao scowled. “How did you make them?”

  “I had the people living around here make them for me?”

  “Don't play dumb with kid. Do you know how rare it is for any strategist to have knowledge of weapon mechanics?”

  “What? The repeating crossbow isn't too hard to produce if you know how the inner mechanics work. Does no one here have access to blueprints?”

  “Oh of course we do, but that is a privilege that only the top 20 elders, 3 top elders, and the venerable head of state have.”

  “Oh, so it's like that. Yue Fei hadn’t told me.”

  “There are countless blueprints available — one is available for every weapon the world has ever seen. Yet, the repeating crossbow is said to be one of the most coveted by the Chinese community.”

  “Wait, why don't we just let everyone see and memorize these blueprints? Would we not be able to perform better in the Death Match Tournament this way?”

  “You are still too naive to think like that. Here on planet four, you have to earn the right to be granted such powerful weapons. It also helps that the high elders and everyone above them declare it to be this way.”