Chapter 232 : I, Oligovich, Have Returned Again!
Chapter 232: I, Oligovich, Have Returned Again!
Upon receiving the telegram, Kris’s expression turned grave: “Five days?”
‘Five days? How could the division commander possibly pull that off? Sixty thousand men—even if they just piled themselves up, they’d bury us to death!’
‘Exactly, this order is basically a death sentence for us.’
Kris raised his hand to silence the murmuring among his subordinates: “Don’t panic. No matter how difficult the situation is, there’s always a solution. About one kilometer along the middle section of the river, there’s a low hill. Perhaps we can use that as our defensive position.”
Kris shook his head and pointed toward the clearly visible barren, jagged hill in the distance:
“If we hollow out the backside and dig tunnels through it, the slope at the front can shield us from enemy artillery and magical bombardment. The mountaintop can serve as the main position for counterattacks—it should minimize our losses.”
‘But what if the enemy bypasses us?’
Kris shot the speaker a glare: “Kid, have you been dozing off in night school again? Our division, combined with the two divisions in the rear, isn’t that much smaller than theirs. Do you think they’d dare to bypass us and expose their rear for us to cut off their supply lines? If they do, I’d have to thank the heavens for such a gift.”
The young officer scratched the back of his head awkwardly: ‘Division commander, don’t say that—I’ve been studying seriously.’
Kris looked him up and down: “Save that line for the female comrades in the future.”
“Now listen up! All units, move out immediately to the hilltop. Under the guidance of the engineer comrades, we will construct defensive fortifications together. The mountaintop will be divided into company-sized units, broken down into smaller groups. Using the mountain as the core, we will establish over two hundred small positions.”
“Nine thousand men—nine thousand! Spread them like sesame seeds across these positions. Nine thousand men! Scattered like a handful of sesame seeds into over two hundred positions. Even if those damned Church forces pull them out one by one, we’ll make them spend five days doing it!”
“Ura!!!”
Kris dispersed his troops by company and platoon across key nodes of the entire mountain. By digging tunnels behind the positions, they created protection against artillery fire as well as spaces for supplies and rest.
Like scattering sesame seeds—positions as points, the mountain as lines—the entire division was connected into an invisible web.
With this defensive tactic, losing a single position would not affect the overall situation. However, if even one position remained, any enemy advancing along that route would be constantly harassed by fire from surrounding positions, forcing them to eliminate each one.
But this approach had a fatal flaw: it was a fixed defense. The soldiers stationed in these positions had no retreat—once the enemy reached them, death was the only outcome.
Less than half a month later, the main force of the Church arrived at the riverbank. Seeing the completely empty river ahead, the Church commander was puzzled. Logically, there should have been enemy resistance here—but he didn’t see even a single trace.
It wasn’t until they approached the hill that the accompanying mage corps reported a large number of life signals within the mountain. Although the exact number was unclear, compared to the Church army, it was obviously insignificant.
Looking at the hill—no more than 600 meters high—the commander sneered: “This is it? I really don’t know what Oligovich was afraid of.”
The head of the mage corps’ expression changed immediately. He glanced nervously at the surrounding soldiers. Seeing that they all looked accustomed to such remarks, he finally relaxed slightly, but still advised: “Your Grace, please mind your words. That man is now His Holiness the Pope.”
The commander said dismissively: “So what? If he hadn’t been lucky enough to survive and happened to have some experience fighting the Alliance, the Goddess would never have given him that position.”
After John had thrown the Church into a massive depression, the price paid to appease public anger had been enormous.
First, the king was put on the “grill,” Prince Farhad was forced onto the guillotine, and several red-robed archbishops involved—along with the Pope himself—were removed from power and became ascetics within the Church.
For the rest of their lives, they were forbidden from touching wealth, meat, or any worldly possessions. They could only wander the streets, reciting scriptures and begging for simple sustenance like vegetable broth and noodles, atoning for the sins of the Church and praying for its people.
It was under such circumstances that Oligovich seized the opportunity to rise to power. The Church territory was in ruins, supplies were scarce, and morale was low. However, this also brought one advantage—far more people enlisted in the army just to get a meal.
Taking advantage of this, they began large-scale expansion. Whether refugees or not, all were conscripted into the military system. Then, targets were selected to redirect this internal pressure outward.
Initially, the Goddess of Light had intended to confront the Alliance directly. But Oligovich proved far more eloquent—he persuaded her to adopt a gradual strategy.
First, cooperate with allied nations to dismantle the Alliance’s wings. Then incite those allies to engage the Alliance in a decisive battle. In this way, the Church could achieve its revenge without suffering excessive losses.
After all, population was the foundation of faith. With a better plan available, the Goddess of Light nodded her noble head in agreement.
It was precisely this sycophantic attitude that made officers who had witnessed Oligovich’s fallen days look down on him.
Moreover, due to the massive recruitment, the Church army had become severely unbalanced. The growing power of the officer class forced Oligovich to tolerate them, further inflating their arrogance.
“Whatever they’re hiding inside, I don’t care. I now order all units capable of long-range attacks to strike with full force. Don’t they like hiding underground like rats? Then crush them into the mud!”
After issuing the order, the commander leisurely returned to his luxurious carriage to rest. Under his command, the troops began unleashing large-scale magic and artillery bombardments, saturating the hill.
Under such high-density firepower, the sparse greenery and trees on the mountain were completely reduced to dust, vanishing into smoke and debris.
Kris and the others hid behind rock walls, feeling the violent tremors and the alternating waves of extreme heat and cold. They couldn’t help but marvel:
“Division commander! Good thing you told us to dig through the mountain. With this level of firepower, our old positions would’ve cost us countless lives!”
“Yeah! Has the Church gone mad? Are they trying to bury us alive with magic?”
The combination of extreme heat, extreme cold, and artillery bombardment could easily destroy most defensive fortifications. However, the L-shaped and U-shaped tunnels carved deep into the mountain, though heavily damaged, were still protected by meters-thick rock layers—enough to withstand such attacks.
Kris sighed: “After being bombed enough times, even a fool learns how to survive…”
Ever since rifles became the mainstream weapon on the Main Continent, nations had developed countless countermeasures. The simplest was to stop charging positions entirely and instead begin with large-scale long-range magic to inflict area damage.
Fragile human bodies simply could not withstand the power of nature.
But after enduring such tactics repeatedly, nations using firearms gradually developed ways to counter them.
The more advanced approach, like that of the Alliance, was to use magic against magic—deploying specialized shield generators to protect positions, while using more destructive or precise long-range weapons to strike enemy aerial units.
The simpler methods involved digging layered trenches, C-type trench systems, or even burrowing deep into mountains—using terrain and structure to mitigate the damage caused by magic and artillery.