Chapter 500
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Contempt was not equivalent to belittling . The fact that the enemy could destroy the flying puppet swiftly, and locate the exact position of the camp, meant that there was at least a holy master who was equivalent to a grade-6 mage present . Since there were so many blood knights, there had to be a huge number of low grade holy masters too .
Lex was lucky . The Tanggulasi army had discovered her tracks very late, so even though they traveled quickly, they were still afraid of letting her get away . Consequently, they deployed the blood knights, who traveled the fastest, to harass her . It was not a planned operation . If there were holy masters among the blood knights, the blood knights would not have been obstructed by the magic traps and fell off their warhorses so easily .
The Tanggulasi Empire did not dare risk the lives of their holy masters . The Tanggulasi people knew that there was a mighty presence accompanying Lex . If the holy masters had entered recklessly without the protection of soldiers, they would be easily slaughtered by the grand swordmasters serving Lex .
Since the holy masters were detached from the blood knights, Lex's war puppets came in handy . Under Wild Bear's command, the war puppets wielded bulky blades, slashing at the blood knights ferociously .
As Lex had insufficient mages with her, the war puppets could not be controlled individually, so they had to act on their own . As a result, the war puppets behaved inflexibly even though they could move swiftly . Fortunately, the enemy were blood knights who had lost their senses and the holy masters were not around to control them either . Banking on a higher amount of strength, the war puppets slaughtered all the blood knights who managed to avoid the magic traps as though they were vegetables .
Wild Bear only made two return trips into the midst of the blood knights and he could not see any more of them already . Human heads and amputated limbs were strewn across the ground, it was an extremely grotesque sight . Wild Bear actually calmed down . These monsters could actually be killed, and they could be killed easily .
Once the two Black Metal Grand Swordmasters saw this scene, they slowed down, then they led the swordmasters back into the heat of battle once more . Given their rich combat experience, they immediately identified the weakness of the blood knights . The blood knights possessed inferior skills, they relied on their fearless bodies and immense strength to triumph, which was very similar to some low grade magic beasts .
Even though the two Black Metal Grand Swordmasters were lousier than Jola, they had killed countless magic beasts too, so they were not afraid of those monsters .
To a real warrior, there was nothing to be afraid of as long as the enemy would die . Via the Sound Transmission Magic Arrays in their helmets, the two grand swordmasters disseminated the crux to winning the battle to their swordmasters . Coupled with good chemistry, the twelve people got into an arrowhead formation, before piercing straight into the team of blood knights .
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This time around, Lex's swordmasters had abandoned their usual combat style . They instead began cooperating with one another . Five swordmasters used the large shields to form a circle, while the Black Metal Grand Swordmasters chopped the heads off the blood knights who could not maneuver swiftly in the circle .
Occasionally, a blood knight would use his giant axe to strike the huge shields, but he would only leave a faint scratch on the metal surface . Most of the impact had been negated by the shield itself . The heavier an object in mid-air was, the more difficult was it to agitate it . A giant axe weighed less than one-hundred pounds . After the impact was negated by the huge shield, it would be impossible to use brute force to injure the person holding the shield .
Since the Spirit Snake Armor was sealed, the stench of blood in the air only reached the noses of the swordmasters after being filtered by a magic array . The smell still nauseated them though . The flesh of a blood knight smelt like it had been rotting for a few months . The swordmasters could only concentrate on killing the enemy in order to temper the feeling to vomit .
The magic array only filtered toxins, not smells .
When the double-edged serrated knives sliced the neck of a blood knight, blood would spurt out, gushing in all directions . Most of the blood knights were killed by the two Black Metal Grand Swordmasters, while the ten swordmasters seemed to have acted as guards . Their armor had long been drenched in large amounts of blood . If it was not for the self-cleaning function of magic armor, scabs of blood would have formed on their skin already .
Saleen suddenly felt a sense of being shaken . He felt that he was a spectator in this battle, even though he was also the enemy's target . That being said, the blood knights only rushed here desperately after receiving information about Lex's movements, their intention was to harass Lex .
When half the face mask of a blood knight was destroyed, revealing a bearded face, Saleen then recognized that they were barbarians .
The barbarians captured by the Black Bishop were shipped back to the Tanggulasi Empire . Now, they had appeared in this location .
Barbarians did not care about etiquette nor hygiene, and they were not as disciplined as the Caucasus people, so they were never really well liked . Saleen knew that the barbarians were pure at heart and easygoing . If the barbarians had lived in a city long enough, they would also learn to live like a Qin person .
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Even though they received occasional mocking, the barbarians would only wave their fists in displeasure, they would not really wallop anyone .
Saleen did not groom those barbarians into very good soldiers, but in his heart, he had already accepted those barbarians as his citizens . There was no difference between a barbarian, a Qin person, or a Sikeqinyan . All of them could cry, laugh, fume, and think .
The barbarians had already become a part of Metatrin City . Now that so many barbarians, who were captured by the Holy See, had appeared right before him, Saleen no longer felt that he was a spectator in this battle .
"Even though it is a war, don't the people of the Holy See have some conscience?" Saleen could not help but blurt out a naïve thought . Given his experiences, he should not have posed such a question . Given the current situation, he did not know how to express his emotions
Nailisi was jubilant, then said, "Master, you humans have a saying; if this world is not up to par, then one should either tolerate it or rebel, but they should never ask why . "
Saleen cut off the connection with the puppets, as he remained upset . Nailisi propped Saleen up, then said, "Master, stop sulking, we should prepare to leave . "
"Leave?"
"Lex cannot hold the fort, we have to enter the desert earlier . "
Saleen did not ask why . He was in a bad mood, so he did not think about this question . With Nailisi's reminder, he came to understand that Lex was depending on just a dozen people . Even though she had a powerful assassin with her, it was impossible to continue camping in the Black Rock Mountain anymore .
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The people from the Holy See could attack this place endlessly, or they could even besiege the area . By then, Saleen would not be able to leave even if he wanted to . The reason why Lex did not give the retreat order was because the blood knights were too fast, they could even catch up to a skeletal warhorse .
If this emblem group of blood knights was not extirpated, it would be difficult to solve the problem even if Lex's team had fled into the desert . Lex's subordinates could not be abandoned, only the war puppets could be abandoned .
Lex had already recalled the injured puppets . In the fight against the blood knights, many more injuries were added onto the bodies of the war puppets . Since the puppets had coarse skin and thick flesh, almost none of them were fully destroyed . More than half of them could not continue fighting already . Some puppets even lost a whole arm . Since the puppets had lost their weapon, they could only kick the enemy, so there was no point for them to remain on the battlefield .
Saleen really wanted to ask Nailisi to release another ten-thousand magic bugs to devour those blood knights . Summoning magic bugs depleted a great deal of resources though, and there was no time to set a secure magic array .
Aiwa was responsible for storing the tent . Indeed, Lex's subordinates were also dismantling the tents . These tents were specially produced magic appliances . One would not even be able to pitch a tent in the Purgatory Desert otherwise .
Lex was also dispirited . She was going to receive information from Metatrin City, yet she got discovered by the Tanggulasi army . It was likely that the news released by Bifano had been discovered by the Agares family .
For the past twenty days, Bifano had stopped transmitting further information, which meant that he was dead . The Agares family would have deployed many men to investigate into this matter . After Lex left, she tried her best to avoid the cities, yet she could not avoid the villages . Since the Agares family had managed Titan for such a long time, they were in control of most farmers, so there was no way Lex could hide her movements from them .
"Since the Agares family knew that they couldn't capture me, they decided to leak the information to the Tanggulasi Empire . If I were in their shoes, I would have done so too . The Agares family had acted too quickly though, I cannot even stay for two or three more days . "
The sound of the war drums in the distance were drawing closer . It seemed like the Tanggulasi army had met with some trouble, so they could not follow the blood knights closely . It was possible that they had alarmed the ferocious creatures at the periphery of the desert due to the presence of their large manpower .
The magic beasts in the Purgatory Desert were different from the ones outside . Due to a lack of food, they were highly aggressive . This was the reason why Lex was not willing to bring along a large number of people, instead she was willing to use the pricey war puppets . Had she brought along an emblem group, the blood knights would have been wiped out swiftly .
Lex could not waste any more time, she spoke into the Sound Transmission Magic Array, "Longqi, come back . Leave the war puppets behind to defend the rear . Saleen, put away the fully constructed puppets, don't have such a high level of consumption for now . "
Saleen nodded . The fully constructed puppets controlled by Nailisi and him were mosaicked with the fragments of the dragonshard, but the other fully constructed puppets were using intermediate level magic nuclei . The dragonshard could self-recover slowly, but a magic nucleus was a disposable item .
Lex's Black Metal Grand Swordmasters were actually the leaders of her first emblem group . Once the order was given, the two of them immediately led the swordmasters away from the encirclement of the blood knights .
The blood knights gave chase fearlessly, so the swordmasters had no choice but to turn around and use their alchemical crossbows to shoot the blood knights' warhorses . The arrow of a miniature alchemical crossbow did not have a tail . Its head was triangular, sharp, and wide . It could amputate the leg bone of a warhorse .
After traveling for hundreds of yards, over a hundred blood warhorses collapsed . Without legs, a four-legged animal could not run no matter how ferocious they were . The fallen blood knights thus began running on foot . Lex's swordmasters dashed into the formation of war puppets quickly, allowing the war puppets to clean up the rest of the enemies .
By now, the mages had boarded the magic war chariots . Other than the tents and alchemical crossbows, the rest of the appliances in the camp compound were abandoned .
This time around, Lex personally gave the directions, leading the rest of the people through the Black Rock Mountain, towards the east .
Without coordination by Wild Bear, the remaining over one-hundred war puppets lost their oppressive advantage, thus they were swiftly drowned out by the hundreds of oncoming blood knights . Lex's method of guarding the rear was a success though . As long as the core of a war puppet was not destroyed, they could continue fighting . The cognition of a blood knight was inferior to that of a magic beast . As long as the war puppets kept moving, the blood knights would pound them ferociously .
About one-hundred war puppets could actually hold back a group of blood knights many times larger than them .