The stream of women came for Alex almost all at once. The battle formation they currently used, the formation that all the warriors of Sunspear used, was one where the group encircled their enemy at the center.
Then, they would attack the beast from each side, using the beast’s blind spot to always land an attack on it.
Alex understood how this formation worked, so he was constantly on the lookout for attackers in his blind spot, and every time he did notice someone approaching, he purposely delayed his reaction just for the sake of fairness.
The girls were fantastic fighters and worthy warriors. They attacked as well as anyone would have in their situation, which meant they had made the best use out of the battle formation that they could.
Alex was consistently being punched on the back and his sides. There were a few times he managed to fight back against one of the attackers, but then another one would come at him.
Even though he had allowed most of them to even touch him during the battle, he still had to agree that the battle formation they had used was quite a good one, especially since they were making use of everyone instead of just a single person.
Sadly, however, that was the part where this battle formation truly shined.
The women caught their breath with their hands on their knees, as their eyes looked at Alex who simply walked back to his spot without breaking a single sweat. They had attacked him so much that he should have been sweating just from the pain of it all.
And yet, Alex had nothing to show for the fact that he had just gone up alone against nearly 50 female warriors in total. His nonchalance made them realize that he had been holding back when fighting against all of them.
That made them scared to find out just how truly strong he was.
“You have done well,” Alex told the group. “You are excellent fighters and your usage of the battle formation was great. But now, I must ask something of you all. Would you all please learn a variation on your current battle formation?”
The women looked around in confusion. They whispered among themselves, trying to figure out just what Alex was talking about.
“Gather around,” Gorang said. “This is what you all are here for in the first place, so listen carefully to what you will all be taught.”
Alex described the new formation and how they should all be playing it. Since the new formation had a single main fighter in their mix, Alex let the women decide who their new ‘leader’ should be for the formation.
They quickly chose a 23-year-old lady by the name of Shumaere to be their leader for the new formation. Then, they began learning about the new formation.
The new battle formation was difficult to understand at first. In their original formation, anyone could attack at any time if they found the opportunity to.
However, in this one, just a single person was to attack their opponent. Everyone else was just a decoy, meant to distract the person.
“The leader stays in the shadow of the beast, the blind side where its senses cannot reach. While the other fighters attack and force your opponent to pay attention to them, the leader will swoop in from the other side and attack them. That is the main advantage of this formation.”
The girls looked… disappointed. It all felt so contrived to make a single person fight when there were so many others right there.
“The other advantage of this battle formation is that it will be just as useful even when you have as little as 3 people. The other one fails when you have fewer than 10 different people.”
Alex looked at how the girls felt about all of that and couldn’t help but laugh on the inside upon seeing their look. They did not trust any of what he had said at all.
Alex could only smile at that. “Come on. You’ll understand the difference on your own when you actually try it out. For now, let us do with just 20 people so you don’t accidentally mess up. Same rules as before. No actual skills or techniques during the attacks. You may use your spears if you wish to.”
20 women started fighting Alex while the rest stayed behind and watched. Shumaere, the leader of this group, was the one that was the most active with the current battle formation.
While the others fought Alex to get his attention toward them, she was the one going behind him and dealing the most damage.
Even as just 20 of them fought Alex, instead of the nearly 50 from before, they were doing far better than anyone could have expected. Aside from a few problems here and there, the battle went as well as anyone could have hoped.
Alex continued fighting for a while before he came to a few conclusions about the new battle formation he had set up from their original battle formation.
First of all, this battle formation could be used even when everyone aside from the leader was far weaker. As long as they could stick around and just do the bare minimum of distracting the target, they would successfully defeat their target with a sufficiently strong leader.
They also needed far fewer people in general to be part of the battle formation for it to be successful.
However, Alex had also noticed that he was somewhat wrong in his previous assessment of their battle formation. While it was clear that it was missing something crucial, he could now see why it was that way.
These warriors were all of the same level of strength in general, so having someone singular lead their group made the other fighters be wasted. Over time, that had to have been the reason why they had changed.
Once the few minutes of battle were over, Alex walked back to Gorang.
“So, what do you think? It’s good, isn’t it?”
Gorang nodded. “It’s great. Now we’ll just have to get them prepared for the chief to see the improvement.”