Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 152. Blood for Blood.
“M-Mustafa…!”
“He’s alive?!”
“His aura… we’re all gonna get killed!”
“I shouldn’t have come here...”
Naturally, this wave of clamor was something that ought to have been predicted. Even elite martial and spiritual masters would have a hard time bearing with the full brunt of Mustafa’s aura, much less those average experts and the regular conscripted soldiers. Just seeing Mustafa walk at the head of two hundred white-robed experts, all wearing the war-sigil of the roaring tiger, was enough to shake them to the very bones. It was just that, just one person, but this presence alone was causing the entire center of Yimar Maar’s army to grow dangerously close to routing right there and right then.
The fact that the regular, mortal realm conscripts were placed in the front and at the head of the two ‘flanks’ of the center army was only adding the fuel to the growing fire. The images of Mustafa swinging his sword and turning hundreds of people into a mass of bloody paste and gore were still very fresh in their minds. They had first thought that Mustafa had been killed by Arakar, then been told that he was critically wounded and that he wouldn’t be able to fight… but here he was, walking towards them while looking no less fearsome than during the last week’s battle.
How could they possibly not be terrified out of their wits? While they still held some hope for survival in a clash with the White Guard itself, they saw nothing but death when the one who stood on the opposite end of the battlefield was Mustafa, the famed strongest man in the entire Arkaria. There was no way that they wouldn’t be aware of the role they would play in the battle, and the people who might have had some delusions about it had been brutally awakened during the previous clash. Thus, as this slim light of hope was brutally extinguished, it couldn’t be helped that their hears would be quickly overcome with fear and their ranks would subsequently fall into disorder.
However, as obvious and natural of a reaction it was for those regular experts and the conscripted masses, it was something incomprehensible for Yimar Maar. Hadn’t he already had the situation explained to all his soldiers the last week? He simply couldn’t comprehend what they were so surprised about now all of the sudden.
“Calm down!” he yelled angrily, sending his voice throughout the entirety of the central army with the aid of his Qi. “You were told he’s already injured! All he’s doing is releasing his aura recklessly! He won’t come up to fight!” he followed up, causing the clamor amongst his ranks to die down by a level or two. Although he wasn’t all that pleased with the result, he snorted and assumed that it would be enough. As long as those people played their role and slowed down the White Guard, he didn’t care if they fought valiantly or died the dog’s death.
“Second-rate… maybe even third-rate,” Arakar murmured from the western wing of the battlefield. As a result of Yimar Maar’s actions, even though the army was no longer in the danger of routing, the heavy and anxious atmosphere remained. After all, Yimar Maar didn’t have the absolute and unconditional trust and loyalty of his soldiers like Mustafa could be said to have. Using mere words to soothe the hearts of those who didn’t trust him… it would bring no good results in the long run.
“Either way, it’s as expected.” Arakar shrugged his shoulders slightly. “The only value left in this place is the possibility of capturing Mustafa’s son. Still, I bet he’s going to abandon all caution and go after me the moment I leave their field of vision. It’s not worth risking my life,” he thought leisurely. He had already achieved more than he had been planning to in those Euleanian lands, so he saw no reason to push things too far. Who knew what acts a wounded tiger would take if he was pushed up against a wall? He could imagine a few possibilities and surely, he wouldn’t want to face any of them.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he said calmly, speaking neither quietly nor loudly. “Each and every one of you is precious to me. We lost five hundred in order to get rid of Mustafa, but now that this goal is accomplished, I won’t accept any more casualties,” he instructed, to what the seven golden-silver robed people nearby responded at once.
“Yes, Master!”
“Mm.” Arakar nodded with a content smile on his face. “Go and lead your units. If anything changes, I’ll make sure to inform you,” he ordered and his words were obeyed without delay. “Good,” he said quietly. With those seven serving as lynchpins, he was confident that he wouldn’t lose any more men… at least, not of his own. He had twenty thousand worthless troops to make use of and ten thousand of relatively useless troops as backup meat shields, so he intended to make full use of them.
“Well, let’s see how it all develops from now on,” he murmured, a slight smile still present on his face. “Four hundred seem to be here to contain me, Mustafa is baiting that fool in the center… so the actual action is going to play out at the eastern battlefield, huh? Well, it’s good for me,” he deduced leisurely. If he were in Yimar Maar’s place, he would have had Abdain prepare an ambush on the eastern flank in order to kill some White Guards, but what Yimar Maar was going to do remained to be seen.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield.
“It worked better than we thought,” Mustafa said with a quiet laugh the moment Kasim approached him, the two of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder with each other. “They seem timid,” he added before he could bite his tongue. This battle was supposed to hone Kasim, yet he was about to explain what he was seeing and give appropriate orders. As useful as leading by hand could be to teaching someone, nothing could beat the experience of accomplishing the objective with one’s own hands.
“The leaders might be acting.” However, contrary to Mustafa’s worries, Kasim didn’t notice anything strange and continued as planned. “But the regular soldiers are surely shaken. The most that can wait for us on the right flank is Abdain’s ambush or an additional ambush of some hidden elites of theirs. However, we’ve already taken that into consideration… the losses will be unavoidable, but we will make them pay dearly for each drop of our blood they draw,” he elaborated, then despite knowing that he shouldn’t, he glanced at Mustafa, seeking a confirmation from him.
Only after receiving a nod from Mustafa did he continue. “The two biggest variables are going to be, as we were predicting, Yimar Maar’s and Arakar’s choices. Will Yimar Maar bet everything to attack our positions in the center? And if so, how much of his army will he commit to that? As for Arakar, the worst-case scenario for us would be if he decides to slowly shave away at our numbers while avoiding you, my Lord,” he concluded and once again, looked for a validation from Mustafa.
“There might actually be one more thing,” Mustafa said out of the blue, startling Kasim quite badly. Hadn’t they discussed everything before the sunrise? Had Mustafa kept this piece of information to himself on purpose or was this something he realized only now? Either way, it caused him to grow quite nervous. “They could actually ignore Arslan’s party entirely and just focus on us instead. However, given that they simply need to commit a few thousand regular soldiers and some martial masters to finding out whether Arslan truly is moving north, it’s unlikely,” Mustafa speculated, thankful that Kasim was clear-headed enough to be keeping the sound at bay the whole time.
“I doubt they are that crazy,” he added with a wry smile. “But who knows, they might ignore Arslan even after finding out that he is there and just try to wipe us out. Between the low chance of capturing Arslan and killing a few hundred more White Guards, they might choose the latter,” he explained calmly. This scenario was extremely unlikely to happen and that was why it hadn’t even occurred to him before now, but since it did, he decided to bring it up just for the sake of it.
“I see,” Kasim nodded in understanding. Now that Mustafa explained what it was all about, he once again grew relatively calm. “I understand that our plan of killing off as many of our enemies would still stand then, yes?” he asked, to what Mustafa once again nodded; if he needed to choose between losing a few hundred more White Guards and allowing Kasim to gain the valuable experience, he wouldn’t think twice before making his decision. Kasim’s growth was far more important, at this point in time, than the lives of a few hundred of his regular White Guards.
“Well then, let us start,” Kasim said, then after taking a deep breath, raised his hand and made a brief gesture to his own vice-captain. The man responded immediately, taking one hundred men to the front, across the wide grasslands. As his hundred-man unit moved, it smoothly split into over a dozen smaller groups. Some of them slowed down considerably, other ones spread to the sides, while the rest of them, around forty, charged forward at full speed.
With the formation Yimar Maar employed, his own elites were protected behind the layer of regular conscripts and average Realm of Heroes experts. On one hand, it guaranteed that the White Guard wouldn’t be able to reach him easily and forced them to get tired out by killing the worthless cannon fodder. However, on the other hand, the current goal of the White Guard wasn’t to win quickly, but to whittle down on Yimar Maar’s strength before cornering him into a deathtrap.
With Yimar Maar’s thousand ruby-golden-robed experts standing still, and in addition to the chilling effect Mustafa’s presence had on the central army’s morale, the first clash almost instantly dissolved into chaos. The forty martial masters led by Kasim’s vice-captain all either wielded a wind or lightning element or had exceptionally powerful bodies that allowed them to move at great speeds. Thus, even though they plunged into vastly superior numbers, they didn’t need to worry about getting out.
With the forty martial masters biting Yimar Maar’s army repeatedly, whatever command structure had there been originally collapsed in just a few minutes. With every charge, the forty White Guards would bite off a piece of flesh off the gigantic whale of an army that stood before them. Although they claimed only up to two or three hundred lives with each clash, they weren’t even using up their Qi all that fast. This kind of an overwhelming advantage… they had expected today’s battle to be harder now that the scattered army was directly commanded by enemy leaders, but the beginning couldn’t have been more favorable to them.
With the aid of the sixty martial and spiritual masters from their hundred-man unit who stayed from a few dozens to a few hundred meters away, they repeated their attacks time and time again. They didn’t need to worry about those weaklings pulling any surprises, but they weren’t planning to make any mistakes either. Thus, after each charge, after claiming each batch of lives, they disengaged without fail as to not find themselves surrounded by thousands of enemies.
Within a mere ten minutes, the central army of Yimar Maar’s lost well over two thousands of their weakest soldiers and almost four hundred of the regular martial masters… but at the same time, to the west, the situation was playing out very differently.
Even though the western part of the battlefield was a mixed terrain of grasslands and forests, and even though four hundred White Guards under the lead of Alysia and Bahir were there, the soldiers under Arakar had barely suffered any casualties. The two Lieutenants attacked at the same time Kasim’s vice-captain engaged the central army, but to their surprise, they felt as if they fell into a quagmire. They had been planning to attack in a manner much alike to the one their central counterparts employed, but the golden-silver-robed men of Arakar’s stopped them in their tracks.
To Alysia’s frustration, her instincts were telling her that if she were to take the bait and attack one of those seemingly powerless units of regular soldiers and weak experts, she would be throwing herself and her subordinates into a death trap. She was incredibly frustrated as all she could do was to engage in brief low-casualty clashes with the units of silver-golden-robed men who roamed the entire battlefield. It was true that she and her men were strong enough to wipe out one of such three-hundred men units, but that would take time. She didn’t quite know why, but she was never good with logic and pure tactics. All she knew was that if she dared to engage in a prolonged battle at one spot, she would be asking to have her two hundred White Guards wiped out.
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On the contrary, the deceivingly youthful-looking Bahir understood what was happening all too well. “Damned bastard, not only is he a genius practitioner, he’s also at least at the General-level when it comes to commanding large-scale battles,” he muttered angrily as he and his men retreated from the incoming encirclement of Arakar’s elites. “He knew that those weak conscripts would only be getting in the way and that there would be no point in trying to directly cooperate with them, so instead of trying to pull off the impossible, he split everyone up into teams from three to five hundred. He probably told them to act independently but not to get too far away from his own elites.”
“Fuck.” Cursing, Kasim had no other choice but to change his approach. “We can’t keep retreating like that, else sooner or later Arakar’s wing will come crushing against our own central units. There’s no way we will be able to do anything without paying the price in blood… but attacking them recklessly is stupid too. I guess we’ll need to play the assisting role for her,” he decided with a sigh, then quickly revised the position of the enemy units in his mind.
Although the loose formation Arakar adapted was very proficient in stopping the attack-and-run tactics, it wasn’t without a flaw. For example, if they concentrated attacks in one place, then at least half, if not more, of the enemies would be late to reinforce. Still, it meant that unless the attack was successful and thus the space for disengage could be created, whoever attempted such an offensive would be surrounded and devoured alive… especially with the variable of Arakar himself. Were this monster not wary of using too much Qi just in case Mustafa went after his life, the battle on this wing would have been an unwinnable one no matter how good their tactics or luck were.
“We’ll be playing the bait for the beast-woman. Sharu, you are your hundred are in charge of making sure that we can retreat,” he instructed, sending his voice only to the appropriate places with the aid of his Qi. Then, as he heart was already steeled, he moved without wasting any time. There were four units of Arakar’s experts in the relative proximity of Alysia, so he picked out two of them. To be precise, he led his two hundred people to rush across their western battlefield, making use of the fact that the formation of Arakar’s troops wasn’t all that flexible in terms of large-scale quick responses. He singled out the close of the two units of silver-golden-robed elites, then led his own hundred men to attack them head-on, without any tricks or plays.
Even with the support of his vice-captain from behind, their hundred was met with a barrage of martial techniques and spells the moment they got into range of those two elite units. The attacks of various elements from both sides met in the air, creating a series of powerful explosions which stalled Bahir’s party momentarily. However, right after the two waves of attacks died down a little, Bahir led his men forward, straight into the dust and the leftover Qi and spiritual energy that filled the air. As powerful as a barrage of ranged attacks was, it was impossible for anyone but the best of the best to repeatedly use attacks capable of threatening the lives of martial masters of third, fourth and fifth ranks. Thus, even though the window was brief, maybe a second-long, Bahir didn’t miss it.
His sword burning with the powerful fire-element Qi of a peak martial master of the fifth rank, Bahir slashed at the first silver-golden-robed men he was met with. The man moved his own sword in time to block, but he got overpowered the next instant and had his guard pushed away and had his torso cut apart from the top down. Although the now standing and burning corpse had been a martial master of the fifth rank, just like Bahir, he died from just one blow. The fact that he had just released a powerful martial technique surely played a part in that, but fundamentally, it was simply that Bahir was strong. As a Lieutenant of the White Guard, he was far stronger than other practitioners at the same level of cultivation, even when compared to the elites reared by Arakar.
The same scenario played out as the few strongest members of Bahir’s unit clashed with their first enemies, but inevitably, their momentum was stalled and stopped. After a few dozen silver-golden-robed experts were killed, the difference in numbers showed itself. Moreover, as big as the difference in strength between the strongest ten percent of the White Guard and of the top ten percent of Arakar’s private army was, the gap wasn’t nearly as big if their ‘regular’ members were to be compared. Thus, the first white-robed experts started falling down to the ground as the two groups ground away at each other’s numbers in this rough and primitive, strength-focused clash.
To make the matters worse, the other group of three-hundred silver-golden-robed men was already rushing in to aid their companions. Had they not been delayed by Sharu’s unit, they would have joined the melee already, causing even more casualties to appear on the side of Bahir’s team. This kind of a stupid fighting certainly wasn’t a thing that White Guard did often… however, it would be more likely for hell to freeze over than for Alysia to miss a perfect opportunity like this one.
Seconds after Bahir clashed with the first of the two elite units, Alysia led her two -hundred White Guards to attack the remaining two teams of silver-golden-robed men. Objectively speaking, this tactic shouldn’t have brought much… but Bahir was confident. It was Alysia and her beast-like subordinates they were speaking about! There were no spiritual masters in their ranks, only close and mid-range oriented marital masters of great strength. Moreover…
“Rippling Wind,” Alysia slashed with her sword the moment she passed through the layer of dust and leftover enemy, one that resulted from the same kind of a clash that occurred before Bahir engaged his own enemies. Her Qi of a marital master of the sixth rank mixed with her insights and transformed into countless blades of wind, much like the ones Mustafa liked to use. The speed and destructive might of this martial technique was simply too great; with no one in place to stop it or to meet it with any kind of a counter-attack, the wind slashed right through the ranks of silver-golden-robed men, turning over a hundred of them into piles of bloody mincemeat in under half a second.
Subsequently, a hundred men who had been following half a step behind Alysia jumped into melee without any fear for their lives. Alysia did the same, leaping to the closest enemy and quickly tearing him apart with a few quick slashes of her sword. Arakar’s elites were powerful, true… but against Alysia’s beast-like instincts, which allowed her to pick out the weakest prey and hunt it down, they were helpless. In a direct confrontation, there was no stronger unit in the entire ten-thousand-strong White Guard than the hundred-man-team of Alysia’s direct subordinates. Once they were allowed to fight on their own terms, it took but a few dozen seconds to lay waste to the majority of those three hundred and fifty silver-golden-robed experts.
At the cost of but three lives of theirs, they killed almost three hundred of Arakar’s elites, with but a few of them escaping with their lives. At the same time, Alysia’s vice-captain engaged briefly with the only remaining elite unit in the proximity. The results of this clash, up to the point when Arakar’s men hurriedly disengaged and retreated, were five dead on the side of the White Guard and more than one hundred and fifty dead on the side of Arakar’s silver-golden-robed experts.
“Stall them up,” Alysia shouted, her gaze turning towards the two units approaching from the back, amongst which was Arakar himself. They couldn’t afford to engage those people, but they couldn’t let them run through either, else Bahir’s path of retreat would be cut off! She wasn’t good with tactics, but even she understood that much.
Naturally, once the business was done, Bahir didn’t force himself and his subordinates anymore and chose to retreat. With the aid of long-range attacks of his vice-captain and the one-hundred men under his command, they somehow avoided too many loses while retreating. Still, their combined two-hundred men were now reduced to one hundred and fifty or so, maybe even one-hundred and forty, while they had killed merely a hundred or so of Arakar’s elites. Were it not for Alysia’s performance, this clash would have been quite tragic to their overall battle prowess.
Overall, this one somewhat reckless bet allowed them to cut down well over five hundred of Arakar’s elites at the cost of around seventy of their own people. Considering that they had preserved their strongest experts and that they killed off two unit-leaders of Arakar’s bands, it was an acceptable trade. However, it was unlikely that they would be allowed to pull off something similar again.
“Still, it was worth it,” Bahir smiled wickedly. If he survived this battle, he would mourn the deaths of his comrades and friends, but for now, he was content enough. The less security Arakar had, the less likely it was that he would try to intervene in the central battlefield. In fact, he could already see Arakar withdrawing the line of his silver-robed experts by a few levels of depth. Although it would still be hard to harass the regular army of Arakar’s, now it would at least be possible.
“Haah, good,” Bahir breathed out with relief. It really looked like Arakar wasn’t too fond of the idea of losing more of his precious subordinates in this battle. Had Arakar been bent on trading blows with them until the end, had Arakar been willing to take the risk of Mustafa attacking him alter and taken field personally, this western wing could have easily collapsed. However, this one blow to the numbers of the silver-golden-robed men shifted the flow of battle in their favor.
It wouldn’t be easy and more deaths were sure to follow, but like this, their job of keeping Arakar at bay would be accomplished as long as they didn’t slip up.
With the western wing coming to a stalemate, the pace of the clash slowing down heavily, the fighting in the central battlefield was becoming more and more hectic.
As the minutes flowed, the difference between the quality of tactics employed started showing itself more and more. The chasm separating someone who was a skilled commander at the scale of thousands and someone who was at the level of a General, capable of directing a battle on the scale of tens of thousands, was perhaps surprisingly quite an enormous one. As such, the casualties on the side of Yimar Maar’s numerous army were only growing faster and faster as be it his personal experts or the practitioners under his command, none were able to react to the attacks of the hundred men led by the capable vice-captain of Kasim’s and the hundred White Guards under his command.
In the end, Yimar Maar had come to power through the means of thorough preparation. He had never been put into place where he needed to fight a large-scale war where both sides had similar fighting strength. There were also his flaws in interpersonal relations and his inability to empathize with the state of mind of the normal, relatively weak people. He wasn’t decisive enough with his commands, the morale of his troops was at the rock-bottom, just about ready to take up a shovel and start digging even deeper downwards. At this rate, it would be the center that collapsed first.
Frustrated, Yimar Maar ordered a group of his own unit of one hundred and eight spiritual masters to start chanting a Grand Spell.
Seeing the great mass of flames gathering in the sky above Yimar Maar’s army, Kasim couldn’t help but snort with disdain. He wasn’t an experienced commander, but trying to use a Grand Magic in such a close proximity to one’s enemy was pure stupidity! Yes, they would be screwed if they had no means of super-long-range attacks… but if they had it, then the side using the Grand Magic would be screwed, and quite heavily too.
As the saying went, one shouldn’t interrupt his enemy while he was making a mistake. Thus, both Kasim and his vice-captain chose to allow the battle to progress as it had up until now as Yimar Maar’s people were casting the Grand Spell. The gargantuan amount of natural spiritual energy that was being drawn towards the massive infernal mass of flames was apparent, and quite terrifying, to anyone. Yet, to Kasim, it looked like nothing else than a tasty snack that he was going to devour whole in just a few more moments.
He waited almost two minutes for the spiritual masters to almost finish the cast and only then, he roused his Qi.
The battlefield was quickly flooded with the peculiar aura of the darkness-element Qi of a peak martial master of the sixth rank. The sounds of battle and the people themselves seemed to freeze up for a few seconds as Kasim raised his hand. Many looked at the huge, ten-meter long spear of pure darkness which formed in his hand. At this sight, the one hundred and eight spiritual masters felt cold sweat pour down their backs, but there was nothing they could do now that they’ve almost completed the spell. There was no way they could dispel it in time… so they could only attempt to finish it sooner than planned. Alas, as if completing a Grand Magic could be that easy!
The next second, the great spear of darkness was hurled through the air by Kasim. It flew at an incredible speed, easily outspending or piercing through the few attacks that were sent to stop it. Then, it pierced right through the middle of the accumulating mass of flames… and inevitably, caused it to destabilize and implode, sending a shockwave and a mass of flames hurling directly down at the core of Yimar Maar’s army, causing many of the ruby-golden experts to sustain light injuries. Still, as spectacular as this explosion was, it wasn't actually all that threatening.
Most importantly, the backlash of having their Grand Spell interrupted at the most critical point made the one hundred and eight spiritual masters experience a dreadful backlash of spiritual energy. Without exception, all of them fell to their knees and started vomiting a large amount of blood, the weaker ones dying almost instantly from their hearts rupturing. Before the water-element practitioners in their ranks could get over to them, two third of their numbers died and the rest were crippled for life, their Spiritual Cores having cracked too far to ever be repaired.