There’s another thing that I find fascinating in “Salvos”. I mentioned “generals” before, but those are nothing like what we have here. Our generals command armies from a distance, aggregate intelligence in the command centre and issue orders. In the “Salvos” universe, the generals are the strongest fighters who lead the armies in battle. They inflict the greatest damage to the enemy, deal with the most powerful units, and increase their army’s likelihood of survival. The rest of the army follows, deals with the lesser units that swarm the battlefield, and support the general in battle.

The way they fight depends on their specialty. A Warrior, for instance, fights at direct proximity. He uses strength and toughness to break through hard targets and clear the way. A Mage works from a distance, avoiding close contact and firing off spells and Skills. Some Archmages with the ability to fly, like Clayton, Helena and Salvos, observe from a high vantage point and then deal with the priority threats. Rogues, like Orgaf and Salvos, use a combination of magic, speed and blades at close quarters to deal with enemies. Salvos is a combination of a Mage and a Rogue; she uses a combination of moving and observing quickly across the battlefield, and then closing the distance and destroying the target in close combat, using a combination of speed, brute force, creation magic, fire magic and even space magic. In the battle of Inor, Helena and Clayton provided support from the air, hovering on their clouds and occasionally teleporting to evade, while Salvos and Orgaf flew quickly around the enemies at close proximity, risking injury, but also dealing tremendous amounts of damage. The highest levelled fighters, the generals, are at the front lines of every major fight, and are dealing with the most powerful enemies who would otherwise easily destroy the lower levelled fighters. This creates a completely different battle scenario compared to what we have here. Here, if a general is killed, it means that the command infrastructure is disrupted. In the “Salvos” world, it means that the lower levelled combatants are left unprotected from the higher levelled enemies who can easily wipe them out if they are not harassed by someone near their level. So, here on Earth if a general dies, you promote a colonel and usually this doesn’t really mean anything serious. In the “Salvos” world, it’s like a tank brigade or a close support airforce unit being wiped out, leaving the infantry vulnerable. It’s a completely different way of waging war. For instance, when Mori Gladius and the Salvos clones were killed at Westshield, the entire adventurer army was left completely vulnerable and had to retreat in chaos lest it be completely destroyed. Without their powerful protectors, and exposed to lvl. 174 Levithus, they were nothing more than cannon fodder. But before that, Belzu was completely tied up by Salvos clones and Mori Gladius and couldn’t afford to lose focus because they would instantly kill him, so the army was free to evacuate the civilians and deal with lesser foes. But when Levithus arrived, killed Mori Gladius and the remaining Salvos clone, and wounded Belzu and forced him to flee with the remnants of his forces, the human army was left completely vulnerable. Here on Earth, if the commanders are wiped out, the infantry will hold its own just fine, because they are the ones who are actually inflicting the damage to the enemy. But on the Nexeus, if the generals are wiped out, the infantry is completely exposed to a threat they can’t deal with and it usually means either escape or instant death.

One would expect that this means that the infantry is a mere protected entity there and the generals on both sides could fight it out without their help, but that’s not how it works. You see, a solitary general can easily be overwhelmed by numbers if he has no support. His Skills will be exhausted if he has to deal with large numbers of annoying lesser targets in addition to the main enemy. When the Skills are exhausted, they are on cooldown and can’t be used for some time. This means that rushing into the hostile army without support that will dilute the enemy’s focus is foolish and deadly.

As a matter of tactics, someone like Salvos who has a temporary invulnerability Grand Skill might intentionally expose herself to the enemy and let them exhaust their Skills, forcing them into cooldown, and allowing the lesser units to deal with them more easily. She also lessens the problem of all the enemies focusing on her by introducing her clones who create chaos in the enemy lines, and provide multiple strong targets that draw fire away from herself. Her weakness is her tunnel vision, because she often gets in too deep without a way out, and she needs support from her companions in battle, because they tend to know when she needs to be pulled out because she ran out of Skills at just the wrong time.

So, the way Humans fight in the “Salvos” world is very specific, and they don’t have the concept of “acceptable losses”. They don’t have the concept of sacrificial troops you throw at the enemy in order to soften them for the general. The Human general goes first and cracks the hardest nuts, and then his support units take care that he’s not overwhelmed, that he can be quickly evacuated and healed if he’s wounded and so on. For Humans, all losses are avoided if at all possible.

But that’s not how the Demon forces of Regnorex fight. To Regnorex, everybody but himself is expendable. Everybody he sent to the Mortal Realm was sacrificial. His entire legions of slave Demons are cannon fodder that protects his stronger units. He talks a lot about salvation for Demonkind, but in reality, he’s just getting everybody killed for his crazy fantasy.

Salvos is the exact opposite to that mentality. She initially learned to fight together with Haec, and the goal is that both of them survive and grow stronger. The fighting was very calculated and tactical. The intent was to survive and avoid injury first, and everything else second. When she got stranded in the Mortal Realm, she was accompanied by the adventurers, and the goal of the adventurers is to get rich and famous, not get killed doing foolish things. The only adventurer who got people killed and barely survived doing foolish things was Edithe, who then had a hard time getting over that later. As a rule, the adventurers are careful, calculated, and only go into a fight if the odds are good that all of them will come home. They don’t calculate on taking losses, and no losses are acceptable. Losses are a tragedy. Losses are a sign that you’re a shitty commander. It suited Salvos perfectly, and she was easily convinced by her companions to become an adventurer, because what’s not to like? She gets to kill wild things, bandits and nuisances and even gets paid for it. So, the adventurers don’t fight like an army. An army would stand their ground because they have orders. The adventurers are more clever about it; apparently less disciplined and organized, but only apparently, because they are trained in getting shit done while keeping themselves and their companions alive. That’s why an adventurer army looks like a disorganized mob, but it’s incredibly hard to kill and usually gets shit done with minimal losses. The adventurers fight in teams, and those teams are like special forces guys who are used to living in forests and killing dangerous things. They know exactly how to work together and get results. They don’t look as impressive as the marching columns of an army, but that too resembles our special forces and their small tactical teams. An adventurer army will disperse into small fighting units that will deal with specific tasks, but the appearance of chaos hides a deeper truth: they get paid to kill shit, not to look fancy.

So, the fact that an army is helpless and unprotected without its main generals is a reason why the fact that Salvos just left her five million army of Demons is so significant. Before, Haec would force them into battle with Regnorex, counting on Salvos to do the heavy lifting, and provide means of escape if the strategy fails badly. But without Salvos, he was forced to face the reality: that “army” is merely a protected entity, a mob of freed slaves that would run in all directions if attacked. Higher levelled Demons are there to survive, not to get killed on his foolish errand. Literally nobody will follow an order to go and fight Regnorex for him, so he’s forced to stop and do nothing, which saved their lives. It’s literally the only move they could have made that would not get them instantly wiped out, and Salvos forced them into it by not being there to mask their lack of a plan with her ability to win fights against incredibly overpowered opponents. The best thing for the survival of that massive group of Demons is if they can’t be seen by Haec as an army, because Haec learned from Regnorex. He has emotional attachment for Salvos, but he thinks like Regnorex. He has the concept of acceptable losses. He thinks of an army as something that charges into battle. Salvos thinks of them as a group she needs to hide in order to protect them.

So, now we wait to see what happens when she comes back and the concept of leading five millions of Demons into battle where they all get killed is no longer on the table.