The castle itself wasn't anything too impressive since s.h.i.+ro had seen better castles before. Even the Spirit Capital had a better castle.

Approaching the castle, they could see quite a few demon guards raising their weapons towards them.

However, when Akog jumped out the car, they immediately dropped their weapons and kneeled on one knee.

"We have returned with the princess. Prepare 10 chambers for our guests." Akog said as the guards nodded their heads.

Dismissing the car, the group entered the castle while Akog led them to the throne room.

"So are there only two demon n.o.bilities in this faction or are there more?" s.h.i.+ro asked curiously.

"There is one more person and she's been helping out with a lot of the planning. She wasn't able to come pick you up princess but that's because she is very busy." Akog sighed.

"That's fine, we seemed to be quite low on manpower so I don't blame you." Madison chuckled.

"We can talk to her in a bit but can you first tell us about our sphere of influence, military power as well as resources such as food?"

"Our sphere of influence right now is a single city and a small mine. Everything else has already been taken." Akog sighed heavily.

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"That's not a lot." s.h.i.+ro furrowed her brows.

"What's the plan? Hit hard and fast or do you want to be stealthy and slow?" s.h.i.+ro glanced back at Madison since this was her choice.

"Hmm… What do you mean by hard and fast or stealthy and slow?" Madison asked.

"Well hard and fast will have us target the most important locations of each region. We'll ignore the less important land and conquer it in the fastest way possible. We can secure our grasp on the weaker territories later. As for stealthy and slow, we'll conquer each land thoroughly without leaving a single one behind. This will take a while and could make the higher ranks focus their attention on us quickly." s.h.i.+ro explained.

Hearing this, Madison stayed silent and thought about the options.

The first option lets them hit hard and fast but at the expense of a stable foundation. Should the higher ranks send an army to them, while they may be able to fight it for a while, it doesn't allow them to protect their own land. If they were just on their own, this option would be fine since they wouldn't need any land. But since they were acting as a small faction, they needed to be concerned about where the residents stayed.

If they leave it defenceless, it could end very poorly for them.

However, just as she thought of this, she realised that she forgot about their strongest ally. s.h.i.+ro.

She is able to protect an entire city all by herself since she could construct hundreds of weapons at once. They didn't need to worry about the main base since s.h.i.+ro would be able to arm it with defensive measures.

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"s.h.i.+ro, if we picked the first option, would you be able to make some defensive weapons and barriers to protect the city? That way we wouldn't need to be worried if we charge forth into battle." Madison asked.

"Sure I can do that. Plus, if my weapons detect something and start fighting, I can open a portal back here immediately and deal with the threat. Naturally, just having weapons won't be enough. I'll prepare some barriers and make sure the places we conquer are well fortified." s.h.i.+ro chuckled as Madison nodded her head.

"Since we have low numbers, I'm thinking we take advantage of our strongest aspect which is our offensive power and hit them hard and fast. Acquire as much land as we can, fortify them and pressure them at the north. But since we don't know the limits of their power, I say we hold back a little and keep our trump cards. That way we can surprise the rankers when they attack. Right now, we're at a disadvantage in terms of information and manpower so we should refrain from showing everything." Madison suggested with a serious expression.

"Are you sure we'll be able to take land with just how many people we have now?" Akog asked with a worried expression.

"It's fine. All of us have improved since the last time we fought you so we're much stronger than before. Plus, we have two blade sainteses on our team and just one could face against an armour never mind two. I have potions and long ranged support while Silvia has buffs. Madison can run rampant without worry of tanking since she has raw offensive power which is the same as Helion. Chen Yu will be able to a.s.sa.s.sinate high priority targets while Yin's power is specialised for large area of effects which will hit multiple enemies. Lisandra can act as our priority target since she is plenty strong herself but since she can dash around the battlefield at high speeds, she can help cover for everyone if they begin to struggle. As for Aarim, I don't even need to explain what Aarim does since she's a better mage than Yin. Her gravity magic can stall or even crush the opposing army that tries to block us." s.h.i.+ro chuckled since she had a pretty good idea on the party's power and it leaned heavily on the offense. The control mage, healer and tank can go on the offense and become one of the highest damage dealers in a different party.

Hearing what s.h.i.+ro had said, Akog found it a little unbelievable but didn't say anything.

"We can do a small practice run though since we aren't exactly experts at damage control." s.h.i.+ro laughed.

Hearing this, the party glanced to the side embarra.s.singly since they knew they were awful at controlling their damage to not harm the surroundings. If they wanted to control it properly, they'll need to decrease the power output otherwise it'll be hard not to damage the buildings.

"If we want to hit hard and fast, we won't be able to build up a proper army so the best that we can do is use them to defend the place or take them as prisoners." s.h.i.+ro shrugged. If they were doing things slow, she could probably take some time to make sure the soldiers were loyal to them but since they were hitting fast, they couldn't use the soldiers since they were unknown variables. If they decide to turn on them, it could end poorly. Naturally, this meant losing all of their territory rather than life since s.h.i.+ro could teleport them away if things turned south.

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"If we do use them as city defence, I'll be tracking them with nan.o.bots that will kill them the moment they turn against us." s.h.i.+ro warned as the party didn't mind. They had seen their fair share of traitors during the time that they had been away from s.h.i.+ro.

Killing traitors for bounties or quests wasn't anything new.

While the party was formulating their plans, Akog could only sigh heavily since he had hoped that they could build up a stable army but that was wishful thinking. They had no land or resource right now so having a proper army was impossible.

"Right then, since we need some practice, why don't we secure a rather weak land first, just so that we can get into the swing of things." s.h.i.+ro smiled before turning to Akog.

"Do you know a decent land that we can secure in the southern borders? One that isn't too important but not useless either." s.h.i.+ro asked as Akog thought about it for a moment.

Pulling out a map of the southern border, he marked down where they were currently.

"There's a somewhat decent farmland towards our west with a fortress nearby keeping guard. It's roughly an hour or so in travel if we used the vehicle we used before. The guards that are tasked with protecting the farmland are somewhat powerful but in reality, they're only there for decoration." Akog explained.

"Hmm… interesting. Who does this farmland belong to?" s.h.i.+ro asked while checking the other territories in the southern border that could potentially be important.

"This farmland belongs to rank 70, Balire Vernix. A queen candidate."

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"Can you mark out her territory?"

Pointing out a small city roughly a few hour's travel away from the farmland, s.h.i.+ro could see that it was even closer to the human territory than where they were. If anything, should the humans decide to launch another attack at that very spot, they would probably be able to take the city and force the queen candidate to leave.

"Let's take this farm then. I won't do anything other than maybe support from a distance. I want to see if you lot can take the farmland without killing anyone since the difficulty of this is rather low." s.h.i.+ro grinned.

Nodding their heads, the party made a few quick preparations and got ready to move out.

It was still around midday so they had plenty of time to secure the farmland and come back in time for dinner.