Upon hearing the words spoken by the scale, Luke looked down, completely shocked.
"Don't you feel that too, Luke Lange? Isn't that why you decided not to remain in the Broteforge Empire?" The woman asked, looking into the eyes of the man in front of her.
The half-wolf was fully aware that the direction in which the Broteforge was heading with the current strategy was not one of victory, yet hearing this from another person was frightening.
No, actually it was not because he heard it from someone else, but because he heard it from that being of supposedly divine origin.
At that moment, Luke put his left hand behind his head and began rubbing his hair. "Ahhh! You're right! Are you satisfied!? I abandoned my friends because I didn't trust the plan of any of those commanders. I tried to say in those meetings that adopting a defensive position not knowing the numbers of the enemy army was a dumb decision, but I also understand that there's no way to be aggressive in a war without sacrificing some things, and based on what I've seen, the Emperor isn't willing to sacrifice anything."
Scales let out a little air through his nose upon hearing that. "One of the greatest lessons I can teach humanity is that there are no results without sacrifices. For a warrior to become strong, he must put in effort. For a jar to be created, the natural state of the clay is molded with effort, time and technique. Do you understand what I am saying? Sacrifice is not the end, but only a means to achieve something. If you choose not to sacrifice anything, you are already sacrificing the chance to win and thus the outcome becomes predictable..."
"..." Luke was silent for a few seconds.
Until suddenly he looked at her again with an expression of conformation and inquired:
"All right, what do you know that might help us? Am I not on the right track? Did I cross the border between the two nations for no reason?"
"You think that was without reason? Luke, I told you, there are no balanced parameters when two worlds cross the same path, there is no right or wrong now. You have crossed the border and found new allies, and no one knows what these new allies might do for you soon. The right future has already been altered once, and when that happened, it became more malleable than ever." She spoke, placing her hands behind her lower back. "I cannot guarantee that the path along which I guide you will be a guaranteed victory over the demons, but I am sure that it will be a better future than the one you follow. If you can understand that, I will follow by your side, guiding you, however, you must know your own limits, because there is a price for that as well."
"I know my limits."
"Do you really, or do you just think you do?"
"What are you talking about?" Luke was confused. He knew he was still weak compared to the strongest people in the world.
However, the woman looked down with a downcast look, making the half-wolf understand on the spot that she was not talking about strength.
"Luke, it is sad to say this, but your curse is advancing faster and faster, and it is fragmenting your soul. For now, this is what allows me to communicate with you, however, soon your body will be just an empty shell."
The half-wolf looked into the eyes of the scale and realized that this was not one of his jokes.
Then he sighed and looked up at the blue sky, where white clouds were passing over them, wooing them. Although not one of the smartest people in the world, Luke understood that his own life was the sacrifice necessary to follow the best strategy, to go with the guidance of the being that once ruled the entire world, yet now that same being had the humility to make such a human request.
"Then that will be the end of me, won't it?" Luke inquired in a serene voice.
The woman frowned. "Will you really accept death so that I can guide you?"
"Ever since I became a thief, I knew I would not die in peace.... A world where I don't have to do anything, that is my ideal world, and I know that may seem like a rather juvenile thought, but if there is peace after my death, I will be happy. Nevertheless, I wish to actually make a deal with you."
"A deal?"
"I want you to promise me that after we are done with the demons, you will leave the world in peace for a few hundred years, abdicating your duty as scales during that time." The half-wolf asked earnestly.
She was about to vehemently deny this request, but seeing the downcast look on Luke's face touched her heart. "All right, I think the inhabitants of this world deserve a little peace after so much chaos."
"Right. Then we will seal the agreement that for as long as it takes, you will be my mind-strategy and I will be your body-physical to accomplish our goal."
At that point, Luke extended his right hand to the scales.
She looked at his hand and saw the huge amount of calluses. That was proof that besides being very talented, the half-wolf was someone who was hard working, and looking at that hand, Scales felt that there was indeed no better person to help her get the world back to normal, help her perhaps get her powers back.
"Okay, so listen to my plan carefully, I won't keep repeating it." She squeezed Luke's right hand with her right hand and spoke.
*
As soon as she finished telling Luke her plan, he almost couldn't believe that she wasn't joking. Her plan was simply the craziest and most unbelievable, but also the one that made the most sense looking broadly at all the features and strategy options the Broteforge Empire had.
Her idea was not to sacrifice the Broteforgian Army in a crazy onslaught towards the Melki Empire, nor to bribe the high-ranking officers of her opponents, let alone to seek reinforcements elsewhere in the world, which was also a probability.
What Scale had in mind was to pull back and reprogram the Army's battle function at that point. The largest number of soldiers were in Oukiwa, on the front lines of the war, but there were also tens of thousands scattered in larger cities, and a few thousand in smaller towns, making the total number of enlisted men not really actively participating in the war.
Emperor Callant's first war strategy to fend off the hordes was to use the number of soldiers originating from each city to defend the cities they were already in. Therefore, cities with larger numbers of inhabitants had a more voluminous defense.
However, thinking this way was the same as wasting thousands of soldiers defending cities that were probably not targeted by the Melki Empire, nor by the demons. To deduce that, just as in any other war, the Melki Empire had goals to achieve made it clear that they wanted to dominate the cities that had Dungeons first, and those that didn't, really didn't interest them.
This goal was obvious when looking at a map that by dominating the Parato Islands, Melki had access to the entire east coast of the Broteforge Empire, including Forge Hill, a large mining town near Forge Hill, but they still did not attack it. Of course, after a few defeats against Oukiwa the demons could choose to advance against Forge Hill, take it down and move on to the Cardinal Kingdom, another city with Dungeon. Since the Cardinal Kingdom had the most powerful city and the most powerful Adventurers in the Broteforge Empire, an action like this would be the same as provoking the Seculars and Sensory Mages, so the Melki Empire had not yet had the audacity to do this.
In the end, there were only four targets left for the monsters to attack: Oukiwa, Vasconcelos, Sheltered Halvoy, and the Island belonging to the Daren Family in the West, where Death Row was located.
Vasconcelos was protected between Oukiwa, the mountain ranges and Sheltered Halvoy, the Imperial Capital.
The Island of the Patriarch Rujierd Daren was in an inhospitable place in the middle of the sea, but overpowering it could be an even greater challenge than attacking the Imperial Capital, because large natural structures isolated it from the rest of the continent.
So there were only two target options left: Oukiwa and Sheltered Halvoy, and these were exactly the two targets chosen for the First Wave, Oukiwa City being the main target, because of all the problems and conflicts that had plagued it in the past months, making it not as powerful a city as it once was.
Looking in such a panoramic way, Luke felt that everything seemed to have been planned in advance by the First Servant, as he had deduced a few months ago.
However, Scales' plan could counteract any and all previous plans of the greatest among the demons. Her idea was to pull the population back from the small towns to the five large cities, making the Broteforgian Army's efforts more focused and the logistics less fragmented.
"That was your plan? Group everyone together?" Luke looked at the blonde woman with his eyes clenched, not believing it. "é... isn't that pretty simple?"
At that moment, Scales inflated her cheeks and turned her face away. "Idiot! That's only the first part of the plan, now we need to find a way to warn the leaders of the Broteforge Empire of this and get them to agree."
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