Chapter 735: No use for Morale (Part 2)
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
One of the battalion commanders suddenly spoke, “Your Highness, the Princess sent us here to obey your orders. We will not retreat and will fight to the death. Our morale will not matter since the enemy outnumber us by so much. This is what military books say so, please give us your orders.”
Saleen was stunned. He immediately realized that these four battalions that Lex had handed over to him were all made up of experienced soldiers. There was no need for him to try and boost their morale because the battalion commanders would have done so themselves. The most important thing now was to explain his strategy and allow the battalion commanders to make their own preparations.
No amount of morale would help when one was outnumbered by the enemy. The phrase they spoke was striking; ‘we will fight to the death’.
Sikeqinyans would never be able to understand that feeling. The generals who were born in Qin did not fear dying on the battlefield.
If they won, they would have fame and glory; if they lost, they would have honor in death.
“If that’s the case, I want to make use of the fact that the enemy has yet to settle down completely and spring a surprise attack on land. The purpose of this attack is to let the enemy know that the soldiers in the bone castle are elite and cannot be underestimated.”
The generals nodded with approval. Although this was a risky move, Saleen was right. By striking the enemy first, the enemy would become nervous. That was the real purpose of building the bone castle here.
“For this attack, I will deploy two-thousand heavy-armored foot soldiers from my first battalion after thirty hours. The four of you will select a regiment of heavy-armored knights from each of your battalions and switch them all onto skeletal warhorses. I will prepare one-hundred chariots containing kerosene and another one-hundred ballistas.”
“Your Highness, only two-thousand heavy-armored foot soldiers?” One of the battalion commanders thought he had heard wrong. It would be difficult for two-thousand foot soldiers to overcome the enemy’s defense. The knights might not be able to charge through the defense, then everything would be pointless.
“Grand Sorcerer Mu En will be there as well. There will be ten giant bone devils that will destroy the enemy’s defense on the exterior.”
Mu En quickly nodded to show his confidence.
“My two-thousand heavy-armored foot soldiers will be wearing magic armor and will be armed with magic weapons. They can fight non-stop for more than six hours.” Saleen gave a thorough explanation to the generals. Not only would the magic armor provide defense, it would also give the soldiers more momentum in their fighting. With power provided by the magic array, a gentle swipe of the sword was equivalent to a violent hack of a heavy axe.
The generals of Bitter Water Prefecture were envious. Their soldiers would only be wearing half magic armor. It would provide outstanding defense as it was totally sealed up. Not even low-level spells like poison fog would be able to seep through.
Saleen raised another ten or so requests and selected all sorts of foot soldiers from the four battalions to form a ten-thousand strong mixed battalion.
These battalion commanders immediately left to make preparations and the necessary selections.
The day pa.s.sed quickly. When night came, ten-thousand soldiers gathered in front of the bone castle. Just ahead of them was an army of spirits of the dead.
Leading the army were ten giant bone devils, followed by death knights, skeleton soldiers, zombies, fangs, and giant skeletal apes.
The winged skeleton had summoned most of the spirits of the dead that could fight on land to form a five-thousand strong army of spirits of the dead.
Even so, the soldiers of Bitter Water Prefecture were prepared to embrace death. No one had any hopes of winning when attacking an enemy battalion of more than one-hundred-thousand with only five-thousand spirits of the dead.
Saleen no longer tried to boost morale. He waved his hand and Mu En smiled bitterly before leading the winged skeleton and three jade skeletons into the group of spirits of the dead.
The troops set off. As the roads were not fixed, the chariots that Saleen had put together on short notice were traveling very slowly. The winged skeleton knew that there were grade-8 sorcerers amongst the enemy so he did not use any flying spirits of the dead to scout for information on the enemy. The troops advanced towards the harbor very slowly. They kept to the pace of the foot soldiers, which was twenty miles an hour.
This was so that the knights and foot soldiers would not be separated. Skeletal warhorses would have been able to cover a distance of one-hundred miles in two hours otherwise.
Every soldier consumed restorative water before they departed. When the army approached the harbor, it was about two a.m.. The lights were scattered and spa.r.s.e in the big battalion in front of the harbor. Only the exterior was lit up by magic lights. There were enemy soldiers on sentry duty, perched on top of the high arrow tower.
Saleen was not worried about this attack. He was in the center and was protected by Su and the four demons. Eleanor was also by his side, carrying the long bow that was almost like a G.o.dly item. In her quiver were twenty-four arrows that Saleen had refined personally.
They were elf s.p.a.ce arrows and elf creature arrows.
Saleen’s badge had yet to regain its attacking powers, but his water puppets had fully recovered and he could now use crystal finger.
The rest was up to the heavy-armored foot soldiers. The heavy-armored knights were the most suitable candidates for crus.h.i.+ng the enemy’s resistance. Skeletal warhorses could pick up their speed in an instant. Even in narrow areas, these knights still possessed very powerful abilities to charge at the enemy.
As for the enemy mages, Saleen had already prepared traps for them.
Unlike the Qin people, who would set up sentry posts sporadically a mile away from the big campsite, the Cloudflow army all shrank back into the safety of the campsite. The campsite had three layers and a wall had been set up.
When the spirit scouts came back with their reports, Saleen could not stop sighing. Cloudflow’s navy and army were two different creatures altogether. Their navy was ridiculously strong yet their army was such a mess. This campsite was simply asking to be attacked.
Saleen did not know if his expectations were too high. He had always been working with the elite soldiers of Qin or Bitter Water Prefecture, which were not commonly found on the Mainland. The Cloudflow campsite was rickety like a metal bucket. There were men using alchemy binoculars on top of the arrow tower to observe the perimeter. Near the campsite wall, a troop of soldiers would pa.s.s by every ten minutes for the entire night without rest.
Saleen’s sneak attack was almost like attacking in the open. By the time his army was a mile away from the campsite, they had already been exposed. Saleen pointed at the soldier on the arrow tower that was about to sound the alarm. Eleanor drew her long bow before shooting an arrow.
Almost instantaneously, the arrow pierced through the Cloudflow soldier’s throat and neck.
As the soldier’s windpipe was pierced through, he was unable to sound the alarm. His neck broke and he was completely paralyzed. He lost control of his body and knocked over the crossbow by his side before falling out of the arrow tower.
The soldiers on patrol rushed over and discovered the corpse of the soldier on sentry duty. Finally, the alarm within the Cloudflow camp was sounded.
The arrow bought Saleen’s army an additional minute’s worth of time at least. The army of spirits of the dead ahead of them had already began to advance at full speed. How far could these spirits of the dead advance using that minute?
The giant bone devils leading the way managed to cover a mile while the death knights followed closely behind them even though they could have picked up their speed. By the time the alarm sounded, the giant bone devils had already used their bone blades to destroy the first layer of wall.
The giant bone devils were incredibly strong. They did not possess too much intelligence, but using their deformed front limbs, the three yard wide bone blades hacked violently into the wall, creating a hole that was tens of yards wide. The ten giant bone devils kept hacking at the wall, enlarging the hole. The spirits of the dead entered through the hole and charged at the Cloudflow tentages.
The giant bone devils moved very slowly. Aside from their incredible strength, they did not possess any other useful attributes and could be killed easily. Nevertheless, the winged skeleton leveraged the giant bone devil’s strength to quickly break down the camp wall and buy more time for his army of spirits of the dead.
Cloudflow had arranged many soldiers to guard the center entrance for the night. When they heard the alarm, before they could even receive any orders from the magic apprentice, they heard a loud explosion from the east side of the camp. The sound was made by the giant bone devils hacking at the wall. Hundreds of soldiers picked up their weapons and rushed towards the hole in the wall.
What these hundreds of soldiers encountered was an army of five-thousand spirits of the dead. Like a whirl of black cloud, these five-thousand spirits of the dead charged deep into the camp. Two-hundred of the soldiers that were on duty were hacked to pieces as the black cloud pa.s.sed them by.
The Cloudflow fleets had already reached them, but as the numbers were so large, most of the soldiers on the wars.h.i.+ps had yet to disembark and were still waiting for vacancies on the harbor. Within the camp were one-hundred-thousand soldiers and the camp near the harbor was still vacant.
When the army of spirits of the dead attacked, most of the people from Cloudflow were still asleep. Only one-tenth of the army was still wearing their armor, as according to the laws of Cloudflow. These ten-thousand men heard the alarm and armed themselves within half a minute.
Saleen’s army of ten-thousand men charged into the Cloudflow camp through a bigger hole. Leading the way were heavy-armored foot soldiers that had dismounted from their horses. These heavy-armored foot soldiers were more powerful on foot than on horseback.
All the heavy-armored foot soldiers were armed with halberts that were as heavy as seventy-two pounds each. Without the aid of magic armor, most of the heavy-armored soldiers would not last longer than three minutes.
Saleen invested a lot in order to create these heavy-armored foot soldiers. All of them carried tens of magic nuclei each, including four low-grade and one middle-grade ones and some replaceable components of magic nuclei. The purpose of the magic nuclei was to mount them onto the magic array of the armor to boost the soldiers’ fighting abilities.
Many n.o.ble families’ mages could not even afford such privileges. As such, the fighting abilities of these heavy-armored foot soldiers were heavily boosted.
Two-thousand heavy-armored foot soldiers destroyed the tentages and cleared a path that was more than ten yards wide for the knights. Saleen and his two-hundred bodyguards followed closely behind the heavy-armored foot soldiers. After a while, he realized that no mages within the camp were coming to stop them.
That meant that the enemy’s powerful mages were still on the s.h.i.+ps. Saleen immediately gave the order for his men to set the camp on fire.
It was easy. The foot soldiers built temporary catapults outside of the camp. The attacking range of these catapults was less than two-hundred miles and there were only four of them in total. These four catapults would launch leather bags filled with kerosene. Saleen added magic powder to the kerosene. Once it start to burn, not even water could put the fire out.
The catapults launched the bags of kerosene towards the sides and archers quickly shot at them with fire arrows, lighting the bags on fire. Both sides of Saleen’s path began to burn ferociously. There were cries of despair coming from within the camp.
Woo woo…
The deep sound of a horn came from a distance away. Cloudflow was already organizing a troop of ten-thousand men near the harbor, ready to charge over. In the sky, a black-robed sorcerer flew steadily towards the fire. Below him was a troop of soldiers on horses that were rus.h.i.+ng towards the chaos in the camp. All of them were wearing magic armor and were armed with golden short pikes.
The Cloudflow warriors that were responsible for protecting mages were always armed with that weapon. In order to become the protector of mages, one had to at least be a beginner-level swordmaster. Even wearing a magic armor, even a beginner-level swordmaster would possess the fighting abilities of a high-level swordmaster.