44 Battle and plans

While all of this was going on with Mason and Jack, Alice was finally just around an hour of walking away from the designated location.

However, in the durance, she noticed large bellows on smoke rising into the air, not from the likes of bon-fires but from burning man-made items.

"Be careful from now on. I think enemies are nearby." Alice spoke to her team quietly as they all got into formation and prepared for a surprise attack while slowing down their forward movement.

However, no surprises happened along the way, much to Alice's relief. The location the Leon army had chosen was a clearing in the forest a few kilometres into enemy territory. Right now, Alice was at the edge of this clearing observing from within the trees.

After some observing, Alice leapt off the tree and arrived amongst her squad.

"Everything is burnt. All the tents, food, everything it completely burnt. Whatever isn't burnt yet is currently on fire making the smoke. However, I only saw barely 2 bodies, which means that either the enemies took prisoners, or most people survived by running away."

Hearing this, many people heaved sigh of relief. As long as the battalion was alive, everything could be solved.

"For now, we need to figure out where the enemy's camps are, and look there. If there is no one as captives, then it means our battalion survived. Since we won't be able to find them by wandering in the forest, we will just move to another battalion's location. I know a one of them is a few days north of here. But if we find our battalion as captives, we will need to do something about the situation them. But before we do any of that, we should observe the battlefield first."

All the squad members nodded and entered the clearing with their weapons raised. Since the battalion was to assemble at the assembly point, the lieutenant thought it would be better to transport things like shields, metal armour for the more skilled people, and other heavy items on horseback. This way, the soldiers would have less to carry and would be more efficient in terms of travelling.

This however, made it so that no one in Alice's squad had shields or other defensive equipment, only carrying a normal sword.

Slowly, the group proceeded to walk across the burnt land and noticed a few things. The mud was covered in chaotic footsteps. After spending some time analysis, the direction or motion and dept of the footprints to see the acceleration people put into walking, Alice was able to analyse something.

"I don't know how to analyse footprints, do any of you?"

"Yes Ma'am!"

"Alright then Charles. Try and figure out what happened."

"Yes!"

Charles walked around the battlefield for quite some time, before finally coming up with a response.

"This was the camp our side had set up. However, the information must have been leaked by someone, since a large number of Rolandian soldiers, nearly 1.5 times our number, were waiting in ambush completely encircling our troops. They most likely attacked in the night since no one would use torched in daylight, in which case the camp should not have burnt down."

"I can also see most of the organised footsteps moving in one direction, which means the victor of the battle moved in that direction. Although there are some people who escaped in the opposite direction, almost 80% of the troops stationed here were captured alive and moved along with the victors."

"So it is likely they are at the camps of the enemy?"

"Yes."

"good. Then we will follow the footsteps, but not directly. We will move from the side and follow the general direction while checking the footprints every now and then." Alice spoke in her 'This is final, no arguments' voice, and the squad members did not object and moved according to plan.

On the other hand, in the southern continent, Heron was still on his journey to civilisation. However, instead of the lonely figure from before, he seemed to have grown close with the slaves, who were now all players. Naturally, they all had received the sub-system which gave Heron some amount of control over their actions. This was to prevent betrayals, especially against one of his strongest players, not considering his rather unique pope SPU.