“So we are going to have hybrid monsters alongside flying ones?” Sara asked, ignoring the panic Angelica was in.


    “We are going to have many,” Hry kept speaking about this uing challenge, “and the worst thing is that portals will open, portals that won’t close before killing all monsters for seven continuous days.”


    “Seven days?!!” it was my time to get surprised, “isn’t it supposed to be just one or two?”


    “No, that bastard will use the worst version,” she sighed, “the worststed for seven days.”


    “That…” everyone was shocked when they heard that.


    “Don’t worry, we can lose a few ces,” I was already prepared for such a loss. But it was time for them to ept such loss.


    “Losing areas? Are you sure?” Hiry asked, feeling a little surprised by what I just said.


    “Losing parts isn’t a big deal,” I shrugged, “as long as we control this, and make sure not a key part is lost, we can y it safe.”


    “I hate the idea of losing anything,” Sara said in faint anger, “why can’t we just go and defend with everything we got?”


    “Yes boss, we have lots of forces anyway,” the spearhead couldn’t tolerate such an idea as well.


    “We should fight!”


    “For what?” I watched their enthusiasm, something I already expected, “it’s not going to give us anything good. Not a single benefit. Don’t forget, we are shadowed from this quest and the oneing afterwards.”


    “But…”


    Before Hry would add another piece of defence for her point of view, I added:


    “We are going to have it nice and easy if we do as you all say. But what about the next quest? What about the fifth quest? We are going to have not a single stat point during these two quests. If I was one of my enemies, I’d wait for the end of the fourth quest or the beginning of the fifth ande at me with everything I got.”


    “That makes killing these monsters more valuable,” Isabe seemed to get over her fear for a little. “If we get attacked while many of our territories are lost, we will have it harder to stop those enemies.”


    “That’s not truly the case,” I sighed, “do you think these monsters are hostile to us and friendly to them? They are acting aggressive against all of us. So it’s just ok to let parts of ournds get conquered by monsters. At some point, this might serve as a tactical advantage.”


    “But…”


    I stopped her again from adding more useless logic. “Besides, we have to get our boys stronger in different ways. Stat points aren’t the sole factor to define strength. We still have a cultivation path to try out. Also we got our dungeons to venture through, and we got the weapon upgrade project to focus on…”


    I stated the few areas we got to work at during this time. I didn’t even mention working over the groundwork of the kingdom, building its rules and systems, and making sure we had something that wouldst for a long time.


    The kingdom part was very important. After all, just jumping around and fighting monsters like we were a bunch of fire fighters wasn’t cool.


    It wouldn’t bring us anywhere to be honest. We had to set rules, systems, regimes that we would all follow even if I wasn’t present.


    I was here most of the time. Putting aside the two coincidences that happenedtely where I was temporarily away, I knew I’d leave for a longer time thanks to the golden quests.


    And I would take at least my jumper and Hry with me, in addition to a decent sized force of mine.


    So I had to make sure before leaving that everything was going to be ok when I was away. Or else once I was gone, all we aplished so far would be threatened and might be lost.


    They didn’t get all this. Even Hry, the one who managed to once rule supreme over the world, didn’t get it either. That wasn’t a mistake on their part… They were just inexperienced in this matter.


    All they knew for now was fight, fight until they bring their foes down or otherwise. But that was good in times of big wars. But what about times of peace? What about the big ns of building the kingdom up?


    “Let’s just give up a few ces,” I gave the final decision here, and they had to live with it, “we need to n which ces we should abandon. We don’t want to let key ces linking our frontier to be lost. Also we need to n the ces we are going to lose to safeguard against the uing attacks from other races.”


    “If we are going to do this,” Hry sighed, “then we have to let areas of our south be taken. The north and west are very vital to us. Also the centre can’t be lost.”


    “This is just a hell of big territory to cover up,” Isabe said.


    “We have to ept losing a few territories in the north,” I said, “after all our most important zone is the west and centre. Also we can’t just lose the entire southern region. We need to have a bridge with the southern allies of Selvators.”


    “So we have to distribute most of our forces like this,” Sara paused before adding, “we won’t have enough for your major n.”


    “We will have to improvise,” I thought for a second about the many tactics I knew about fightingrge numbers of monsters, “for example we can just station a certain number of forces for a big region. They will just rotate and move to defend one area at a time.”


    “This will exhaust them,” Sara said, and everyone nodded.


    “We have to do this,” I had no other solution but this, “also we can keep moving forces from the capital to the hot zones. Whenever we got forces with cultivation opened, they could move and help and rece other forces.”