Chapter 35: 35- The First Charge

"He is asleep," the guard sitting in the hall leading to the room where captain Dunn's office was, said as he saw me heading there. I nodded at him in acknowledgement as I kept walking:

"It's important and I have his permission," With that, I knocked at the door. Not long after that, I heard the captain's exhausted voice from inside:

"Who is it?" Even though the captain's voice was clearly exhausted and tired, I couldn't sense any drowsiness from it, he was totally awake and as sharp as he always was.

"It's me," I answered, "I have something to tell you."

"You can come in," He replied straight away.

I pushed the door after taking a deep breath and stepped in. With the continuous interaction with the captain and our agreement, I was finding dealing with him easier and easier. There was still some panic and uncertainty but it wasn't as much as the first few times I had to face him. Inside, I saw that captain Dunn was still on his desk, I didn't know for sure if he was sleeping on it but that was how it seemed like.

Captain Dunn gave me a nod once I sat in front of him before saying:

"So? What is it, what did you get?"

I had already gone through everything I wanted to cover with captain Dunn before coming there, but I still took a moment to go over what I prepared one last time before starting:

"I have quite a few things to share, and I will go through them from the least to the most important. First is something that you might have already guessed but I think that I should confirm it anyway: the demons know about the course of action we are going to take in our defence."

Once I finished with the first thing I wanted to bring up, I focused on captain Dunn again, who nodded and answered my unspoken question.

"We did consider that, even though, from what we found, the kalla was in town for a short period of time only, the demons had contact with Bruce for a long time it seems, so them knowing our plans was something we already had in mind and were preparing for."

I felt a weight get lifted off my shoulders when he said that they were already working on and preparing for the possibility that our plans were already leaked. With that out of the way, I preceded to tell the captain about the rest of what I knew.

"Even though the demons knew a lot about our plans, their army's composition isn't the best it could have been, they don't have the ideal troops to take us down as the other armies that were sent to more important locations got those. They still have some pretty strong squads in their ranks though, ones that we will have quite a bit of trouble dealing with, such as..." I then went on to explain what we had coming and all I knew about the two special squads we were expected to fight. I also went over the normal soldiers in the army and all that.

Captain Dunn fell into silence once I was done talking, he had a frown on his face and it was clear that the news had quite an impact on him, which honestly was to be expected considering the situation we were in and how it seemed that things were just getting worst.

"What about the castle's gate," The captain finally said, "how are they going to deal with it?"

At that point I took a deep breath as the thing that I wanted to deal with the most was finally brought up. 

"This links with the most important thing I wanted to bring up. In these operations, the Demon King sent his three children to lead three different armies. And fortunately for us, one of them is leading the army coming our way."

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"And that's a good thing because?" Questioned captain Dunn with a raised eyebrow.

"Because the one leading the army at our door is prince Zagmuz, the most useless and incompetent among the three, and he has the final say in things in the army, well as long as he doesn't do something extremely moronic because then, the army's general would have the opportunity to take the lead from him, something the general wants more than anything."

"Let me guess," Mused captain Dunn, "Prince Zagmuz is the one attacking our gate, isn't he?" The Royal Family's fire control ability was something that almost everyone knew; the horror stories of how the Demon King set cities on fire were still told by mothers to naughty children, so it wasn't hard to conclude Zagmuz's part in this.

"Exactly," I nodded slowly, "None of the squads that are specialized in taking down castle gates were left, not even those that had just a bit of advantage in that regard. So the demons could do nothing but give the prince the important job of taking down the gate."

"So dealing with the prince before he reaches the gate is the best course of action, it would be hard, especially with the protection he would sure be under, but it can be done," Captain Dunn nodded slowly.

I could feel the blood freeze in my veins as I heard what he said. I knew in a sense that the people I was doing my best to protect and help would kill me as Zagmuz the moment they laid their eyes on me, but hearing captain Dunn saying it out loud jolted me up a bit and I had to fight as to not show any unusual reaction in front of the Captain, which I'm sure I did a horrible job in considering how his eyes harden and squinted at my reaction.

"No!" I again tried to link my suspicious reaction to something that would make it less suspicious. So I acted agitated as if his misunderstanding of my plan was what set me off, "we shouldn't touch Zagmuz, he needs to stay alive," My outburst had captain Dunn frown deeply as he leaned forward a bit.

"Zagmuz is a danger to us," I started explaining my idea without giving him the chance to say anything, "but as long as he is alive and in control, we still have a chance to survive this. You see, Zagmuz was forced to be here, he is an incompetent scum that knows next to nothing when it comes to leading an army, and he doesn't care much if this operation succeeds or not. The same can't be said about the general with him though, general Kildor is an ambitious demon who wants to use his victory in this war to open up the door to a brighter future, he needs this operation to succeed, he is the one pushing Zagmuz to act as a commander and do his best to take the town. and as I said before, he is second in command, so if anything were to happen to Zagmuz, he would step up and start leading the army in earnest."

Even after I was done captain Dunn still kept a close eye on me as he fell into deep thoughts, or maybe he was trying to put me under pressure by doing so, it could be either ways, I didn't really know.

"So killing general Kildor while leaving Zagmuz alive should be what we aim for." He finally said to my relief.

"Exactly, Zagmuz doesn't want to be here. I'm sure that without Kildor there to force him, he wouldn't be as proactive in his attacks and that would give us enough time for the reinforcements, which I'm sure are going to get delayed for a long time, to arrive."

"I can see how that would work, but getting general Kildor is going to be hard, I doubt he would be anywhere close to the fighting."

"That would have normally been the case, but due to how bad the relationship between Zagmuz and Kildor is, the prince agreed to be part of the plan only if the general was there with him, the black-hearted prince didn't want to be the only one under danger and that gives us the chance we need to take the general down."

"So that's your plan?" Asked Captain Dunn when I was done talking, "kill the general so the useless prince takes his place, we also can't take down the prince because that would mean that someone else in the army can take his place."

I nodded in answer, that seemed like the best thing that could happen to me, I would get rid of the thorn on my side and we would have more time to wait for our reinforcements.

"It's a good plan, if a hard one," Said captain Dunn, "it is based on the assumption that we would survive the first, and full, attack from the demons, which is going to be quite hard."

I knew that without needing captain Dunn to remind me. Kildor wanted to take down the town in one attack, one swap that had all their power behind it, but we were probably going to go with the same thing too, doing our best to survive the charge and kill Kildor. We were going to make sure that the first attack would be the last.