"Did they really win?"
Chris stared at the battle report in amazement.
He had known the players were very likely to win, but capturing an entire military camp intact, taking nearly four thousand prisoners, and seizing mountains of supplies and five thousand horses... the sheer scale of their victory far exceeded even his most optimistic estimate.
Of those five thousand horses, the players would take more than three thousand. They would probably sell the remaining two thousand or so to the logistics officer in exchange for military merit and equipment.
As for the wealth the Retalians had plundered, the players would keep a small portion of the most valuable items for themselves or discreetly sell them on the black market. Most of the spoils would still go to the quartermaster.
In other words, more than half-perhaps even most-of the proceeds from the players' capture of the Retalian Army camp would actually end up in Chris's pocket.
That was the advantage of running the platform.
Then Chris found himself troubled by the players' follow-up requests.
It was not just the four thousand prisoners of war. So many Retalians had caught him completely off guard, and he had no idea exactly how to handle them.
The players also wanted Chris to send troops to take over the camp's defenses, and that posed another difficulty.
The reason was simple: he lacked manpower.
Chris was desperately short of men. The five planned Defense Force corps and the Hegrande Legion were already in place, giving him roughly ten thousand men. On paper, that seemed like a sizable force.
But compared with the Raitelian invaders described in the intelligence reports, ten thousand was hardly enough.
He was already outnumbered. Splitting his forces and sending a detachment right under the enemy's nose at the players' request seemed