BXBX NOVEL Chapter 171 Undead Scourge (4)
"Can we go to the next one?"
Yvraine asked in a bored tone because there was nothing to do after the initial resistance was broken; there was just boredom as she was guarding Samiel together with his personal knight Juulius Crawford.
And while the social purple-haired paladin loved boredom because, for him, it was best if nothing was happening, Yvraine felt it like absolute torture because she expected some fight and action. Even Dharzug got to fight, at least something, because he had the honor of smashing through the city's gates and raiding the manors and other important places.
"Now, we will be going in two groups... one will be going to raid the forts around the borders, which was also posted as Mission from The Guild. On that, Yvraine will go together with Dharzug and Ashimer. I will be taking Negash and Juulis and we will be going to give the gift of death to the surrounding villages and towns around the Grand West Mountain City."
Samiel instructed as neither Yvraine or Dharzug were too thrilled that they would be going together, but at least they were going something more thrilling than just killing defenseless people, as neither one of them took enjoyment from that... but to be not confused, both of them thought that it was too boring to do.
Samiel would be going after the villages and towns that were in the vicinity of the Grand West Mountain City and started harvesting them because they were a prime target. Of course, he chose to go alone on that, only with Juulius, because he knew that there wouldn't even be guards in the villages, so there would be zero action, truth to be told.
That was rather common because only cities would afford to have City Guards and maybe some bigger and richer towns would have some kind of town militia, but that was all when it came to armed forces of them. Because they were relatively small, villages wouldn't have either and their best bet to protection were its inhabitants.
After all, was said, all of them parted towards their respective destinations. Yvraine, Dharzug and Ashimer departed to the north, where the forts were waiting for them to be destroyed. Meanwhile, Samiel, Juulius and Negash, who was controlling the Undead Scourge, were heading towards the towns and villages to increase the soul count as much as possible.
***
4 Days Later
Samiel spent four whole days going with the Undead Scourge with Negash and Juulius, from town to town, from village to village, as they left them all cleaned of any life and sometimes not even the corpses of its inhabitants remained in one place.
During the four days, Samiel was in much hurry as he tied to destroy as much as places as possible, which resulted in obtaining approximately 950,000 souls. While he wanted to have at least one million, that seemed to be impossible, as the Demon Tribes found about the Undead Scourge rampaging in the Western Area and the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe sent one of its smaller armies, numbering more than 40,000 demons to destroy the Scourge.
And that was that moment when he started thing how best to exploit the situation because, truthfully, he wanted to kill that Demon Army as he knew that it should be one of the weaker ones, but since it belonged to the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe, destroying it will not cause anything, but at the same time, it will be another stain and will serve as ammunition for the Star-Moon Demon Coalition.
Samiel also knew that the army they were sent here was not that strong because the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe was too arrogant to take the threat of Undead Scourge seriously, and while the forces of the Scourge numbered only around 10,000, it should not be a problem.
If they had some traps and prepared well, Samiel was confident that he could cut their numbers by ten thousand just from traps. Then it would be outnumbering 1:3, but most of them were weak, probably on the same level as were Negash's ordinary Undead, meaning that under the battle conditions, even if all Negash's Undead were destroyed, he could effortlessly resurrect new Undead.
According to Samiel's calculations, they would need at least fifty thousand to destroy the Undead Scourge in one go by brute force or to take out the control of the Scourge, meaning Negash out of the picture, then even if they had 15,000 it would be enough to destroy 10,000 Undead.
Samiel was right now discussing the strategy together with Juulius and Yvraine, who had returned from the mission of destroying several smaller forts at the borders. Both of them were deducted in the military strategy, so their counsel was valuable, while Dharzug could more or like provide some practical insight because Orks didn't exactly know the meaning of the word "strategy".
"We would need to select the place to ambush the demons and prepare the traps well, to take as much as possible with them... I would personally suggest the Teleryan Pass... it is a place that is relatively narrow, which would greatly lower the power of numbers when they are forced to pass through it. We can install traps all around the length of the pass and take approximately more than 20,000 of the demon army if we do it in the right way. Afterward, the Undead will do the rest."
Explained Juulius, to which Samiel wholeheartedly agreed with his prediction. Teleryan Pass was located several hundred of kilometers away from the Grand West Mountain City and that region. The importance of the Teleryan Pass was that it was a fast shortcut connecting the Northern and Western Areas. If someone wanted to reach the Western Area from the Northen Area very fast, then going through the Teleryan Pass is the sole option.
"The forces Golden-Horned Demon Tribe have just not taken from the encampment of the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe. To carry out this plan, we need to depart for the Teleryan Pass right now, and even then, we would need to work as fast as possible to set it in one place."
Yvraine stated as it was indeed the truth. If they did not hurry, the forces of the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe would reach the Teleryan Pass before them, which would result in the inevitable failure of annihilating their army.
Samiel was aware that in the open field, the Undead Scourge was no match for the army that the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe sent here.
The main reason was that their numbers were too high and while not strongest under the heaven of the 8th Floor, they were bound to have a good number of Bronze-Tier Professionals, while Samiel's Undead Scourge had barely 500 of Bronze-Tier Undead.
***
At their top speed, it took them several hours to reach the Telerayan Pass, which was located among an enormous mountain range. Samiel observed it while hearing the reports from Nefertari, who was telling him that there was no demon army in sight, so that was a good one.
"So, how ya do it?"
Dharzug asked as he started playing with stones, throwing them in the distance.
"Yvraine and Juulius, I believe that you know how to inscribe Spell Holding Ward?"
Samiel asked, seeing both of them nod in agreement; he could proceed to the next stage of the plan. Spell Holding Ward was a very basic Ward that was typically used when someone was preparing traps; like the name suggested, it was a Ward whose sole purpose was to hold spells that were inserted into the Ward.
Subsequently, when the time was right, the spells would be released from the Spell Holding Ward. Of course, Yvraine and Juulius new only some basics of the Warding Magic, enough to follow exactly what Samiel was doing because if they were to do it alone without a "tutorial" then they wouldn't be able to create anything.
Samiel quickly created one Spell Holding Ward capable of holding Intermediate Magic Spells while Yvriane and Juulius observed carefully. After the third Spell Holding Ward was inscribed, they started doing their wons; of course, theirs were capable of holding only Basic Magic Spells.
Even though they were only capable of holding the Basic Magic Spells, it was still enough because if they could cover significant parts of the Teleryan Pass with that kind of Spell Holding Wards, it would have enough firepower to blast apart a lot of demons.
This took a good two hours to finish because creating one Spell Holding Ward after another, especially the ones capable of holding the Intermediate Magic Spells, was not an easy feat and required a lot of effort and precision. If not for Samiel's Level 4 Transcendental Ability Architect, which was doing the majority of the job for him, he would have long ago collapsed from exhaustion.
Of course, Juulius and Yvraine, who were doing Spell Holding Wards which were capable of holding only Basic Magic Spells, were a bit better on it, but not that much. There was a great difference between the Spell Holding Ward capable of holding Basic Magic Spell and Intermediate Magic Spell, as the one for the Intermediate Magic Spell required a lot of complexity and complicated runic matrix compared to the one for the Basic Magic Spell.
So, due to that, Yvraine and Juulius were capable of creating several of them with the moderate effort invested in the creation of a single Spell Holding Ward. Slowly but surely, three of them were covering the entire Teleryan Pass with the Spell Holding Wards, as it took them several hours to cover the most suitable places and part of the Teleryan Pass with the Spell Holding Wards.
'Hooman, hooman.'
Suddenly as Samiel finished the creation of the last Spell Holding Ward, he heard the voice of his familiar Nefertari, whom he sent to scout of the area to see if the demon army was not approaching the Teleryan Pass... that fact that she returned meant only a single thing, and that the demons were not that far from their position.
'Yes?'
Samiel asked, preparing for the worst eventuality; in truth, he feared that the number of the demons would be way higher or there would be much stronger than the initial estimations or reports. Everything could happen and even despite the most meticulous preparations, nobody could always prepare for everything.
'Demons are numbering somewhere between 43,000 to 45,000 and are two hours away from the Teleryan Pass. The number of Bronze-Tier Professionals within their army is 654, but they have only 20 Silver-Tier Professionals.'
When he heard that, he knew that this was way better than he initially thought because the number of Bronze-Tier Professionals was way lower than he expected. So, that was a good thing and the number of the Silver-Tier ones was also lower than he thought.
Dharzug alone could take at least five or six of them, Juulius could take several together with his familiar Tytos. Yvraine too, was pretty strong and could take some Silver-Tier Demons, as well as himself, so they were not that threat.
For now, the most important thing was to finish the preparation of all traps when the Demon Army entered the Teleryan Pass so they could inflict them with high damage as possible. Then, he would march down with the Undead Scourge and finish what had remained from the Demon Army; of course, it would be for the best if they managed to take as many of the Bronze-Tier ones and possibly even some Silver-Tier Demon Professionals out of the equation during the ambush.
"The demon army is around two hours away from the Teleryan Pass... I need to start injecting spells into the Spell Holding Wards."
Samiel stated what he was told by his familiar who was scouting the area. For the spells he would be stored in the Spell Holding Wards; naturally, Samiel chose the Void Magic Spells because they were the most destructive from his spell repertoire and would do the most damage out of all.
Of course, he didn't choose only the spells which were destructive in nature, like Void Bombs or Void Strike, but several of the Spell Holding Wards were also stored with Maddening Whispers Spell, Crushing Curse Spell and a whole bunch of curses of the Necromancy Arts.