Revive Rome: Wait! Why not make the empress fall in love with me first?
Chapter 153 - 57: Firefight

Chapter 153: Chapter 57: Firefight

As the Azure Longsword Mercenary Corps stormed onto the battlefield, the Crusaders’ scouts also spotted them.

"Have they been located?" In the command center, Alfred forcefully slammed his hand on the table in frustration, "Have you found that red-haired Mage Assassin and those two female Knights?"

"This time, I must avenge my previous loss!" Alfred remembered the compensation he had paid out last time and the assets he had been forced to sell because the money was not enough. He instantly regretted it so deeply that his heart seemed to bleed, "Connect me to the front line command system! I want to command personally!"

"But..." The aide hesitated, feeling that this commander was clearly motivated by personal revenge.

"But what? Am I not one of the commanders personally appointed by Your Majesty for the Northern Front?" Alfred said displeasedly.

The aide was instantly speechless. Although the motivation was clearly problematic, as the Northern Front Commander, Alfred’s request to take over the allowed scope of command authority was procedurally correct.

Really, if he wanted to commit career suicide by refusing orders, he might as well quit his job.

"Yes! Your Excellency Alfred!" the aide hurriedly responded.

Approaching the digital sand table, the distribution of all Crusader squads at the front line was laid out. This was the latest technology aided by the Church Court: a digital command system that allowed the commander to easily mobilize troops and grasp the full situation on the battlefield.

The small red dot representing the Azure Longsword, according to the last report from the Crusader scouts, was located not far north of the ruins of Olympia.

However, the scout’s signal had been silent since the last report, which clearly indicated they had met with disaster. The Crusaders needed to quickly reconfirm the enemy’s location.

"Like this! Like this!" Alfred swiftly drew out the route on the sand table, "Then like this! The twenty front-line squads I’ve appointed will next advance according to the route I’ve laid out!"

"Yes!" the aide immediately issued the orders.

Far away, on the battlefield, the Azure Longsword quickly sensed something was amiss.

"The frequency of enemy encounters is rapidly increasing, Squad Leader!" Eleanor pulled her long spear out of the corpse of a Knight Follower and turned to speak, "We must have been spotted by a scout!"

"The surrounding Spiritual Bodies tell me that there is no one nearby spying on us." Nora gestured with her hand, and the transparent Spiritual Body floated toward her, "Rather, there are several enemy squads approaching from a distance."

"My Mind Body field of vision also hasn’t detected any Mind Bodies nearby," Medea stated, arms crossed, "but I think I know what’s going on."

She explained the spider-web command system they had encountered last time, and the girls were instantly alarmed.

"What! It means they are mobilizing a large number of enemies to surround and annihilate us, right?" Sigrdrifa excitedly said, "Are the Crusaders really that afraid of our Azure Longsword’s power?"

Always looking at things from such a unique perspective... Everyone tacitly ignored her statement, and Eleanor said worriedly:

"If, according to Medea, every encounter with the enemy, whether we eliminate them or not, actually exposes our location..."

"Hiding nearby also won’t work," Mia added. "Since the enemy can pinpoint our rough location, they’re bound to search around here. Should we split our forces?"

Splitting forces meant dividing the team into multiple smaller groups, breaking the whole into parts, in an attempt to infiltrate through the enemy’s encirclement.

"Is splitting really useful?" Eleanor questioned, "Consider that the enemy numbers far exceed ours. Even if we scatter our team to its greatest extent, for the enemy’s commander, it would just change from one location to confirm to nine."

"Moreover, the combat power of an individual is far weaker than that of a team, unless you manage to entirely avoid the enemy. Otherwise, once an encounter occurs, the risk of death in battle would significantly increase."

"Perhaps we can make use of Fire Island," Thira pondered, "Everyone hides on Fire Island, keeping only one person with the strongest stealth ability on the outside, carrying a book to stealthily escape."

"Among us, I should have the strongest stealth ability," Mia raised an objection, "However, it’s daylight now, and in conditions where Shadow Ability cannot be maximized, even I would run the risk of being detected."

"So we’re back to the original problem," sighed Thira. "In solo combat, once you expose yourself on this kind of battlefield, the risk greatly increases. It’s better to move as a group, at least there’s mutual cover."

"Exactly, if stealth doesn’t work, we’ll just have to crash through head-on," Aske said. "We don’t have to worry about being discovered. We just need to maintain a guerrilla status and keep taking out the small enemy units we encounter."

"What if the commander mobilizes a large force..."

"Then he won’t be able to maintain such a dispersed large-scale search net," Aske calmly stated. "Aren’t we just able to break out of the encirclement?"

Eleanor paused, pondering.

So, fight if we can, run if we can’t? The tactics seemed sound, but why did it feel somewhat sleazy?

Seeing that she didn’t speak, Aske decided conclusively, "Let’s execute it that way!"

———

A small squad of Knights was approaching the designated location.

Four Knights with gun shields and eight Knight Followers with rifles cautiously moved through the nearby collapsed ruins, arriving at the coordinates provided by their superiors.

"No enemy detected," a Knight spoke into the communicator.

"Search the vicinity," another Knight ordered, and the Knight Followers began to sweep the area.

Suddenly, gunfire erupted, and a Knight Follower fell.

"Sniper!" the Knights yelled. All the followers quickly hid behind the Power Armor Knights; during this process, two more followers fell.

Then, they saw ahead on the road, a Knight with a gun shield slowly stepping out, followed by a Samurai wielding dual battle axes.

"Prepare for a charge, I’ll cover you," Eleanor and Sigrdrifa said.

"Okay," nodded Sigrdrifa.

The Knights raised their large shields to defend in place, attempting to intercept bullets from any direction the sniper might fire. The followers cautiously peeked out from next to the large shields, firing frantically in Eleanor’s direction.

The bullets clattered against the shields. Eleanor, now at Level 3, could barely hold her shield, protecting Sigrdrifa from the bullets behind her.

Another long, low screech stood out amid the staccato of assault rifles. A sniper’s bullet passed between the gap of two large shields, piercing the neck of a Knight Follower.

"Get covered better!" a Knight drenched in blood yelled.

Although we are using the Church Court’s support shields that are bomb and bullet-resistant, at the very least when you shoot, you should properly hide behind the shields. What’s the deal with sticking your body out for the enemy sniper to shoot!

The Knight Followers were speechless as they were indeed well hidden; it was clearly the enemy sniper’s accuracy that was formidable.

However, arguing now was futile; the followers had to risk peeking out again to shoot, trying to stop Eleanor’s charge. Again, a sniper bullet exploded the head of a Knight Follower who had just peeked out.

Eleanor had already charged forward, a Crusader Knight thrust with his long spear, but she deflected the force with her shield.

Sigrdrifa took the opportunity to leap up. The other three Crusader Knights crossed their long spears, rapidly thrusting upward to try to assassinate the Samurai in midair.

Sigrdrifa swung her dual axes in the air, executing Aske’s Shadow Hawk’s Raid to cut through all the incoming spear tips, and then landed among the group of three Knight Followers.

The followers had already raised their guns, about to give this female Samurai a close-range shot, when suddenly a figure burst out from the shadow behind her.