Chapter 744 - Bitter Defeat
Chapter 744: Bitter Defeat
When Bardi Emperor Halent told me about the situation on Bardi’s frontlines, I felt almost as if he was telling me a terrible joke with how fast he told me things. I really wanted to laugh, but couldn’t, which felt so aggrieving.
“You didn’t receive my information?” I inquired.
After my secret agreement with Undead Emperor Sandro, I had sent my ally Bardi information on the undead, telling them much about the undead army’s actual internal situation. I couldn’t understand why things had gone so majorly wrong even after my informational assistance.
Halent sighed as he shook his head in dejection.
“It was precisely because we learned that the five Undead Emperors weren’t unified, with one of them missing and two of them only pretending to fight us, meaning that only two Undead Emperors are our true mortal enemies, that we made up our mind to eliminate this threat once and for all.”
Although it might sound rather ridiculous, the combat situation had gone like this: Bardi felt that they had a tremendous numerical advantage, so they closed their eyes and turned on auto-battle mode, letting all soldiers attack by themselves, and then Bardi typed GG and admitted defeat.
Was this foolish? Or suicidal? Or foolishly suicidal?
Bardi had actually tried to calculate standard troops’ numerical advantages when fighting against Undead Emperors! Bardi had tried to use the strength of numbers to overwhelm the enemy. What actually happened was that Bardi had attacked with multiple army squadrons in a rush, and then was completely annihilated by forbidden spells and ambushes. Bardi’s forces on the frontlines were utterly annihilated to the point of having to retreat 300 kilometers in a single day. They suffered massive losses and a great blow to their morale. That was also why Halent had made my arrival into a piece of political propaganda for raising everyone’s morale.
Moreover, all of this had happened while the Undead Emperors were still not unified.
I gradually learned more details about what had happened from Halent.
Only the two enemy Undead Emperors had attacked.
Undead Emperor Anina, the “Long-sleeping Witch” from the Darkness Plane, and Undead Emperor Shupnus, the “Undead Wizard” from the Deathmist Plane. They were both relatively younger Undead Emperors. Neither of them had any outstanding combat achievements before, at least not in the mortal plane.
It could be said that everyone underestimated these two Undead Emperors compared to the other three far more famous Undead Emperors who had invaded.
However, these two were still Undead Emperors, existences who had achieved the impossible. They weren’t known little because they didn’t have the power, but rather because they hadn’t needed to show their true power.
Neither of the two had used any surprising strategy at all. They used the classical strategy that all undead mages would use: an undead sea followed by support magic from behind.
However, their magic power was far beyond that of any ordinary undead mage.
They first intentionally allowed their own undead army to be eradicated by Bardi, which lured the Bardi forces deep into their territory. They then launched an ambush once a tremendous number of human warriors and several dozen dragons had entered their chosen location.
The two Undead Emperors then combined their powers at spellcasting and successfully opened up a dimensional tear, connecting the mortal plane to a Death Plane, which caused a torrential amount of negative energy to pour out and slaughter all the living. The scene had been incredibly horrendous to behold.
Such a spell was somewhat similar to back when Aso had sacrificed his life in order to forcefully connect the mortal plane to the Death Planes, opening up a permanent portal. However, the dimensional restrictions were much weaker now since the Holy War had started, so with two Undead Emperors working together, along with already having prepared enough sacrifices for the ritual, their chosen ambush location was instantaneously corroded into a land of death.
Yet, that had only been the beginning. What followed right after was of course the summoning of more undead.
Countless high-level undead arrived from the dimensional tear. They started harvesting souls by hunting down any of the living who tried to escape.
When the Undead Emperors had first arrived in the mortal plane, they had all come by themselves. Their current undead army was just a bunch of cannon fodder that they could summon quite easily. But this time, the two Undead Emperors had summoned their personal elite armies.
More than 80% of a regular undead mage’s combat strength would be tied to their subordinates. Since Undead Emperors were at the very peak of undead society, it wouldn’t be possible for any Undead Emperor to only fight by themselves.
To use Undead Emperor Roland’s Red Hunting Hounds as an example, it could easily be extrapolated just how powerful an Undead Emperor’s personal elite army would be after being alive in undeath for a long enough period of time.
The ambush location had been in a valley surrounded by mountains. The humans had thought that they had cornered the undead, without expecting that this was actually a death trap designed by the undead.Read more chapter on NovelFull
The complex mountainous terrain made escaping nothing more than a dream when the negative energy wave arrived from the Death Plane.
The combat results were incredibly pitiful. The Bardi army for this attack had totaled 250,000, yet less than 50,000 had managed to retreat alive to safety. Almost 100 dragons had also fought on Bardi’s side, and 37 had perished, with a majority being young dragons, and half being the newest magic armor dragons.
Yet, this was only the beginning of Bardi’s troubles. Despite finally managing to destroy so many undead, the undead would now easily revive their army by using all of these dead Bardi soldiers. Not only would there be countless new powerful undead, the brave warriors who had just been fighting on Bardi’s side would now become enslaved zombies on the undead side. The newest magic armor dragons would now become armored bone dragons on the undead side. This was a great blow to Bardi’s morale.
This battle had basically given the undead enemy several hundred thousand free undead troops. It was a complete and devastating loss.
Bardi was truly foundationally strong. It could afford such a loss. In just a few months, it would be able to form another similarly big army again. Bardi was still capable of fighting.
Bardi had been fighting losing battles for many years already, so this shouldn’t have been a big deal originally.
However, the most critical part was that the crushing defeat had been far too unexpected and sudden. Large numbers of injured soldiers ran away from the battle. Some deserted and ran to various major cities and domains. The deserters would of course tell everyone in exaggerated fashion about how scary and powerful the undead were. This news would start spreading and sink all of Bardi into an atmosphere of fear and panic.
My arrival had thus been a chance for Halent to improve the morale of his citizens.
In his propaganda announcement, my arrival wasn’t due to my own personal matters, but rather because I was here as a representative of the Mist Alliance who was here to reinforce Bardi.
Technically, Halent wasn’t lying about this at all. Bardi’s loss had been far too sudden. Its allies were indeed sending reinforcements which were on the way.
By now, I understood what Halent meant. He was pleading with me as his ally for assistance.
But as for me, no matter if I helped him or not, this was rather troublesome to deal with.