Chapter 54: Steady, We Can Win
The sky was covered with dark clouds. Su Xiao hung up the communicator in his hand. He had just successfully contacted Kingsley and gained a preliminary understanding of the situation regarding Emperor Taiatu.
Emperor Taiatu was inside the ancient royal city, where a massive number of parasitic insect warriors were stationed. If one could infiltrate, there was no need to deal with all the parasitic insect warriors. The reason was that within the building where Emperor Taiatu was located, a dense aura of Abyss Force drifted.
Once parasitic insect warriors came into contact with such dense Abyss Force, the nematodes inside their bodies would rapidly transform. Since the main body of the nematodes had been killed by Yuelang, these nematode offspring would undergo several cycles of rapid transformation before dying.
In other words, if one infiltrated the imperial palace where Emperor Taiatu was located, they would only need to deal with the three knights there and Emperor Taiatu himself.
Su Xiao would not infiltrate there. He planned to attack head-on. His strategy was to first level the ancient royal city with explosions, then deal with Emperor Taiatu.
The good news at hand was that the dozens of researchers from the Eclipse Organization had used their unique technology to construct a stable long-distance teleportation array. Each activation could teleport 50 soldiers.
This might seem insignificant, but with funding from the four major factions, ten long-distance teleportation arrays had already been successfully established, and the number was steadily increasing.
Each teleportation array could be activated every five minutes. With thirty arrays, that meant 18,000 soldiers could be teleported per hour. That was a considerable number.
This was the benefit of waging war with the support of four major factions. There was no need to worry about resource consumption.
With the boost from the War Lord title, the combat power of their soldiers had undergone a qualitative change. Su Xiao found a soldier of average combat quality and checked his data, obtaining the following results:
Name: Walker Fei
Category: Alliance Soldier.
Health Points: 100%
Soul-Physical Power: 1240/1240 points
Strength: 125+20 points (True Attribute)
Agility: 126+20 points (True Attribute)
Stamina: 123 points
Intelligence: 76 points
Charm: 27 points
Skill 1, One Heart (Passive, Lv.43+10): For each soldier-type unit nearby, physical defense +1 point (max increase of 19 points), reload speed +0.03% (max increase to 25%), shooting accuracy +0.5 correction (max increase to +7 shooting correction).
Skill 2, Soldier Fighting Spirit (Passive, Lv.35+10): Health Points +3700 points, Willpower +10 points.
Skill 3, Firearms Specialization (Technique Class Passive, Lv.47+10): Due to the significant increase in skill level, this ability has a chance to advance to Firearms Master during combat and gain the Veteran title (this information is only visible to the Hunter himself).
Tip: This ability data requires opening the branch list to view.
Skill 4, Hard Training (Passive, Lv.55+10): Neural Reflex Speed +32%, Dynamic Vision +39%. When near death, there is a chance to temporarily negate the dying state and restore normal state for 5 seconds (after triggering this effect, Stamina attribute permanently -1 point).
Skill 5, Blood-Soul Power (Title Passive, Lv.55+10): Not activated.
Tip: After this ability is activated, the ranged attacks of this unit will be imbued with Soul-Burning Power, dealing 107 points of True Damage (originally 120 points of True Damage, reduced for ranged units). As a ranged combat unit, attacks cannot carry the Bloodbath effect, cannot absorb enemy life force, or restore lost Health Points.
...
No matter how you looked at it, the Alliance soldiers themselves were not strong, but they used firearms. In other words, all their training and strengthening were focused on this aspect.
With the boost from the War Lord title, as long as they did not flee from battle in the midst of fierce combat, there was a chance for their Firearms Specialization to advance to Firearms Master. The Alliance soldiers had laid a solid foundation through hard training. Now, with the War Lord title's boost as a catalyst, the accumulation from this hard training was being unleashed.
What the Alliance soldiers lacked was no longer training but an opportunity. Otherwise, the War Lord title's boost alone would not achieve this effect.
One or two veterans, or Firearms Masters using blue-powder firearms, were not particularly terrifying. But what about dozens of them? Eighth Rank Contractors would find it very troublesome to encounter these veterans.
But if there were hundreds of soldiers who had advanced to Firearms Master and transformed into veterans? If Eighth Rank Contractors encountered them, they would turn and run without hesitation. These veterans were indeed fragile, but a single volley from them could instantly kill an Eighth Rank Contractor.
What if they encountered thousands of veterans? In that case, an Eighth Rank Contractor would only say one thing: "How the hell am I supposed to fight this?"
And what if there were tens of thousands of veterans? Moreover, veterans whose bullets were imbued with True Damage. That would be an incredibly terrifying sight.
There was another point. The War Lord's full ability level increase of Lv.10 did not provide a full Lv.10 boost to Technique-type abilities. This time, reaching Lv.10 was mainly because the seven-star War Lord title's rank was more than sufficient to boost Specialization-level Technique abilities, so the effect was maximized.
Su Xiao had already formed a plan. If they directly clashed with the enemy under the current circumstances, since their soldiers were participating in war for the first time, once the enemy launched a full-scale assault, their soldiers would collapse under the pressure.
In the previous battle, the enemy did not choose to launch a full-scale assault because Su Xiao had chosen a good location for the base camp, which happened to be within the fleet's artillery range.
Leaving aside the destructive power of the fleet's volley, Su Xiao had the fleet bombard the Western Continent for five hours. The enemy was wary and would not expose more than half of their parasitic insect warriors within the fleet's artillery range.
In that case, the best choice was to have their soldiers use the base camp as a foundation, go out in large groups to actively engage the enemy, and conduct medium-scale battles.
The benefits of this approach were threefold. First, it allowed their soldiers to adapt to the battlefield.