"Siya…"

I slowly raised my head to the other commanders. "Sorry, what were you saying?"

"We were talking about our predictions? And what we should be looking forward to… If we should maybe negotiate surrender, or…"

I blankly stared at him for a moment. 'I figured we wouldn't be on the same page… But I didn't think we'd be that far off…' "They consider this a holy war against a cursed people… Even if we did surrender, they would just attack us again later, so that's not an option, unless you want to be a slave, executed, or who knows, at the very least annexed and heavily discriminated against." 'not to mention it would become way harder for me to become king of anything…' The next attack will be either at sea or through the mountain pass; either way, they are at a tremendous disadvantage. Despite being outnumbered, they would be easy victories for us." I circled each area. "From there, we simply retake Riverhold by attacking it from three directions: the sea, through the pass, and from upriver, using the wyverns as troop transports. From there, we move northwest to join up with any remaining forces and push east back to Kasesh. While they are distracted, there we could… I'm getting ahead of myself. The point I'm trying to make is that we aren't losing… If we look at the casualties suffered, we are actually winning. Taking ratios into consideration, they have lost a substantially larger percentage of forces. Which in itself can still be dangerous for us because of our overall realistically lower head count, but we have more than enough knights left to not have to worry about that yet. I guess… It's a bit concerning that they have been using a more unorganized rather than formal force, so it's possible that once they begin using eliet military personal things could change, but we have our own, and there overall strongest fighter is down and out, so it's unlikely any new force they present to us would remotely close to his strength, or the strength of the other stars, meaning we could probably handle them."

They all blankly stared back at me.

'Right…' I sighed, piling up everything again and clearing the table of all the game pieces. "Let me explain. You see, the empire is massive, right? And they have what, 10 legions at least, probably safe to say 11, keeping one secret. Each one is supported by a star general and a royal sage. We've already completely annihilated one legion."

"But we lost two of our five generals… And our King…"

I growled, looking over at the man talking, and he quickly went silent. "As I was saying…" I said calmly, placing 10 enemy markers on the map. "The empire has roughly 10 legions… But it's so big that this number doesn't accurately reflect what we are fighting…" Slowly spreading out the pieces, the fight began to look much more closely matched. "They would need one stationed here due to border friction, and one here for the same reason… We aren't the only ones they don't get along with. They would need one here and one here to cover the territory's internal structure and maintain peace, as well as enforce the law and manage dungeons. At least two of them are naval legions tasked with protecting trade, one cross-continent and one intercontinental. A sixth legion would be required to patrol this island chain because of its size, as well as it being recently conquered, which means there is most likely unrest. That means we are dealing with at MOST 3 or 4 full legions, one of which is completely destroyed, and one of which is halved due to half of them being rendered useless by being on boats. In other words, we have already destroyed half their standing army, whereas we have only lost around a third of ours. Furthermore, their casualties increase daily due to attrition and monster attacks. Technically speaking, we are winning… Depending on how you define it… I guess."

They continued blankly staring at me as I rearranged the pieces again. "It all depends on three things. The first is how well the remaining 2 armies hold up besides us, the second is whether or not they are stupid enough to attack us, and the third is how long this war lasts… If they call up another legion or two and make sacrifices elsewhere, things might get ugly… And if they call in any more than that, we're going to end up having to give up everything on the other side of the mountain pass… Although they will likely suffer far more. There is also a possibility the nation south of us declares war on us as well… Which would again result in us losing everything on the other side of the pass, but on the bright side, we'd end up gaining the entire southern nation… So it's not that concerning…"

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I rubbed my eyes, taking a sip of water before leaning forward on the table and looking at them, once again, all blankly staring back. 'I don't know what else I'm supposed to say here… Are war councils really supposed to go like this? I just talked to them for a while… And then dismiss them?'

"General…" One of the city elders said nervously.

"Call me king…"

He cleared his throat and paused for a moment. "King then… Are you saying you want to keep fighting?"

'I suppose I could always head south and start a slave uprising to overthrow the country and become king there… But it's more convenient if I just stay in charge of this nation here… We actually have a surprisingly capable military, despite how much it also obviously lacks…' "Are you saying you want to give up… I was under the impression that we fought every battle as though we were against a monster and had a child behind us with their heels at the edge of a cliff… That's what I was taught."

He sighed. And lowered his head in thought, and yet again, everyone else remained silent for a long time until Al eventually stood up. "There is work yet to be done. If we are at war, let us do it properly."

Riverholds' old commander grand, standing up alongside him with one arm in a cast and an eye bandaged over. "Siya… You came straight here. Have you checked the report from our end of the last battle?"

I took a deep breath. 'I was too nervous… All I know is that Hara made it out, and we still have the boat. She was the only one there of vital strategic importance… So… seeing casualty reports just…' "I haven't… I calculated this with the worst outcome from that battle in mind…"

He shook his head with a grin, looking down and sorting through a few things before tossing a stack of papers over to me.

'Just how many people did we lose… Was it that bad?'

To fill the silence, some of the elders and other knights began rambling. "This is a losing fight… Even against monsters, sometimes you have to give ground, sometimes it's better to jump off the cliff and use your backbone to break the fall for the child."

'What a saying…' As they rambled on, I slowly read through the report that listed the supplies used up and remaining, and a full explanation of the ship's damage, as well as the equipment damage of the soldiers. 'Replacing swords is easier than replacing soldiers, but who organized this?'

"It would be better to give up and keep behind the mountain pass, winning in numbers doesn't matter if we continue losing ground and retreating until we have nothing left… The fact that we retreated at all means we have already lost."

A fist slammed into the table as Elianara of all people stood up, a chunk of the table splintering under his fist. "If you say that again, I'll kill you…"

Another dead silence hung in the air as I continued to flip through until the last page of the report with a small smirk. 'He's pretty reliable as a traditionalist, it's nice that we're finally on the same side.' When I reached the bottom, my eyes stopped, locking in place as my whole body froze.

Casualties report summary:

1 horse:

A wave of relief passed over me, and I let out a snort before quickly covering my mouth, slowly putting the report back down, and pushing it away before leaning back in my chair. "Commander Elianara, please calm down. I've already stated that we will not be surrendering, but rather that we will be winning this war. Commander Varick, "It's a shame that we lost a horse in the last battle. What was its name?"

He smirked back at me through the cuts on his face. "Her name was Pumpkin; she was a chief's horse under my command, and unfortunately, she was shot in the side with an arrow while boarding the ship."

"Did we recover the corpse?"

"Yes, the rider cared a great deal for her mount, and so she carried the horse on board; unfortunately, it died afterwards."

'C-carried… the horse?' I slowly shook my head. 'Honestly, that's really sad…' "Give the rider compensation and bury the horse in the knights' cemetery with full honors."

"As you wish." He said, saluting me, desperately trying not to laugh.

Elianara followed, and then Al and Philly, along with several others, before eventually everyone did so just out of peer pressure. "The war council is dismissed."

I left first, quickly ducking away as fast as I could, my nerves and embarrassment getting the best of me. I estimated there was plenty of time before the next attack, so I wasn't in a hurry to do anything else. With that in mind, I headed out to the docks, shrank down in size, and dipped my feet in the ocean, watching them hurriedly finish repairs on the flagship that was still suffering from the demon we killed.

The sunlight shone on the water, making it sparkle and shimmer as the warm summer wind brushed past my skin. 'It's hard to believe we're at war… With a view like this… And how good I feel right now.' Lying down in the soft sand, I closed my eyes and let the heat sink in as I thought about the meeting, turning more red the more I did. 'I just gave full honors to a horse and claimed we were winning a war in which our king was killed and over half the nation was occupied…' As my eyes opened, the heat faded, and once again, everything felt peaceful. 'I never thought it would be so much less stressful, knowing the decisions I was making, ridiculous or not, were made by me alone…'

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