The Rise of the Black Plain

As he felt weakened by the pain of that last attack, Russ didn't have time to react when four blows as hard as the previous hit him!

Pow!

"Ahhhh!"

Crack!

In that instant, his legs and arms were hit, causing several cracking sounds to sound from Russ' body as he felt many of his bones breaking.

"Ahhhhh!"

At the same time, he was screaming in pain, feeling extremely vulnerable, and gradually losing control over his own body. 'Shit. Shit. They will kill me. I won't be able to defend myself.' He thought frantically, losing what little of his calm remained.

But before Russ even had a chance to lose his lucidity due to fear of death, one of the soldiers fighting him hit him with a hard punch in the face.

Such a thing had not been strong enough to put the life of that nobleman of the Gill family at risk. However, this served to put an end to this fight!

Russ had passed out, and now only Winston was standing among those in this Gill family group.

This man had nine people around him as he continued to fight these soldiers actively.

His body was already quite injured at the time, while his spiritual energy wouldn't last long. But despite the bad situation, he wasn't the least bit desperate like that other guy...

After all, this man had a personality quite different from people of high status or high regional level. He wasn't as superficial and status-dependent as Russ, for example. So, his fall in this place wasn't enough to mess up this man's rationality!

Precisely because of this, he had realized from the beginning that, at least in the short term, his life was not at risk.

However, he had still fought in that place as the enemy had not given him the option to surrender. After all, he understood all too well the ability Minos must have to have made that move earlier.  And as such, this young man could easily defeat Winston if he wanted to.

But even so, none of that had happened...

Anyway, Winston continued to defend himself from those nine soldiers around him, waiting for the end of this battle.

...

Meanwhile, Mendy, who had followed the entire fight so far, was slowly approaching that place, soon after realizing that the Spiritual King was about to be defeated.

Winston had fought bravely and demonstrated decent strength for someone at level 50. Yet, he had still been forced into a dead-end by a group of level 44 Spiritual Generals!

And that was something incredible to see in this region, where these beings at the 6th stage were usually considered experts.

The fact that this was fantastic was not because one person had lost to a lower-level person. No, this happened quite often, even in this less developed region of the Spiritual World.

What truly impressed Mendy and was something notable was the combination of the power of individuals from many weaker levels to defeat a single opponent!

It was common knowledge that even if two people had collective power equal to a single higher-level cultivator, the fight would not be balanced. On the contrary, the higher-level person would have the advantage all the time.

And Mendy firmly believed that there wasn't much room for numbers to make a difference. That is, it would be challenging to get people to fight in similar ways, to the point where one party fills the gaps in the other.

The main reason for this was that cultivators frequently had very different sets of techniques, making it challenging to combine these people's strengths.

For example, someone might have techniques focused on hand-to-hand combat, while others might concentrate on long-ranged battles. And obviously, it would be a problem for the two to fight together.

The chance of one interfering with the other was not slight. One person would have to constantly be close to his opponent, making it difficult for the other side, who would need space to attack from a distance!

Anyway, several variables related to this would make it challenging to combine certain types of warriors.

But maybe someone thought, 'so to solve this, all you have to do is unite people with similar techniques and characteristics, right?'

Not necessarily.

That is because the system adopted by the large regional families made it difficult for this to happen.

Because in these families, subordinates had to learn the techniques they had the opportunity to put into their hands and not what they wanted or needed. 

They rarely had the opportunity to learn techniques more compatible with their collective characteristics.

And in many cases, a person has never had a chance to have a Black-grade technique. Still, then one day, this person has the opportunity to learn something that might not fit perfectly with he wants.

What to do? Try to change it to one that suits him better?

No way!

For those who did not have the support of great powers, such as the nobles, having Black-grade techniques would be a taboo they would not speak about in public. Otherwise, it wouldn't be long before a criminal, or even an ordinary but ambitious person, appeared to 'recover' such a technique.

As such, hardly an ordinary person would talk about having a copy of a Black-grade technique or even try to sell or exchange it!

And that generated the previous problem.

The incompatibility!

However, no one saw this as a problem in the northern part of the Central Continent. After all, individual power was seen as the most important, and therefore no one minded being incompatible with other cultivators...

That fits the context well, right? Or did the context match it?

Who knows...

The fact was, Mendy thought so, until this very moment when she had seen that Spiritual King fall unconscious to the ground!

'This is interesting! Those soldiers fight very well as a team and even have similar spiritual techniques…' She pondered everything she had seen in these minutes of battle as she approached where young Stuart was standing.

"That was an eye-opener for me, Minos. You did a good job in your army, congratulations!" Mendy praised him by clapping a hand on the shoulders of this young sovereign.

"How did you think that? Did your father pass this on? Or maybe some great master?"

Hearing this, Minos left aside his problems, which had been hanging his head for a moment, and responded. "No, I was originally taught to value individual strength like any youth in our region."

"However, when you find yourself at a dead-end, there are no options but to change your behavior..." He commented vaguely. "Anyway, I did it just to adapt to the dangerous position in which I'm."

Mendy then shook her head, indicating she understood what this young man had said. 'Indeed, your situation is quite dangerous... You have so many things, but you still don't have enough power to maintain them.' This young woman thought about it, believing that Minos was referring to his situation in the northern region of the Central Continent...

Anyway, right after the two exchanged those few words, young Stuart gave his orders to those soldiers. "You guys did a great job!"

"Collect all the spatial rings from these individuals and then send them to the headquarters administration. Furthermore, take these people to the local prison. I want them to be interrogated as soon as possible, especially these two…" He said, pointing to Russ and Winston.

"Yes, young master!" Several soldiers shouted at the same time.

Minos then continued. "When these two men wake up, send someone to let me know. I'll talk to them right away."

"Finally, each of you will receive 1,000 merit points for performing well in this battle!"