(ZDZ) "You can't be serious, Baron. Are you saying that we haven't really been fighting the all-stars? If we weren't fighting them then, who were we fighting?" Zhang Da Zhi was now visibly starting to get furious with the situation.
(BM) "From what little intel I got from the enemy soldiers, it seems that the ones that we have been fighting are actually the strategists under the all-stars. They are pretty good, but they don't compare with the all-stars at all. This situation just got a lot more complicated." Baron couldn't help but sigh.
(CK) "Damn it! I thought we had finally won against them. Do you realize how difficult it was to fight off just the lackeys of these four? We nearly lost! Baron, how many soldiers did you see?" Commander Ke was also starting to get a little frantic.
(BM) "At least several hundred thousand more at the very least. Likely a larger force than what was sent here to serve as a distraction for us. I can't believe that we fell for something so simple as that. However, our advanced scouts weren't able to catch them was because their armies were so out of our way, that no one really would bother to check. They sure have prepared well."
(ZDZ) "Annoying little bastards they sure love to be. So, what should we do? Stay here and fight, or run away or whatever else?"
(BM) "We'll put it to a vote. I say we stay and fight."
(CK) "Seconded."
(ZDZ) "...yeah, what the hell. I'm sure even if we disbanded, they would still come after us all the same. It is better to stick together in this situation."
(BM) "By the way, I went to go check out the enemies that had stationed themselves on the mountain on my way back, and they seemed to be nowhere in sight. Did one of you deal with them?"
(CK) "No clue where they went."
(ZDZ) "Haven't touched them, if fact, I didn't even know they were there."
(BM) "Oddly suspicious. Well, nothing we can do about it now. Let's all let the men get at least a day of rest before we start upon the preparations and we will have to stick together until we see the enemies. I think in this particular scenario, my deepstrikes are the most useful weapon that we have at the moment. So, why don't each of our camps at one of the 3 fields and guard them with some of our most trusted strategists?"
(CK) "Will you give us control of them?"
(BM) "Sure, why not. I don't think we will have much of a chance to defeat them anyway. Might as well give you two something to play with while regretting your choices to aid me in this battle that we were destined to win."
(ZDZ) "Well, if there is nothing else, then I will go inform my two right-hand men about this situation and try to work something out. If it's only a few hundred thousand, then I think we will be able to do quite a bit of damage before we kick the bucket. I have about 120,000 soldiers of my soldiers left, what about you two?"
(CK) "Close to 90,000 soldiers, I'd say."
(BM) "As is the case for me. So we have about 300,000 soldiers left, most of whom are tired after weeks of fighting while the enemy has at least double our numbers and all of their soldiers are fresh as a daisy. This does not bode well for us."
(CK) "Whether it does or doesn't the only option left for us to fight until we no longer can."
(ZDZ) "That's true. Baron, although we didn't exactly get off on the right foot, fighting with you has been quite an experience."
(BM) "Let's get going, there is still much to do. See you all on the other side."
The three of them got up and left the meeting room and let off a little sigh. They had so much difficulty with the underlings, just how much difficulty would they have with the real deals? In fact, now that Baron was thinking about it, was it possible that his first battle with Xuan Feng was actually nothing more than a battle with someone that was not actually Xuan Feng? Who knows? It could be a real possibility though.
Once Baron got back to his allies, he strategized with them about how to handle the situation and what they could do to minimize the risk of them losing, which at this point seemed pretty far-fetched. A day later, all three armies began to work on preparing for another large scale battle that they were expecting in a short period of time. Every one of them worked at a furious pace and within days, they had mostly gotten everything completed. Then, a few days after that, the army of the all-stars came as they had predicted.
Not only were there a lot more enemies than they had originally planned, they practically knew that even if the enemy just rushed them they wouldn't be able to fight them off completely. Not to mention with someone of the 4 all-stars leading such a massive force. What was even more surprising than their numbers though, was the way in which they showed up to fight Baron, Zhang Da Zhi, and Ke. They had their army split up into hundreds of smaller armies that checkerboarded in an encirclement to surround Baron and the rest. There were several layers to this pattern and it seemed to be neverending.
It was difficult for anyone to even begin guessing how many soldiers were marching in, not including the ones in tanks and other transport vehicles. However, Baron had a rough estimate for what he believed the enemy had in numbers due to him personally witnessing the armies when he went to go scout with the others. His guess was that this army numbered somewhere in the 2 to 3 million. Which is to say, at least 7 times what he had on his side, as a conservative estimate.