Chapter 41: The Trump Card
"Boom!" "Boom!" "Boom!"...
The magic crystal cannons fired relentlessly, as if they cost nothing, and beneath the walls of Code County City, it was like a fireworks display, the brilliant lights so dazzling in the night.
In the distance, the faces of Visport and Gilmer in the command post were also flickering indistinctly.
"The trump card?"
Visport looked at Gilmer and said with a low laugh, "Gilmer, Your Eminence the Archbishop, I think, with these exhausted soldiers of Code County City, if your Holy Church of Light's Sacred Legion goes into battle, victory would be easily won. My side doesn't need to contribute, right?"
The Holy Church of Light's trump card—the Sacred Legion!
The Sacred Legion!
The strongest legion that the Holy Church of Light had painstakingly built in the Chaos Territory, investing massive amounts of manpower and resources.
The Sacred Legion totaled thirty thousand men.
Among them, five thousand possessed the strength of at least a Level 7 warrior, and the remaining twenty-five thousand were at minimum Level 5 warriors. In other legions, a Level 5 warrior might be considered elite, but in this legion, they were merely the weakest.
One must know that a Level 7 warrior, with just their jumping power, could leap onto a city wall over thirty meters high.
With such an ace legion entering the battle, it would be a one-sided slaughter. But because training such a legion was incredibly difficult, costing more money than training a million-strong army.
"If that Linley and other Saint-level experts break the agreement and directly intervene... wiping out my ace 'Sacred Legion,' that would be a real loss," Gilmer thought to himself. Visport was thinking the same thing; both were worried that Saint-level experts would break the agreement and act.
For example, that Saint-level dragon clan, or Linley and the other ultimate warriors.
If a few hundred thousand ordinary soldiers were killed, the Holy Church of Light and the Dark Church, with their vast populations, could easily recruit a few hundred thousand more, train them for a year or two, and they'd be qualified. But this Sacred Legion... each generation required years of accumulation. Losing it all at once and trying to rebuild it wasn't something money alone could solve.
"Visport, are you joking?" Gilmer's face darkened.
Visport immediately laughed: "Gilmer, don't be angry. Our Dark Church's 'Dark Legion' will set out at the same time."
The Dark Legion... was originally established by the Dark Church to counter the 'Sacred Legion.' Their strength was roughly equal.
Two terrifying legions.
Although each had thirty thousand men, totaling sixty thousand, in the eyes of both sides, their ace legions were worth no less than a million-strong army.
******
On the city wall, Linley and Barker stood like figures detached from the war.
The defending soldiers in this area had long been dismissed.
"There's no one there." The enemy soldiers clearly noticed a spot where only two people were standing.
"Hurry, charge up!"
In the frenzy of battle, the soldiers were all hot-headed. Seeing a gap, they immediately rushed over. As they climbed up the scaling ladders, brandishing their weapons and howling as they charged at Linley and Barker—
"Puchi—"
In an instant, a dense cluster of wind blades spread out. The three soldiers who had charged up first were instantly turned into minced meat. Even the upper part of the scaling ladder was shredded into fragments by the wind blades. This scene... had occurred many times during the battle. No one could get close to those two.
"What a damn pain in the ass," Barker muttered under his breath.
Barker looked at Linley. Linley seemed unfazed, and Barker couldn't help but say, "Lord Linley, can you just watch this?"
"What's there to watch?" Linley said, looking down below.
"Oh?" Barker looked at Linley with confusion.
Linley said with a faint smile, "I now understand the War God's thinking a bit better. Let the mortal world develop on its own. Wars will inevitably claim lives. If we hadn't established the Baruch Kingdom, the prolonged chaos and conflict would probably have killed even more people."
Linley looked down below: "The mortal world has its own rules. And we, we have our rules!"
"I will abide by that agreement. Even if they fight their way to the magic crystal mine and seize it, I won't intervene," Linley said calmly.
Barker said urgently, "But what about the secret room in the micro-plane we discovered?"
"What's there to fear?"
Linley said with a faint smile, "That secret room can only be entered by Saint-level experts. And would any Saint-level expert dare to come to my territory?" Linley now viewed this war with a detached perspective. Win or lose...
That secret room in the micro-plane couldn't be moved anyway.
"You're right, my lord," Barker said, beginning to understand.
Having reached the Saint level, they had gained eternal life and stood above ordinary humans. Secular battles were no longer their concern. But deep down, both Barker and Linley still harbored a glimmer of hope—
That their side would win.
"Not good," Barker suddenly exclaimed, his face changing.
Below the city, a massive number of elite soldiers were charging toward the walls at lightning speed. There were tens of thousands of them, densely packed. These elite soldiers moved terrifyingly fast, covering twenty or thirty meters in a single flash. In less than a minute, they would reach the city walls from a distance.
"Fire!"
With the magic crystal cannons moved from the east gate, over twenty cannons roared almost simultaneously, sending brilliant spheres of light crashing down.
"Swoosh!" "Swoosh!"...
Many elite soldiers immediately dodged. The magic crystal cannons fired too quickly. Even with their formidable strength, these elite soldiers could at most avoid the direct impact zone. A few unlucky ones were killed outright, while those caught in the blast radius suffered only minor injuries.
Just one volley!
Only one volley of magic crystal cannon fire was possible before these elite soldiers reached the city walls.
"There are a lot of them, tens of thousands. Where did such powerful soldiers come from? Many of them are at Level 7," Barker said, feeling a hint of shock.
Linley also noticed the sudden appearance of a large number of elite soldiers below. With Linley and Barker's eyesight, they could immediately gauge the strength of these densely packed warriors: "So many Level 7 warriors? This is just like the ace knight legions I saw in the Holy Alliance back then."
"This is probably the Holy Church of Light, following the same model as the eight ace knight legions in the Holy Alliance, establishing an elite legion in the Chaos Territory," Linley guessed.
And that was exactly the case.
"Whoosh!" "Whoosh!" "Whoosh!" "Whoosh!"...
A large number of soldiers leaped directly from the ground below, clearing the thirty-meter wall in a single bound. Dense clusters of soldiers landed on the city wall simultaneously. Every one of these soldiers possessed the strength of a Level 7 warrior.
"Pfft!" Swords and blades swung, and battle qi surged.
In an instant, ten to twenty thousand defending soldiers on the wall were killed. The defending soldiers were only Level 2 or Level 3 at best; a Level 5 warrior was already considered remarkable. But these soldiers who had jumped up were all Level 7 warriors, and there were nearly ten thousand of them.
Slaughter!
No resistance at all! At the same time—
A large number of Level 5 and Level 6 warriors were rapidly climbing up using scaling ladders.
Although the south city wall could accommodate nearly a hundred thousand soldiers, that was spread across the entire wall. In reality, only twenty to thirty thousand soldiers faced these Level 7 warriors at once. By the time the nearly fifty thousand Level 5 and Level 6 warriors joined the assault...
"We've lost."
Barker sighed.
As the Sacred Legion and the Dark Legion, sixty thousand strong, charged up, followed by hundreds of thousands of ordinary soldiers climbing countless scaling ladders, the entire south city wall was completely overrun. The densely packed enemies, like endless ants, surged into the interior of Code County City.
As for the area where Linley and Barker stood, no matter how many soldiers charged at them, they were instantly shredded into minced meat by countless wind blades.
"Let's go," Linley said, flying directly off the city wall.
"We can't leave those magic crystal cannons for them," Barker said. With a few flashes of his figure, Barker collected the cannons one by one from the wall into his spatial ring. How could ordinary soldiers stop a Saint-level expert like Barker?
"This Barker?" Linley shook his head with a smile.
"Done," Barker said, flying over to Linley.
Barker and Linley flew above Code County City, clearly seeing what was happening inside. Watts had apparently prepared for street fighting within the city. Large numbers of troops were retreating through the west and north gates.
At the same time, many soldiers remained in Code County City, ready to use street battles to slow the enemy's pursuit.
*******
North of Code County City, a massive army was fleeing in disarray.
Watts looked back at Code County City in the distance and sighed softly. He had still lost. When the enemy's two terrifying legions appeared, Watts knew there was no way to stop them. The combined forces of the Holy Church of Light and the Dark Church numbered sixty thousand, with ten thousand of them being Level 7 warriors.
Level 7 warriors could ignore city walls entirely.
How could such an absurd army be stopped?
"Watts, why the long face?" Gates was beside him. "Losing is losing. Back in the eighteen northern duchies, winning and losing were common for me. Of course... it still stings a bit."
Gates was also helpless.
Those sixty thousand soldiers had charged all at once. How many could he, Gates, kill alone? It wasn't like they were lining up for him to slaughter.
"If I were a Saint-level magus, I could just cast a single forbidden destruction spell and be done with it," Gates grumbled to himself.
Just then, Linley and Barker flew down from high above. They spotted Gates, Bune, Anko, Black Shark, and the others. Linley landed and immediately asked Watts, "Watts, how many people did you leave behind for street fighting to slow the enemy?"
"About a hundred and ten thousand."
Watts replied, "The soldiers we retreated with total nearly a hundred and fifty thousand, all uninjured. As for the hundred thousand left behind, half are wounded, and the other half are still combat-ready. Using the traps and hidden passages we built earlier, they can hold the enemy back for at least an hour."
"An hour?" Linley asked.
"Yes, an hour. After that, the people I arranged will fire a signal arrow, and all the soldiers will surrender," Watts said with a sigh. "There's no other choice. If we force them to keep fighting, it's just sending them to their deaths."
Linley nodded in understanding.
In the Chaos Territory, surrendering after losing a war was common.
"An hour is enough time for us to put some distance between us and them," Watts said.
...
Around the magic crystal mine, two hundred thousand troops were already stationed, and defensive fortifications had long been built. Watts and the others fled in the early morning, and by afternoon, the hundred and fifty thousand soldiers had arrived at the mine area. After arriving, they immediately rested and ate behind the fortifications.
At dusk, inside a tent.
Linley, Barker, and a few others were eating together when someone entered. The newcomer was Delia. Her arrival made everyone stop eating. Even Barker, Gates, Bune, and the others immediately greeted her.
"Linley, how can you still eat?" Delia said, somewhat anxious.
"What's wrong?" Linley looked at Delia.
Delia quickly said, "The allied forces of the Holy Church of Light and the Dark Church are almost here. What do we do?"
"What can we do?" Linley shook his head helplessly. "Delia, right now, a lot of people are digging out the magic crystals as fast as they can. We've already excavated over a quarter of the mine's reserves." It was one way to handle it—take as much as possible.
Suddenly—
"Boss." Bebe suddenly appeared on the dining table, his small, shiny eyes fixed on Linley. "The enemy has sent so many people. Boss, I've already brought Sesslar over. Let Sesslar cast the forbidden spell 'Plague of Undeath' and summon millions of undead to wipe them out!"
Just then, the tent flap was pushed open.
An old man in a black robe walked in. He was as thin as a skeleton—the Saint-level necromancer Sesslar.
"Lord Linley, I await your command. With a single word from you, not a single one of those less than a million troops outside will survive." A faint, cold green light flickered in Sesslar's eyes. Sesslar's undead army wasn't just ordinary skeletons; it included plenty of Level 9 undead and even Saint-level undead.
Wiping out those less than a million troops would be child's play!