635 A raving army Part 2 (1/2)

Saleen would rather spend time with the lightning dragons every day than to bother himself with these matters. The current trouble was closely related to the contract he had signed with the Goddess of Myers. The Holy See must be destroyed, so Saleen had to bite the bullet and do it. He had to succeed.

As a huge number of combat equipment was being distributed Saleen was contemplating another issue. He had summoned Banchajanna and Diyabannersa over. These two spirit kings were leading a pretty good life in Metatrin City, however, they had to summon a large number of spirits occasionally for Daniel's usage.

Since Daniel was already a grade-6 death mage and had a dozen low grade death mages as his subordinates the three kings no longer needed to command the spirits for him.

At the moment, the three kings frequently lodged themselves in Saleen's library to look for information. Was their previous owner dead or in hiding? If they could not find their owner they would never attain freedom.

”If our owner didn't die, he can easily destroy the contractual trap set by Saleen and that damned death mage easily given his powers. Following our original owner is better than following Saleen.”

After the two kings were summoned, Saleen carefully briefed them on the things he needed them to execute. Along the route towards Phoenix, Saleen had built a small town every one-hundred miles so that the traveling merchants could take a break. To date, these small towns were thriving already. Each town contained two to three hundred households and there were about a thousand long-term residents.

There were so many people there to ensure the stability of this commercial route. If these people were massacred by the Holy See's army Saleen could only rely on the marine route to maintain his city. There were five months in a year where his city could not be accessed via the sea though.

He could not just protect Metatrin City. At the moment, Saleen could not deploy a large army to receive the Holy See's expeditionary army. Even if he triumphed, he believed that the consequences would be disastrous. If there were too many casualties Metatrin City would be doomed.

The best idea would be to withdraw those people in the small towns first.

Currently, Saleen still had four camps worth of manpower. Since the Caucasus people could not be assembled yet, he let Sika take charge of the city's defense. Four camps of soldiers amounted to forty-thousand people only and including the deployable barbarians, there would only be fifty-thousand men. With these fifty-thousand men, Saleen knew that it was impossible to stop the Holy See's expeditionary army from advancing.

The fourth and fifth camp had been deployed by Saleen, each camp brought along many chariots and mages. The mission of these twenty-thousand men was to rush to the small towns as soon as possible and fetch everyone back to Metatrin City.

At the borders of Phoenix, two emblem groups from Metatrin City's sixth camp were laying in ambush beside the mountain road, waiting for the Holy See's army to pass by. The road there was only about four yards wide, the other side of it was a gigantic slope. These two emblem groups planned to retreat to Metatrin City because they had lost more than twenty percent of their manpower. Of the original two-thousand men, only sixteen-hundred remained, about six-hundred were wounded. In fact, only one-thousand were ready for combat.

The Holy See's army did not travel on the main road, it was going to use a nearer route to advance and the scouts had discovered this information. Commanders of both emblem groups had a brief discussion, then they decided to conduct an ambush there.

Even though there were many casualties, the soldiers did not lose their weapons and most skeletal warhorses were in these two emblem groups. They were actually supposed to be the last ones to retreat. With these skeletal warhorses, the soldiers basically had their weapons with them. They also carried the weapons which had been abandoned by the other emblem groups ahead of them.

Among these one-thousand people, there was a total of two-hundred large crossbows.

A large crossbow was not a heavy crossbow. Mainly, their long distance lethality was inadequate, but its short distance penetrative ability was great and its cost was cheap too.

There were two-hundred large crossbows while each soldier held one small crossbow in hand. These one-thousand soldiers camped along the roadside and awaited the Holy See's army to pass by. After expending all their arrows, they would then retreat.

Both emblem group commanders were high grade swordmasters from Sregl Island, they were valiant and ferocious. It was a miracle that they had not sustained an injury yet. Both of them had brought along miniature alchemical crossbows. An alchemical crossbow had great penetrative ability and high accuracy. There was even a chance that the commanders could kill the enemy's holy masters.

Those holy masters were abominable. As long as a soldier did not die, they could be resurrected by the holy masters. No matter how severely injured the soldiers were, they would regain their offensive ability two to three days later.

Using such treatment methods, these soldiers would not live for long. Those who were twenty years old would not live past forty and if they experienced multiple divine treatments, they would not even live past thirty years old.

This skill was that effective. The sixth camp used crossbows as their main combat equipment. If it was not for the huge number of holy masters within the enemy, the over one-thousand people from the sixth camp who sacrificed their lives would have been exchanged for the lives of more than ten-thousand enemies already. A pity though, the Tanggulasi people who got injured would be able to rejoin the battle in a day or two.

After two rounds of battle the sixth camp began targeting the enemy's holy masters, but there were too few alchemical crossbows available. Their concealment was not good enough. During battle, the Holy See's warriors would use their body to block the arrows so as to protect the holy masters.

”Commander, they are here!” A scout dashed over while riding a skeletal warhorse. He charged into the forest by the roadside.

”Get ready!” The commander of the ninth emblem group gave an order and everyone else stopped fidgeting. They adjusted their armor, lugged the quivers, tightened their boots, changed into archer's gloves, and tightened the crossbow chords.

Even though these two emblem groups had lost more than half their manpower, the psychological state of the soldiers was excellent. Skeletal warhorses were present, so they had a higher chance of escaping from the battlefield. They would only fire arrows this time around. The soldiers who were familiar with war would know that this assault would only serve to lower the enemy's advancing speed by a little.

Since they were not going to fight to their deaths, everyone's actions were slow but steady.