Advantage Is Ours

With Lianda splitting in two and following Dongwen and Zhicheng off the field, Moye's immediate crisis was resolved, at least for the time being.

Neither side lingered—after all, they'd only ended up in that standoff because they'd spawned in the same spot.

Moye and Cimei Academy merged into one group and began moving toward the higher ground to the north.

Yun Yao climbed into Xu Lingqu's command vehicle.

"Thank you," Xu Lingqu said.

Yun Yao smiled. "We're on the same side now, Commander Xu. What's your plan from here?"

Xu Lingqu pulled up the map. Right now, the three Federation military academies had a clear objective: secure the fortress points first.

The most distinctive terrain feature on this competition map was a river running between the fortress points, splitting the ten points into a 4-and-6 formation. On the left side, among the four fortress points, Dongwen's people had already taken fortress point 3, worth 20 points, and looked poised to capture more.

Meanwhile, Situke, which had chosen prudence and retreat from the start, currently held only the 5-point fortress point 6, and they still had a full, unscathed contingent of a hundred people.

"They only took a 5-point fortress?" Yun Yao shook her head in disbelief.

"It matches their initial decision to play it safe," Xu Lingqu said. "They probably intend to hide behind that 5-point fortress until the very end."

Little did Lei Nuo know that his plan had already been laid bare by Xu Lingqu. At this moment, he was inside fortress point 6, a cramped space barely fitting a hundred people.

The scout's report had him on edge.

His deputy commander was baffled. "Didn't we agree before the match that securing a certain score mattered most..."

Situke's students had simple, unadorned hopes: as long as they didn't finish last, everything else was negotiable.

They were, after all, a local academy that had come here to 'fill numbers.' Last year, Moye—even more pathetic than a local school—had comfortably occupied the bottom spot. Who could have guessed that a year later, things would be so different?

"Cimei Academy reinforced Moye, and their two hundred people beat back three hundred from the Federation. Now we're stuck in the middle, squeezed from both sides," Lei Nuo sighed. He now realized the folly of leading all of Situke's students into 'playing it safe,' but there seemed to be no chance to make amends.

The Federation would never help an Empire academy. If Xu Lingqu led Moye and Cimei Academy straight at this 5-point fortress, given the skill level of Situke's students, they'd be taken out with ease, marking Situke as the first academy to be completely eliminated.

Lei Nuo was anxious and regretful, but anxiety and regret changed nothing.

"What we need to do now is wait." Outside the vehicle window, the sun was about to set, and the area would soon fall into pitch-black night. Xu Lingqu's words left Yun Yao bewildered.

"Wait?"

"Mm." Xu Lingqu nodded and pointed at the map again. "Not just wait—we wait until they've mostly occupied the points."

Yun Yao raised an eyebrow. "By the time they've taken all the points, won't we be too late?"

"Right now, four factions hold fortress points. Excluding Situke's hundred people sitting on the 5-point fortress, the remaining nine points are being divvied up by three different academies. The spoils are bound to be unevenly split, and they'll naturally be wary of one another. That means they have to split their forces to occupy and defend the points," Xu Lingqu explained patiently. "And we, 178 people in total, are all mobile forces."

In that earlier battle, Moye lost 16, Cimei Academy lost 6, Lianda lost 12, and Dongwen and Zhicheng each lost 5.

"Their advantage is that by holding fortress points, they can activate the energy shield devices ahead of time, and once they're familiar with the positions, holding out means victory," Xu Lingqu assessed objectively. "But the energy shield mechanism isn't invincible—activating it doesn't make the point unassailable. With 178 people, we have more than enough to attack any fortress point. So now they have to worry about when we'll strike and which point we'll target."

As long as they could maintain an aggressive tempo, the enemy would be forced onto the defensive.

"Makes sense." Yun Yao nodded, roughly grasping Xu Lingqu's thinking. "We can precisely calculate how much firepower the energy shields can withstand, which helps with the later precise assaults. But I still want to say: going fortress by fortress and bashing our way through would cost too many losses and take too much time. We only have two days..."

Though every Cimei Academy girl had chosen to come support Moye, Yun Yao, as Cimei's chief commander, still had to think about what score Cimei could ultimately achieve in this match.

At this moment, the fortress points on the map were being claimed and lit up one by one.

Xu Lingqu looked at the map, her lips pressed together. "Don't worry. Things are already developing in the most favorable direction for us."

On the western side of the map, among the four fortress points, Situke had taken fortress point 6 early on. Fortress points 2 and 3 were held by Dongwen, while Zhicheng had taken fortress point 1 and crossed the river. On the eastern side, fortress point 4...

Lianda had directly occupied the remaining five points on the eastern side—fortress points 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10—swallowing half the territory's fortress points.

"Look at this layout. Knowing we're still on the western open ground, Tansen Meilin chose to hide at the furthest point from us, using Dongwen and Zhicheng as shields to block us," Xu Lingqu analyzed. "He knows we'll inevitably regroup and counterattack, so he picked the safest spot for himself."

Tansen Meilin was ambitious and ruthless in exploiting those around him. He'd learned a lesson during the encirclement of Moye when his two subordinates, Yetai Yangquan and Jie Luo, had betrayed him. This time, he simply dragged them out to serve as his shields.

But his actions actually handed Cimei Academy and Moye a golden opportunity.

Grabbing the biggest share of points while doing the easiest work—Dongwen and Zhicheng might have grudgingly accepted this unreasonable arrangement under the pressure of their earlier betrayal of Lianda, but once Cimei and Moye began their attack, resentment toward Lianda was inevitable.

"The three of them falling out is a certainty," Xu Lingqu continued. "You just mentioned it's hard to attack each fortress point one by one, so I don't plan to do that."

"Then what do you intend to do?" Yun Yao looked at her.

"Besiege the point to strike at the reinforcements," Xu Lingqu replied. "For now, they still seem to support each other. We'll focus on wiping out their reinforcements, which will simultaneously erode their strength and accelerate their infighting."