Chapter 627 — The War Machine

On the other hand, the tactics Gaoyang had conceived were more or less constrained by his ingrained experience from Earth and might not necessarily suit the actual conditions of this world. In this respect, the Legion's commanders clearly had to learn to adapt to local conditions and to adjust on their own initiative—and this too depended on the soldiers' relatively high level of education and the professionalism of the non-commissioned officers.

When this war was over, the Cecil Legion might still not be a battle-hardened force, but at the very least it would be a qualified modern legion capable of properly employing its advanced equipment.

The Cecilans were pushing north, at an astonishing speed, pushing north like a wild beast that had slipped its leash.

This "push" could already be described as a "charge."

When Heedon awoke in astonishment and listened to his subordinates in charge of the southern defense line report the situation, the first defense line the Divine Scourge Legion had established in the plains region had already vanished—not breached, but vanished entirely from telepathic sense.

As if burned to ashes and blown clean away by a gust of wind.

A priest of the End of All Things, already fully transformed into a Divine Scourge form, lowered his head and reported nervously, with a trace of terror: "They have broken through along the Cypress Manor line and are now attacking our second defense line… Great warships have appeared on the Gorgon River… six brigades… no, nine brigades have just lost contact again!!"

Heedon glared: "How did they get this close?! Why did no one detect them before?!"

The dark priests were silent as cicadas in winter, but Heedon himself had not expected an answer from these people—the Cecilans' attack was an established fact, and studying their previous route of movement was meaningless now.

"They're coming for Red Maple… damn it… how could they be this fast!!" he cursed under his breath, and for the first time, a feeling of terror toward the Cecilans' power took root in his heart.

He had indeed once feared that Pioneer who had risen from the dead, feared that he had unified the power of the Southern Border within a single year… but that should have been a thing of the past!

The Society of the End of All Things had forged a mighty Divine Scourge Legion, a legion powerful enough to overturn the entire Kingdom of Ansu within a month. It should have been incomparably strong, and in the course of fighting the royal house and the noble armies of the Eastern Border, this legion had indeed demonstrated its strength, but… what was happening now?

"Swiftly gather the transformed ones of the plains region, reinforce the second defense line, and have the legions in the southern region contract and pull back to block the Cecilans' retreat—attack them from behind!"

After a brief moment of shock, Heedon forcibly suppressed the tremor in his heart and began to respond to the Cecilans' offensive with the best plan he could conceive—he had noticed one thing: the Cecilans had thrust straight into the Red Maple Plains by some manner of covert march, which meant the Divine Scourge host stationed to their south was still intact… so as long as they could hold the Cecilans in the north, the southern Divine Scourge Legion could launch an attack from the enemy's rear.

Even if that Klorod were here, he probably could not produce a better plan.

Yet shortly after his orders were issued, a priest in giant form said, trembling slightly: "Your Eminence… our second defense line… has already vanished… the enemy… the enemy…"

The priest could not even finish a sentence, but Heedon no longer needed to hear any more intelligence from his mouth—

He heard the faint, distant sound of explosions!

A wind of magic rose from nowhere; Heedon's figure was swiftly enveloped and wrapped in a mass of twisted black vines, and the next second, he arrived at the city wall south of Red Maple through the vine network set throughout the city.

He saw a grand cloud of dust and smoke rising from the southern plains, and many oddly shaped metal vehicles grinding across the earth turned to scorched soil, driving toward this side. The Divine Scourge transformed ones prowling and patrolling the plains were ceaselessly annihilated by explosions and flashes of light, and those explosions and flashes—clearly magical in nature—were being fired from those metal things.

Just as described in the earlier intelligence, those were the Cecil Legion from the south.

The defenders of Red Maple City sprang into action at once. Countless towering Divine Scourge giants climbed onto the walls and raised the defense line. The rune-carved stone bricks of the Red Maple city wall glowed brightly, and a hazy magical barrier began to take shape swiftly in the air—as one of the important cities in the central Plains of the Holy Spirit, Red Maple too possessed a city-level shield system, but it was not, after all, a heavy fortress like Bedrock Keep; its shield apparatus could not be kept open for long periods, and the shield would only be raised temporarily when the city was threatened.

Heedon watched the magic in the air gradually condense into a barrier, but before the shield had fully closed, he suddenly saw a flash of light in the distant smoke and dust—

A strange-looking object, wrapped in pale cyan magic currents, tore through the air straight toward them. It pierced the red maple barrier before it had fully closed and plummeted straight down toward the city wall.

One of the divine-scourge giants—an extraordinary from the Eastern Region before his transformation—reached out and, with idle curiosity, caught the flying thing. The force behind it was so tremendous that even the mighty Commander-class giant was nearly swept off his feet the moment he closed his grip; he staggered backward again and again, crushing a string of ghastly craters into the city wall before he barely found his footing. Then he lifted the obelisk-like lump of metal before his eyes and peered at it curiously: "What is this thing? Apart from that shell of energy, there doesn't seem to be any magic re—"

"Idiot!!" Seaton roared, fury following hard on his astonishment. Under normal circumstances, catching a weapon hurled at you bare-handed on the battlefield was always taken as proof of immense strength and superb martial skill—but did anyone in their right mind catch something the Cecilans had thrown?

The Order of the End of All Things had learned this lesson long ago: when fighting the Cecilans, whatever they lobbed your way—be it even a pumpkin pie—you must never, ever reach out and catch it!

Nearly everything they threw exploded!

But before his warning could land, the "lump of metal" in the giant's hand had already gone off.

The mechanical device had triggered its preset runic array—now it had a magic reaction.

The colossal flash of the blast swallowed the reckless giant commander whole, and countless shards of shattered crystal and metal sprayed in every direction. Seaton threw up a shield at once, blocking all the fragments that might have wounded him, and when the explosion finally cleared, all he could see where the giant had stood was a single mangled lower leg.

In the next instant, the city shield of Red Maple City finally sealed shut.

:. :