100: The crusade ends

“It’s over, my Troops are all gone. I shouldn’t have been greedy for the Alliance’s bounty. I regret it.”

“Ahhh, this is impossible. How could a hundred of us Lords, with an army of five hundred thousand Troops, not defeat one person?”

“I’m broken, completely broken. The advantage I painstakingly accumulated during the novice assessment is gone in one wave, back to square one.”

“...”

Not all Lords had Gerard’s mindset.

As the siege, which had lasted for several hours, was about to conclude,

the Lords who participated in this punitive expedition began to wail and howl.

Some Lords were even so terrified that their faces turned ashen, and they collapsed on top of their own Troops.

They arrived full of vigor and high spirits.

Now, they were all disheveled, like stray dogs.

In fact, they were not much different from stray dogs now.

To answer the call of the Alliance, they had truly gone all out for this expedition, bringing out almost ninety percent of their Troops.

Then, they watched helplessly as almost all their Troops were lost beneath Li Feng’s city walls.

Most of them were not Chosen Ones and would not receive the favor of fate.

This defeat plunged them almost into an abyss.

It was imaginable that for the next year, they would fall behind other Lords and find it difficult to turn the situation around.

The Endless Continent is vast, but most resource points have either been exploited by others or occupied by stronger Lords.

If they couldn't gather as many resources as possible in this novice area within this year,

their future growth process would be infinitely extended, or they might even fade into obscurity.

This was not their wild imagination, but a hard fact.

“It’s about to end.”

Li Feng stood on the city wall, his gaze calmly fixed on the battlefield below.

This defensive battle was the longest war he had ever commanded, lasting for several hours.

The further it went, the more entrenched the battle became.

Firstly, because the cannon fodder of the Alliance army was completely exhausted, and the remaining Troops were all more powerful high-tier Troops.

Secondly, as the numbers drastically decreased, the battlefield also became more open.

The remaining elite units of the enemy began to attempt dispersed guerrilla tactics, and the terrifying area-of-effect damage of the dragon breath arrow tower could no longer be fully utilized.

Moreover, a slight misstep could accidentally injure his own Troops.

Therefore, Li Feng had long since deactivated the dragon breath arrow tower.

Without the assistance of the dragon breath arrow tower, the efficiency of killing enemies naturally decreased significantly.

Fortunately, after several hours of fighting, it was finally coming to an end.

On the battlefield, only a few scattered high-tier Troops were still putting up a desperate resistance.

Through the global overview of the War Tech Tree, Li Feng could see that

the Lords of the Taiyi Alliance were frantically fleeing, protected by their respective high-tier Troops.

However, as long as they hadn't escaped Li Feng’s territory, Li Feng could see them.

“Shadow Scorpion, kill those Lords.”

This was the first time Li Feng had ordered the Shadow Scorpion to act.

Now that the Lords of the Taiyi Alliance no longer had a massive number of Troops in front of them, the Shadow Scorpion could finally be put to use.

Upon receiving the order, hundreds of Shadow Scorpions immediately sprang into action.

Don't let their small size fool you; their speed was much faster than the Bronze Dragon from before.

Because of the holy light crystal ball, they chose not to hide their figures and brazenly charged towards the Lords.

As seventh-tier Troops, their speed was too fast; they easily caught up with the Lords who had started fleeing earlier.

Soon, a sharp-eyed Lord spotted the Shadow Scorpion heading straight for him.

He was furious, “Damn Dragon Countryman! Even if this punitive expedition failed, you shouldn’t use such trash to humiliate me.”

He didn't recognize the Shadow Scorpion’s tier, only guessing it was a low-tier Troop based on its size.

The next moment, the Flame Lion beneath the white Lord went berserk.

It opened its gaping maw, a huge fireball with a diameter of over three meters condensed, and it spewed towards the Shadow Scorpion.

Whoosh!

Just as the white Lord thought the Shadow Scorpion was dead for sure,

a relatively tiny black shadow tore through the huge fireball and charged directly in front of the white Lord.

“Ah!”

The white Lord let out a terrified shriek, his body involuntarily falling from the Flame Lion, looking very disheveled.

Before he could get up, the Shadow Scorpion’s sharp stinger had already pierced his body.

Although he had broken through to the first-tier and was much stronger than an ordinary person,

facing the attack of a seventh-tier Troop, he was utterly defenseless and was instantly killed.

Accompanying his death, a pile of items dropped to the ground; these were the resources that burst from him upon his demise.

At the same time, the Flame Lion, which had been aggressively trying to attack the Shadow Scorpion, instantly became stunned and bewildered.

A single casual attack from the Shadow Scorpion instantly killed this powerful sixth-tier Troop.

The gap between legendary Troops and elite Troops was too vast, so much so that the latter couldn't withstand even a casual blow from a legendary Troop.

When the last Gerard also fell in battle, this punitive expedition completely ended.

On the surface, Li Feng appeared to have won a Pyrrhic victory.

Of the nearly seventy thousand Beedrills, only a few thousand remained.

Of the thousands of Flying Mantises, less than a hundred were left.

Even the city wall beneath his feet had been breached multiple times.

To repair these breaches, the resources Li Feng consumed amounted to millions of units.

But only Li Feng himself knew that this was a great victory.

Because the Troops and resources lost in this war were recovered many times over by killing the five hundred thousand strong army of Troops.

Not to mention the various resources, blueprints, and items that dropped after killing the Lords.

Just by killing their Troops, the gold coins earned exceeded 5 million gold coins.

Among them, the Seven-Colored Star Ladybug's levels all increased to 5, and its base attack power alone increased by 4800 points, causing its strength to surge.

For other Lords, no matter how many resources they gained, if the number of Troops lost was too great, it was still not cost-effective.

After all, for other Lords, summoning Troops incurred significant time or item costs.

Even for a first-tier Troop, losing tens of thousands represented a huge time cost.

Therefore, in the hearts of the Taiyi Alliance Lords, although Li Feng had defeated them, it was only a Pyrrhic victory, because he had very few Troops left.

What they didn't know was that as long as he had enough gold coins, Li Feng could summon back all the lost Troops in minutes,

not to mention he also possessed Mirror Replication, which only required one-tenth of the cost...