Chapter 49: Movements Unseen

The moment Arachne and Eleanor cut off the connection, Arachne could not help but recall the conversation between her and her master.

In that conversation, Arachne revealed the weakness of the Pink Bats as well as her inability to exploit them, after all, Arachne is not well versed in magic, so she decided to consult Her Lady and most probably have her deal with the Pink Bats personally, however, her response was quite bizarre.

"Well, about that, I certainly can, but because it is the first time I am fighting someone of my caliber, I am preparing myself and do not have the time to plot for those things for the two settlements at the same time, so I was sending Eleanor, I can guarantee you that she will find a way that will kill those bats."

Sophia then paused for a while to grin, or at least that's what Arachne thought her master was doing.

"While I will personally deal with their queen."

Arachne turned back to reality.

She cannot help but grimace at how annoying the bats can be, first they can make rhythms that can only be heard by a unique race and she was just lucky enough to have human-level intelligence to not be their target, their eyes are shut (Except for the queen) and will never open no matter what, that is the reason why did they become subjects of horror of the fourth layer, eyes transmit eighty percent of all the information an individual needs, normally many monsters in there evolved to directly inflict illusions through the said part of the five senses.

Not having them is an advantage to itself and then when you add their echolocation that forbids any form of stealth (except of course for truly creative individuals, like herself.)

They can even fly and use sound not just to inflict illusions but to also inflict physical damage.

Of course, they have a weakness like Arachne has said, but even the schemer that she is, cannot take advantage of it because of the lack of materials needed to do such a thing.

_Hmm... I wonder what she will do to subdue those annoying oversized mosquitoes._

Arachne then turned away and started walking using the numerous limbs of her spider half of a body.

_Urgh... I want to know how will she do it... Too bad I have the order to obey as well._

________

Eleanor of course doesn't have a way to learn of Arachne's fascination about her methods, she just continued to work hard and refused to take a break and pulled an all-nighter to create the offense-defense battle plan of the settlement. Unlike Sophia, she doesn't have oozing confidence in herself, for she knows that Sophia is undoubtedly more creative in strategy, Sophia focuses on surprise, and Eleanor focuses on orthodox means.

Well, she is mostly trained in the little amount of war that she participated in, so her first impression of wars is just in school: to "Follow everything down to the letter."

So, when she had a more frontline active role, she followed everything to the finest details, now that she was entrusted to become a commander, she naturally knew that having a pattern of play, or having only a single plan and not having several backup plans is just plain suicide.

She planned when her "surprise" would be successful if it failed if the army of the enemy tried to encircle them instead of how she predicted them to employ the people's ocean tactic and more. All of these plans are outlined and finalized by her without a single rest as she uses healing magic to recover from the fatigue caused by straining herself.

_I must succeed no matter what..._

Eleanor thought so to herself, of course, her mind is filled with the praising figure of a certain small individual, though it seems like she did not notice such thoughts.

The next day, piles of shattered stone tablets accumulated in front of Eleanor's table, several stone tablets is stacked in the table of Eleanor, she weakly stood up out of all the rubble that she created and once again used healing magic to herself, instantly, her pale complexion turned normal as she drank water out of a wooden drinking glass to quench her thirst.

She then looked at her back, in there, the unmoving figure of Kabuto can be seen, unmoving as it may be, he is still quite impressed by the determination of soon to be her second master, Eleanor does not have any idea of what Kabuto is thinking and said: "Wake them all up, I have orders."

Kabuto then said "Understood." He then inhaled even though his lungs did not require him to.

"WAKE UP!"

"Waugh!"

As Kabuto shouted, Eleanor also did, alongside her, the whole settlement seemed to groan in dissatisfaction, but because it was Kabuto, it must be something of importance, thus they woke up no matter how unwilling they were, Eleanor just smiled awkwardly at the figure of Kabuto that seem to wonder why did she shouted while thinking.

_You could use more gentleness, you know?_

Eleanor then sighed and once more said to Kabuto.

"Hey, after you wake them up, please call up the leader of the construction team."

Kabuto then nodded and called out once again, Suddenly, his shadow spat out a goblin that was scared silly, Eleanor helped the leader of the construction team stand up.

_Man, he sacrificed courtesy for efficiency._

"Leave us for a moment Kabuto."

Kabuto then said, "I shall." Almost instantly as he heard the command of the temporary commander, he got swallowed by his shadow, The moment he got fully submerged, his shadow slowly decreased in size until it finally disappeared.

"For a scout, he sure is quite flashy."

The leader of the construction team said and Eleanor just awkwardly laughed, She then went back to her table and sat on the chair, The leader of the construction team also knew that joke time was already over, thus his rather smiling face became stern once again.

"Commander, for what reason did you summon me?"

Eleanor pulled a stone tablet from the many pile and gave it to the construction leader, The leader looked at the illustration on the tablet that seemed to be some kind of a weapon blueprint.

"Commander this is...?"

The goblin is puzzled he is yet to know the function of the equipment blueprinted in the tablet, Eleanor replied immediately before he could even continue his question.

"That is the blueprint of a weapon called ballistae, It is normally a siege type weapon but I modified it so it's smaller and will fit the giant spear Lady Sophia has given to us, I want five of them prepared as early as possible."

Eleanor then snapped her fingers and several dozen stone tablets with the same blueprint appeared in front of the construction leader.

"There is no time to teach this to your disciples properly, it can be shabby, Just make sure that it can at least shoot a single shot and that shot should be able to gravely injure a Pink Bat."

Eleanor paused for a moment to let her words sink in, after a second or so, she continued.

"You will have to obey this command in total secrecy, so I made an underground corridor so that your work will not be revealed to the pink bats, The only thing they will see are the lumber team gathering a lot of logs for the said weapons. Oh, and ask the Lumber Team to widen the base in which they are gathering wood and make it into a clearing, They do not need to uproot the tree because I will take care of the roots."

Eleanor then once again pulled out a tablet and placed it in the pile of tablets on the ground.

"After you made the ballistae, ask several soldiers to put the weapon in this position, I will also make corridors for discretion, that is all, do your best."

The construction leader nodded with an "Understood", and did not question the orders of his commander, at wartimes like this, doubts about the brain of the army will lead to the collapse of the whole fighting body, though that may seem a little exaggerated, he still want to prevent such thing from happening.

_Still, it seems like  Lady Eleanor will have her own "Big Surprise" for her opponents._

The construction leader thought so as he went to his office and summoned all of his subordinates

______

Eleanor went to her next set of commands, of course she was not worried about her commands not having the same weight as the goblin's lady, after all, Sophia's command was to follow Eleanor's orders down to the letter, and the goblins are repaying the debt of new and more civilized life so they will never dare to even slip up for a moment, she is so sure that her commands will get finished and be ready in the shortest time even humans will find hard to imagine.

Eleanor then contacted Arachne via one of her spiders and asked her to do not to let the bats go to the clearing until the clearing was finished, this is so that they would not be able to guess the purpose of the clearing and would think that it was just a normal shaved off area, her plan is after all pillared by the said clearing.

"But if I covered for the clearing too much, they will sure to be suspicious."

Eleanor then replied matter of factly.

"Oh, don't worry, the goblins are thinking that they did something wrong to Lady Sophia by looking at her like the god of death so now that they are not affected by one of her skills, they will do everything to say sorry to her, so latest at this night, I am sure that it's already finished."

"That sounds like a shrewd commander would say."

"... I don't know what are you talking about."

They have that mental conversation as Eleanor once again makes an order and summons the undead subordinates of Sophia as well as Jin the monkey and Ruphas, because Ruphas will not fit into Eleanor's lab, she goes outside to accommodate him. She then commands Jin, Bernardo, and Ruphas using a tablet that she made for the three of them, as for what order did they get, no one knew because the tablet was shattered the moment the trio said "Understood".

The three left without saying even a bye to their colleagues, Eleanor ignored them and then ordered Philo and Kabuto to tell the soldiers responsible for pincer the maddened army to change their positions, they were to make a semi-oval shaped formation whilst the light cavalry will intentionally let the goblins pass the middle layer of the pincer formation and will attack the orcs that will be stationed in the back.

They would then surround the goblins when the signal was fired.

"We understand, but what's the  signal?"

Eleanor stared at Lyra for a moment and then continued.

"They will know the moment they see it."

Eleanor then asks Kabuto to communicate with Sophia and tell her to kill the Queen of the Pink Bats, for Eleanor doesn't have any means to deal with her, after all their queen is not blind so her "Gift" will surely not work as effectively as the lower caste of the bats.

After the round of commands, Eleanor started planting the mines in the center of the battlefield, this pathway is the direct way towards the lair of the spider queen, and because the Pink Bats does not have an army big enough to surround the whole settlement, she is so sure that they will not do so, but of course, the light cavalry is on high alert if it so happens that her plans will not be followed by the enemy.

Later that day, the desired size of the clearing Eleanor has ordered is already on sight, She made a corridor under it while holding a staff made of a large branch whilst she started to make the roots go underground and shape it like that of a funnel.

_Now then, let's start._

She said as she started to scribble into the ground underground, pun intended.

______

The moment Eleanor finished the clearing, Arachne stopped restricting the bats and one of such bats was instructed to scout the vicinity of the enemy, strangely enough, the enemy knew of their plan of condensing the number of their maddened army into one single pile in the direct path of the link between the settlement of the hero prospect and the lair of the Spider Queen.

He proposed that they pincer attack the pincer formation of the enemy, however, his proposal was quickly denied, simply because the enemy was too strong for it to succeed, for reference the enemy has the strength of one to three or one soldier equal to three kills, that is also just estimated with only the first attack of the enemy and not when they use up all of the soldiers' stamina, so if they want the truth to smack them in the face, then the enemy can kill 30 or more goblins using just a single soldier, the bats cannot count the exact number of the soldiers because the spiders of the spider queen are already driven away from the settlement.

So they settled for a thousand combined light and heavy cavalry archers and infantry units of one thousand.

So 1000 multiplied by 30 is 30000 forget about pincering the enemy, their 7000 goblins and orcs will get snorted.

The bat could only shake his head, he did not know when the great monsters of the five-pronged forest had fallen too low to use people's ocean tactic, while thinking of that, his echolocation that used the sound of his flapping wings saw an abnormally large clearing in a distance to the settlement, he flew on top of it and tried to echolocate it to know what purpose does it have, but piercing through thick soil proved to be a challenge.

_Hmmmm... Oh well, its far away from the battlefield so maybe it's just some random clearing they did with their preparations?_

The bat just shrugged it off and went back to fly towards the lair of the spider queen, Yes he just shrugged it off, without knowing that a priestess just finished drawing a gigantic magic circle underneath the thick covering of the clearing.