Chapter 448: Smoothly Taken Down

Outside the City of Moonlight, a troop of fifty cavalry arrived, knights hailing from Fierens Castle.

Led by Meteor Knight Jonasan Hodden, the cohort included one Gold Knight, three Silver, and eight Bronze, while the remaining thirty-seven were all mid and high-tier knights.

Fierens had not deployed these men to the front lines but had instead dispatched them to Jesus, which amply demonstrated his resolve to sow chaos.

"Haha, Sir Jonasan, it has been a long time!"

Jesus welcomed them outside the city walls, offering a warm and enthusiastic embrace.

Jonasan was an elder past his sixtieth year, born and raised in the Gregory Plains; he had never visited the royal capital, and the people here hardly knew him.

Because Jesus had previously journeyed to Fierens Castle, the two men had once crossed paths.

"Your Excellency the Count, a long time indeed!"

Jonasan understood the purpose of his arrival, yet he remained ignorant of Jesus’s true situation, a detail Duke Fierens had omitted to mention.

He was a direct man who focused heavily on objectives, so his very next words were an inquiry into local affairs.

"I heard your town was raided by the Wushan Domain. Has the fighting already commenced here?"

While escorting the guests into the city, Jesus exaggeratedly depicted Ronin’s arrogance and overbearing nature, summarizing it in a single sentiment: the Wushan Domain needed to be suppressed, or else they would completely lose all respect for the royal family.

As the two discussed their strategy, Jonasan remained entirely oblivious to the black-robed man standing atop the ramparts, whose Sorcerous Soul Bead radiated a pitch-black light.

"Excellent material. My thanks to Fierens."

...

At three o'clock the following morning, Elrond cast several wide-area Invigorate spells, ensuring that the well-fed soldiers felt not a shred of fatigue, while dissolving the gloom and pessimism of war from their hearts and leaving them intensely spirited.

Subsequent to this, the Wushan army split into upper and lower detachments, advancing down the plains highway directly toward Nasca Town and Pisa Town.

The cavalry moved swiftly, but the march of the infantry and archers was far more deliberate.

Fortunately, they carried few provisions and heavy gear, which lightened their burden along the way and bolstered their speed.

Happily, the distance from the camp to the towns was not overly long; marching rapidly with the aid of a few timely Invigorate spells dropped by Elrond along the route, Ronin and his company arrived in the woodlands five miles outside Nasca Town before nine o'clock.

Ronin invoked the Whispering Wind and discovered that there were no Sorcerous Soul Knights patrolling the perimeter, which spared them a great deal of trouble.

He ordered everyone to eat and drink their fill, rest briefly, and then in a single surge of momentum, they crossed the five-mile expanse and stormed the town.

Concurrently, owing to the shorter distance of the lower route, Rydal and his forces had already arrived outside Pisa Town.

It was a mere small town, its entrance guarded only by low earthen walls that clearly offered scant defensive capability.

The Sorcerous Soul Knights stationed in Pisa Town grew aware of the enemy’s approach, promptly sounding the horn to assemble everyone for the confrontation, surging en masse toward the town gates.

"Sophia, it is up to you," Rydal instructed.

Sophia offered a brief nod of assent and immediately unleashed the Flame God’s Roar.

Following a tremorsome shaking of the earth, the first wave of charging Sorcerous Soul Knights was instantly blasted into fine powder.

Just as she had done previously, she summoned water and fire elements, utterly bewildering the opposing forces.

At this spectacle, the throats of the uninitiated knights could not help but turn dry.

"Magicians... they truly possess an absurd level of power!"

Marvin recalled the colossal conflagration just witnessed; had he been on the receiving end, he would undoubtedly have been reduced to ashes as well.

"Archers, attack!"

Rydal commanded in a resounding voice.

The archers, snapping out of their daze, hastily drew their bows and loosed their shafts; a dense cloud of arrows whistled through the air, disrupting the enemy's formation.

Yet this manner of harm was negligible to the Sorcerous Soul race; even when pierced by arrows, their constitutions ensured they would not perish.

By this time, the enemy had also reacted, and an archer squad began returning fire toward their position.

Sophia executed a master-tier Gale spell, and a great gust of wind swept across, instantly robbing most of the enemy’s arrows of their accuracy.

Only a few magic-infused arrows managed to streak forward.

Rydal drew his longsword, his blade aura flaring out to cleave the incoming projectiles: "Everyone, charge!"

He bent his knees and then kicked off the ground with tremendous force.

In an instant, the earth beneath him exploded with dirt, and Rydal launched forward like a cannonball, crossing a distance of two hundred meters in the blink of an eye.

His battle qi surged fiercely; any enemy who rushed toward him was sliced apart by the sharp blade aura before they could even clash with his sword.

"Charge!"

Only then did Enilu and the others follow in his wake.

Instantly, the cavalry began their slaughter, followed by the infantry, the militia, and even the archers, who stowed their bows and drew their sidearms to join the harvest.

Though there were seventy to eighty thousand Sorcerous Soul Knights and soldiers, the battle was completely one-sided.

Sophia observed the combat from above, riding her magical flying carpet, her gaze fixed upon Rydal.

"As expected of the former expeditionary commander who slew the Shadow Lord. Rydal appears slightly stronger than Ronin, particularly in how cleanly and decisively he handles being surrounded."

Her intuition was accurate on this point.

Prior to experiencing the battle of one against ten thousand at Tals Town, Ronin’s combat proficiency had been lower than Rydal's, but though a gap still existed between them now, it was no longer so vast.

With Rydal, a Blazing Sun Knight, leading the charge into Pisa Town, the resistance of the Sorcerous Soul Knights was torn apart as easily as fragile paper, and the battle reached its conclusion not long after it began.

On the other front, in Nasca Town, Ronin and his men had likewise initiated their engagement.

He employed essentially the same tactical style as Rydal, using magic to deliver the opening salvo, followed by archers to break the lines, before the knights commenced their charge.

Three Meteor Knights possessed absolutely no means of resistance; under the combined assault of Ronin and Harmon, they were swiftly dispatched upon the battlefield.

The combat proceeded with equal fluidity, concluding in less than forty minutes, with roughly an hour still remaining before noon.

Back when Ronin and Sophia had cleared Tals Town, the time spent had been vastly longer than this.

There was absolute truth in the saying that there is strength in numbers.

Harmon scanned the battlefield and smiled: "Fighting the Sorcerous Soul race has one distinct advantage—there is hardly any need to clean up the battlefield."

They had all turned to powder, leaving nothing to sweep away.

However, while there were no corpses of the Sorcerous Soul race, there were those of their own men.

Though the battle had been smooth, casualties remained inevitable.

By Ronin’s rough estimation, the number of knights and soldiers slain by the Sorcerous Soul Knights reached at least double digits.

Fortunately, Elrond was present; so long as an injury was not immediately fatal, he could administer a degree of healing, which effectively lowered the mortality rate.

Ronin leaped onto a rooftop and shouted forcefully: "Those uninjured, conduct a grid search of the entire town! Slit the throats of all alien races, take the surviving humans prisoner, and forbid indiscriminate killing!"

In this manner, the two small towns were captured by Ronin and his forces with minimal exertion.

Meanwhile, within the Castle of Moonlight, Mephisto’s expression was dark enough to drip water.

"Damned Wushan Domain!"

He had originally intended to launch an offensive once the reinforcements from Fierens Castle arrived, never anticipating that the enemy would beat him to the punch.

From the messages transmitted by the Sorcerous Soul Beads, he could clearly perceive that the forces he had deployed in Nasca Town and Pisa Town had already been utterly annihilated.

So much soul energy, wasted in vain!

"A single marquisate, splitting forces to attack simultaneously from two fronts, and winning so quickly—how could they possibly be so powerful?"

With the precedent of Tars Town, Mephisto tightened his defenses while also bolstering the arrangement of his troops and overall strength.

Yet, the result was a defeat even faster than before, something he could neither foresee nor accept.

"Ronin, Rouland, Sophia—they must surely have powerful knights or mages I don't know about!"

Mephisto frowned. What he found even more unexpected was that the Wolf Mountain territory actually dared to openly invade the lands of Hessus.

"Who knows what the royal family will do once they learn of this news?"

A sinister gleam flickered in his eyes. "Regardless of what the royal family does, the main forces of Wolf Mountain are here, making the other fronts necessarily weak. It's time for them to attack!"

Mephisto suddenly laughed, as if losing the troops of two towns meant nothing to him at all.

"Things are finally starting to stir up chaos!" (End of chapter)