Badge in Azure

“Split into five teams to stop the expeditionary army? We are talking about twenty-five-thousand regular soldiers.” Saleen disagreed with Nailisi’s suggestion. It was right to seize this opportunity to train the troops, but if a camp was split into five portions each team would only have two-thousand people. That was akin to two emblem groups, the enemy would have ten times the manpower.

With more than ten times the difference in manpower of the Holy See’s army could even use the besieging technique to extirpate two emblem groups of forces.

“Master, you don’t know something. While you were away Daniel selected one-hundred people to inherit death magic from him. Currently, about eighty of them are high grade disciples already. As long as the dead soul flame is present twenty people can immediately transform into low grade death mages. We just have to assign two death mages to each team and we will be able to deploy two-hundred skeletal warhorses.”

Saleen moaned. Among his soldiers, most of them had not undergone a real battle, with the exception of the pirates and the swordsmen from Sregl Island. In a bloody battle the morale of these soldiers would be difficult to sustain. Only soldiers who had experienced the tribulations of war could be trusted.

The Holy See did not deploy the sacred knights, it allowed Tanggulasi’s imperial family to send their army of twenty-five-thousand regular soldiers. In a field battle, these twenty-five-thousand men would definitely enjoy an absolute advantage. “A death mage can preserve one-hundred skeletal warhorses. Even if I send all my death mages there will only be twelve-hundred skeletal warhorses. That will not be adequate for my men to attain a speed advantage. I still have to deploy the three kings, otherwise this camp of mine will most likely be devoured by the Holy See’s army.”

“Banchajanna does things incoherently while Diyabannersa has the tendency to act impulsively. I shall let Judikaka notify Lex’s army, then he will return and receive the sixth camp. We have two months to prepare.” Saleen conjured an idea in a flash. It was necessary to stop the Holy See’s army. If it could arrive at Metatrin City without getting damaged Saleen would have a tough time defending his city.

Lex had taken the first camp to Bitter Water Prefecture to participate in the war, leaving Saleen with the second to sixth camps. Saleen had set up the sixth camp when Lex was about to leave, while the other five camps had been trained by Lex all this while.

The sixth camp consisted of a mixed composition, there were barbarians and Caucasus people in it. The core of the command was made up of swordsmen from Sregl Island. Saleen’s agenda for creating this camp was obvious, he wanted to establish a human army which was fully in his control. All the recruited soldiers could only be twenty years old at max. The sixth camp did not want anyone who was older than twenty years old.

No one in this young army had an aristocratic background, Saleen could deploy them without any worry. The recruitment of these ten-thousand people took several months. Many people registered, but only few were accepted. Eventually, some skilled Caucasus people trained by Sika had to be added in so that the composition of this camp was complete.

The proportion of Saleen’s troops to the number of civilians was on the higher side. As a result, during the planning of the troop composition, the auxiliary troops did not belong to any specific camps. They would be assigned to whichever camp was going out for a field mission. The main objective of the five camps was to protect the city. During the defense of the city the scale of logistical support would be very small. Even if there were only twenty-thousand auxiliary troops it would be sufficient for use by the five camps.

As Saleen assembled the sixth camp he decided to use a mixed composition for it with the intention of lowering the demand for logistical support. The sixth camp had ten-thousand men and it was split into emblem groups. As long as two emblem groups were together an offensive formation could be formed already.

As Qin had many mages it could coordinate logistical support more easily than the other empires and it was the same case for Saleen’s sixth camp. Each brigade was fitted with a low grade mage, an emblem group would require at least one grade-4 grand mage.

The sixth camp had more than one-hundred low grade mages. Each emblem group could be paired with more than ten low grade mages. These low grade mages would not be useless. During battle,the lethality of a low grade mage was equivalent to that of a few swordmasters. With the presence of low grade mages the warriors would be able to obtain a steady supply of treatments such as Restorative Water.

A low grade mage could activate a special spatial equipment in the army. These special equipments were crates with a volume of about one cubic yard. They relied on a magic array to maintain their balance and the space inside was only two cubic yards. The interior space might only be double the exterior volume, but the function of these wooden crates was immense because such crates were extremely sturdy. The volumes of logistical items placed inside were calculated by their specific volume. A normal box with five to six cubic yards of space might not even be able to contain these items.

Even though this army only had this one advantage its transportation capacity was five times that of a normal army.

Saleen assigned Gurney, who had been recalled back to Metatrin City, to this camp as a deputy commander. The position of the chief commander remained vacant. At the moment Gurney still did not have the ability to take up the role of a chief commander.

This battle did not involve a large scale confrontation between two armies, so Saleen did not assign a commander to Gurney. This mission would be split into five parts and two emblem groups would act together.

These emblem group commanders were swordsmen from Sregl Island, the lowest grade of them all was an intermediate grade swordmaster. It was difficult to look for a grand swordmaster, but the people from Sregl Island were reassuring. They were not old and it was only a matter of time before they all advanced into grand swordmasters.

Saleen meticulously planned the advancing and retreating route of the army, he also specially created ten maps. He gave them to the grand mages serving the ten emblem group commanders. Saleen had arranged for someone to draw these maps. No one had ever created such a specific map of the region north of Phoenix to date.

He then went to organize the logistical matters. Disposable items like crossbows, rations, and intermediate-size magic equipment which could be dismantled needed to be supplied.

Judikaka had been deployed in advance, the spirit king was going to inform Lex’s army to get ready in advance.

Death mages had also been allocated to each emblem group, they were responsible for the logistical support. With skeletal warhorses, the logistics elements would not affect the advancing speed of the army.

Feeling that everything was in place, Saleen asked Sika to deploy another few hundred Caucasus magic wolf warriors to Deep Forest Town to gather intelligence.

It was only when the sixth camp left Metatrin City that Saleen began considering that he needed to resolve a problem; his identity.

Lex had left and Saleen had already prepared all the things needed to create his false identity. Narnia also came by every day to train him. At the moment, Saleen’s actions vaguely resembled that of a noble from the fourth dynasty already. It was fortunate that the fourth dynasty did not have too many rules for its nobles, so Saleen did not face much difficulty grasping these rules.

Jola gave Saleen a suggestion. When Saleen heard Jola’s idea he nodded in agreement.

Saleen was to execute this plan starting with the youngsters which had separated from the four big families; Aini from the Clyde family, Irene from the Williams family, Renee from the Tiffany family, and Sharman from the Rolande family. When these four youths came out of their families they had brought along huge amounts of funds, experienced businessmen, and a certain number of private soldiers.

Aini and Irene would surely collude with Saleen. Even though Irene had some conflicts with Saleen, Irene herself knew that she wanted to carve out a career Metatrin City. She would be impartial. It was indeed a little troublesome to rope in the other two youths.

The people from the Tiffany family had been engaging in commerce and investment earnestly all this while. Even though the Rolande family had interacted with Daniel many times Baroness Guya still had no intention to initiate contact with Saleen ever since Sharman returned.

Guya was waiting and observing the situation, she was eyeing the benefits Saleen would give. Saleen still had not openly accepted the nobles who came forth to settle down, there was no status. If Saleen was incapable even a young lady would not invest her assets in him.

Jola’s idea was to use the two incoming grade-9 mages to convince the youths from the other families. Once the people from all four families were converted, Saleen would then use this circle of nobles as a core to expand his own influence.

Originally, Saleen was still thinking of a location to build the ten story magical tower he had promised to gift the two grade-9 mages. Now that the Holy See had deployed its forces to invade his city Saleen had lost all worries. He planned to choose an island to build the magical tower for the two grade-9 mages. At the moment he decided that he would construct the magical tower west of Metatrin city in the town where Lex’s army was stationed.

Aini’s parents did not deceive Saleen, those two grade-9 mages were indeed persuaded by their friend and they were coming to visit Metatrin City. Currently, Metatrin City had been fully developed. Other than the magical towers, the rest of the amenities were fully built. Saleen could receive the two grade-9 mages already. What Saleen needed to do right now was to wait for the mages’ arrival. He would then have to convince them to settle down for good.

After making this decision Saleen no longer felt anxious. There was news about the two grade-9 mages, they would be arriving within the next two to three days. Seizing the next two days of free time, Saleen went to visit the arena.

The construction of the arena was very smooth, it was located west of the city. This location, spanning almost one mile, housed a cluster of public buildings. Other than this central arena a dozen other mini arenas were designed and scattered in the vicinity. As the main works were completed, the spirits had been withdrawn. At the moment, there were many smiths in the arena who were building chairs for the spectators, they were also drawing and engraving various patterns along the passageways.

Seeing the arena getting built, Saleen knew that many professionals would come to Metatrin City to try their luck very soon. By then, Saleen would have many more options.

“The demonic city is good, but before my foundation is stable, I still have to maintain a low profile.”

Just as Saleen was about to discuss the rules of the arena with Daniel someone suddenly came and reported that the two grade-9 mages had arrived. The mages were waiting in the temple for Saleen. The moment Saleen learned about this information, he was inevitably flustered. He quickly ordered people to invite Aini’s parents over, then asked Diyabannersa and Banchajanna to come and meet him.

Saleen had to take some precautions, the visitors were grade-9 mages after all. With two spirit kings by his side the two grade-9 mages would not be able to kill Saleen swiftly. This would buy Saleen some time to take out his clan badge, which would pose a threat to the grade-9 mages too.