A Pre-emptive Move

I remembered playing online chess a long time ago.

In offline chess, when time was short, you had to move your pieces quickly, which often led to chaos – accidentally knocking over other pieces or failing to press the clock switch properly.

In online chess, however, you could pre-move, or 'Premove,' allowing you to queue up your moves even during your opponent's turn. This meant you could make several moves even if you had less than a second left on the clock.

Of course, unless you were smart enough to predict all of your opponent's moves or could force their hand, unexpected moves could still put you in danger.

“Anna.”

“Yes, General.”

It was a very useful memory, applicable to my current situation.

Ever since Caligo declared he would take direct command, things have been different.

I could feel his tactics changing rapidly, both in the long scout skirmishes in the forest and in the battle currently underway, but his changes were merely reactions to our own tactics.

The direction of his changes was also intuitive enough to be predictable, and he even continued to show an immature side, making several trial-and-error attempts, far from perfect...