Epilogue: Internship in the Hero’s Company (part 3)

Morning of the next day.

Amalia’s group was finally accepted by both Elnar and the other trainees after they had shared the story of their encounter with the demon Azuria. It was by that shared veteran-feeling that both sides finally recognized each other as comrades. Everyone finally called it a day after the clock in their shared quarter showed that the time had just passed midnight.

The rooms in their living quarters were two-person rooms and thus, Amalia, or as Ray, naturally went with Vaska without any suspicions; both of them were men. Meanwhile, Amalia and Vaska kept teasing Rita to go to Kyle’s room but she refused the idea with embarrassment. Lumi eventually took Rita in.

Last night, Amalia took the upper bunk while Vaska slept in the lower one. But when Amalia woke up in the morning, she somehow got a headache because Rita was sleeping with Vaska in the lower bunk.

“Vaska, can you explain this to me?”

Amalia quietly asked the already woken up Vaska. Vaska was gently patting Rita’s hair as if he was petting a cat.

“Big Sis is always like this. You forgot to lock the door, didn’t you? Big Sis always sleeps in my room when I forget to lock the door.”

‘ALWAYS?! AND YOU HADN’T TOUCHED HER AT ALL?!’

“Arghhhh, fine my fault, then. But, how the hell should we explain this to Kyle if he somehow notices?”

“Like hell I know?! You think about something now, dammit!”

In the middle of their stupid banter, Rita suddenly opened her sleepy eyes and unconsciously made the situation worse,

“Good morning, Vaska. Where is Rita’s morning kiss?”

CHOP...

CHOP...

Vaska chopped Rita’s head while Amalia chopped Vaska’s. Fortunately, no one noticed the absurd morning inside that room.

***

Vaska, Rita, and Amalia would have a tight schedule for that day. As in their deal with Voran, Amalia would join the evacuation force sent to relieve her garrison while Vaska and Rita would defend the castle while their usual defenders went to join Amalia’s relief forces. However, around two hours before their scheduled departures, Voran suddenly called the three of them, along with every member of the Hero’s Company and its trainees available in the castle, to the command center.

Just like the previous day, the command center looked very busy, if not even busier. Vaska just realized the nature of Voran’s summon; they were called in to join a war council. Vaska saw that Spledorf with two of his disciples, the captain of Charles’s first squad, some high-ranking officers, and even some nobles were already seated.

Vaska whispered to Amalia right after they took their seats,

“Do you have any idea?”

“Not at all.”

“Prepare several escape routes, prioritize using the sky or high-grounds.”

“Bastard, why would I follow your order?”

“I believe that you have already memorized this castle’s layout.”

“Tch, you owe me one.”

Soon afterwards, their interaction was interrupted by Voran opening the war council.

“Thank you for heeding my calls. I have something important to announce and I need all of you to be present.”

Everyone abruptly stopped their activities or their little conversations with their sitting neighbors and paid attention to Voran. Voran had bags under his eyes, indicating his lack of sleep. Nevertheless, he seemed to be having a high morale.

“I just finished reading Colonel Charles’s unit’s evacuation report last night. It was unfortunate that Colonel Charles didn’t make it out himself, but his unit’s actions gave us an idea of how to liberate Regalion from those bastard spiders.”

Hearing the mention of ‘Regalion’s liberation,’ everyone’s morale was steadily raised. After all, they had been enduring the demon’s attacks without any counter-offensive ideas for two to three days. Voran signaled his aides to gave every participant a copy of summary from Charles’s unit’s actions. Then, he explained his plan’s foundations,

“First, Charles’s unit reported that the spiders are fond of explosions, either the sounds or the vibrations. Actually, Master Spledorf was the one who found this behavior and he reported to Charles during the evacuation.”

Voran looked at Spledorf, prompting everyone to do the same. Spledorf then lightly bowed to everyone.

“As expected of Master Spledorf.” Muttered a noble with admiration.

“Why didn’t I realize this?!” Muttered Kyle with frustration.

“But, Vaska found this sooner.” Rita quietly muttered to herself.

“SSHHHHHHH...” Vaska and Amalia quietly shut her.

Voran continued summarizing Charles’s unit’s reports,

“Charles’s unit used this behavior to their advantage during the evacuation of the Regalion Academy. They successfully lured those spiders into some locations to open up safe evacuation corridors. And last night, I summoned every high-ranking officer, along with Master Spledorf, the Duke of Regalion, and some nobles, in this castle and formulated a counter-offensive plan based on that. Please open the second page.”

After everyone turned their pages, Voran continued,

“In the counter-offensive plan, we will use the same method. We will lure the spiders with explosions. But instead of just luring them, we are going to annihilate them using our maximum firepower. Simple, isn’t it? We will make them gather in several places and then we obliterate them in one go.”

The audiences’ reactions were mostly positive. Some of them were even continuously nodding as if they were in an ecstasy. Kyle showed his enthusiasm because he guessed that he would go to the front to write some magic formulas; of course, Rita might be the one protecting him. But between those who bathed in optimism, Vaska and Amalia were different; both of them wore a sour expression.

‘HUH?! Isn’t this just the usual artillery tactic?’

Voran ended his explanation with a course of action,

“And thus, we have to simulate the effectiveness of this plan in a smaller scale before we can formulate a bigger liberation plan for the entire city. We are fortunate enough that we will have a deployment for an evacuation today, led by Lieutenant Ray, a trainee of the Hero’s Company—”

In the end, Voran decided to slightly adjust Amalia, Vaska, and Rita’s orders. Amalia still had to join the evacuation sortie but her deployment would be delayed for another five hours to readjust the tactics because they would be doing something that had a very different strategic value.

For Vaska and Rita, they would be joined by Kyle and Elnar and their task of defending the wall was changed into writing explosion magic formula in the nearby areas and detonating them using remote activation; similar to their task during the evacuation process within Charles’s unit.

But that time, their orders were not merely luring the spiders. After the spiders were lured, Elnar would use his elven-bow attacks to deliver the killing blow for those spiders. If the plan went as expected, they would move further west to do the same thing to assist Amalia’s evacuation group using the same method; lure and destroy. It was as Vaska and Amalia had thought, Voran would be indirectly simulating the artillery tactics that he had disposed of five years ago.