The different tribes of monsters had gathered together and were now preparing for a larger-scale war with the 'intruders' of the island.
"That's way too fast... they were probably never really at war with each other." Jyuuk pointed out, "That's just not how they would act if that was the case, especially when it comes to the less-intelligent beasts. They wouldn't just let monsters like Goblins ride them without any resistance. Not within a single day, at least."
"So basically, they've been screwing around because they were bored?" Evalia summed up, and the Beastperson and animal-expert slowly nodded his head, "That's what I think, at least. Many cultures had things like war-games integrated in them, so it would make sense for that to be the case on an island like this in particular." After Jyuuk's explanation, Brody kept looking at the map laying on the table in front of him.
"Either way, these fuckers are far smarter than you'd expect them to be, that's for sure. They're split up into proper squads depending on their types of attacks, they have a proper camp set-up in front of what I guess to be the 'main town', and they're just helping each other out completely. Usually monsters like that would just attack without a second thought."
"Then that means that either those are all variant-monsters that are highly-intelligent and inherently less aggressive, or they have powerful captains and leaders that control everything."
"Yup, I think it may be both, to be honest. But they've definitely got captains, commanders and shit like that." Brody agreed with Jyuuk, "They've really got stuff properly set up. They've got stations within their camp that seem to be organized properly. A spot for first-aid, a spot where they keep their provisions, another place where they keep their weapons... The whole 'Army' is split up into four, and they completely surround the town with a focus on the side we're on, right? Well, each of the groups of the army has one 'leader' it seems, and obviously the squads have captains as well. But there has to be some supreme commander somewhere, and my guess would be that that's the Boss of the island."
After a bit of discussion, it seemed like everyone here understood the seriousness of the situation, and that it really wouldn't be possible to be as disorganized as they always were before, because the enemies were simply organized at a whole different level to what they experienced until now as well. Eisen moved his fingers through his beard in thought and then looked at the Demon-Orc sitting across from him, "Then how should we best deal with this situation?"
Brody closed his eyes, crossed his arms and leaned back into his chair, before he came up with a suggestion, "We should probably try and overpower them in some way. Force them to give up. If they were just the regular dumbass monsters, we couldn't do this because they would keep fighting back in any situation, but this is different. It's war. It ends with either complete annihilation of one side, or with one side giving up before that happens. Or, with a treaty to stop the war. First, we need to decide what we wanna do."
"Well... complete annihilation doesn't sound like the best goal. I think we should try and aim for a treaty or bring them to the point where they would admit defeat." Eisen suggested, until Brody slowly had a good idea.
"How about we do both?" Brody asked, and everyone looked at him slightly intrigued of what his idea was right now. And so, the Demon-Orc leaned forward and started to explain the plan. It had a quite simple base, and Brody would definitely need to think of proper tactics to actually make this happen after this, but it seemed like they were slowly getting there anyway.
"We'll bring them to the point where they would surrender, but just before they can give up, we suggest a treaty." Brody suggested, and the others quickly understood his reasoning behind this idea, although Hephaestus, with his loud mouth, just had to ask about it because he apparently didn't understand just yet.
"Why'd we do that? That's fucking dumb, let's just have them give up so that we can take whatever we want." The ego-item suggested, but Brody just sighed and shook his head.
"Listen, dude, it ain't about taking what we want. We need those monsters if we don't want the town to fall to ruin, ya know? Up until now, every island we've taken over has had a certain population of both monsters and humans. For one, because they're the ones that're actually living on the island in the towns. They're valuable manpower that we need to grow the town, have more people come here, and simply to have more numbers if we do end up having to wage literal war."
"Well, yeah, I got that part, but I don't get why we wouldn't just have them give up. We can treat them however we want then, right?" Hephaestus pointed out, and Eisen looked at him with a slight frown, "Just that that would be completely involuntarily on their part. It would be like we own them or something. And they obviously won't be happy if we do things like that, and may fight back at some point anyway. If we go for a treaty, on the other hand, both sides will agree. If the monsters find out that they were about to give up, but we offered to treat them like equals, then they're going to be happier to work with us. It's a simple way to get rid of too much opposition."
"Ah..." The ego-tool sighed, "That sounds way too fucking boring though..."
"I agree, I'm not good at that shit either. So Eisen's prolly gonna take that over, right?" Brody pointed out with a slight grin on his face, and the old man looked at him with his brows raised before he inevitably nodded his head, "I don't think I have much of a choice. Talking to the literal king of the invaders might make them more keen to listen as well."
"Wait what?" Hephaestus interrupted, "What do you mean, 'King'?"
"...we mentioned it before, I'm the King of the country made up of the islands we've taken over so far. That included the island whose boss you used to be." Eisen replied immediately, but Hephaestus just looked back at the old man, "...I kinda thought you were kidding, I mean... really? You? A King?"
"I will ignore the fact that you're being a bit rude right now and will make the active choice not to turn you into scraps as long as you just shut up." The old man grumbled quietly, before he looked back at the Demon-Orc, "Well, anyway, I'll take over when we get to that point. Until then, we're all yours to do whatever you want with. Just tell us how you want to deal with them." Eisen suggested, and Brody just nodded his head slowly as he cupped his chin with his fingers.
"A'ight..." He muttered quietly, "I think I have a pretty good plan."
---
Just a few hours later, the two main groups of the two factions had gathered on a rather level field where they could even spot a part of the town in the background behind the monster army. They had a lot of different monsters of different sizes, shapes and innate abilities. Some were the size of elephants, others the size of toddlers, but all of them seemed like they had specific purposes to them that they would need to be careful about.
Jyuuk prepared his squads of different undead to face the ones that the monsters had fighting for them as well. Number-wise, it seemed like the monsters were at a complete advantage, but luckily the side of the originals had much higher quality of items, fighters, and hopefully much better tactics.
One of those tactics was that every single fighter had a couple extra weapons on them. But not ones that they would fight with in the case of an emergency, but ones that would fight autonomously, as they were the haunted weapons that Jyuuk had created.
This would allow for surprise-attacks rather easily, as well as ways to defend everyone's back a bit more easily, as the weapons would be able to react to such things far more easily, as they sensed such things quite differently.
Either way, the moment that everything started, the first things that were shot out on either side were numerous arrows and long-range spells.
Obviously, either side was prepared for such things, just that they handled them differently. It seemed like the monsters were mostly trying to defend things physically, while the originals' side defended against it magically or through artifacts that would create defensive walls and barriers to block the incoming attacks. The good thing about this was that they were going to automatically activate in case some long-range attacks were shot at them, while the monsters had to stop what they were currently doing to defend. And like that, the originals' side already had quite a bit of an advantage.
And then, there was also the second advantage. And the third. And the fourth. Giant Eisen, Askr, as well as the healthily-combined version of the giant Light-Minotaur. There were also some larger golems, although it wasn't really possible for them to take the ego-buildings from the island of craftsmanship with them, as they were too large to fit through the dungeon's entrance just like that.
But still, they could make other golems inspired by them, something that Hephaestus was actually able to help with pretty well.
Like this, it was possible for their side to properly push certain groups back while defending against some of the more large-scale attacks. But for the most part, they were really just trying to be as flashy and show-offy as possible, so that they could implant the image of them being incredibly, overwhelmingly strong into the minds of the monsters.
However, just like they had expected, fighting a war against strong enemies was just something that pumped the monsters up even more, and they became somewhat harder to deal with, although still not too hard.
More and more, the originals' side managed to push back the monsters, until some of the groups were slowly pulling back after realizing that they wouldn't be able to fight back properly. Because while some on the monsters' side were dying, whenever the health of someone on the originals' side got too low, some of Melissa's special bees would come through and sting them. And since they were special bees, instead of injuring the ones they stung, they healed them until they were able to retreat to the 'healing field' set up by Caria, Jyuuk and Xenia together, where everyone that was standing in the area would end up slowly having their health recovered and their wounds healed.
The monsters were slowly realizing that while their numbers dwindled, through the necromancy of their enemies, their numbers were only growing. They would become stronger as the fight went on. They were realizing that this fight would be harder than they thought.