Chapter 46: The Map

" This Map represents our most recent data about the distribution of Blood Tabi Beasts. The Minions class are green, the Warriors are yellow, Commanders are blue and the Ruler is red. Currently we don't have accurate information on the number of minions and warriors. These dots signify a cluster and not a single beast.

Your first mission is to scout their numbers even better, do not engage the beasts if you have a choice and avoid the Commanders. Now each squad pick up your device and move out to the marked out location. 

I'll be moving out as well the purple dot represents my position if you need backup."

Cao Guang and his squad left the village to reach point F on their map and their location to scout. 

Song Xia covered the group using shadows in order to hide them better. Blood Tabi Beasts had a poor sense of Shadow magic.

They could use a machine that could count the number of beasts using a sonar type spell. But it would attract every nearby beast and the scouting missions would turn into a tower defence battle they would loose a hundred percent.

So they had depend on their own judgement and analytical skills to infer the number of the packs of Blood Tabi Beasts.

The military had laid the foundation by tracking out ever Commander. Commanders in a horde lead by a Ruler were often tribe leaders.

Each had their own territories and subjects. One commander trespassing into another's territory would mean a tribe war, but that would only happen if the Ruler allowed it. 

Rulers some times allowed it for the sake of the controlling population. The military had spent squads of Advanced mages on the information about Commanders. Now the smaller squads would be adding the information about lower levels.

They took this approach to the mission to keep their losses to a minimum. A frontal war would be faster and would have higher casualties.

A strong demon beasts could be born overnight but it took years to make a strong Mage.

"Sixteen Minions as far I see" whispered Gao Xuan.

Cao Guang made hand signs to move on and chided Gao Xuan.

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This process would continue on until Blood Beasts were accounted and marked out for extermination. 

" The Blood Tabi Beasts of the tribe we are tracking have been all accounted for.

Next we move on to the extermination" Captain Huo gathered the squads he had and explained.

"We have found out that there are 17 Commanders under the Ruler. Ancient Capital has allocated about 75 Advanced mages to deal with them. 

While the advanced mages deal with the Commanders, Intermediate mages will take out the Warriors and Minions.

The problem being that we don't have enough Intermediate mages here in Carp Village for a quick extermination.

The numbers in Carp Village has to be controlled. More than a thousand people here and the presence of living becomes above what the Ash Wood can mask from the Undead. 

For this reason we will begin the battle at daybreak. Everyone will take positions using Ash Garlic and follow the Warriors and Minions they are supposed to kill through the night and kill them as soon as Sun goes up.

Once you have killed the first pack, you move on to the next and so on. At sunrise all Advances mages will engage the Commanders and kill them as quickly as they can. Remember you priority isn't just to eliminate the beasts but to prevent them from interfering to save their leader, Got that?

At the same time more reinforcements will set off from Ancient Capital, but they will take ten hours to get here and then another hour later, we will be facing the Undead as well. The faster the Advanced mages kill the Commanders, the better but for that interference has to be kept at a minimum, Am I clear?"

Affirmative 

Cao Guang and his squad opened up the map marked with targets they were responsible for.

"Which pack are we taking out first? The strongest?" asked Song Xia.

"We'll take out the one with the most numbers and then the strongest one. Look from here on out the military has very little control over the small details. A pack that other squads are responsible for or another tribe might converge under threat of death.

We don't have the necessary numbers in Intermediate and Basic mages, we take out the troublesome ones first, believe me anything that can go wrong will go wrong".