Mobilization Order! (Part 2)

Ever since he discovered that the gnolls were gathering in large numbers, Murphy had sent out soldiers each day to spy on their movements.

The auxiliary system brought him some convenience overall, but it still had a lot of shortcomings when it came to details, and those details required plenty of Murphy's time and attention to personally resolve them.

Over the past few days, the golls had been moving more frequently.

If it wasn't for that, Murphy wouldn't have needed to train five troops one after another. He had done all this just in case the gnolls attacked and they would need to mobilize the backup troops.

However, everything had happened much more quickly than Murphy had expected.

Last night before bed, a majority of the gnolls were scattered on the Strategy Map. But when Murphy checked the Strategy Map again today, all the gnolls were gathered at the largest of the gnoll clans. When Murphy checked his Strategy Map, he found that the group consisted of more than three thousand gnolls, and they had already been camping 30 kilometers away from the town of Athens.

Around the town of Athens, there were roughly fourteen scattered gnoll clans. Each gnoll clan roughly had 300 to 600 gnolls. Because competition within the gnoll race was extremely fierce, a clan of 500 gnolls had about 100 adult males and 200 adult females. There were also elderly gnolls and gnoll cubs.

Gnoll cubs took around 10 to 20 years to fully mature. Their bodies tended to develop faster than humans.

Gnolls were slightly similar to humans in regard to clan composition.

For humans, a family of five would have two adult men. These men were usually the grandfather or father, and they were the backbone of the entire family and its center.

The composition of gnoll clans was slightly more relaxed than this. Only the leader had a clear partner. Due to the characteristics of the race, there was one adult male gnoll for every two adult female gnolls. Besides for the leader, who had an exclusive spouse, the other male gnolls' partners were interchangeable. All of the cubs belonged to the clan, and the clan fed the cubs together. Cubs didn't have clear parents.

Female gnolls usually gave birth to triplets, and their gestation period was eight months. However, their infant mortality rate was very high.

Out of ten gnolls, only one or two would survive. If there was a food shortage during the cold winter season, the heartless gnolls would take the young gnoll cubs and use them for food for the winter.

So, in general, a clan of 500 gnolls would only have the combat strength of 300 gnolls.

This didn't apply to the gnoll clan that Murphy encircled. That clan was apparently the result of two clans merging after a fight. A large number of adult gnolls had survived, and there were definitely more than 3,000 gnolls gathered 30 kilometers away from the town. But if Murphy were to only account for the adult gnolls that could fight, he estimated there were only around two thousand of them. However, two-thirds of the population being combatants was a very high percentage.

Since last year, the amount of adult Kazat gnolls who had fully invaded the human city-state was around 100,000.

But without an advanced civilization to ensure adequate food and medical care, it was difficult for a species to reproduce. This could be seen in the entire gnoll clan, which had a population of just hundreds of thousands.

And yet this was also the reason why the humans were being beaten by the gnolls, yet still believed they could win against them in a battle.

In the southern plains, the human population was over three million. Strictly speaking of war in terms of population size, mankind had already become invincible.

This was a fairly primitive world.

It was also an era of survival—survival of the fittest. All sacrifices would be tolerated if it meant multiplying the population.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Without reinforcements, all schemes were useless when the enemy was non-human creatures. The only thing Murphy could do now was defeat the gnolls, who were more beast-like creatures than intelligent beings.

The gnolls had about three times the strength as Murphy's troops, which meant that if they were to simply array themselves on the battlefield, no matter what the gnolls would far exceed their troops.

According to Murphy's understanding of the age of cold weapons at this period in time, if their battle formation was much shorter across than the enemy's, they would face pressure from three sides, and would eventually be wrapped up like a dumpling.

They would be finished in one bite!

The biggest difference between reality and a game was that if the formation was messed up in a game, the enemy would still give you time to reform.

But in reality, when the formation was in chaos the enemy would make its fiercest attack!

Therefore, it was best not to move in a marching formation.

As an inexperienced tactical general, Murphy had always been accustomed to waiting for the enemy to attack first.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Since the issuance of the total war mobilization order earlier that morning, the entire territory had been extremely busy.

Both women and children had been moved to the port, where there were many fishing boats. If the front line fell, they would immediately be sent to the other side of the Nidoria River.

The men were given weapons because the soldiers needed to be given priority over equipment.

Most of the recruited men were assigned a dagger. Of course, only men with certain combat skills could be assigned daggers, while the others were organized by Murphy into an auxiliary legion to attack as a distant unit.

The Greek's auxiliary arm had limited combat effectiveness. Until the archers appeared later on, the javelin cavalry and javelin throwers were weak.

Javelin throwing was something every Greek man had a little experience with. Although they weren't at the level of a javelin thrower, they could win through sheer numbers alone. As long as they were strong enough to throw a javelin, with more than a thousand recruited adult males, they could cause great harm to the gnolls, even without aiming.

In wartime, there weren't many requirements for javelins.

It was a wooden stick about two fingers thick and roughly one to one and a half meters long. The wood needed to be hard, and the tip had to be sharpened.

Since there wasn't any professional training when it came to javelin throwing, Murphy shortened the javelins used by the conscripted townspeople to make it easier for them to throw them.

Eight hundred Greek infantry had been able to arrange a line of defense in the town.

With regard to the arrangement of the defense line, Murphy already had a plan in mind. If the gnolls went for their town, then this plan was feasible.

Currently, adult men throughout the town were demolishing houses.

After they sharpened all the available wooden sticks into javelins, they piled them up one by one in the town plaza of the Greek town.

There were 1,200 adult males. If each man threw ten javelins in battle, then a total of 12,000 javelins were needed. This was definitely a huge number!

Fortunately, the supply from the lumberyards had yet to be cut off. All they needed to do now was process the wood a bit more.

Taking some time off from the war preparations, Murphy decided to meet with Lady Elizabeth again. He tactfully told her that the gnolls' army would attack at any moment now.

If they were in trouble, they could choose to leave first, and he would personally prepare a usable ship for them.

In this critical life or death situation, Murphy would never rest his hopes on others. If these aborigines were unwilling to stay and help in the fight, Murphy would never make them stay.

But to his surprise, Lady Elizabeth actually said that she would stay and help him deal with the gnolls.

"Your Excellency, I hope to stay and help you deal with those fierce beasts. And my servants all know how to fight and know combat techniques," she said. She stared silently at Murphy, inexplicable courage flashing in her blue eyes.

If only she had been so fearless from the start!

Would her territory have fallen then?