The Four Major Businesses of the Dou Kingdom had a very prestigious name, and it would certainly be beneath them to openly go to war with another group. As a business, it was expected they would defend their assets, but if they were in competition with another business and directly attacked them, wouldn’t that be an admission of their inferiority? How can they claim to be the top businesses if they use their fists instead of competing with goods?
Of course, that was only on the surface. The Four Major Businesses may not be able to act overtly, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do shady things in the background. Would anyone be foolish enough to think they got to where they were by just doing legitimate and fair business deals? The Lang Clan had already foreseen these sorts of difficulties, which is why they focused all their efforts upon only the Prosperity Company rather than opening many smaller businesses. Each province only had a handful of Prosperity Company buildings, one in each of the largest cities. Over the whole of the Dou Kingdom this was quite a large number of locations, numbering over a hundred, but when compared to the immense area that the Kingdom covered this was nothing.
Over a hundred locations was definitely nothing when compared to the thousands of locations that Thousand Treasures had, but even so it was still a significant number of locations to defend. Or, it would be if they weren’t the Lang Clan. With Sage around, they had the population of an entire world to draw upon as manpower. It would be absurd to rely upon an entire world in this way, but the Prosperity Company on the Inner World was run by a few large families that had become trusted collaborators with the Lang Clan. It wasn’t too difficult to recruit a few hundred rank five Cultivators from their ranks. Along with them, a thousand Dragoons were sent to each of the Prosperity Company’s locations in the outside world. There were many smaller cities that could be ruled entirely by just a few Core Formation Cultivators along with a thousand troops in the third rank. The Prosperity Company’s buildings were located in the largest cities, which had much stronger rulers, but such large forces were enough to give them all pause.
This was especially true for the Four Major Businesses. Mercenaries from the Black Dog Company were already moving to take the role of bandits and harass the Prosperity Companies caravans, but when seeing the armies of Airships moving through the sky, they were stumped. They’d come prepared to attack these Airships, but they were astounded by the sheer number of them and the swarms of defenders swarming around them like a hive of bees. They usually brought along enough Airships for a third of the Dragoons to be resting inside while the other two thirds flew through the skies as a protective guard. They were also confused by the strange limbless crossbows the Dragoons were carrying and gave up their plans to attack.
Mobilizing such an immense force all at once gave the Four Major Businesses little time to retaliate. The mercenaries they hired to harass many locations at once were thwarted by a pair of extremely large armies moving in unison. Instead of spreading out, the Lang Clan’s Airship armies moved in two large groups, stopping at different Prosperity Company locations and dropping off personnel and supplies. It was only after most of the locations were reinforced that these two armies finally weakened, but that was when the ten thousand Dragoons remaining in the two armies met up with each other and flew back towards Golden Cricket Cove. The two flying armies that were sixty thousand strong at the beginning of their voyage were returning with only twenty thousand.
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For many of the mercenaries, being thwarted like that was an insult and they teamed up with the intention of intercepting this returning force. By guessing that they were heading back to 10,000 Wave Province, the mercenaries were able to set an ambush and put to use all the scattered anti-airship weaponry they’d brought with them. It was a shame because they knew most of the Prosperity Company’s goods had already been delivered, but they felt humiliated and wanted to retaliate. They wouldn’t be rewarded with the Prosperity Company’s new products, but that was secondary to their pride.
It was too bad these mercenary companies were acting as bandits and hiding their names so ‘reputation’ meant nothing. Most of them wanted to give up and abandon the mission, but the bigger groups strong-armed the weaker ones to stay in the fight. This disharmony among the mercenary teams didn’t stop them from working in unison. There were too many experienced warriors among them to let that disrupt their cooperation. Hundreds of large ballista opened fire at the same time, each of the giant bolts was a powerful Magical Tool which punched through defensive formations and the unlucky Dragoons that got in their way.
The large envelopes of many Airships were punctured while others had holes punched clean through their frames. The sudden ambush instantly downed twenty of the eighty Airships, and the two thousand Dragoons they carried fell from the sky with them. Many of them swarmed out of the falling ships, but others were not so lucky.
Unfortunately for the Mercenaries, the success of their initial ambush wasn’t repeatable. Once they realized they were under attack, a hundred Dragoons flew into formation around each of the remaining Airships, activating the Million Scale Shell formations in their armor. New barriers formed by more than six thousand Dragoons sprang to life around the sixty airships to block the follow up ballista attacks. Then, the other twelve thousand Dragoons swarmed forward, charging towards the mercenary’s weapon emplacements. They lifted the limbless crossbows in their hands and introduced these mercenaries to some of the products that the Prosperity Company hadn’t started selling yet.
Streams of fire rained from the sky, drenching the Mercenary groups with burning energy. These rifle sized devices were not Magical Tools, but actually Blastids. Raised to the third tier, each of these weapons were just as strong as their wielders, except all of their power was focused on the expulsion of energy. Each and every one of them was like a Cultivator who only trained to release flame attacks at the expense of all other areas. The Dragoon wielding the Blastid could handle evasion, defense, and aiming at their targets and the full energy of the Blastid was used as a weapon. The streams of fire washed over the mercenary groups who had their own methods of defense. Some groups had large carriages drawn by Demonic Beasts that carried a defensive array. Others used a Battle Formation like the one created by the Dragoons Formation Armor, or used their carefully timed cooperative attacks to deflect the flames. A few of the largest groups had Core Formation Cultivators in charge and they protected most of their team with their own strength.
The teams of Dragoons armed with flame made a pass over the mercenary troops and then gained altitude, pulling away so their Blastids could recover. Yet, that was only the first wave. Following behind the flame wielding Dragoons were those wielding ice. Streams of icy vapor sprayed down on the mercenaries still surrounded by burning flames. The sudden change of hot to cold caused more damage than just attacking with a single element, shattering many of the defensive measures. After the ice attacks, another wave of fire attacks came, burning those whose defenses failed.
Most of the mercenary teams only had a few dozen members and only the largest dared to field more than a thousand. Due to so many mercenary groups gathering together they had assembled an equally sized force as those from the Lang Clan. Before the battle started they felt the weapons they were supplied with as well as the powerful Core Cultivators who led the larger mercenary teams would make the battle easily tilt in their favor, it was just too bad they knew nothing about the Lang Clan’s newest weapons.