Badge in Azure

Saleen entrusted the task of organizing and training the mercenary group to Gurney. Saleen could not help himself from feeling gloomy that Gurney was the only one that turned out to be dependable amongst the pirates that he recruited in the beginning. He was too naïve back then to think that those pirates only needed training to form a powerful army.

Saleen was not worried about training as Daniel’s subordinate would assist Gurney while Eleanor would be in charge of organizing and planning the training.

What Saleen needed to do was to build a city where the four kingdoms intersected. This city could potentially face threats from all four sides so it was necessary to build a complicated castle. Saleen only intended to use this place as a means to reduce losses incurred by his and Lex’s armies and not to launch attacks.

Saleen could not possibly replicate Metatrin City again as the resources required were too huge.

Metatrin City was built with not only white rocks, but also large amounts of magic nuclei. If not for the reserves of magic nuclei and Sregl Island’s support, Saleen would never have been able to incorporate Dante’s Sequence when building the city walls.

Two Sregl Island grand mages had already been sent to the region to assess the land quality and choose an appropriate location to build the city. At the moment, Saleen was trying to mine as much white rocks as possible while also ordering the alchemy workshops to produce as many alchemy arrows as possible.

The Metatrin Mercenary Group would not consist of sorcerers so other than the magic tower, they would also need a lot of alchemy crossbows and magic cannons. Whatever defense they had would be pointless if the enemy could easily fly over the city walls.

Fortunately, the red krill brought back by the winged skeleton would solve this issue. Creating the armor was a long process, which was why Saleen only expected the army to be ready by the end of the year. If Laiyin Duchy was to launch an attack earlier than expected, then he would have to utilize his main forces.

The mercenary soldiers lacked armor so the Emperor secretly ordered men to bring over five-thousand suits, but this was still insufficient. Saleen started everything from scratch, but he would never allow the mercenary soldiers to wear their own armor to battle. Not only were they of poor quality, they looked messy too.

Eventually, Saleen could wait no longer. He planned to send many mages over to build the new city. Since this city was to be fully militarized and there was no need to consider how to accommodate the citizens, four months should be more than enough. Other than the main forces of the mercenaries, the remaining forty-thousand soldiers must complete their training in four months and their equipment must arrive even earlier.

Saleen distributed the equipment of his ten main forces to the mercenaries. The officers of the main forces were not agreeable with this move at first and all sought to speak to Saleen about it. As a result, Saleen had to summon all the first-grade regimental officers to the palace and explained the plan to everyone.

After seeing Saleen’s magic model, the officers were pleased. Saleen asked the mages to redesign the equipment for the ten main forces so that they should be better than those that were given out. This was clearly more troublesome.

The Metatrin Mercenary Group was happier than the main forces, especially the newly recruited soldiers, since they had never worn armors of such high quality before. The equipment that Saleen had given to his main forces were tough but light and could easily match the standard equipment issued to the Qin main forces.

Every soldier was given seven weapons and one big wagon would carry the equipment of one-hundred men in addition to a magic apprentice. These apprentices joined the military as they had no hopes of becoming mages. Magic apprentices did not possess magic chords, but could train themselves to develop sword aura. They also possessed greater knowledge of magic medicine so they also played the role of medics in the military.

Most people died in battles due to infections to their wounds. Some magic apprentices would carry around plenty of medicine to keep such losses to the minimum. On some occasions where the soldiers’ limbs were cut off, the magic apprentices were even able to use magic to reattach the limbs after the end of the battle.

Although these men would no longer be able to continue as soldiers, at least they could still carry on with their daily lives.

This was how Saleen gained the confidence of his troops. Deploying just one magic apprentices in every one-hundred soldiers, the latter’s morale would be greatly boosted. In actual fact, low-level apprentices could only cast grade-0 spells and were negligible in battles.

The only problem was warhorses. Saleen did not manage to purchase many warhorses and Daniel was occupied with work. He only had limited skeletal warhorses and could only give some of them to the officers. Saleen had wanted Aini to settle this issue, but Aini was in the midst of advancing into a sorcerer and would not be able to participate in expeditions.

Fortunately, Saleen did not plan to attack Laiyin Duchy immediately. Even five-hundred-thousand soldiers might not be sufficient, not to mention fifty-thousand. The powerful Sikeqinya was supporting Laiyin Duchy so it would be useless to take over the land only to lose it very quickly after that.

Saleen’s plan was to build a huge city, so that everyone that passed by would feel intimidated. Foot soldiers were more useful than knights in guarding cities.

The mercenaries were sent to north town for their training while the factories in Metatrin City were hard at work to produce the defense equipment for the new city and also the new equipment for Saleen’s ten main forces.

Pasatilo and Kanuka quickly returned back to Metatrin City. They had both advanced to grade-6 mages so they used flying techniques. If they had chosen to walk, they would have to travel seven-thousand to eight-thousand miles from Metatrin to the border of Laiyin. Even if they took shortcuts, they would only travel one-thousand miles less. They only needed to travel five-thousand miles by flight.

In total, the two mages spent six months on their travels and recce of the lands.

There were six regions on the magic map that they brought back. Three of the regions were to be used in the future and only the other three were suitable for building a city in the intersection of the four kingdoms.

The first region was very close to a huge plain with a cluster of mountains behind it. The second region was a concave area below a gigantic mountain. The area of concavity was less than a mile, so it was not big enough to fit the entire city in it. The third region was a lake with an enormous island in its center.

These magic projections came with notes of explanation. The two Sregl Island mages were knowledgeable about building cities and had even investigated the underwater elements to ensure that there would be no possibilities of earthquakes. The land was suitable for building a city and there would be no issues in terms of magic physics in constructing any type of building.

Saleen thought about it carefully and chose the second region. The first and third regions did not suit Saleen’s strategies. A city with a cluster of mountains behind it could still serve as a good business city, while a city in the middle of a lake could only defend.

These two regions were not intimidating enough. On the other hand, a city built under a mountain would allow for attacks to be launched in all directions.

Once the location had been chosen, all the data was listed out. Saleen summoned Eleanor to work on the design of the city. The mountain was enormous and looked out of place amongst the surrounding hills and plains. One side of the concave area was made up of red rocks. After analyzing the samples of these rocks, they found they were not created from volcanoes.

These red rocks were clearly not of the same quality as Metatrin City’s white rocks, but were similar to granite and fulfilled the criteria for building cities. The most important thing about a standalone and militarized city like this was its warehouse. It must contain sufficient grain and water supplies.

Tens of mages gathered together and began to draw out designs while Saleen analyzed them.

This location was close to Laiyin Duchy and Luolan, which were one-hundred and twenty miles northwest and one-hundred miles southwest respectively. One-hundred and eighty miles behind the mountain was Phoenix and two-hundred miles south was Qin.

Although the location might seem close to the four kingdoms, the terrain was mostly flat with plenty of mountains surrounding it. There was limited accessibility. Regardless if one was heading north or east, there were better paths to take. The lands were not suitable for cultivation and were deserted. It was said that in the past, the location was the site of a huge battle that involved the black magician and hundreds of thousands of people died there. This was another reason why no one was willing to stay there for long.

This was a good thing to Saleen. The route towards the northwest was not too rough. If he deployed soldiers to fix the route, it would lead straight towards Laiyin. On the other hand, the route towards the south was narrow while the one towards southwest was broad. Qin would not be able to attack directly and would have to go through Luolan. It would be much easier to go through Phoenix.

The mages studied for three days and designed a strange-looking city based on the terrain of the mountain. Saleen was attracted by the design immediately. This was exactly what he wanted.

On the west side of the thousand yard high mountain, the concave area would be used as the city’s warehouse. Two miles west from the mountain, a gigantic castle would be built and one castle would be built on each side of the mountain. The three castles would be connected together by city walls.

The castle in the center would be able to contain twenty-thousand men while the other two castles at the side would contain ten-thousand men each. Including the space enclosed by the city walls, the entire city would be able to contain a one-hundred-thousand strong army with up to ten-thousand auxiliary soldiers.

The area that Lex’s army roamed in was towards the southwest, which was actually close to the border of Luolan. They were only two miles away from where Saleen intended to build this city. If they ever required reinforcements, it would only take a day of travel.

After making the decision, Saleen began to prepare all the necessary materials. This time around, Nailisi had to be there personally. Without the help of spirits of the dead, constructing a city with only humans would take a very long time, unless all the mages were activated to help out with the cutting of the mountain and digging of resources. Even so, they would still require the help of thousands of puppets and Saleen simply did not have that many.

Just as Saleen was occupied with all that, the group of envoys that were being escorted by the sixth battalion ran into trouble.

The noble families in Phoenix Duchy had started a rebellion.

The cause of the rebellion was said to be due to Lex’s invasion of Huoxing City and Cexing City. In actual fact, it was because of the envoys from Holy Rock City. These envoys passed through Phoenix in a high-profile manner and Guderian City even deployed a powerful troop of soldiers to escort them.

A rumor was started in Solar City.The rumor mentioned that Holy Rock City acknowledged Metatrin Kingdom in the north so that both cities would be able to attack Phoenix from both sides. Responding to the call of Solar City, the people of Phoenix organized an army of fifty-thousand men to surround Huoxing City and another army of twenty-thousand men to take over Cexing City.

The group of envoys were just about to pass through Huoxing City and Lex’s five-thousand soldiers were on site as well. It was inevitable that a battle would erupt. The twenty-thousandstrong army in Cexing City attacked the group of envoys from the side.