Chapter 256 Art of War

Looking at the reaction of the army, Dyon smiled.

“I’ve already arranged living quarters for each of you. Foot soldiers will live four to a tent. Until the day that you’re as powerful as a demon general, don’t think of having any other arrangement. Work hard, and you will be rewarded.”

With that, Dyon turned to Arios who had been standing further behind him and Ri, observing.

A small smile played on his face as nodded in satisfaction. “Successor, where did you think of splitting the army up into groups like this? It’s ingenious. At first, I was confused, but the more and more I think about it, the greater the idea becomes.”

Dyon raised an eyebrow. He had read many martial world military books, but he had never felt the need to read about formations or even tactics. For one, it was a logical human world practice to have a top down structure like this. Secondly, he had implemented a few communication measures to adapt formations on the fly in response to enemy movements.

Although Dyon had admitted to himself that he knew nothing of military tactics previously, to him, that was only because he hadn’t meditated on war before. Dyon was confident in his ability to come up with his own tactics. After all, hadn’t someone else invented them? Why couldn’t he? Who could be better at reading a battlefield than him with his innate aurora?

But Arios didn’t seem to notice Dyon’s confusion as he continued excitedly. “And the command codes and communication arrays. Your tactics are so intricate… Where did you study?”

Ri giggled, she had immediately noticed Dyon’s confusion. ‘There he goes pretending something complicated is simple again…’

The truth was even if you could found an account for how Dyon knew of military group rankings, there was no simple answer for his tactics. Dyon even went as far as creating a new language to communicate quickly.

Essentially, Dyon’s aurora wasn’t able to sustain communication with a thousand people – that was too much at his level. And, even if his aurora grew in strength, so too would the size of his army. It just wasn’t feasible to implant a communication array into every single soldier. So, he did something different.

Dyon linked a communication array – one that happened to be a slight variation on the one he used to let Aeson know to lay low after his attempted murder – with each of the Vice Commanders and Lieutenants. His last communication array was for Ri. This made a grand total of twenty-one which was well within Dyon’s strength to sustain.

These communication arrays had a range of ten kilometers, so, on the scale a thousand-man army would work, it should have been more than enough.

Then, by using these arrays to speak to those twenty-one, they could then use their own soul strength to sustain communication to a single soldier of each of the ten squads they were in charge of. And then, those soldiers could then supply the soul strength to communicate to the other four in their squad.

To be clear, the only one doing the speaking would be Dyon. He was simply using the Vice Commanders as supplements to his soul power to spread his words. This would also avoid what the human world would call the ‘telephone effect.’

To Dyon, this was a simple matter. Electrical engineers would use this method all the time – a method he himself used for many inventions. To oversimplify it, it was essentially changing an in series circuit, to a parallel one. Except in this case, the parallel circuit was boosted again and again.

And yet, as though seeing Dyon’s thoughts, Ri couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Using multiple cores of soul power to power what amounts to a single array is not simple Dyon… You had to design an entirely new master level array. People are going to hate you if you keep thinking like this.”

Dyon grinned. “Will you hate me too?”

Ri flicked Dyon’s forehead. “Focus.”

“Yes, yes, yes. I didn’t study anywhere in particular, it’s just that this is the way human world warfare works.”

Arios pondered for a bit, before nodding. “Martial world warfare has everyone searching for the best merits… A lot of the time campaign leaders neglect their armies entirely, just commanding where to charge and when is about it…”

Dyon’s brows furrowed. “But don’t you have specialized units? Like the fletcher family for archers, and the Grimbold family has quite a few beasts useful as makeshift cavalry.”

“Yes, but that’s about as far as the subdivisions go. When it’s time to launch arrows, all of them are launched at once. When it’s time to charge, foot soldiers go and beast users are useful for their increased maneuverability.”

A pensive look appeared on Dyon’s face. “No wonder you keep losing to innate aurora users. The advantage given to you by a high percentage aurora would be severely cut down if your armies are more organized. But, if you’re only searching for the best feats under a weak structure, those who have a better view of the battle field multiply their advantage manifold.”

After Listening to Arios’ words and thinking on it, Dyon suddenly realized that during all the time he spent researching for this campaign, nothing was said about formations or tactics… He read about Akash’s victories, the troubles of the gates, possible pitfalls, he memorized maps, locations – he even thought about possible strategies. But somehow, he only now realized that while victories were detailed, they were often explained in superlatives and expressed who contributed the most rather than how the victory happened…

Everything clicked. The martial world was different. They didn’t have set armies. In fact, even their military rankings were shaky. What did ‘campaign leader’ even mean. There were no numbers attached to it, and even the head of the Elvin Army, Akash, had vastly different numbers under her disposal as compared to the head of the Ragnor armies, or the Pakal armies, for example.

Mortals needed strategy because they weren’t as powerful… Martial experts relied on their power. Dyon was sure that somewhere, maybe even in the coming enemies, there were people who used tactics. After all, could the whole of the martial world have no thought of using formations and tactics? He doubted it. But, he’d be ready.

Suddenly Dyon grinned. “I guess it’s about time we bring a new wave of the art of war to the martial world, no?”

With that, Dyon flashed him, Ri and Arios out of the spatial world.