630 The arrival of the grade-9 mages Part 1 (1/2)

”Split into five teams to stop the expeditionary army? We are talking about twenty-five-thousand regular soldiers.” Saleen disagreed with Nailisi's suggestion. It was right to seize this opportunity to train the troops, but if a camp was split into five portions each team would only have two-thousand people. That was akin to two emblem groups, the enemy would have ten times the manpower.

With more than ten times the difference in manpower of the Holy See's army could even use the besieging technique to extirpate two emblem groups of forces.

”Master, you don't know something. While you were away Daniel selected one-hundred people to inherit death magic from him. Currently, about eighty of them are high grade disciples already. As long as the dead soul flame is present twenty people can immediately transform into low grade death mages. We just have to assign two death mages to each team and we will be able to deploy two-hundred skeletal warhorses.”

Saleen moaned. Among his soldiers, most of them had not undergone a real battle, with the exception of the pirates and the swordsmen from Sregl Island. In a bloody battle the morale of these soldiers would be difficult to sustain. Only soldiers who had experienced the tribulations of war could be trusted.

The Holy See did not deploy the sacred knights, it allowed Tanggulasi's imperial family to send their army of twenty-five-thousand regular soldiers. In a field battle, these twenty-five-thousand men would definitely enjoy an absolute advantage. ”A death mage can preserve one-hundred skeletal warhorses. Even if I send all my death mages there will only be twelve-hundred skeletal warhorses. That will not be adequate for my men to attain a speed advantage. I still have to deploy the three kings, otherwise this camp of mine will most likely be devoured by the Holy See's army.”

”Banchajanna does things incoherently while Diyabannersa has the tendency to act impulsively. I shall let Judikaka notify Lex's army, then he will return and receive the sixth camp. We have two months to prepare.” Saleen conjured an idea in a flash. It was necessary to stop the Holy See's army. If it could arrive at Metatrin City without getting damaged Saleen would have a tough time defending his city.

Lex had taken the first camp to Bitter Water Prefecture to participate in the war, leaving Saleen with the second to sixth camps. Saleen had set up the sixth camp when Lex was about to leave, while the other five camps had been trained by Lex all this while.

The sixth camp consisted of a mixed composition, there were barbarians and Caucasus people in it. The core of the command was made up of swordsmen from Sregl Island. Saleen's agenda for creating this camp was obvious, he wanted to establish a human army which was fully in his control. All the recruited soldiers could only be twenty years old at max. The sixth camp did not want anyone who was older than twenty years old.

No one in this young army had an aristocratic background, Saleen could deploy them without any worry. The recruitment of these ten-thousand people took several months. Many people registered, but only few were accepted. Eventually, some skilled Caucasus people trained by Sika had to be added in so that the composition of this camp was complete.

The proportion of Saleen's troops to the number of civilians was on the higher side. As a result, during the planning of the troop composition, the auxiliary troops did not belong to any specific camps. They would be assigned to whichever camp was going out for a field mission. The main objective of the five camps was to protect the city. During the defense of the city the scale of logistical support would be very small. Even if there were only twenty-thousand auxiliary troops it would be sufficient for use by the five camps.

As Saleen assembled the sixth camp he decided to use a mixed composition for it with the intention of lowering the demand for logistical support. The sixth camp had ten-thousand men and it was split into emblem groups. As long as two emblem groups were together an offensive formation could be formed already.

As Qin had many mages it could coordinate logistical support more easily than the other empires and it was the same case for Saleen's sixth camp. Each brigade was fitted with a low grade mage, an emblem group would require at least one grade-4 grand mage.

The sixth camp had more than one-hundred low grade mages. Each emblem group could be paired with more than ten low grade mages. These low grade mages would not be useless. During battle,the lethality of a low grade mage was equivalent to that of a few swordmasters. With the presence of low grade mages the warriors would be able to obtain a steady supply of treatments such as Restorative Water.

A low grade mage could activate a special spatial equipment in the army. These special equipments were crates with a volume of about one cubic yard. They relied on a magic array to maintain their balance and the space inside was only two cubic yards. The interior space might only be double the exterior volume, but the function of these wooden crates was immense because such crates were extremely sturdy. The volumes of logistical items placed inside were calculated by their specific volume. A normal box with five to six cubic yards of space might not even be able to contain these items.

Even though this army only had this one advantage its transportation capacity was five times that of a normal army.

Saleen assigned Gurney, who had been recalled back to Metatrin City, to this camp as a deputy commander. The position of the chief commander remained vacant. At the moment Gurney still did not have the ability to take up the role of a chief commander.

This battle did not involve a large scale confrontation between two armies, so Saleen did not assign a commander to Gurney. This mission would be split into five parts and two emblem groups would act together.

These emblem group commanders were swordsmen from Sregl Island, the lowest grade of them all was an intermediate grade swordmaster. It was difficult to look for a grand swordmaster, but the people from Sregl Island were reassuring. They were not old and it was only a matter of time before they all advanced into grand swordmasters.

Saleen meticulously planned the advancing and retreating route of the army, he also specially created ten maps. He gave them to the grand mages serving the ten emblem group commanders. Saleen had arranged for someone to draw these maps. No one had ever created such a specific map of the region north of Phoenix to date.

He then went to organize the logistical matters. Disposable items like crossbows, rations, and intermediate-size magic equipment which could be dismantled needed to be supplied.