Chapter 845 845 - Are they idiots?
Ripped from pleasant thoughts, Erik turned from Leia to blink at Elora. "Right…" he muttered with a nod, quickly focusing back on the matter at hand. He glanced at Ankhur and smirked with amusement. "What do you say, Ankhur? Now or never?"
Unfortunately, Ankhur didn't appreciate the joke and looked at him with a deadpan expression. Never would mean watching as Enkare Nkai burned. He knew Erik was joking, but he'd already had his reservations over this whole thing. The very idea of letting that army march any further was close to giving him an aneurysm.
Rolling his eyes, Erik chuckled and turned back to Elora. "Alright, my love… Where do you want me?"
***
"Where, even, is this thrice-cursed city!?" the qipao-wearing woman snarled. Her long black hair whipped in the air as she swivelled her face at the sea of jungle in every direction except for directly behind her.
"S— Scouts claim it should be no more than another hour dead ahead at this pace, Lady Confessor," one of her subordinates said nervously.
The woman narrowed her eyes at the seemingly endless plane of bark, leaves, and shrubbery in front of her. "They'd better be right," she snorted with disdain. "Because if they're not, their life will be as forfeit as yours."
She couldn't fly and had no intention of clambering up a tree like some monkey. Though even if she did, it wouldn't help her much. Despite the city's tall spires, the trees surrounding it were no smaller and acted like a perfect natural camouflage so that you couldn't see the city until you were right in front of it. Thus, she satisfied herself with threatening the scouts rather than confirming for herself.
Her subordinate paled, but couldn't find the will to reply. His mouth opened and closed a few times, but no further sound came out. The confessor watched his expression from the corner of her eye and revelled in the abject fear she found there.
The moment dragged on—one party amusing herself and wondering when her victim would unfreeze themselves, the other party desperately trying to get his fear under control so that he could go 'encourage' the army to move even faster before getting some assurances from the scouts.
Yet, no one would know how long it would have naturally taken him.
"Contact!"
A third-rank roar echoed over the vast, compact army. The echoing throes of fighting soon followed. Explosions and screams rose from one side of the military, and everyone's faces swivelled in that direction.
The confessor quickly started grinning and promptly pierced the ground with one of her hookswords, leaving it standing upright. Then, she jumped up and balanced on the hilt with one foot to give herself a little more height. At the same time, she produced a communication sigil stone, and reports started flooding in.
"Contact from the South-West! They came out of nowhere! I thin—"
Before this one could even finish, more explosions and screams echoed from three more directions.
"Contact from South-East! The—"
"Contact from North-West! What the—"
"Contact from North-East! Are they stupid?!"
Soon, the confessor was turning on her heel on top of her sword's hilt and looking in all directions. A confused frown graced her pretty face. Yet the confusion was quickly dispelled by excitement and disdain, as people believed the enemy had made a grave mistake.
Their army of several hundred thousand had been moving in a massive, compact square formation.
Traditionally, moving like that would have been the perfect target for artillery or traps, but neither scared the confessor and her army. They had the power and sigils to protect against artillery, and the only traps that could seriously hurt them were sigils, which they were constantly scanning for.
Yet, they only scanned along their direct path, and now it looked like four small, tactical deployments of Enkare Nkai's troops had used sigils to hide themselves just outside of their scanning range.
Still, what confused the confessor was that this tactic made little sense to her. Surrounding your foe like they'd done was effective when trying to make sure none of your foes escaped, but when facing an enemy stronger than you, it was actually very bad.
In fact, she'd made sure that the entire square her army moved in had Runebound troops on the edges and Arcanists in the middle to avoid being flanked exactly like this. Thus, even as an attempt to quickly kill the Arcanists in melee combat, this was doomed to fail.
She did see enemy reinforcements making their way over to support the initial, small group of assault forces, but still didn't consider that a problem. Though Enkare Nkai likely had more numbers than she did, she had no doubt her power-per-capita was far better.
She had ten third-rankers spread around, and more or less half of the rest of her army was second-ranked. By the last report, especially with several powerhouses still in Maghreb, Enkare Nkai did not have numbers like that.
Most importantly, however, she believed there to be no threat that could stop her from massacring all of the enemy troops. Her cruel grin widened. Her bloodthirsty tongue flitted out to lick her lips.
She turned once more on the hilt of her sword and appeared to choose a direction at random. She pointed at the combat there and grinned. "You're first!"
She was about to jump off her sword and follow through on her decision when something changed. Suddenly, she felt four third-rank powerhouses enter the battlefield. There was one in every corner, and though two of them were barely noticeable to her, two others gave off waves of power that even made her take notice.
But not enough to give her pause.
"Oooh…" she purred excitedly as her eyes glimmered. "Juicy prey!"
After another turn, she chose another direction. This direction was one of the two more powerful ones and gave her a feeling of life that annoyed her to no end. Bright golden light began to bloom in that corner, and she finally jumped off her sword, ripped it out of the ground, and surged in that direction.
Around her, the other third-rankers had already spread to every corner to take control of the battles, knowing their commander could not be counted on for delicate work like that.
Yet, just as the confessor became the last third-ranker in the approximate centre of the large formation—though rapidly leaving it—something else changed.
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