I, who was eager to retire, became an Imperial General.

Chapter 247 Battlefront, Three Decoys

"Why are you suddenly standing so close to me?"

Looking at Wendy, whose mouth he had just grabbed and who was now staring at him in disbelief.

John coughed lightly, then placed the squad leader on the ground, and then, under the other's resentful gaze, took out a handkerchief and wiped the drool from his fingertips.

Then, he earnestly lectured the pig-headed squad leader who had been plotting against him:
"Lieutenant Wendy, as my second-in-command, have you forgotten the order to maintain a safe distance from the battalion commander at all times and not to get close to him unless in a crisis?"

“These are basic principles that everyone in the guard team knows. Your dereliction of duty by forgetting these principles has greatly displeased me. Go back and recite Maslow’s quotes ten times, then hand them to me. Understand?”

"...Captain, you'll probably end up alone!"

"Huh? What did you say? I didn't hear you clearly."

"It's nothing, I will complete the punishment you have given me, Battalion Commander John!"

Looking at the captain who was pretending to be stupid, Wendy replied expressionlessly, and then, under John's flickering gaze, she angrily turned and left the government office that had hurt her so much.

"Wendy, you idiot, can't you even read the room? Ugh..."

Watching Wendy's departing figure, John murmured a helpless sigh to himself. But feeling his burning earlobes and his inexplicably accelerated heartbeat, even he realized that his usually proud composure had just been momentarily unbalanced.

But he quickly put this subtle feeling behind him and turned his attention back to the sand table of the Crescent Strait in front of him, his gaze once again sharp.

According to intelligence from Galil, the Bloodhowl Legion has abandoned its westward advance into Crescent Straits and instead plans to join forces with Reginald to launch a amphibious assault from the sea.

Therefore, his previous order to the Black Hawk Special Forces to search for and destroy the Blood Howling Legion's ground anti-magic devices became meaningless, and he could instead focus all his efforts on attacking the Blood Wolf Tribe's military base, or even directly occupying its main city.

After all, the Bloodhowl Legion has now boarded the warships and will soon arrive at the Crescent Straits front under their transport.

His original plan to besiege the enemy stronghold and attack reinforcements had already failed.

However, this situation has two sides. If the enemy is unable to quickly launch a counterattack, and the ground support troops and assault companies destroy the enemy's anti-magic devices, then our elite magic soldier squads can directly occupy the Blood Wolf Clan's territory using the magic soldiers' explosive magic.

They also coerced the Blood Wolf clan's leadership, forcing them to issue a withdrawal order to Gromas at the front lines.

In this way, he would not only be able to easily force back this Grand-ranked powerhouse, whose individual combat strength was deadly to him, but also...

It can also directly reduce the number of enemies your side has to face to one-fifth, or even less!
"Therefore, the strategic strike plan does not need to be canceled; it only needs slight adjustments!"

"Furthermore, with the Shadow Orcs already boarding the transport ships in batches, all I need to do is have Galil send a few trusted Shadow Orcs to do a little work, and then I can easily destroy this army of suicide puppets."

"In this way, the two most lethal ground landing forces have been successfully contained and destroyed. The only thing I need to deal with now is the 83 warships led by Reginald."

"And it is necessary to deploy the strait defense line in advance to give the magic forces responsible for strategic strikes enough time to complete the occupation of the Blood Wolf tribe's core city and the capture of the Blood Wolf clan's high-ranking members."

So, what should I do?

Looking at the Crescent Strait region in his field of vision, with its resources and terrain that could almost be described as barren, John's gaze became extremely solemn.

However, as the analytical techniques continued to unfold, John quickly conceived thousands of plans in his mind and judged their probability of success one by one. He then adopted the plan that he believed was the most effective and had a high probability of delaying the enemy's advance to the greatest extent.

"I need to establish a sparsely defended decoy line in the Black Rock Beach area of ​​the Crescent Strait, and a heavily fortified decoy line in the western mangrove area!"

"Finally, I myself set up a bait trap at the sea cliff at the end of the hilly area, thus depleting the 2.5-meter main guns of the battlecruiser Damienst and forcing it into a sixteen-hour repair period!"

Thinking of this, a glint flashed in John's eyes. He then looked at the red chess piece on the sand table that represented the core fleet of the Blazing Sun Fleet. At this moment, the expression on his face began to become playful.

John was naturally familiar with Reginald, the most famous and strongest naval commander in the Kingdom of Victoria.

In fact, within the game's storyline, he even completed an extra side quest as a player to become an adopted son-in-law of the Solaris family.

Therefore, regarding the marshal's personality and the opponent's combat characteristics...

He knew perfectly well what was going on.

The opponent appears to be straightforward and, relying on the power of their Grand Class, frequently leads their fleet in risky actions, using an absolute difference in combat strength to crush the opponent.

But John knew that this was just a deliberate act by the other party.

The other person's true personality is completely the opposite; they are extremely conservative and cautious.

"Furthermore, the fact that I am leading the Imperial forces to victory after victory on the battlefield of Faoken has already attracted the attention of the enemy. Perhaps they already regard me as an even more dangerous figure than their nemesis, Grand Marshal Ostan."

"Under the influence of this cautious mentality, the other side will first, like Roxie, speculate on various possibilities after arriving at the battlefield. However, unlike Roxie, regardless of whether the speculation is correct or not, the other side will choose to bomb the suspicious location and break the trap they have set up in an absolutely violent way through this seemingly cowardly but actually wise decision."

"Instead of letting the arrogance of an ever-victorious general, or the pride of being a champion, cause the opposing force to bear more risks of making wrong decisions."

"However, this is exactly what I want to see!"

While mentally processing Reginald's personality, John picked up his baton and circled three areas he had chosen on the sand table: the southernmost Black Rock Beach in the Crescent Straits peninsula region, the southwestern mangrove forest, and the northwestern sea cliff. He then quietly recited his plan:
"Therefore, I cannot commit any troops to these three battlefronts, whether it is Black Rock Beach, Mangrove Forest, or the Sea Cliff. Instead, I must use them as bait to deplete the Sunfire Fleet's shells!"

"The Black Stone Beach area, with its complex and sharp terrain, small landable area, and the risk of being ambushed by submarines, was disguised on the surface as having few troops, but in reality, it had no troops at all, so as to cause the enemy to have doubts and misjudgments."

"And by using the ports that they no longer need as sacrifices, Reginald's initial artillery bombardment achieved unexpected results, thus convincing them that this front was indeed sparsely manned."

"However, given the cautious nature of the other side, they will certainly not rashly send troops to land directly. Instead, they will order the naval guns to launch a large-scale bombardment of this 'ordinary' area until they are sure there are no traps. Only then will they send ground troops to Crescent Strait and try to cooperate with the naval guns to break through our defenses."

"Therefore, on this ground that is about to be bombarded by a lot of artillery, we can make some tricks with the existing resource reserves!" For example, by using the terrain modification spell of the functional group, we can bury the ley line magic energy conduits collected from the goblin workshops in the Darkmoon Clan cities that have been occupied after the war under the ground area.

Although the main effect of this thing is to provide kinetic energy for the mobile armored weapons ridden by goblins and connect them to earth-elemental ley lines, adding additional negative effects such as temporary petrification to the attacks released by the armored weapons.

However, the downside of this thing is that after being exposed to a large amount of magic, the magic energy solution inside will explode and become unusable.

Furthermore, due to its ability to connect to the earth's veins, once it comes into contact with the soil, this special conduit, originally intended for power generation, will rapidly spread out.

The soil within a 1-meter radius was transformed into extremely soft quicksand by the rampaging power of the earth's veins.

Therefore, under normal circumstances, this thing is obviously ineffective.

After all, no matter how soft the quicksand is, as long as the enemy isn't stupid.

Upon discovering they've been hit, the enemy will undoubtedly abandon their advance immediately and attempt to use earth or ice magic to cover the dangerous quicksand.

"That's a good idea, and it fits Reginald's personality perfectly, but unfortunately, I won't give you that opportunity!"

Since the enemy is already stuck in quicksand, and the naval guns are likely already in a replenishment state due to the previous ground attacks, only a small number of naval guns can be used.

Under these conditions, where there is no need to worry excessively about enemy artillery fire, our troops, hidden behind the low hills, can then launch long-range artillery bombardment against this ground force, which is struggling to move, as well as other enemy forces that are likely still waiting on the ground.

While inflicting casualties on the enemy, we will further deter their landing operations.

John believed that if this front was handled properly, it could buy him at least 25 hours of time.

However, this time is clearly still far from the 52 hours he needs.

"Therefore, my second bait, the mangrove front, needs to be deployed!"

After achieving the goal of delaying the enemy at the first front, our army troops will then withdraw to the mangrove area, which will serve as the second front.

However, due to the extensive and intricate root systems of plants in mangrove areas, visibility is poor.

Therefore, this front is very suitable for stationing troops and is very advantageous for defense.

The numerous trees in the mangrove forest not only provide a large number of natural barriers, but also hide many troublesome poisonous insects.

It looks like a location that's easy to defend but difficult to attack.

But John also had no intention of deploying any of his troops here. Instead, he would have his troops retreat to Stargazing City under the cover of the mangroves, abandoning the entire Crescent Peninsula!

Because, just as he had planned, this seemingly most suitable defensive location was merely a simple bait for him.

One, also an excellent decoy used to deplete enemy firepower and disrupt their judgment!
Looking at the mangrove area, a glint of unfathomable brilliance flashed in John's eyes:
He planned to send troops to transport the wreckage of a large number of armored vehicles and magic cannons left behind by the Fifth Legion's defeat to the mangrove area, and replace the Allied flags with the Imperial Golden Eagle Flag.

This creates the illusion for the enemy that there are a large number of troops on this front, and that a forced landing and attack would require a great deal of effort.

Ultimately, in a manner similar to the bombing of Black Stone Beach, they achieved the initial depletion of enemy firepower, making it difficult for the enemy's main guns to shell their own charging soldiers in the subsequent actual combat.

John's calculations included everything from Reginald ordering the fleet to sail, to discovering the anomalies on the mangrove front and issuing a bombardment order to the fleet, to sending reconnaissance troops ashore to investigate the mangrove area and determine whether further incursions were necessary.

All he needed to do was to plant magical booby traps in the enemy's reconnaissance routes before his troops withdrew, thus further delaying the retreat.

Therefore, given the numerous disruptions he had initiated beforehand, as well as the misjudgments and uncertainties surrounding the information, Reginald would need at least 18 hours to accomplish these tasks.

Thus, by combining the two, John was able to successfully buy his troops 43 hours of delaying time.

In other words, he only needs to buy himself nine hours of delaying time in the deployment of the last line of defense, so that the Imperial support forces will arrive at Faoken Bay by then.

No matter how unwilling Reginald was, he was facing a full 60,000 elite army soldiers and 10,000 magic soldiers from the First Air Force Group Army, which was comparable to nuclear bombs.

Knowing that the battle situation is unlikely to change any further, there is a greater than 90% probability that the opposing side will choose to lead all its troops to withdraw from Faoken.

As for the final plan to use himself as bait to lure enemy battlecruisers into firing at him.

John himself certainly wouldn't be the bait.

Of course, he didn't need Edgar, who was capable of mimicry, to impersonate him and complete this near-death mission as bait.

Similarly, no one will be made to bear this risk.

Because he already had a better method for this matter.

That was the Image Fern that Edgar had used before!
Since the Image Fern can conjure up images of an army, then conjure up the image of him as a commander and make him the target of the enemy's main artillery, wouldn't that be enough to make his life complete?

"Therefore, as long as everything proceeds according to my plan, victory awaits our army!"

"Nothing will go wrong!"

Looking at the sand table in front of him, which he had divided into countless routes, John's eyes were filled with unprecedented confidence and composure.

……

(End of this chapter)