After becoming the general, the first thing that Leonhart did was to ask his advisor about the situation of the army and the war. And from what he heard, he became sure that clearing this stage would be very hard.

His beastkin army had a total of twenty five thousand soldiers divided into 5 legions with five thousand soldiers in each one. Each of the legions was led by an A rank commander and they had 5 B rankers under them to lead 1000 soldiers each with the title of Brigadier General.

On the other hand, the army of the demons had a total of sixty five thousand soldiers who were divided into two camps. Each camp had a S ranker as the leader and five A rankers as the general. Even one single camp was stronger than the beastkin army so fighting against two camps at once, they were in a very bad situation.

Leonhart was the only S ranker in the beastkin camp and the last S ranker was the previous general who died in an ambush made by the two S rankers of the demon's army. Now Leonhart had to fulfill the role of the previous deceased general.

Other than the number of soldiers in each race, the demons had already conquered 6 fortresses and the beastkins only had 4 more fortresses left to defend.

For Leonhart to clear this round, he needed to at least free one of the fortresses from the hands of the demon. And the more fortresses he could free, the more points he would get for his performance. And if he could free all the 6 fortresses then he could get a perfect clear. But that was easier said than done.

First of all, Leonhart needed to raise the morale of the army. As they were in a disadvantageous situation, the morale of the whole army was very low which was not a good thing. And they just recently lost their general too which made the morale to fall at the rock bottom.

So Leonhart needed to do something to raise the morale as soon as possible. So as soon as the battle ended for the day and both army retreated their camps to take a short break, Leonhart went to the barracks and gave a blood burning speech.

He also gave the army hope by saying that he had a plan to turn around the situation. Other than that Leonhart also showed off his powers and declared himself to be several times stronger than the previous general. He did all that to give the army some hope and his plan was a success.

After he was done with raising the morale of the army, he decided to study the maps of the area properly to create a good plan to defeat the army of the demons. These maps were not the normal maps but were special maps made of the military. So they were way more detailed than a normal one.

While studying the maps, Leonhart found a hidden passage which could allow him to do a sneak attack on one of the fortresses that the demons had recently conquered but there was a problem. A very troublesome monster, Smanak, had made that passage their home.

These monsters were poisonous snake-like monsters that would make their habitat to be a poisonous land. So for that reason this passage was declared unusable. But if this passage could be used then it would definitely make the conquest of the fortress to be an easy job.

Actually, Leonhart was confident that he could take a whole legion of soldiers alongside him in this poisonous land safely. That was because he knew about a process that a mad monster researcher invented to venture to the poison infested land safely.

But for that he needed soldiers who were very resilient and he had a perfect candidate in his mind.

...

One of the 5 legions was called the Black Bear legion and it was made mainly using the bulky beastkin races with superior endurance. This team did not have only bearkins but other large beastkins too and they all were quite resilient.

After Leonhart was done with planning he called the A rank commander of the Black Bear legion. His name was Gathor and he was an Elephantkin. Leonhart knew about Gathor's personality as he did a detailed study on all the notable members of the army. So he used some provocative words to make his blood boil and then praised him to the high heaven to make his guard loose. So, when Leonhart told him about the dangerous mission, he was not able to decline Leonhart and agreed to accompany him through the dangerous passage.

...

Time was very important and Leonhart went to the passage the very next day. He did not take all five thousand soldiers of the Black Bear legion and chose one thousand best soldiers among the legion to take with him. If he took all five thousand of them with him then the demons might find it to be suspicious.

The special method that the researcher had invented included using a special structure to filter the poisons of a poisonous land. This process did have some risk and it was not one hundred percent safe but still it was good enough for Leonhart to take the risks.

And even if some of the poison did not get filtered, the resilient beastkins would still be able to hold on and he had also prepared a huge amount of antidote to cure anyone from dying from that poison.

His plan was successful as, without their poison, Samanaks were not very strong. The passage was long and it took over nine hours for the thousand soldiers to reach the end of the passage. When they left the secret passage it was night time and the demons were getting a bit sloppy with their guarding.

Night was the time for most demonic species to enjoy. As this was a fortress that they had already conquered which made it very safe, demons were not very serious about guarding it. They had no information that the beastkin had any plans to counter attack so their guard was down.

The passage opened in an abandoned warehouse in the north of the castle. As the warehouse was abandoned, two demons were busy raping a beastkin women there. When Leonhart came out from the passage, the naked demons were very surprised and even forgot to alert the army.

Leonhart instantly killed those two demons and rescued the beastkin women. Then he used a magic item that he got from the army's treasury to make the area isolated. Then the army of a thousand men also came out from the secret passage.

Leonhart did not instantly lead the army to attack but instead questioned the rescued woman about the schedule of the demon army. According to her just two or so hours later it was supposed to be dinnertime for the soldiers which would also be the time when their guards would be at the lowest. That was obviously the best time to attack. So Leonhart decided to wait for two more hours before attacking.

The warehouse was unfortunately not big enough to host over a thousand soldiers, some of them had to wait in the passage for two hours. Just as two hours were almost up, Leonhart used another magic item that he retrieved from the treasury to spy on the demons. When he saw that they were busy with eating dinner, Leonhart finally gave the order to attack.

As soon as his order was given all the soldiers instantly got battle ready showing their incredible training. Then they left the warehouse like a flood and started to kill demons left and right. Leonhart took the lead in killing demons as a S rank powerhouse.

The strongest demons present inside this fortress were two A rank demon generals from the two different camps. As soon as the battle started for real they instantly became alert and attacked the beastkins that appeared suddenly. Gathor blocked one of the A rank demon generals and Leonhart killed the other one in just a few minutes.

As soon as the single horned demon died in Leonhart's hand, some of the demons also died instantly alongside him. Actually that one horned demon had a special power to bind other weaker demon's souls to him in order to make them and also himself stronger. But as soon as he died, all the demons that were bound to him also died along with him and that made the battle to be even easier.

Then Leonhart joined forces with Gathor to kill the other horse like demons too. As soon as both the A rank commanders died, all the remaining demons lost their nerves and started to flee like crazy. Most of them died while fleeing and only about a thousand were able to escape from the fortress.

And just like that Leonhart was able to capture one of the fortresses back which also allowed him to clear this stage. Now all he needed to do was to try to capture as many fortresses as he could without losing any of the other fortresses to the demons. But at least he was sure to go to the next stage even if he failed to capture any more fortresses.

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