Close Combat Mage

Chapter 217 – Roar of Ice Pt.1

In terms of speed, the Velociraptors were fastest on ground, and wind-elemental magical beasts were fastest in air. This may seem slightly outrageous, but if both went in water, would either the Velociraptor or the wind-elemental magical beast be able to run quickly? No, in the water, a water-elemental magical beast would be fastest! It was all the same reasoning.

Typically speaking, even if ground-type wind-elemental beasts didn’t fly to attack, they would still jump high into the air. Their bodies would glide in mid-air, as they were fastest that way. The Velociraptor was different; as long as both its feet were on the ground, it would first enter a state that ignored the effects of gravity. This limitless boundary went up to a weight of a ton, so their armors just had to be less than that.

Under this anti-gravity state, the Velociraptors could do anything without restraint. Moreover, in an earth-elemental environment, they’d have endless energy. They could run while gathering power from the ground, so traveling thousands of kilometers in a day was nothing big. They could definitely do it without even running short of breath!

However, no matter how fast the Velociraptors were, they were still bound to the ground. They couldn’t go fast to the point of flying. It’s like how no matter how fast a car goes, it cannot be faster than a plane. If one didn’t consider environments, the wind-elemental magical beasts were undoubtedly the fastest.

Giving one final glance at the disappearing Velociraptors, Suo Jia abruptly turned around and shouted, “Immediately seal the doors. From now on, Dawn City will enter a war preparation state!”

Thousands of slave soldiers quickly lifted large rocks and forced them into the city gates’ gaps. They pressed the large stones together in a large pile, solidly blocking all the passages along the 30+ meter long city gates. It was now no different from the city walls.

Of course, it still looked like city gates from the outside. But if one wanted to push the gates open, it was impossible with just human strength. Smashing the city gates into pieces was possible, but after that, one would discover that the inside of the gates was filled with rocks!

Nearly 3 months had passed since the Dawn’s first military campaign. Within this period, the slave soldiers’ motivation to work had greatly increased. They worked overtime every day to make the city walls taller and sturdier. Now, the 100,000 slave soldiers had created a 10,000 meter long and 10 meter high wall. It was large and imposing, and seemed like a small mountain range if one looked at it from the distance!

In addition, after 3 months of training, the 10,000 regular slave soldier archers, as well as the 60,000 non-regular slave soldier archers, had mastered the bow and arrow to a new level. Their 3 months of hard labor had greatly boosted their arm strength, so the arrows they shot had more power behind them. Their penetrating abilities had also improved. With the addition of the massive amount of training as well, their accuracy had also exponentially increased.

This was quite a normal phenomenon. In the beginning, it is always extremely easy to achieve success. As long as one is willing to work hard, they will soon see results. But once they reach a certain point, their growth will slow down. At the moment, the slave soldiers hadn’t reached this point yet.

Because the city gates had been blocked, the 5000 regular pike users didn’t need to guard the gates anymore. Instead, they stayed in the army camp, waiting for any orders to leave. The reason they hadn’t been dispatched to the battlefield was because Suo Jia was preparing them for critical fights; if any dangers occurred, they’d immediately rush out. With their formidable might, they’d be able to extinguish any dangers.

A week of waiting passed, but outside of Suo Jia’s expectations, the battle that he thought would soon start hadn’t yet begun. The Thief Alliance’s army and Oz City’s army only sealed off all the paths between Dawn and Holy Light Empire, but they hadn’t surrounded Dawn.

After some contemplation, Suo Jia soon understood what was going on. Those stupid guys clearly wanted them to run out of food. However…their information was way too off. This place was a fort, the Empire’s border station. They could use the reserves’ 100,000 rations at any time. Each ration was worth two burlaps of food; if they ate conservatively, they could last an entire year without a problem.

Right now, food wasn’t an issue. In terms of weapons, they had an endless supply of refined iron arrows, and also 40,000-50,000 sets of armor ready for replacements. They could completely maintain their place in a long war of attrition.

This was especially true now that Dawn’s city walls were already 10 meters high. When they started battling, it would be equivalent to fighting while standing on top of a five story building. If the enemy wanted to reach the top of the walls, how great of a price would they have to pay? Dawn City now had 10,000 regular slave soldier archers, and 60,000 non-regular archers. 7 archers stood on every meter of the walls with their bows. With the addition of the swordsmen and pike users that now had crossbows, there was a total of 90,000 mid-range weapons. They could clearly arrange a line of death!

Every time they trained, Suo Jia would specially choose 1000 soldiers and make them responsible for picking up the refined iron arrows shot outside of the city. The loss of these arrows couldn’t be afforded. One arrow was worth 100,000 gold, and dwarves could maintain them for 3 years. With this period, if the arrows were broken in any way, they would exchange the old arrows for new ones. Every arrow had a specific serial number, so not a single one could go missing.

How could a single arrow be worth 100,000 gold? Actually, forging a refined iron arrow took longer than making a refined iron blade. It required one to consider more of the balance aspects. In addition, the arrows had to be fixed specially so that they were aerodynamic, and had a stronger penetrating ability. Due to the fact that assembly line methods of production didn’t exist in this world, each arrow had a long forging time. Just the manual labor costs was already an astronomical figure.

In addition, the material these arrows were made from was iron that had been refined hundreds of times. In order to increase their sturdiness so that they wouldn’t break easily, precious materials had to be used. That’s why among the trillion funds, at least ⅔ of it was used on the materials.

The amount of money spent was proportional to the value of the goods. These refined iron arrows not only didn’t break easily, their destructive and their penetrating abilities were greatly boosted. Compared to those light bamboo and wooden arrows, these refined iron arrows were multiple times more destructive. However, the refined iron arrows were only suitable for defense, and not for war of attack and defense on level ground. After all…the weight of the refined iron arrows was really a bit too excessive. Accurately hitting a target was too difficult.

But despite this drawback, these arrows were what Suo Jia most desired. Dropping a brick from atop the 10 meter high city walls could easily smash someone’s skull. If they also shot a massive amount of arrows down, the inertia alone could cause them to pierce through armors, killing the enemies.

Since the enemies weren’t attacking, Suo Jia was naturally happy and relaxed. After establishing the 1000 men group to pick up arrows, he established another 1000 men group for tending wounds. They were all older, somewhat weaker slave soldiers. Each of them had 3 belts on their waists that contained hundreds of Life Potions. Their task was to bring any heavily injured slave soldiers down from the wall and heal them with the Life Potions.

The fact that Suo Jia had considered this made the slave soldiers extremely touched. In previous battles, the slave soldiers had always been fated to die after getting injured. There was no need for the enemy to kill them; for the sake of protecting secrets, their own army would give them the killing blow to end their lives.

But now, Suo Jia not only didn’t do such a thing, he had also dispatched specific people to heal them. Although everyone understood that this didn’t mean they could escape death, it already lowered their probability of dying to the least it could be. As long as they were cautious, they’d definitely survive this battle!

After considering their safety, the slave soldiers’ drives to improve the city walls flared up even without Suo Jia commanding them to do so. They didn’t think of it as doing it for someone else, but as protecting their own lives.

The wisdom of the masses exceeds that of any individual, and the more people there were, the more intelligence was gathered. Under the constant reflecting, studying, and polishing of the 100,000 slave soldiers, the peak of the thousands of meters long city walls had completely changed.

Since these slave soldiers weren’t lacking in battle experience, they could survive through countless battles. Their familiarity with battle formations was probably not inferior to any regular soldier’s. What was even rarer was that these slave soldiers all had unique skills, as they were all criminals from Holy Light. They were extremely cunning. Although they were regarded as the scum of society, they would make anyone’s head hurt once they started scheming.

They had first set up a stone barrier on top of the city walls to block arrows. This basically made the task of the swordsmen unnecessary. However, that wasn’t the end; because they were sure that Oz City would definitely have a large amount of archers that would shoot a rain of arrows over the walls, they had built another inclined shack on top of the arrow-blocking barrier. That way, unless the enemies’ arrows could turn 180 degrees in midair, there was no way they could injure the soldiers on the walls.

Of course, they had also considered that the slave soldier archers on the walls may need to use rocks to smash their enemies in addition to shooting arrows, so they left openings to shoot from on the arrow-blocking barrier. The width of each opening was about the same as a swordsman’s shield. Normally, they’d block the openings with their shields, and when they need to toss rocks down, they’d pull out the shields to do so. The results were quite good. Shooting arrows was the principle behind this method, only the arrows were replaced with rocks.

The Thief Alliance’s army and Oz City’s army still had the paths blockaded off as they had before, and insisted on not attacking. However, Dawn City was actually looking forward for them to do such a thing. The longer the duration of this blockade was, the more time they’d have to prepare. If it was dragged on for a year, the Velociraptor Knights would’ve returned by then, and the battle no longer needed to be fought. As long as a few pathways to the enemy’s camps were opened up, the enemy would have to flee from the battle. But what else could the enemy do except flee when faced against such an overpowering army?