Chapter 126: Normal is Suspicious

One month later.

Nix soldiers with pointy ears and black skin were setting up tents with Danyum ahead of them.

Robey Sulla, the duke and commanding officer of Golden Eye, was listening to the reports from the knights.

“When did Red Fruit’s army arrive again?”

“The army of 20,000 soldiers led by Tobe Volco arrived four days ago.”

“Hm, what about Mangul?”

“The 24,000 soldiers of Count Milovo Toon are expected to arrive in about four days, the same as us. If Night Sky doesn’t intervene, that is.”

“...Hm.”

After Black Scale’s army entered Deimerit, everyone on the continent realized that this war wasn’t a simple war of conquest. The fight between the gods had broken out in earnest.

Even Robey Sulla fell victim to Night Sky’s active attack. The wells that they had stopped by for drinking water were contaminated, and when they slept in the fields, the fields would be infested with insects. Wherever they went, a flock of birds followed them and let out eerie cries. Every time they saw an ominous sign, Robey would order the soldiers to kill it no matter how many arrows it took. And the most dangerous situation was when Lakrak the Apostle appeared in front of them.

‘Even though I had a large army of 18,000 soldiers behind my back, it was terrifying.’

Fortunately, Lakrak wasn’t able to dominate the army of Golden Eye. The god of Golden Eye and the Nixes, Concealed Text God, had also sent their creations the moment Lakrak appeared. Concealed Text God’s guardians faced Lakrak, and in the meantime, Robey pulled back his army and managed to get away from the fight between mythical beings.

‘Even though all that was left when we went back to the battlefield was the dead bodies of the guardians…the fact that Lakrak didn’t attack us again probably means that our god is powerful enough to stop Night Sky’s apostle.’

In addition to blocking Lakrak, Concealed Text God had destroyed the numerous curses that Night Sky was going to use on them or offset them with Miracles.

Robey believed that Danyum had lost not because it was weak, but because of Night Sky’s clever tricks.

‘In the end, Night Sky’s ordeal has made us more faithful. It’ll only make us stronger. We will win.’

Robey commanded, “We’ll move up to stay alongside Red Fruit’s army. And we’ll wait until Mangul’s army arrives. Our enemy is not simply Black Scale, but also their god, Night Sky. So everyone, keep a good eye out.”

When Robey was about to call the knights back, a soldier ran into the commander's tent.

“What is it?”

“A group of 2000 soldiers are coming toward us.”

“Where do they belong to? Is it Black Scale?”

“I’ll have to take a closer look, but it seems like Danyum’s army.”

“Danyum? But I thought they had been disbanded after their defeat.”

The soldier bowed.

“Yes. It seems to be the 2000 rebels who have risen up against Danyum.”

***

Jang-Wan said, “That’s strange.”

On top of the tent of Golden Eye’s army, four players that hadn’t gathered for a while were gathered in one place, namely AR1026, Jang-Wan, Lunda, and Crampus. Wisdom was absent since he had only just begun to move his army with the end of the civil war, but all the other four players of the alliance had come together.

Until now, they hadn’t been able to meet up because they thought it would only be giving Sung-Woon an opening to exploit, but in this case, the main forces were all located close to each other, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to not gather.

“What’s strange?” AR1026 asked.

“Night Sky’s movement.”

“Hm, really? I can’t really tell,” AR1026 said. “He constantly interfered with the march of my troops to buy Black Scale time. And it also seems that Black Scale is still steadily recruiting more soldiers. Although the difference in number still exists, they are on the defense rather than the offense, while we have to gather expeditionary forces to march for a month.”

That was the case for Red Fruit and Danyum. The supply line was even longer for Golden Eye and Mangul. As they were all allies, there would be no significant disruption in getting supplies, and there was little risk of the supply line getting cut off, but things would be troublesome if the war dragged on for a long period of time.

Jang-Wan agreed.

“That’s right. Nebula is doing good.”

“So what?”

“I mean, he’s doing good according to our standards. That means it’s an orthodox tactic.”

“What’s wrong with that?” AR1026 asked, not understanding what Jang-Wan was getting at. “The orthodox tactic is the tactic most often employed to win the game, and it usually means it’s the best solution. Wouldn’t an abnormal move be risky?”

Jang-Wan shook her head.

“It’s fine for us to use the standard, most obvious methods, but not for Nebula.”

“Why not? Because Nebula is the first-ranking player? And that’s why he needs a strategy we don’t understand? Or that’s what he would do? Are you saying there’s something else going on behind what he’s doing?”

Jang-Wan turned toward AR1026. The eyelids of the lion mask were droopy, indicating that she was questioning AR’s logic.

“That’s not it. Nebula is obviously at a disadvantage. We will win if things go on like this. Danyum made a wrong judgment in our first clash with Black Scale. That’s true. To accurately predict that Danyum would be defeated by Black Scale, however, Danyum’s generals alone wouldn’t be enough; Crampus would also have to have known much about battles. It’s a reality that we players aren’t real war commanders or operation officers, and our gaming experience isn’t enough to inform us about everything.”

Jang-Wan continued to say, “However, the next clash will be a siege or a pitched battle. A siege operates on set rules, and in The Lost World, provided that technology levels, other related variables, and the number of troops are known, there’s a siege calculator add-on that could be used to determine the win rate.”

“Uh, wait a second. Can I ask what the percentage is?”

Jang-Wan stopped talking for a moment to click on the system window.

“It’s not accurate since many variables are involved, but the win rate is 80 to 95 percent.”

AR1026 and the other two players nodded as if that was obvious.

“Well, I see.”

“And in the case of a pitched battle, the calculation would be more accurate. Did Black Scale recruit around 5000 more soldiers? Then they have 14,000, and we have 62,000 all together. With this great a numerical difference, it would be difficult for us to lose even if we wanted to. The win rate is 95 percent when the enemy fights with the fortress walls, so without it, the win rate would be higher.”

“But Nebula’s Divinity level is higher.”

Jang-Wan hesitated at those words, but no one noticed since she had her lion mask on.

“...That’s true. But our levels are higher combined. It’s not a one-on-one battle like the one between Nebula and Crampus. If we pour all our Faith points into this, we should be able to get Lakrak.”

“So in the end…”

“We will win. If Nebula insists on using orthodox tactics, we will win.”

Hearing that, Crampus cleared his throat.

“I don’t think what I went through was in any way orthodox.”

Jang-Wan raised her index finger as if she was going to reply right away, but the words got stuck for a moment. Even she had to admit that there was something unusual about the scheme used to defeat Crampus.

After Danyum lost the first battle, nothing could be done to stop Black Scale from entering Deimerit with a bloodless fight. Crampus put all his mind into coming up with all kinds of tricks at that point, and the solution he came to was the separation of state and church. Since religion was the core of playing The Lost World, political power could even be abandoned in an extreme case. It was difficult to simply say it was good or bad, but in this case, religion would incite more rebellion against the royal family, political parties, or dictators, and the resistance would be more violent with the separation of church and state.

And that was exactly what Crampus had intended. If Danyum became a puppet state controlled by Black Scale, resistance against Night Sky, the god of Black Scale, would only grow more intense. Then Sung-Woon’s control over Danyum would become significantly weaker. To strengthen his control, Sung-Woon would have to invest a considerable amount of Faith points. Thus, it was likely that he would give up on Danyum in the end.

However, Sung-Woon twisted the situation once more. He had a third party, a Wizard, fill the empty seat next to the queen rather than his religion. And because of this, Danyum was made a neutral party that didn’t belong to Crampus or Nebula. The Wizard hadn’t shown great performance yet, but Aranju Dolan and the main generals were using that power to win over the nobles. Although magic was greatly rejected, among the Satyr nobles, there was a growing sentiment that it would be better to believe in magic over the Limitless God, who had failed to protect them in the end, or Night Sky, who had pressured them from the outside.

The current stage of civilization was ultimately centered around nobility. Crampus could only manipulate the commoners to make them agitators. To seek stability, Aranju actively captured the agitators and priests who refused to listen to her with the Wizard supporting her, and as Black Scale didn’t really intervene, Crampus’s revolution also lost momentum. Eventually, Crampus was left with little option. All he could do was take the fanatics out of Deimerit and build an army of their own.

Still, Jang-Wan judged that Crampus had achieved a lot under difficult circumstances.

‘Considering he underwent a terrible defeat, saw the royal family collapse, and lost his capital, it’s fortunate that he managed to build an army of 2000 soldiers and is still maintaining his influence in the provinces. It’s not like all his chances are gone yet.’

Strictly speaking, as Crampus had said, Sung-Woon hadn’t been only playing by the book.

‘Nebula, no, Choi Sung-Woon is still human at the end of the day. Facing all five of us, he can’t always play cleverly. After destroying Crampus, it seems…reasonable that he can only make universally standard moves.’

While Jang-Wan was lost in thoughts, Crampus said, “You seem to be withholding something rather than speaking your mind, Jang-Wan.”

“What do you mean?”

“Aren’t you implying that he’s using tactics that are obvious to the eyes of the opponents, so he might be doing something in the dark without us noticing?”

Jang-Wan sighed.

“Okay, to be honest, you’re right.”

Crampus asked back, “So what is it you’re worried about?”

“First, the Wizard.”

“...Hm.”

Having been beaten by the Wizard he had cultivated, Crampus showed an angry expression.

Jang-Wan continued to say, “There are three Wizards that we know of. Yan, the Gnome, Talay, the Ent, and Mazdari, the Garuda. Out of these three, we have confirmed the whereabouts of the Gnome, Yan, but it’s still unknown where Talay and Mazdari are.”

“Because Wizards can use Deception. Why are these damn attributes carried over from the game?”

“Apart from them being hard to find, Wizards are dangerous. Even when they appear outside of battlefields. Nebula has already gotten one thing done by using these attributes of Wizards, and there are two more cards left. He can do the same thing twice more.”

“Are you certain?”

Jang-Wan slowly nodded at Crampus’s question.

“I’m certain. Unlike other entities, Wizards tend to be more proactive, so they require less effort to control. And knowing how Wizards act, it’s possible to strategize accordingly. I don’t think he’ll leave them alone.”

“...Then are Wizards the only thing we should be careful of?”

“No.”

Jang-Wan looked around at the other three players and said, “It’s simple reasoning. Why is Nebula playing the orthodox way? It’s because contrary to our calculations, he judged that he could win by playing like that.”

“How so?”

“Nebula did his calculations with the correct information, but we’re doing our calculations incorrectly with false information. It’s actually us who need to play risky.”

“What is it that we missed?”

Jang-Wan looked at Crampus.

“What if one of us is a traitor?”

Lunda, who had been tense throughout the meeting, tried her best to control her facial expressions. Fortunately, no one saw her turn pale.

Crampus then said, “Uh…so you’re just speaking hypothetically, right? You’re not saying there’s a real traitor, are you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have any concrete evidence, but I do have a strong hunch. And I actually brought this up in order to confirm it.”

“Who are you suspecting is the traitor?”

Lunda gulped.

‘The time has come.’

Lunda tried to think of what excuses she could make. However, the more she agonized over it, the more her mind became blank and couldn’t think of anything.

‘W…what do I do?’

Jang-Wan opened her mouth.

“It is…”

She pointed at one player.

“You. AR1026.”

The resulting silence was broken by Lunda.

“...Huh?”