418: Chapter 405 Sadu: Not a Loss

Sadou never expected the surprise to arrive so suddenly, leaving him somewhat caught off guard and dazed for a moment.

The three of them had stayed up all night in the command tent, with the two Vice Legion Commanders arguing passionately, spittle flying everywhere, all over how to avoid engaging the enemy army within the forest.

There was no need to ask for the result; judging by the fact that the dispute had lasted the entire night, no feasible plan had been reached, leaving all three with a bit of a headache.

Who would have thought that at this moment, Lake would actually take the initiative to emerge from the forest? Was there any news more exhilarating than this?

The two Vice Legion Commanders, who had previously held differing views, immediately reached a consensus. They were about to leave to gather the Soldiers for battle when Sadou called out to stop them.

"What is it, Lord Legion Commander?"

"Exactly, since Lake dares to come out, I must give them a harsh lesson!"

Sadou ignored them and looked at his adjutant: "How many enemies are coming?"

"Approximately 2,000."

2,000?

Sadou felt somewhat suspicious.

According to the gathered intelligence, Zhang Mu's First Army had a full complement of about 8,000 men when it was established. Although they won the battle against the Kingdom in the Silent Forest, they suffered heavy losses, with less than 2,000 remaining.

Afterward, Zhang Mu had replenished his ranks, but the selection criteria for the First Army were strict and the process was very cumbersome. It was said that they even arranged "ideology classes," so the number of Soldiers selected was very limited.

But no matter how limited, the First Army should have at least ten thousand men by now. To attack us with only a thousand—where are the other Soldiers?

Sadou's gaze sharpened; there was a trick!

"Don't be in a hurry to engage," he told the two Vice Legion Commanders waiting for his instructions. After a two-second pause, he continued, "Take a squad of High-tier Professionals to search the surrounding area and check for any ambushing enemy troops."

Finally, they weren't avoiding the fight. The two Vice Legion Commanders breathed a sigh of relief, then left the tent to assemble the High-tier Professionals. They passed through the magic barrier to search the area around the camp for enemy ambushes.

They moved quickly and returned successfully in just ten minutes to report the results to Sadou.

The two entered the tent side-by-side, and one of them said excitedly, "Lord Legion Commander is wise; there are indeed hidden troops lurking in the forest!"

"Numbers."

"About six thousand men. Five thousand are divided equally on the left and right flanks, and the remaining one thousand are in the center."

"Six thousand?" Sadou's brow furrowed in hesitation.

Logically, finding traces of the enemy's ambush was a good thing, but he felt that Lake's bizarre move of rushing out of the forest to initiate a frontal assault was strange in every way.

Through more than half a month of entanglement with Lake, Sadou knew very well that the enemy had a commander highly proficient in warfare.

Would such a commander make the foolish decision to give up their home-field advantage to fight a decisive battle with the enemy?

The two Vice Legion Commanders clearly didn't understand why the enemy had reached the camp gates, yet the Legion Commander hadn't ordered a counterattack and was instead standing by the table in deep thought.

What was he hesitating about?

The tent was quiet for a moment before the adjutant who went to scout returned: "Lord Legion Commander, the enemy is digging trenches on a hillside about one kilometer from the camp; it seems they intend to set up a position."

Sadou's expression darkened; he couldn't wait any longer.

No matter what trick Lake was hiding, he couldn't tolerate them taking advantage of the terrain to set up an encirclement. Otherwise, even retreating would become a luxury.

"Attack!"

"As you command!" The two Vice Legion Commanders had finally received the order they were waiting for. They turned and left excitedly to assemble the Soldiers for battle.

Having made the decision, Sadou felt a weight lift, though he still felt uneasy. But since things had come to this, he could only trust that the Soldiers could defeat the enemy.

The two Vice Legion Commanders arrived at the open space in the middle of the main camp and ordered their subordinates to gather the Soldiers.

Once tens of thousands of Soldiers had assembled in formation, they immediately collected the magic crystals placed on the ground, and the magic barrier slowly vanished.

"First Battalion, move out! Target: the enemy on the hillside one kilometer away!"

The two of them indeed didn't believe they would lose to a legion composed of ordinary people, but they weren't contemptuous either. They cautiously sent out a five-thousand-man battalion to test the enemy's strength.

The standard tactics the Bauhinia Legion used against enemies usually involved knight Soldiers in the front for protection, with mage Soldiers in the center concentrating magic to blanket the enemy. Once the enemy Soldiers had lost most of their numbers and morale, the knights would charge to completely annihilate them; there was never a testing phase.

In this unprecedented move to test the enemy, the two weren't stupid enough to send fragile mages to get close to the enemy. Instead, they deployed the First Battalion, which consisted entirely of knights.

Knights could also learn some long-range attack methods, but apparently, no one in the First Battalion, who were all low-tier Professionals, had mastered any. Once they advanced to a charging distance of one thousand meters, they immediately broke into a full sprint, activated their combat skills, and charged toward the hilltop like arrows, their bodies glowing with light.

Poking his head out of the trench and using binoculars to observe the First Battalion, the commander of the Second Regiment of the First Army couldn't help but praise them upon seeing their perfectly orderly formation even while running.

"They truly are the elite legion of the Empire. Look at their formation; they run faster than rabbits, yet the line isn't broken at all. If it were a legion from the coalition, they'd be a mess by now."

"Regiment Commander, the enemy has entered range."

"Good. Prepare."

The Soldiers of the Second Regiment heard him and quickly pulled back the tarps covering the objects in front of them, revealing the magic-guided machine guns underneath.

"Listen up," the Regiment Commander said, looking around to remind the Soldiers. "Try to aim for the legs. If you hit one, don't bother finishing them off; immediately switch targets. Do you understand?"

"Yes!"

"Fire!"

The moment the Regiment Commander's shout fell, the muzzles of more than thirty rotary magic-guided gatlings distributed along the trench spat out tongues of fire simultaneously.

It was morning and cloudless, so the Soldiers of the First Battalion didn't get to see the grand spectacle of muzzle flashes connecting into lines of fire as they would in the night, but that didn't lessen the intense pain of the bullets hitting them.

The frantic rate of fire from over thirty gatlings formed a web of fire with no blind spots. The Soldiers of the First Battalion, who had never fought against firearms, didn't understand that crawling forward could reduce the probability of being hit, and they continued to sprint forward stubbornly.

In the history of warfare on Blue Star, the reason human wave tactics were phased out was inseparable from the birth of the gatling, because of the gatling's terrifying speed at harvesting lives.

Sadou had certainly never seen it before, but fortunately, he had the honor of witnessing it today.

Five thousand knight Professional Soldiers, with the lowest rank being Elementary and the highest being Advanced, led by a Sky Knight. Such a legion was enough to wipe out a minor Principality.

However, under the fire net woven by the Second Regiment, they didn't even last ten minutes.

The two Vice Legion Commanders, watching from the camp gates in stunned silence, also saw for the first time the manifestation of a metaphor often used in literature—the crowd fell row by row like wheat being harvested.

The initial battle ended just like that, so fast that one couldn't even react.

After a long time, the Vice Legion Commander was startled awake by the wails of the distant Soldiers. After seeing the situation at the bottom of the slope clearly, he was fly into a rage.

"Those bastards! They actually deliberately avoided vital points and specifically shot the Soldiers' legs!"

Cursing was just cursing; after he was done, the problem still had to be solved.

Now the enemy had stopped their attack, and a large number of their own surviving, heavily wounded Soldiers were lying there. Should they save them or not?

If they didn't, the Soldiers assembled and waiting would be watching. If they did...

The Vice Legion Commander's gloomy eyes looked toward the top of the slope, where the unfamiliar tubular weapons reflected a metallic luster in the sunlight.

Wouldn't that be sending people to their deaths?

At this moment, both Vice Legion Commanders felt a bit nostalgic for the leisurely time they spent eating and drinking inside the magic barrier.

"What should we do?" the other Vice Legion Commander asked in a low voice near his ear.

"Why do you think I would know?" he replied expressionlessly.

"Deploy the Magisters to destroy their positions from the sky."

"Legion Commander Sadou said that the enemy has a squad capable of quickly killing High-tier Professionals. I believe that squad is hiding nearby."

"Then do we just leave it alone?"

"Deploy the Magisters."

They turned to see Sadou walking over with his hands behind his back: "I thought about it for a long time just now and realized that when we decided to activate the Magic Array to hold our ground, the last chance to escape had already slipped through our fingers."

The Vice Legion Commander was stunned and said with some doubt, "Can't we leave a battalion behind to cover the retreat?"

Sadou shook his head: "Although I can't guess what the enemy's methods are, I estimate they must have prepared to block our retreat. Accept the reality of defeat."

"No, Lord Legion Commander, we still have hundreds of High-tier Professionals. We can't just surrender like this!"

"Who said we were going to surrender?" Sadou looked at their bewildered faces and smiled. "Defeat is indeed certain, but it's not like we can't win it back in the future. The Gangnuo Empire hasn't fallen yet."

"The Empire is powerful; how could it fall?"

"So, don't be discouraged. The outcome of this battle doesn't decide who the final winner is."

Now, what we need to do is force Lake to reveal more of his strength, so that the hope of defeating him in the future will be greater. Based on this, regardless of whether we can win the upcoming decisive battle, it won't be a loss."

The two Vice Legion Commanders stared fixedly at Sadou. Not being beaten down by failure and not fearing difficulties—this was exactly the reason they had originally sworn their loyalty and followed Sadou.

"I understand," the two said in unison, with one following up, "The next tactic?"

"According to the way the Bauhinia Legion is most familiar with."

"As you command!"

The subsequent operations didn't require Sadou's command. One of them mobilized all the remaining Soldiers to attack the slope, while the other led the High-tier Professionals into the sky to provide support from above.

The movement of the entire Bauhinia Legion was not small, and the Second Regiment Commander on the hill immediately noticed it.

He raised his binoculars and observed carefully. After confirming that all the Bauhinia Legion's High-tier Professionals had taken to the air and the Soldiers were marching out of the main camp in formation, he quickly turned on his headset and said excitedly, "They're all coming out!"

A reply came through the headset the next second: "Understood."

The Bauhinia Legion still had forty thousand Soldiers left. The momentum of forty thousand people marching across the grass in formation was still very shocking. With their steps moving forward in unison, added to the powerful physiques of Professionals, the First Army Soldiers even felt the ground beneath their feet tremble.

As the distance between the two sides closed, the mages in the back of the Bauhinia Legion began to condense magic, raising a huge Magic Shield with their companions at the very front of the formation, intending to withstand the Second Corps's fire net.

However, the first things to hit them weren't bullets, but artillery shells flying from afar.

The blue light emitted by the Magic Shield continued to dim, and the Vice Legion Commander contacted the sky: "Go and take them out!"

"Leave it to me."

The hundreds of High-tier Professionals hovering above, led by the other Vice Legion Commander, sped toward the First Army's artillery positions.

But shortly after they took flight and reached the edge of the forest, they encountered stubborn resistance.

The First Army Soldiers lurking in the forest quickly pulled back the high-rising magic tarps beside them, exposing over a hundred anti-aircraft guns to the air.

"Fire!"

With the sudden recoil of the gun barrels, one cloud of "black mist" after another exploded around the High-tier Professionals.

The Sky Knights reacted quickly, swinging their weapons to block in front of the Magisters, while the Magisters summoned Magic Shields to guard against sneak attacks and cast blessing magic on the Sky Knights.

After blocking the "black mist" a few times, they found that the power of this stuff wasn't very strong, at least not enough to break through the Magic Shields and the physiques of the Sky Knights.

The Vice Legion Commander waved his hand: "Ignore them, go and destroy those distant magic crystal can—"

"Aaaah—"

Halfway through his sentence, he was suddenly interrupted by a scream from beside him. The Vice Legion Commander turned his head in shock and saw the headless corpse of a Magister falling straight to the ground, a large fountain of blood spraying from the neck and drifting with the wind in the sky.

"Where is the position!"

This Magister had his Magic Shield on. To be able to take him out in one hit, the one who did it was undoubtedly the mysterious squad Sadou had mentioned.

"Vice... Vice Legion Commander, I can't find them!"

"Me neither!"

The High-tier Professionals were somewhat panicked, subconsciously tightening their formation and warily searching for the enemy hidden in the shadows. However, judging from the identical replies that kept coming in, they had clearly found nothing.

The Vice Legion Commander's face was grim as he looked down at the ground, his Mental Energy spreading out as well.

Not here, not here either, same here. Where on earth are they?!

Finding nothing after a desperate search, he clenched his fists and gritted his teeth: "Magisters, cover the ground with magic! If there are more sneak attacks, Sky Knights, charge into the forest immediately!"

Hearing the order, they immediately sprang into action. The Magisters began to condense area-of-effect magic, and the Sky Knights prepared their acceleration combat skills. Along the way, the mysterious squad's bullets never stopped for a moment.

At the cost of three Magisters and two Sky Knights, bursts of brilliant magic rained down from the sky toward the ground.

Violent explosions echoed through the sky as several pillars of light stabbed straight down from the heights. Fire and flying stones enveloped the forest, with thunder occasionally surging through it. Huge stone spikes erupted from the earth, standing tall amidst the sky-high flames.

The terrifying scene lasted for about ten minutes. As the magic power gradually ran out and the magic faded, the forest no longer existed, replaced by a patch of scorched earth.

The Vice Legion Commander looked at the results of his team's work, but there was no joy. Instead, his eyes were vacant, as if he were seeing something unbelievable.

On the scorched earth stood twenty-five strange and unfamiliar magic beasts. Magic runes lit up on both sides of their bodies, and the disc-shaped heads atop them shot out countless lines of light that meandered and connected in the air to form a Magic Array.

The center of the Magic Array shot a thick beam of light into the sky, supporting a deep purple magic barrier.

Through the magic barrier, the Vice Legion Commander saw that the Soldiers hiding inside were unharmed. The Soldiers looked up at the Vice Legion Commander with smiles on their faces, seemingly mocking his stunned expression.

Since even the ordinary Soldiers were unscathed, there was naturally no need to say whether that mysterious squad had survived. Furthermore, another scream that rang out beside him was the most powerful proof.

"Vice Legion Commander, please give the order!" a Sky Knight urged anxiously, swinging his sword to block a bullet with difficulty.