Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 186. Organized Retreat.
“Is he really only a spiritual practitioner?” One of the dual experts from the White Sword Unit asked in a baffled tone. The twenty-plus people around him who were similarly exhausted or have suffered serious wounds couldn’t help but nod in agreement from atop their horses. Even though their White Sword Unit as a whole hadn’t sustained any casualties in the past five to six minutes of constant clashes, had it not been for Laien, many of them would have undoubtedly ended up dying. To begin with, their own wounds were mainly from their independent choice to further shave-off the numbers of their enemies while tempering their own skills at the same time. However, even counting Julien’s men, they were facing thousands of enemies with more or less hundred and twenty people on their side. It was inevitable that once they went on the offensive, they would pay a certain price for that.
It could also be said that many of their ten-man teams had gotten overzealous due to how easy it had been for them to slaughter Abdain’s elites in the clash earlier today. They had gotten somewhat careless and hadn’t thought that those ruby-golden-robed elites would be able to put up such a fight and often push them to the brink of death without those two kids around to pave the way forward. As a result, they had felt relieved once the agreed upon three sounds of a horn sounded, but simultaneously, many of them were aware that it wouldn’t be easy for them to disengage their fights. It would have been simple had they kept the distance and allowed their enemies to simply follow them closely like they had been doing early on, alas, now this was all only wishful thinking.
Still, as members of the elite White Sword, they were prepared to pay the price in blood in order for the majority of them to retreat safely. The respective ten-man commanders and those of them who had fewer regrets about dying stepped up, willing to exchange their lives for the retreat of their companions. However, as if it was a wave moving from the west to east, all of their respective battlefields had been successively and quickly thrown into chaos. Coincidentally, those who were further to the west were expected to retreat first according to the standard military tactics, so this series of events had thrown the original course of events into complete disarray.
“He’s gotten even stronger,” one of the women commented with a sigh. Just like the man who brought up his rhetorical question a second ago, she was a dual practitioner. Her martial cultivation base was of the pseudo wind element, just like of the very majority of the martial practitioners in the northern lands of Eulene. After all, one couldn’t become a Tempest Rider without cultivating their Gryphon Lord Martial Art and thus, without it one would have limited opportunities of advancing in their military. Only the extremely talented individuals or practitioners of water and light elements who could heal others were an exception to this rule. However, those small regrets about her martial cultivation not suiting her innate element only lingered in the woman’s mind for a brief moment.
What did weigh on her, though, was the fact that as a wind-element spiritual master of the third rank, her abilities couldn’t hold a candle to those of a twelve-year-old boy. Just like those twenty men and women around her, the more she looked at the unrestrained and seemingly effortless way Laien handled his water and ice-element magic, the more depressed she became. Like many others, she had had the idea of watching Laien’s magic closely and benefiting from it, but both she and everyone else had given up equally soon. They had come to the realization that even though they could see Laien’s spells and they could probe them with their aura, they were completely and utterly unable to see through their nature. The insights contained in them were already at a level that was so far beyond them that they couldn’t learn anything from seeing them in use.
Yet, perhaps somewhat ironically, it was exactly because they were able to watch something that was too far beyond them for a relatively long period of time that their feelings changed. At first they had been excited, then they were depressed, but now, once their hearts accepted Laien as someone simply beyond them, those negative feelings of gloom and jealousy changed into ones of respect. Given that all of them had already accepted Laien, and Yin at that matter, as someone with the ability of a General-level figure, those old and new feelings of respect added upon each other. This made the twenty-plus of them to wholeheartedly recognize Laien, in particular, as someone to be revered.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that if no good reason existed, and if a situation where they had to fight Laien or Laien’s allies occurred, they would go as far as to refuse the orders of their superiors. And, if they who were standing in the back were already feeling like this, it was needless to be said that those fifty-plus of them who were fighting side-by-side with Laien felt all the more strongly! Especially those of them who had intended to sacrifice themselves to allow the rest of them to retreat safely were extremely grateful for Laien’s timely appearance. Truly, Laien’s prowess in team-oriented battles had been great to begin with, but once they had seen the new abilities which Laien must have awakened in the past minutes, they became all the more awestruck.
Even now, Laien’s virtually instantaneous and yet frighteningly powerful spells aided their battle and continued to claim one life after another. By this point, the weaker of their enemies, those regular non-affiliated experts in the Realm of Heroes, were too scared to approach while the ruby-golden-robed martial masters of the third rank were warily keeping their distance. With only the martial masters of the fourth and fifth ranks attacking them, the pressure they had to bear with was considerably reduced. Moreover, with Laien’s support, they had been able to kill a considerable number of those top-tier experts of Abdain’s, so how could their blood not boil with excitement?
“So comfortable,” Laien thought with a smile on his face. Compared to battling alone or jumping into the fray of the battle right off the bat, being able to stay behind and use his magic was almost relaxing. “There’s the next group,” he mused once he heard the sounds of battle coming from the east. From what those from the White Sword told him, there should be three more units including this one in their part of the forest. Once they picked those guys up, they would all mount up and rush to join their main unit in the middle and by then, they wouldn’t need to worry much about their rear being attacked as they would have quite a great advantage in movement speed.
“Come forth,” Laien said soundlessly. Before he noticed, the phrase had etched itself in his mind and he ended up repeating it every time he drew upon the full force of his insights. And, just like he willed, after a second of concentration a new river-like wave emerged and flew up into the air while the previous one, which had lost some of its strength after over a dozen exchanges, dissipated.
“Just like before,” he began saying. “I go in first, you guys later. Then go with the flow,” he instructed in a few words, mainly for the sake of the most recent group which they had picked up. This tactic had proved itself to be very effective in every other clash, so he saw no reason to change anything. Their enemies would be startled by his appearance and his display of magic, then they would realize that ‘for a second, he will still be separated from his allies’. In consequence, some of them would break their ranks and try to kill him quickly. However, how could they possibly accomplish that within a few seconds given his Water Flow Spear Art and his other defensively-oriented abilities? They wouldn’t have been able to kill him even if he was alone, much less with so many strong allies keeping his back safe the entire time. Simply enough, he was perfect and very effective bait.
“Got it,” some of the ten-man leaders responded casually and with a smile. They had been told by Laien to lighten up a bit after they responded with ‘Understood!’ the first time around, so they did just that. Curiously enough, as small of a change as this was, it caused not only them, but also their subordinates to view Laien as more of a friend and companion than a young master of a kind. Laien himself didn’t know anything about it, but this small shift in their attitude was very beneficial to him. Those men and women would have found it hard to devote themselves to an outsider whom they only respected and viewed as a commander. However, now that their attitude began shifting to one of companionship, they would be far more willing to act for Laien’s sake in the future if so required.
A few seconds later, their group with Laien at the head spotted both their allies and the far more numerous enemies, then joined the ongoing battle without delay. Laien, in particular, used his river-like wave of insights and transformed it into a surge of mist, which he used to kill off dozens of the regular martial masters on the outskirts of the battlefield. He didn’t stop charging deeper into enemy ranks at all and went as far as to employ the remaining Phantasmal Essence of Inferno alongside a little bit of his spiritual energy. He created dozens of small needles of ice and sent them out, too, in this way killing well over fifty of the weaker experts and even ten or so of the weakened ruby-golden-robed martial masters who had been hanging out in the backlines while trying to recover.
The sudden massacre inevitably attracted the attention of the ruby-golden-robed elites who had been fighting in the front and aiming to finish off the seven men of the White Sword Unit. At the same time, the eyes of those five men and two women lit up. They had been surrounded by well over five hundred enemies, so even if half of them chose to sacrifice themselves, they wouldn’t have been able to break free. They had been about to give up hope as they understood that it was unlikely for any reinforcements to arrive, but then, this happened! As half of the strongest enemies they had to face suddenly turned around and dashed towards Laien, the felt a breath of life returning to their bodies. With those fifty-plus of their comrades following Laien from behind, it was all but guaranteed that they would be able to regroup and retreat in just a moment!
In the span of the next few breaths’ worth of time, Laien weathered the attack of the incoming martial masters of the fourth and fifth ranks and retreated back to the ranks of his allies. Then, much like on the previous occasions, he concentrated on using his magic from the middle of the formation. This quickly resulted in dozens upon dozens of the weaker experts amongst the ranks of their enemies to fall, what soon caused the morale on their side to drop heavily. Finally, when with the assistance of Laien’s unreasonably unrestrained magic the strongest ruby-golden-robed started dying to the members of the White Sword Unit, the entire encirclement collapsed into pieces.
After a few more seconds of cutting at the backs of the retreating enemies, Laien’s group of fifty-plus experts absorbed the new seven members and proceeded to move towards north-east. Once this newest group of seven gave their thanks to Laien and to the rest of their companions from the White Sword Unit, five of them were sent off to mount the horses further to the north and join the twenty-plus others who were similarly incapable of battling any longer. The two who did stay, however, couldn’t resist sneaking glances at Laien, their eyes shining brightly as they thought of what happened. Be it the display of strength by Laien or the fact that he had gathered all of their respective teams of the White Sword Unit on his way here and was undeniably the one leading them, either of those facts was enough to make them feel heavily indebted to this ice-wielding youth.
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It was right at this time, right as everyone was catching their breaths, that all of them sensed quite a few strong presences rapidly approaching them from the west. Many of the White Sword members grew anxious and were about to shuffle their ranks and prepare for battle, but Laien’s lighthearted and very much merry laugh stopped them in their tracks.
“Don’t worry, they are allies,” Laien said with a bright smile. He had been able to sense Yin coming closer and closer to them for the past two minutes or so, so he wasn’t surprised by the appearance of Julien’s elites and naturally, of Yin himself. He was also aware that Yin had been harassing their enemies in order to prevent them from making any encirclement attempts from the west. Apart from their own group finishing every one of their clashes in under ten seconds, Yin’s help was the main reason for why they were able to retreat so smoothly despite slowing down to pick up all of their allies.
Having heard Laien’s reassurance, the members of the White Sword grew calmer. They trusted that Laien wouldn’t speak nonsense in such a potentially dangerous situation, but at the same time, they all wondered how Laien knew the ones incoming were allies. They, for example, weren’t able to tell from the sounds or presence alone and those people were still too far for their auras to reach them. So, how did Laien know? In the end, many of them either chose not to think about it too much or assumed that it had something to do with Laien’s unnaturally powerful magical capabilities.
Another few seconds later, Yin and the twenty-two elites of Julien’s caught up from behind, their appearance causing those few doubtful members of the White Sword to finally sigh with relief. Considering the speed of the new arrivals, Yin and Julien’s elites soon made their way to the forefront of their whole merged group. Then, while one of the ten-man commanders of the White Sword was telling Julien’s men to send their wounded and exhausted members northwards, to where all of their horses were, Laien’s and Yin’s gazes met and the two of them smiled at each other.
“How did it go?” Laien asked wryly. It had been ten minutes at most since the two of them separated, but he was very happy to see Yin. As for the question he asked, they didn’t have time to speak in detail and he was pretty much aware of the simple answer anyway… but he still asked regardless. Somehow, he felt that chatting and exchanging words was pleasant in itself, irrespective of the Spiritual Bond the two of them shared, so he saw no reason to restrain himself.
“Pretty well,” Yin responded with a chuckle, knowing what Laien was thinking about. “I don’t know if it will be enough for the Shadow Trials, but it went as good as it could,” he added, seeing as they were yet to encounter another group of their allies. Thanks to Laien, he came to know that they were expecting to find two more ten-man-strong teams, so he didn’t need to ask anyone about it. “And you, did you do well?” he asked, choosing to play along with Laien. To be honest, he had been wondering if they were or weren’t going to start talking less once their Spiritual Bond strengthened even more, but he too found it pleasant to have an actual chat with Laien. Seeing each other’s expressions, body language, and hearing each other’s voices, there was a unique kind of charm to such conversations. Naturally, exchanging their emotions and thoughts through the Spiritual Bond was a very amusing and pleasant experience too, but it was simply a different concept in of itself.
“Same as you,” Laien said with a laugh. If someone were to ask him, he would say that he had made a great leap forward, but somehow, he doubted whether his performance would satisfy whoever was behind their Shadow Trials. He had come dangerously close to dying and he made a breakthrough, but he came to think that this person was looking for a ‘satisfying conclusion’. This encounter in the forest, on the other hand, while meaningful and satisfying made for a half-hearted conclusion.
“A huge group, probably both last ones are there.”
The thought of Yin’s brought Laien’s mind back to reality. A second later, he also heard the sounds of battle and so did the elites that were running a step behind Yin and him. He exchanged a brief glance with Yin, only for the two of them to reveal amused smiles. There wasn’t enough time for them to talk about their breakthroughs at this moment, but they could display them in battle easily enough.
“The two of us go first, you guys follow,” Laien said to those behind him and received another ‘Got it’ from the White Sword Unit. What did cause him to suppress an amused laugh, though, was that Julien’s lieutenant, Zalar if he recalled his name right, only replied with a calm ‘Understood,’ once he saw Yin nod his head. As it seemed, each of them managed to fully capture the hearts of different groups of elites during this relatively short-lived battle in the great forest of the Guode Yimarate.
The next moment, the two of them spotted a full twenty-man-strong team under the lead of the captain of the White Sword Unit. The twenty of them were besieged by close to a thousand people as they had, apparently, gone all-out in order to stall the enemies close to the center and thus enable Casimir’s unit to move slower. The second part of their purpose was undoubtedly to lessen the pressure on their allies further to the west and amazingly enough, under the leadership of their captain, they were yet to be surrounded. They were very obviously struggling as they had to face almost two hundred ruby-golden-robed men at once, but they seemed to have been focusing purely on defense the entire time and thanks to that, they limited the casualties on both sides.
“Hoh.” Laien couldn’t help but nod in acknowledgment. Unlike the rest of the White Sword which ultimately engaged in an offensive battle and thus had progressively gotten themselves into bigger and bigger trouble, those two ten-man-strong teams led by the White Sword captain kept their calm. They didn’t forget the greater purpose of this battle and acted accordingly, most likely thanks to their captain’s orders. They might have killed close to no enemies because of this, but the positive influence their actions had on the western battlefield as a whole was impossible to overlook.
“We might as well, right?”
The question coming from Yin made Laien want to laugh once more. It usually would be him who was the overeager one, but this time Yin was too impatient to get a go at their foes. Technically speaking they could join the captain’s men and retreat with them while barely engaging in any fighting, but ultimately, he couldn’t possibly disagree with Yin. Since they were already here and they had such a good opportunity to act, then not devouring a free meal like this one would be a sin in itself!
“Half-half with our backs to each other?” Laien suggested. Even though the two of them were connected by the Spiritual Bond, they would be hard-pressed to fight together without any restraints while they didn’t quite know in what way the other one had improved or changed. Thus, they might as well use this opportunity to familiarize themselves with each other’s new abilities, or so Laien assumed. Coincidentally, or maybe not, Yin was in full agreement, so they did exactly that.
What came as little surprise to either of them, the strongest elites of their enemies were at the forefront, focusing on their own battle, so the first obstacle in their way were those regular martial masters of the Guode Yimarate. In response to this standard development, though, the course of actions the two of them took proved to be vastly different.
Laien used his Phantasmal Essence of water and the Phantasmal Essence of Inferno in order to quickly and efficiently slaughter all of those weaker enemies in his path. On the other hand, Yin used his Lightning Steps a few times in quick succession and bypassed all of them, moving straight into the core of enemy forces in the blink of an eye. Subsequently, within the next three seconds or so, the actions of the two of them sowed chaos like no other, causing shock and fear to spread throughout the enemy ranks as both their common experts and their elites started falling in high numbers.
Moreover, the news of Laien’s and Yin’s endeavors, or rather of the Ice Devils’ and Lightning Devil’s endeavors, happened to have reached the ears of those enemy experts. This, in addition to the almost seventy people who began slaughtering their way through the soft outer flank of their thousand-man-strong group, stampeded into a disorganized retreat within seconds. With well over two hundred casualties on their side from the initial clash alone, those weaker experts panicked and fled without a second thought. As for the ruby-golden-robed martial masters of the fifth rank, prompted by their fear of dying at the hand of the two Devils that were backed up by almost a hundred elite warriors, they didn’t choose to overstay their welcome either. Thus, with both the low and high end of their forces opting to flee, the entire battle ended in under ten seconds, again.
A little dissatisfied, Laien and Yin both killed some more of the retreating enemies before moving on with their retreat. They hadn’t really been able to display all of their abilities in this clash as once the initial two or three seconds passed, their enemies forgot about fighting and degenerated into a chaotic, fleeing mess. Cutting down such people couldn’t possibly allow them to display their abilities to the fullest as the fighting styles they had developed weren’t oriented around killing those who weren’t resisting. Curiously enough, however, while their styles had developed in opposite ways, Laien’s focusing on impregnable defense and Yin’s on unstoppable attacks, they both were the most effective if the enemies in question came to attack them with their full strength.
“Thank you for assistance,” the captain of the White Sword spoke to the two of them while they were still grumbling a bit about the last clash finishing so soon. “And thank you for gathering all of my men and helping them with their retreat,” the man added with an expression of genuine gratitude. He had done all he could in order to lessen the burden on his subordinates, but he didn’t need to ask about the details to know that it was those two boys who helped his men greatly. He could see it in his subordinates’ eyes and in their expressions, so he didn’t need to ask. Even if he was blind, he would have been able to notice that all those experts here were extremely grateful to Laien and Yin.
Hearing the man’s thanks, Laien and Yin snapped out of their regretful thoughts and without even looking at each other, they said at the same time.
“You’re welcome.”
The two of them chuckled while the captain was a feeling a little baffled by their reactions. However, Laien soon added a few more words.
“You’re here because of us, so it’s only natural that we help you guys out whenever we can. This time we both were able to move freely, so it all worked out well.”
Once Laien finished speaking, a warm smile returned to the captain’s face. There was no way that he would miss a clear implication in Laien’s words, one that said that they wouldn’t move to help them if the situation was hopeless, but rather than get angry, he appreciated this pragmatic approach. He wouldn’t have been able to rest in peace in the afterlife if he knew that his companions had died trying to rescue him from an impossible predicament, so he was glad Laien was reasonable. Similarly, he very much appreciated that Laien spoke no platitudes just to appease him and the others. Had he heard something young-master-like akin to ‘You fight for my sake, so I would do everything in my power to save you if you were in danger.’, then his stomach would twist and churn. What use was there saving a few people if the entire battle could be lost because of such reckless decisions and even more of their allies could end up dying in consequence of the self-righteous act?
In the end, as far as this captain’s opinion went, people who were suited to be stereotypical heroes weren’t suited to be generals, nor were they suited to be rulers. Having such people lead armies or countries would, as history showed, without exception lead to one major disaster after another. So, as far as this concept went, he was convinced that those two boys were suited to lead others. He couldn’t be sure what kind of a future awaited them, but he was sure that with their abilities, neither of them would end up as a mediocre person. To the contrary, the more he interacted with those two, the stronger he believed that both of those boys would shape the future of their entire continent.