Badge in Azure

Saleen already planned to let his people consume worms, he did not have a choice. The war would very soon spread to the whole mainland. In at most three years every country would be sucked into the Holy See’s war. By then, it would be even more difficult to purchase grain. Without stable logistical support, could they still fight a war?

The soldiers in the city did not know that Saleen was vexed over their food. Saleen had secretly altered their meals, increasing the ratio of fish and prawns. These things were not any less nutritious than beef or mutton, it was just a problem of taste.

Saleen had deployed a twenty-thousand man team each to both sides of the city wall. Metatrin City’s city walls were more special and extremely thick, they could not be destroyed by magic or divine spells. The upper half of the city walls were assembled using Dante’s Sequence, it was unlike the style of any other country on the Myers mainland.

There was a maze-like cloister that was built by piling up rectangular stone pieces, the cloister was sixty yards thick on either side. The fortress above the city walls was split into two stories that had a width of hundreds of yards. Even the side door was constructed in this manner. With this in mind, one could finally understand why Saleen took such a long time to construct the city walls despite having hundreds of thousands of spirits as his laborers.

These spirits worked through the night helping Saleen to build the city and the city walls consumed the most time.

People could live in the city walls. Twenty-thousand people lived in an eight-mile long city wall, it could actually accommodate one-hundred-thousand people. There were horse tracks within the city, they were slanted and lead towards the thirty yard tall city walls.

Saleen wanted to build an even taller city wall, but he could not do it. If the city walls were too tall, they would be taller than the magical towers.

One story in a magical tower was six yards tall, nine stories would equate to a height of fifty-four yards. Only the city walls of the Holy Rock City were higher than one-hundred yards, but that was only because the city itself had been carved out of a mountain, the height of its foundation was not even less than sixty yards.

Using a ladder to leap over a thirty yard tall city wall would result in massive casualties. The broken-edged barrier was not guarded because Saleen did not deploy too many mages, he did not want the mages to die there.

The thickness of Metatrin City’s wall was larger than its height, the wall was in fact an eight-mile long house. The entrance of the city was fifty yards wide while the exterior façade had a ten yard wide horse track and a soldiers’ fortress. If the enemy tried to leap atop the entrance, they could suffer a rampage by the cavalrymen.

As the cavalrymen charged horizontally across the horse track, the infantrymen scaling the city walls would not even be able to organize a defense formation. There were magic stone cannon platforms within the city, while the trebuchets on top were protected by magic arrays. These two weapons would not destroy each other.

The city did not contain any magical towers, the only structure which could function like a magical tower was Saleen’s temple. The temple was slightly far, it was about five miles from the city walls. Without a central magical tower to make the link, it could not contain any offensive power for the time being.

Fortunately, Saleen had many low grade mages at his disposal, they were all left behind by Lex. The intermediate grade mages had been taken by Lex, so these low grade mages actually became the main offensive force.

Once the three kings returned, Diyabannersa and Banchajanna would each defend one side. Each of them would lead thousands of spirits, cooperating with the soldiers and assisting in the defense.

The skeletal troops could fire arrows. Over long distances accuracy would not matter. The strength of a skeletal troop would not be exhausted, so Saleen had prepared large quantities of inferior bows for the skeletal troops to use. These bows had substantial might and a very long range, but their accuracy was pathetic. They would only be suitable for blanket-type scatter shots.

Along the road, fifty death knights were stationed at an interval of every two-hundred yards. Of course, these death knights could not rival the doom knights, but Saleen had given them heavy armor. It would still be pretty easy for them to conduct a rampage on the enemy’s infantry.

In the midst of the intense preparation for war another tens of thousands of people had swarmed into Metatrin City, they were the citizens of the nobles living nearby. From the broken-edged barrier to Metatrin City, the distance was about one-hundred miles. There were numerous villages and fortresses along the way. Saleen had already given his last order; to allow these nobles to seek refuge in his city. It was impossible for their fortresses to resist the Holy See’s army.

These nobles had to comply because they had only settled down in Metatrin City very recently. They could not recruit sufficient soldiers and had very little citizens. Even though it was easy to defend a small fortress, manpower was scarce. In the face of an offensive by a large army, such fortresses would not even last a day.

The expeditionary army rested for three days at the broken-edged barrier before continuing on its journey. The vanguards had already done a sweep across Metatrin’s plains, but they did not manage to plunder any grain and got attacked in western town. One of Lex’s emblem groups led thousands of mercenaries and rushed out of western town, flanking three-thousand of the Holy See’s light cavalrymen.

This emblem group was equipped with three-layered armor. Even though it was not made up of heavy cavalrymen, its offensive power was close to that of heavy cavalrymen already.

On the other hand, the less than four thousand mercenaries simply followed behind. Hundreds of them positioned at both sides of the enemy forming a clasp formation. It was as though Lex’s emblem group was a blade and the over three-thousand mercenaries were the steel pieces which sandwiched the blade.

This assault was analogous to a swordsmanship expert using a longsword to swipe at a person’s neck. With a crack, the three-thousand expeditionary cavalrymen were cut off in the middle. This offensive was swift and decisive, the expeditionary army did not even have the chance to alter its formation. Not many enemies were slaughtered, only about two-hundred of them. As most of the expeditionary troops were struck by cavalry crossbows, their injuries were not serious.

Lex’s emblem group turned around and charged at the enemy again. This time around, her soldiers had changed to lances. During this abrupt dash, they tore another piece of flesh from the enemy, killing around two-hundred people. Lex’s emblem group then left in style. In these two instances, almost five-hundred people were lost, it was definitely a huge blow to the three-thousand vanguard cavalrymen.

The enemy wanted to give chase, but they were not as familiar with the terrain as Lex’s men. In this tapered region, the mercenaries had disposed of their shovels and sharp antlers to allow the speed of the cavalry to be reduced to its minimum. This action made the expeditionary army’s cavalrymen realize that this place was no Tanggulasi Empire.

The mages whom Saleen had hidden in the hilly region observed this whole event and the three kings sighed in regret. If they had coordinated with this offensive, then all three-thousand cavalrymen would have died there. The order Saleen had given was to attack the large force traveling behind these cavalrymen though. The Holy See’s army used light cavalrymen as the spearhead force, there were another ten-thousand soldiers at the back.

The three kings were going to attack these ten-thousand soldiers and then flee before the main forces at the back arrived.

The vanguards had retreated, they should be meeting up with the ten-thousand strong army soon, before entering the periphery of western town. Banchajanna flew onto the battlefield and grabbed a corpse on the way. He smelled it and his face contorted in disgust.

Seeing Banchajanna return dragging a corpse in hand, the other two spirit kings also detected a tinge of strange smell. It was like the scent of the gods, but it was not quite like it either. This smell contained an evil which exceeded the scope of the rules.

“These people…” The three kings looked at one another, then turned to look at the soldiers behind them. These soldiers had been recruited by the nobles. The five camps under Saleen’s command did not simply recruit anyone. The offensive power of these soldiers was pretty good, but they were ignored because of their age. Since the regular army did not have a place for them, they defected to the nobles.

Judikaka said, “Let’s go back, there’s no need to ambush anymore.”

The commanders leading the human troops were in a tight spot, but they did not dare argue with the three spirit kings. Judikaka cast a death spell, when this spell was targeted at the corpse, it caused the corpse to explode with a clap.

Diyabannersa also shook his head, this corpse was effected with a divine spell and death magic could no longer manipulate it. This situation was more severe than the one in the beginning. When the expeditionary army first entered Phoenix, the bodies of the soldiers were not displaying such serious symptoms yet.

The thousands of troops hiding in the hills retreated, leaving behind some Caucasus people and barbarians to continue observing the enemy. Judikaka flew onto the battlefield, destroying all the bodies. After transforming all of them into a pile of decomposed flesh, he led the army back to Metatrin City.

Judikaka went to visit Saleen personally, he was afraid that Diyabannersa or Banchajanna would spout the wrong things and anger Saleen. Judikaka was not disobeying the order, but this order was not very meaningful anymore.

In the temple, Judikaka could feel an unknown pressure, “Saleen is merely a grade-6 mage, even if he is making tremendous progress, he shouldn’t be able to exert pressure on monarch-grade spirits, right?”

Judikaka did not look too much into it, he told Saleen, “There is something amiss with the soldiers in the Holy See’s army. Be it the Corpse Explosion Skill or the Undead Soldier Spell, their bodies are not affected.”

“Oh? I don’t know much about death magic and divine spells, give me a moment.” Speaking, Saleen told someone to get Narnia, then he continued questioning Judikaka.

“What is going on, did you not conduct an ambush?”

“The soldiers of the expeditionary army are infected with a vicious divine spell. I don’t know the specifics, but within a year, the offensive power and constitutions of these soldiers will be forcefully boosted. No matter their injury, they will be able to recover swiftly under the effect of this divine spell.”

Narnia nodded and said, “There is indeed a divine spell that works like this, but it will consume the soldier’s lifespan in exchange.”

“Yes, when I was at the borders, I could still manipulate those dead soldiers for a while. Now I can’t and only less than a month had passed. This means that the divine spell veiled in the soldiers’ bodies is slowly increasing its speed of influence. I estimate that these soldiers will not live for more than six months even if we do not kill them. The ones with the shortest lifespans might only live for two to three months.”

Saleen inhaled a breath of cold air. The life of the Tanggulasi people were slightly shorter, but they could also live for eighty to ninety years. On average, the age of a soldier in an expeditionary army would not be more than thirty-five years old. The Holy See had condensed the other forty or fifty years of remaining life of the soldiers in order to release massive offensive power. Even if these soldiers conquered Metatrin City, they would still die off swiftly.

What could be crueler than this? For their religion, these soldiers had traveled about twenty-thousand miles to Metatrin. In the end? Before they set off on this expedition, their fates had already been sealed, they would die on foreign soil.

“What about the main forces?”

“I didn’t come into contact with them. The main forces consist of grand swordmasters and holy masters above grade-8, I don’t wish to take the risk,” Judikaka answered honestly.