955 Attack, Attack! Part 2 (1/2)

Aini smiled without saying much. He was still very confident of what he was capable of. The city was named aptly: Lonestar City. The city was indeed a lone city. To other generals or nobles, a city like that would have proved difficult to defend, and troop morale almost posed a great problem. There was only a small fort in the northern mountains, and it was situated about two-hundred miles away, meaning that it was hardly able to help support the city in a battle.

Aini was a death mage who possessed two powerful summoned creatures. The advancement of those two creatures was limited by Aini, and stuck firm at grade-9. Even so, those two spirits were still capable of providing massive death energy to the spirit army. The connection between the two planes enabled Aini to support a spirit army of more than six-hundred-thousand strong.

With the twelve ancient warriors left behind in the city, Aini's confidence grew even firmer. Even if Lex was to leave the place, he would still have been able to hold the city down. Saleen had always been providing material for the city's construction, and the construction of the city had always been high on the priority list. That enabled the stockpile of defensive weapons to easily last for years before there was any concern of depletion. Most of the gear wielded by the spirits was brought directly from the spirit plane after all. The use of the likes of bone arrows and death phosphorous fire enabled the stockpile to be easily conserved.

”Aini, I'll get one big trouble off your back before I leave,” Saleen said as he opened the map and displayed the image of the landscape surrounding Lonestar City, pointing at a river more than three-hundred miles to the south. ”The Sikeqinyans went here when they retreated. The army of the Holy See will meet the scattered army here at the southern shore of the river. I will crush them there. You will have to hurry up and get the fortress up north fixed, then have it ready to serve as mutual support between there and Lonestar City.”

”I...” Aini intended to say he wanted in on the action.

Saleen simply smiled and said, ”Give me one-hundred-thousand spirits and gather them outside the city. I'll be off soon.”

Saleen knew that Aini wanted to collect souls still, but if one were to do something like that, they needed to be discreet about it. There was quite a number of death mages serving under him. If all of them went imitating Aini, it would cause mass panic across the mainland.

Nicholas was different. He was a fallen holy master. People held the opinion that fallen holy masters collecting souls was not something that would have instilled terror in the hearts of people.

He had given tacit permission for Aini to collect souls due to the ones being remembered in the battle were his own elemental creatures. What the spirits did in comparison would not have stayed long in people's memories.

Saleen was careful with things, even when it came to matters like sacking an entire city, they still proved less terrifying than someone running about collecting souls. Wars never ceased on the mainland, and people got used to people getting killed. The collection of souls would bring about terrifying thoughts of black magicians in them.

Where black magicians tread, it would be decades before the place got settled by humans again. Such was the fear black magicians instilled in the minds of people.

Saleen had Aini got one-hundred-thousand spirits ready and lined up outside the city. He himself mobilized a battalion of temple guards and five-thousand light cavalry from the nobles' backup. The riders brought only two weapons with them—bow and arrows, and reverse-edged sabers.

One-hundred-thousand spirits seemed like a huge number, but Saleen had also taken one-hundred death mages with him, with every one of them in charge of one-hundred-thousand spirits. Even low-level mages were capable of commanding tens of spirits, and the lowest level of the death mages who went to reinforce Lonestar City was grade-4. The ones of the highest level were grade-7 sorcerers.

The warriors riding on the Wings of an Elf returned one after another, bringing pin-point accurate news to Saleen.

At the southern shore of the nameless river, the scattered Sikeqinyans set up two camps which were only about five miles from each other. From the looks of things, they seemed to have no further intention of running. The nameless river was not a wide one, and it was a short one as well. Water levels during that season were high, and even then, the width of the river hardly reached beyond one-hundred yards. Saleen's magic infantry hardly needed bridges for crossing the river, and to spirits, there simply was no need for bridges to begin with.

Saleen was pleased to find that his decisive action of breaking up the camps outside the city was a correct one. Morale of the scattered army remained low, and the reinforcements from the tribunal had yet to come. If he was to launch yet another attack and had them running again, their morale would be totally ruined and there would be no choice but to make their last stand against his forces at the river.

The notion of making a last stand would break the minds of the Sikeqinyan mages, after what happened during the last battle.

Tens of sorcerers dared not even get near to his charging army, and their camps were literally razed by his elemental creatures. His next course of action would be no different.

Nicholas, Sharman and Lex participated in the attack as well. Five-hundred personal troops stood by Lex's side, and every one of them was armed with elvish alchemy crossbows crafted by Saleen for them. The crossbows were made specifically to fight mages and magical equipment. The tips of the bolts were lined with a purple-gold solution that was known for its excellent anti-magic effects.

The battalion of temple guards consisted of eight-thousand demons and two-thousand heavy magic infantrymen, as well as ten-thousand auxiliary troops and five-hundred light cavalrymen. For the attack, Saleen brought only about twenty-thousand human units and one-hundred-thousand spirits. The camp he was about to raze consisted of about six-hundred-thousand Sikenqinyan troops.

Saleen sorted out his elemental badges and found eighty-six Blue Ice Maidens, one-hundred and twenty Midnight Fangs, forty-five Vermilion Knights, sixty-one Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers, seventy-seven Tempest Dragon-mights, and one-hundred and one Angels of Brightness intact.