- Rolling Barrage -

“So… could you understand the queen just now?” A general asks another general away from prying ears and eyes.

“At first, no… but I slowly discerned what she meant.” he admits

“Really?!” the first general says, shocked. “How so? Please explain it to me.”

“Ah so… I think the key to understanding is that; our main purpose is advancement.” He begins to explain, “Ideally to perform a solid defense you need to know where the enemy is, how many there are and how many of yours are left, correct?”

“Correct.”

“So in effect the barrage acts more as a smoke screen rather than an active artillery strike. We’ve even loaded some of the payloads with flour as well.

The first barrage would be 200 meters from the army, once the barrage is complete the soldiers have four seconds to advance 100 meters.

Then the second row of artillery would launch 300 meters from the initial position of the soldiers, they would advance 100 meters, so on and so forth.

Naturally after every volley, when reloading, the catapults must adjust their sights to 200 meters more for the next barrage. The end goal is to obscure the advancing army."

“Wow, that is quite complicated, and ingenious" the general applauds the explanation, “... Do you think the queen was thinking about all that? Or that she just heard the term somewhere?...”

“... No comment.”

…….

On the front lines of the battle Elaine advances with her troops. After each barrage they make an advance of 100 meters . The unprepared oni are often taken off guard by the sudden loss of vision and relentless advancement. Not being able to see where the gaps of your lines are makes it impossible to compensate, creating large fissures in formations.

“ADVANCE!”

Elaine roars after each volley which would be met with the war cry of her men.

She would advance over and over again. Each time slaying the foes without fail.

“ADVANCE!” she cries, but this time she was met with silence.

Up ahead a small attack party of oni and two large orcs stood in front of her.

“Formation!” She yells, but again she is met with silence.

Looking around her she finds that no one was by her side. She alone made it to this point of the barrage in her section.

The smoke screen carries with it, the double sided blade of your own formations breaking as well. Overtime, a second line would arrive, but by then the smoke may already have subsided.

The Justiciar grips her blade tightly.

The oni charged at her full force, but she wasn’t worried about them. Her concern was with both of the orcs if they decide to flank the lone knight. With only one arm it would prove difficult to combat.

She lunges at the oni at the front. Dispatching two, she moves to take out another. Only that an orc swings at her back, which she notices only in the nick of time. Being predisposed, the initial oni she was aiming for gets a cheeky stab at her side.

“Agh!” she cries,

The orc on the other side then swipes at her. The result of which knocks her back a good distance. The remaining oni tries to pounce on the knight only to find that a blade was waiting for him instead. The blade became stuck fast in him, she pushed the oni off of her.

A lumbering Orc then makes a large slam for the knight. She just barely avoids the attack by pulling on the loin cloth that hangs between his legs sliding her to his backside, landing in an upright position. The other orc then makes a great swing which ducks, hitting the other orc.

Pulling a small dagger from her boot, she pounces onto the orc who was still on his back swing, and stabs the orc before he could retaliate.

Out of breath, she gets up from the ground only to be swung at by the orc that got hit by friendly fire. The blow knocks her to a wall. Blood streaking from its head, the orc prepares for the finishing strike…

Elaine closes her eyes, she readily accepts her fate.

“Uorgh…” the orc groans,

Elaine opens her eyes to see the orc collapse in front of her.

“Huh?...” she says dumbfounded.

The smoke slowly dissipates to reveal a familiar maid uniform.

“Hey, leftie. Sleeping on the job?~” Aoi smiles and winks,

“Damn… I thought you were the grim reaper…” Elaine sighs,

“Hey! That’s really rude!” she complains , yet outstretches her hand to help.

Getting up, Elaines sees the field open up before her. Few stragglers remained but not enough to act as any effective fighting force, as most were slain or chose to surrender. The wall she fell on was in fact the spire’s walls. They had succeeded in their assault.

“Dust yourself off commander…” Aoi smirks, “We won…”

Elaine outstretches her arm to the air and roars:

“VICTORIUM!”

The remaining soldiers join in echoing the sentiment,

“VICTORIUM!”

The battle is only half done however. Lyla’s strategy succeeded in taking a good foothold at the base of the spire. Now the effort had to concentrate on defending and toppling the thing.

……

Hearing the war cries of victory the Black serpent felt an opportunity to smugly jeer.

“Ho ho… It seems your armies have faltered, Lucifer…”

“They were an afterthought after all,” she spits back at him. “A minor stepping stone to get you here after all?”

“What?!” he shouts,

“I only need a touch more Divine essence after all… I think I’ll pluck it from your still beating heart,”

“Such insolence!” the Black Serpent lunges at her, only for her to make a swift dodge and clamps down on him with her powerful jaws.

“AAAAAAAHH!!” The great serpent bellows from the pain.

All of the victorious army look to the sky seeing the fabled snake bleed.

He flies towards the spire to bump into the city in hopes of knocking her off.

But to no avail. The White Serpent’s grip remained steadfast. Try as he might, he could not escape her grasp. Eventually the Black Snake loses strength and begins to fall from the great height.

Seeing the tragedy unfold before her eyes, Aoi screams for her master:

“ASMODEUS!”