"But I got something to solve this problem," as I was growing a massive headache about this, she finally said something nice, "each region is controlled tightly by a group of one hundred towers…"
She leant over the drawing of her and started to draw circles. Each one contained one hundred towers, "if we dealt with the entire structure as a whole, we won't be able to do anything to it. But if we arranged it into different zones, each containing one hundred towers, then we could easily crush the defences there."
I looked at the circles she drew and at the entire drawing. To be honest, I didn't feel much about what she just said. Everything looked like a big puzzle in my eyes.
"I don't get what you mean," I honestly said. And she smiled as if she expected this.
"The ones who designed all this didn't have the ability to build a sophisticated layout expanding over hundred of miles as this one here. So they had to divide the entire region into zones, each controlled with one hundred towers."
I looked at the drawing again and when I thought about her words, I felt the drawing became simpler than before.
Even the complicated design of mine began to be much easier to understand.
"They aren't gods after all," I muttered, feeling much relieved that the scary ones who did all this were still suffering and struggling like normal beings.
Even if they got something novel like this layout, they still couldn't be this overbearing. And I was lucky to have someone like Isac by my side.
"So we need to attack that place zone by zone?" I asked, but unlike what I expected she shook her head.
"Doing this will put great pressure on our forces. After all, other regions won't stand idle and watch us dissemble the layout built near them."
"That's a good point," I nodded despite the lack of any happiness or enthusiasm, "but you have a solution for this, right?"
"Thinking about taking the entire zones out is crazy," she didn't directly answer my question and instead she started to draw smaller circles inside the bigger ones she previously drew, "I bet the ones who devised all this wanted any army coming at these defences to commit such a mistake."
"And?" I still didn't get the answer I wanted.
"In the smaller zones, taking down one third of the defensive towers would weaken the entire zone defences. And taking one half down would paralyse the entire zone defence."
"This…" I paused while looking at her drawing again, "according to your words, we need to take down at least fifty towers from each zone, right?"
"Either this," she didn't answer me directly again, "or we find a way to determine the main key points in each zone. Taking down these key points would bring the same effect."
"Aren't both the same?" I didn't get what she meant by this.
"No, the number of key points is smaller than the fifty towers…" she looked at me and I didn't say a thing. So she added, "if my guess is correct, then there are five main key points in each zone. Taking these down will turn the entire zone useless."
"That's great news!" I clapped my hands in excitement. Taking down fifty towers was indeed a hard task, and many of my elite forces would die doing this.
But if we just needed to take down five towers, then things would be much easier for my forces.
"I don't have a way to determine these key points…"
"That's bad news!" I frowned and my excitement vanished the moment she said this.
"The ones who designed everything are the ones who know where these key points are," she sighed, "even if we managed to ascertain a few key points location in a few zones, that wouldn't help."
"Why is that?" She seemed to read my mind. I was thinking about sending armies out there as a test, determine the location of these key points at a few zones and then aim towards the same locations at other zones.
"If I was them, and I admit I'm not even close to one tenth of their mastery over defensive arts, then I'd make sure the arrangement of these key points will be random. Even if few have the same places of their key points, this will be aimed to fool us and won't give us any help at all."
I listened to her logic and found it acceptable. Such great minds able to think about something this complicated and crazy wouldn't commit a newbie error like this.
But that meant learning all this didn't help at all. My forces had to deal with each zone as if they were exploring new undiscovered lands. With one hundred towers out there, only five of them would be the key points.
And that meant my forces had to attack all to determine which ones were the key points. Doing so would place my forces at greater risk, and the total loss count would escalate.
When I thought about it, I didn't find any benefit from doing this either. It was the same trying to attack the towers and determine the places of the key points and trying to damage fifty towers from the start.
At least the second way had the fixed goal of destroying fifty towers, which would be much easier to accomplish.
"Is there a way to determine the key points without the need of sending everyone to all the towers?" I held little hope for this, and when she shook her head I knew this was going to end up bad.
"I got something that may help…" just when I was lost in thoughts, trying to accept the grand loss awaiting my forces out there, a voice appeared from behind me, attracting my attention.
When I turned, I saw Garry walking towards me from the direction of my chariot's stairs.
"Do you have a solution for this?" I asked with anticipation.