Karna valiantly took charge of the elite legion and controlled the battlefield like a true guildmaster for the first time ever.
Karna had long realised that the other commanders including Asmodeus were basically useless in leadership, as they lacked the appropriate battle experience of leading a legion of this size.
Albeit talented in combat themselves and undoubtedly stronger than Karna, they were still not good enough leaders.
Karna would try to not invoke trouble with people stronger than him if he could avoid it , however he realised that if he truly wanted to fill Rudra's shoes someday he needed to start showing more spine and call out the mistakes of others eventhough it might not be pleasant on the ears.
Karna said " Asmodeus you're doing it wrong , pull back the seventh squad and redirect the third squad to fight with the fifth one.
They are taking too much heat from facing the winged demons and could use some long range fighters".
Asmodeus glared at Karna and said " Don't teach me how to rally my troops human , Shakuni is the only human i recognise as my equal ".
Many troops stopped fighting for a second to look at the two commanders fighting, most of them expected karna to back-off after this insult by Asmodeus but Karna did nothing of the sort.
Karna drew his sword and pointed it at asmodeus's throat as he said " Guildmaster shakuni had appointed me as the commander of the first legion in his absence , the first legion commander outranks the second legion commander in combat and refusing my command in war will be judged by lord Hades as treason.
Pull your damn troops back and redirect them where support is needed i won't repeat myself twice ".
Saying so Karna ran off into a fighting area that needed his support and was taking too much heat as Asmodeus was left gulping at the ferociousness displayed by the human.
In the end he complied to Karna's orders and soon Karna also started to operate the fifth legion under Beelzebub as well.
However not only did Karna show excellent war accumen he also displayed superior fighting skills , performing one of the best fight sequences of his life as he took down a tier 5 demon commander alongside Medivh.
It was a truly exhilarating fight and also an important one that changed the momentum of the battle for the fort as soon the attacking forces started to overwhelm the defending ones.
Karna showed up everywhere just like Rudra did and helped nudge the war effort in just the right direction so that maximum goals could be achieved with minimal casualties.
The display of his strength was so dominant that by the end of the fight the troops across all legions were singing chants of his praises.
His name reverberated across the fort of Mirzapur as if he were an immortal god , and it truly felt exhilarating to him.
However while he expected his heart to feel content with thousands chanting his name , what he actually felt was a strong void in his heart as if he missed the guildmaster being here.
Somehow karna felt he was happier in chanting these war chants and fighting in the direction the guildmaster nudged him towards as he felt truly happy when he sang those chants , just like the soldiers below.
Hearing his own chants was a humbling experience but the burden that came with it was truly monumental. Only he knew how much pressure he had handled over the last 50 days to make this attack successful.
Only he knew how many nights he had spent sleepless as he tried to think of a way that this plan of his was flawed. How his heart would panick when he saw a small piece of the puzzle not perform like he expected and how anxious he had been to fix that problem and nudge it towards the greater good.
It was a truly exhausting experience so much so that he wished nothing more than taking a few months off Omega just to recuperate from all the stress , which just made him wonder how Rudra did what he did for all these years.
There was never peace at the elite headquarters with one war or another always looming over their heads. On an average the elites fought two major wars every year and mostly all of them had been atleast this stressful.
Finding newfound respect for Rudra and what he did for all these years karna finally felt like he needed to start stepping up so that Rudra could finally start stepping down and take it easy for a while.
While the clean-up and the aftermath of this fight was yet to be handled , one thing became clear for the army of death and that was the fact that nothing blocked their way from here to the capital city anymore.
Their campaign in hell was nearing its completion, as according to the scouts Lucifer had already called for all his forced from the west to amass a truly massive army behind the gates of the capital city.
The endgame was near and according to the timeline Rudra had given them , they would start the raid on the capital city in nearly 20 days time. Which would be the last and most glorious fight of their lives in Omega.
Although Karna tried his best the fight against the fort was a heavily men intensive fight as they needed to fight against well fortified positions and the only logical way to advance was to sacrifice troops in the process.
However even still the army of death was left with 84 million troops in the end , which was 4 million more than what Rudra deemed as the baseline to conquer the capital , and high quality troops at that with only 14 million of the forces being tier 2 while the rest 70 million being tier 3.
/// Bonus chapter for the supergift by Cervantez91, thank him in the comments for this one ///