Chapter 427
After the pirate had departed, Lex ordered all the mages to undergo rehabilitative meditation in preparation for the night's battle . This time around, she had brought along many mages . Two grade-5 mages, about twenty grade-4 mages and about one-hundred mages below grade-3 . There were also more than three-hundred magic disciples .
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These mages were not to be used for battles, but to be brought to Saleen's city to help expand its power . Since a battle was imminent, they were roped in to assist the soldiers . At any point in time, no matter how strong an army was, there would definitely be casualties in the sieging process . Without the presence of mages, the death-injury ratio would be greater, severely damaging morale .
The moment Saleen was faced with a battle, he would be restrained . He would have to rest his brain for an idea, but he would still have to rely on the three kings in the end . On the other hand, once Lex made her decision, she would have a bank of talents to draw on .
Lex had been accumulating her army for dozens of years after all . She also received the private handsel from Emperor Chanake . She neither lacked manpower nor money . Equipment-wise, although Lex and Saleen had robbed Dragon's Tooth Town and acquired a similar quantity of weapons and armor, all of Lex's loot was soaked in dragon's blood .
The dragon's blood was such a precious item, one would not even know where to begin looking for it .
Lex's letter was shot into the city with an arrow . A soldier went to pick up and delivered it to Nash, the city's commander . Nash's father was a noble in the Upper House, so he should be on intimate terms with Lex . After Emperor Chanake's passing, the Upper House became leaderless, while the emperor himself did not have much capability either . Even though the Upper House did not really take orders from Prince Safilos, they had washed their hands of Lex's issue .
Everyone might not have believed Master Merlin's prophecy in the past, but after Emperor Chanake died, the nobles in the Upper House wavered . As long as Safilos did not give the order to kill Lex, everyone else would simply acquiesce in the prince's oppression of the Bitter Water County .
Be that as it may, Lex was still Emperor Chanake's daughter . Legally, she actually had the right to ascend to the throne, so the Upper House was in a fix too .
Safilos' plan was really sinister . By obstructing Lex without attacking her, he was forcing Lex to attack the empire's cities . By doing so, Lex would be at fault . There were only two routes from the empire through Phoenix . Even if Lex chose the other route, she would still run into a huge obstacle .
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In the past, Lex could still travel using sea means, since the nobles in Lianyun City were not under Safilos' control . Lianyun City was currently occupied by the enemy however . As a result, Lex could only pass through Phoenix, there was no other alternative .
No matter how meticulous Safilos was, he would never expect Lex to dare assault Fort Strand . Even if he knew that Lex would take action, he would not be able to deploy any more troops . At the moment, the north was in utter chaos . Hundreds of nobles in the vicinity of Lianyun City had died in the war . The nobles were actually pretty mighty, but because they were invaded abruptly, they had no time to unite . Consequently, the invaders managed to seize thousands of miles of land .
A few cities in the central region of the empire had assembled their armies, forming an arc-shaped defense line, thus containing the invaders in the northern sea . It was not sufficient to just contain the invaders, Safilos had to gather even more troops to conduct an offensive . Once the invaders had adequate rest, such a loose defense line would be easily destroyed otherwise .
Following the upheaval in the north, Loulan also sank into disorder . Of the troops involved in the campaign, ten percent of them were nobles from the north . Their homes were already in peril or were already lost, hence these soldiers did not even have the will to fight . When this ten percent backed out, the remaining troops also were affected . The land seized from Loulan was not yet acknowledged by the Upper House and the Lower House after all . That way the nobles had no choice but to abandon the things at hand and retreat to Qin .
Fortunately, the Tanggulasi Empire had met with some trouble, thus it could not ride on the momentum . The Qin army would have met with yet another massive failure otherwise .
In order to stabilize Loulan, Safilos had to deploy the empire's elites – the imperial swordsman's camp . These troops were the foundation of the empire, they were not affected by anything else . A certain number of troops had to be stationed in Holy Rock City, while a portion was sent to Loulan . Some troops needed to be dispatched to deal with the Eastern Sea Allied Army also . All in all, Safilos really did not have any more manpower to dispatch to Phoenix at that time .
It was only at this point in time that Safilos realized the difficulty of running an empire . He also realized how much stronger his brother, Emperor Chanake, had been . Safilos could only control Holy Rock City . Beyond Holy Rock City, his sphere of influence was definitely not more than one-thousand miles .
For example Pompeii City, which was in cahoots with the Cloudflow Empire . Safilos knew about this matter, but he could do nothing other than be anxious about it . If the empire was in peace, he could simply write a letter to berate the Grand Duke of Pompeii . If the grand duke refused to adhere, he could simply send troops to mount an offensive . At this point in time, Safilos could only watch the southern nobles mess around though . The tax revenue received in the past two years had been on a straight decline, some nobles had even stopped paying taxes to Holy Rock City .
The man named Nash who was assigned to Fort Strand was an inflexible blockhead . Safilos had sent him mail using a magic array . He told him to guard this place, and never to let Lex pass the border no matter what happened . That was why Nash defended Fort Strand vigilantly, standing ready for battle anytime .
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When the soldier handed the letter to Nash, Nash simply tore it without even looking . That action caused the letter to give off a ray of magic light, burning in his hands . It made Nash so appalled that he threw it away at once .
"Lex! She wants to stab me in the back!" Nash was enraged .
A mage, standing beside Nash quickly advised, "General, that was magic feedback . This letter had been replicated by Lex using the magic images . Lex already knows about your action . "
"So what!" Even though Nash responded in this manner, he tolerated the incident . Then he suddenly remembered that if he went to fight with Lex, he might not be able to quash her swordsman's camp .
Since a long time ago, Nash had already heard of the twenty-thousand elites serving Lex . Even though he was skeptical about a woman's ability to manage an army, the number of mages in that army was several times that of a normal one .
He had seen Lex's camp compound before . There were at least ten-thousand elites, with an equal number of support troops . If he really needed to go out of the city to start a war, he had no confidence . Although Nash had a grade-6 mage beside him, he heard that Lex herself was already a grade-6 mage . She had many subordinates who were mages too .
Even if Lex stood outside the city cursing Nash's family, Nash would have no choice but to bear with it . It was currently winter, and Lex's camp would definitely have a higher level of depletion as compared to his ny way . In order to prevent the soldiers from freezing, the magic materials providing warmth would consume thousands of gold coins daily .
Qin was also known as the magic empire, its army was way mightier than that of the other three empires . It was precisely because its army had many mages, that was why it consumed a great deal of magic materials too . The winter in the north would inevitably cause frostbite to some of the marching soldiers . During encampment, the source of warmth for the soldiers was magic powder .
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If a battle was in the south, magic materials for killing pests, preventing high tides, and lowering the temperature were also provided . One could say that the Qin army would be able to unleash their usual offensive power in any kind of environment . The only concern was that these materials were very expensive .
"Mage Soron, tell me, do you think Lex will attack the city?" When Nash realized that his enemy was stronger than him, he suddenly became distraught . At first, he thought that Lex would not attack the city, but that letter reminded him . If Lex did not attack the city, would she return to the Bitter Water Prefecture? This time round, Lex had brought more than twenty-thousand people along, of which ten-thousand were elites while the others consisted of support troops and smiths . The cost of traveling from the Bitter Water Prefecture to this location was already an astronomical figure . Lex could not possibly tolerate this .
The gray-robed mage sighed, then said, "I am a mage . I don't intend to understand the affairs of the nobles . "
Nash was no idiot either . Even though he was inflexible, he could understand what the mage meant . Be that as it may, he could not defy Prince Safilos' orders . Whether Lex was determined to attack the city or not, he could only defend it until his last breath . He could not allow Lex to pass through .
"General!" A soldier entered Nash's room hastily .
"Yes?"
"We have lost a team of scouts . "
Nash was stunned, then he recovered immediately after . He did not deploy any scouts to the west . The eastern side was in trouble .
"Who did it?"
"General, the scouts never returned the flying puppet . We don't know what happened . "
"Send two brigades of cavalrymen… and another two brigades of infantrymen to go take a look . " Nash became unnerved because of Lex's letter . He gave an order which he would undoubtedly later regret .
Four brigades contained a grand total of eight-hundred men . Nash only had five-thousand men with him . If it was for the current situation, there was no big deal making this move . These eight-hundred men might not be able to return anymore however .
In Qin's army formation, a camp had ten emblem groups while an emblem group had five brigades, each brigade contained two-hundred people . Each brigade was further split into five teams, with each team having forty people . Forty scouts would be separated into five groups to conduct patrols . A flying puppet would be assigned to a forty man team . If there were any unforeseen circumstances, the flying puppet would be released back to the city or the main camp to report the intelligence .
These scouts possessed the best warhorses and proficient archery skills . The leader of the scouts was at least an intermediate grade swordmaster . The disappearance of these five groups of scouts was obviously due to them running into Saleen's army .
The five-hundred men deployed by Saleen were all riding on skeletal warhorses . The barbarians wielded hard bows while the pirates wielded soft bows . Traveling in a magic chariot, Daniel disseminated his commands to the soldiers . It was impossible for those scouts to escape a death mage's surveillance . In less than half an hour, the battle had ended .
Saleen's soldiers were injured by a few arrows, but they had received treatment already . Of the forty scouts, only two were kept alive and the remaining shot dead . The scouts were not useless, it was just that they did not wear any armor . In that barrage of arrows, they were basically walking to their doom . On the other hand, Saleen's soldiers were all clad in magic armor . They also had been blessed by magic before the battle, making them resistant to arrows . What caused the scouts to be really astounded was that the warhorses of their enemies were not even afraid of arrows .
Two prisoners were brought to Daniel . Daniel's Death Flames levitated behind him, giving off an eerie green glow . With just a sentence, the scouts surrendered .
"There are dozens of mages here who can cast the Detection Magic . If you do not reply, or choose to lie when answering my questions, I will extract your souls and check it myself . "