Chapter 110: Battle of North Soqya (Part 6)
The sea breeze blew, and the sky was overcast with dark clouds.
Giovanni Draghi stood at the bow of the ship, gazing at the gradually approaching coastline.
Although known as a veteran general of Badan, in his heart, Giovanni did not like war. Since childhood, he had a dream of becoming a playwright. Even now, he would write a few acts of a play when he had leisure time. It was just that his superhuman aptitude was rather good; he awakened at his first initiation ceremony, so he was conscripted onto the battlefield very early on.
Alvaro's claim that "Badan people don't know how to fight" was not entirely nonsense.
Giovanni went to the battlefield in his teens, fought for over twenty years, achieved some minor merits, and made no major mistakes. He relied solely on seniority to gain the title of a veteran general in Badan. If Giovanni were to evaluate himself, he would at most dare to give himself a "not bad" rating.
However, such a person was already Badan's most presentable general. The quality of other Badan generals could be imagined.
Balotelli came up behind his son-in-law and said, "The weather isn't good today. We should land as soon as possible to avoid strong winds at sea."
"This..." Giovanni hesitated. His intention was to drift off the coast of Dolrcocha for two days, wait for the citizen-soldiers of the Camela city-state to arrive, and then land together after the two armies rendezvoused.
This way, their entire army would have eight or nine thousand men, including twenty-seven hundred superhumans. Giovanni felt that fighting a war this way was sufficiently prudent.
But Balotelli persuaded again, "We don't need to attack the city immediately after landing. We can just set up camp outside the city. We have a large number of scorpion ballistae and foul oil. If the Viscount of Lanwan's griffin knights dare to take the initiative to attack us outside the city, they will only suffer a great loss."
"Alright."
Giovanni knew Balotelli was worried about his city-state and family, but he still couldn't withstand his father-in-law's repeated persuasion and nodded to order the landing.
During the landing process, the Badan army did not encounter the "attack while crossing" that Giovanni feared most. The entire army landed smoothly, organized their ranks methodically, and pushed the heavy ballistae towards Dolrcocha.
However, when the Badan army arrived tremblingly at the foot of Dolrcocha's city walls, what they saw were open city gates, an empty city wall, and pedestrians coming and going.
Giovanni and Balotelli were both very puzzled. Logically, their fleet had lingered on the sea for the better part of a day before landing. The Oran people shouldn't have been completely unaware, right? Why did it seem like there were no defenses at all?
Giovanni had his subordinates grab a pedestrian leaving the city for interrogation.
"What is your status? How can you leave the city随意 (at will)?" Giovanni asked sternly.
The man knelt and answered in panic, "I, I am a freeman of Dolrcocha. I, I didn't know I couldn't leave the city! Please forgive me, General!"
Giovanni frowned and asked again, "I'm asking how you got out of the city!"
"I walked out of the city..." the man answered honestly.
Giovanni raised his whip, about to strike.
Balotelli couldn't bear to watch any longer and quickly stepped forward, "I am Elder Balotelli of Dolrcocha. Tell me honestly, what exactly is the situation in the city? Why aren't the city gates closed? Why is no one defending the city walls? Where did the Oran people go? What are they doing?"
"Elder Balotelli?" The man's eyes immediately reddened. "We've suffered so much! Why did you only just return? Those robbers and bandits from the Oran Empire have already left..."
"Left?" Giovanni said in surprise.
"Yes, they left last night, riding their evil griffins," the man said. "Before leaving, they not only plundered all the money from the public treasury but also killed people and set fires everywhere, burning down our houses..."
Giovanni had his subordinates grab some more civilians leaving the city, among whom were citizens who recognized Balotelli at a glance. From them, Giovanni and Balotelli received largely the same answer – the Lanwan Viscountcy's army had retreated, and Dolrcocha was now an undefended empty city.
"Why don't we just go into the city?" Balotelli suggested.
Giovanni felt something was amiss, so he dispatched four hundred citizen-soldiers into the city to investigate and control the four city gates.
The citizen-soldiers were in the city for a long time, then came out to report that everything in the city was normal, and no enemy troops were found.
Only then did Giovanni order the army to enter the city in three waves, with himself in the last wave.
Although Balotelli was anxious, he still entered the city with Giovanni in the final wave.
After entering the city, Balotelli's eyes fell upon congealed blood, collapsed city walls, unburied corpses, and houses still emitting wisps of smoke...
It was said that the Viscount of Lanwan's army had set fires everywhere before leaving. Although the residents of Dolrcocha had spontaneously organized to desperately extinguish the fires after they left, many houses were still burned down, leaving many people homeless and wandering the streets.
However, the fires mostly affected the residences of freemen and even slaves. Balotelli couldn't be bothered with them. He hurried back to his own home, only to find that his wife, children, and relatives were all gone.
Balotelli grabbed a servant and anxiously asked where his family had gone.
The servant stammered, "The Council of Elders."
Balotelli hurried to the Council of Elders.
Dolrcocha's easily defensible Council of Elders was the last refuge for the city-state's elders and their families, allowing these nobles to hide inside and await reinforcements.
However, when Balotelli saw the originally beige marble building turned into an almost molten, charred black, his heart sank.
Entering the Council of Elders, Balotelli saw corpse after corpse, all in gruesome states. Their postures were twisted, their faces contorted. Some clutched their necks with both hands, as if trying to tear their own throats open. Some had dark red skin that felt brittle to the touch, as if they had been suffocated by heat. The pungent smell of burnt foul oil mixed with the greasy aroma left by high-temperature roasting was trapped in this relatively enclosed building, creating an extremely nauseating odor.
"Melissa! Jim!"
Suddenly, Balotelli lunged towards three of the corpses.
Giovanni, following behind Balotelli, recognized them as his mother-in-law, his young brother-in-law, and his father-in-law's mother.
As soon as Balotelli's hand touched his wife, the skin on the corpse sloughed off. Balotelli quickly raised his hands, not knowing where to put them. He knelt on the ground, crawling on his knees from his wife to his son, and then from his son to his mother, whimpering sounds escaping his throat like a bereaved old dog.
Giovanni sighed inwardly. He had a decent relationship with his in-laws, especially his young brother-in-law, whom he had practically watched grow up. But now, he didn't know how to comfort his father-in-law.
At this moment, Giovanni's adjutant came to ask how the army should be arranged.
This adjutant had followed Giovanni for a long time and was highly trusted. So, Giovanni casually replied, "You arrange it. Find a place for everyone to rest."
The adjutant took his leave and found a Dolrcochan citizen to ask where troops could be stationed.
The citizen led the adjutant to the military barracks within Dolrcocha. The barracks were quite large, and the buildings were not heavily damaged, so the adjutant settled the entire Badan army in the barracks for the night.
As night fell, a light rain began to fall from the sky.
On the relatively clean main road, Dolrcochan residents who had lost their homes huddled by the roadside, enduring miserably, praying for the rainy night to pass quickly. Among them, a figure wrapped in tattered cotton clothes, who had been蜷缩 (crouching/huddled) in a street corner for who knows how long, stood up, bent over, and quickly slipped into an even darker and damper alley.
Several other figures were also huddled in the depths of the alley, looking like displaced refugees.
"Viscountess, the arriving enemy forces are much smaller than we estimated. It seems to be only a contingent from the Badan city-state," the person who had just entered spoke. It was Adams Bell's voice.
"Fewer is fewer," a figure wrapped in a linen sheet, huddled in the mud at the end of the alley, also looked up. It was Charlotte. "When the civilians on the streets are asleep, we move."
"Yes," Adams replied.
It seemed Yig had heard the prayers of the Dolrcochan people. In the latter half of the night, the light rain gradually stopped, and the physically and mentally exhausted civilians on the streets slowly drifted off to sleep.
An inconspicuous torch was suddenly raised on the roof of the tavern opposite the Dolrcocha Council of Elders.
Then, one torch after another lit up in the city, like arrows, pointing all the way to the position where the main Badan force was stationed.
In the darkness, figure after figure stood up. They wore clothes similar to those of Dolrcochan freemen or even slaves, yet they fumbled for sharp blades from their bosoms or beside them.
They were all Oran knights who had shed their "tin can" armor.
Following the guidance of the torches, the knights silently converged on Dolrcocha's military barracks.
A second torch was raised on the tavern roof.
Ball after ball of fire flew up, then curved through the air towards the barracks.
The Oran knights already gathered outside the barracks immediately sprang into action. The barracks had no brick walls, only wooden fences. With a loud shout, the knights exerted force simultaneously, pushed down the fences, and charged into the barracks.
The Badan soldiers on sentry duty were distracted by the fireballs. Before they could clearly see who was storming the camp, they were cut down by a flurry of blades.
Apart from the soldiers on rotation, most Badan citizen-soldiers were already asleep. When they were groggily awakened, the barracks were already in chaos.
There were fires everywhere, shouts of battle everywhere, wails everywhere, and the clash of weapons everywhere.
"What on earth is happening?"
The citizen-soldiers asked each other, but no one could figure out the situation.
Soon, the front camp collapsed in the night raid. The fleeing crowd swept into the rear barracks. The blood on them and their terrified expressions quickly spread panic and chaos like a plague.
They abandoned half-worn armor, discarded cumbersome weapons, and turned to flee with the crowd.
"General! General!"
Giovanni, who had just comforted his father-in-law and had not been asleep for long, was awakened by his adjutant.
"What is it?" Giovanni asked, still sleepy-eyed.
"General, someone has raided our barracks!" the adjutant said anxiously.
"A raid? Oran people? How many enemy troops are there?" Giovanni was instantly wide awake.
"I don't know! The citizen-soldiers who fled said there are a hundred thousand!" the adjutant replied.
"Nonsense! Even if you count all the dogs in the Lanwan Viscountcy, you wouldn't reach a hundred thousand!" Giovanni berated angrily.
"General, this isn't the time to talk about this! We should flee quickly!" The adjutant was about to cry.
Giovanni only had time to put on his boots before he was supported by his adjutant and guards, fleeing from the temporarily requisitioned private house.
On the street, a fleeing Badan citizen-soldier, seeing someone blocking the way, screamed in despair and swung his sword, only realizing it was one of his own after being kicked away by Giovanni's guard.
"General, a million Oran people are attacking!" the citizen-soldier scrambled up and shouted in panic.
Giovanni finally understood his adjutant's meaning. A camp rout was like a bursting dam; once it started, it couldn't be stopped by human effort, not even by him, the general.
How many enemies there were no longer mattered. The beast called "panic" alone was enough to crush his army.
Adams rarely experienced Celine's feeling of being invincible, one against ten. He alone, with a single sword, could chase ten, twenty, or even a hundred Badan citizen-soldiers, striking fiercely.
Initially, some superhumans would exchange a few blows with Adams, merely intending to temporarily repel him and then find a chance to escape.
When panic had completely spread, even the superhumans gave up resistance. They knew that if they stopped to resist, their comrades beside them would flee without hesitation, leaving them behind as tools to delay time.
Adams encountered a two-winged superhuman citizen-soldier who dropped his short sword and fled desperately. Adams stabbed him in his exposed lower back. When the citizen-soldier was forced to fight back and revealed his two-winged strength, he was already severely injured.
Just like that, Adams slew a two-winged sorcerer, the process unbelievably simple.
The battle turned into a one-sided slaughter, a race between pursuers and fugitives.
"Giovanni, what on earth happened?" Giovanni, while fleeing, fortunately encountered his father-in-law. Balotelli asked, "Your citizen-soldiers are shouting that Oran people are everywhere in the city."
"They're lucky they didn't shout that ten million Oran people are attacking," Giovanni panted slightly. "We were ambushed by Oran troops. There was no movement at the city gates or walls; the Oran people must have been lying in ambush in the city all along. But it's too late to understand now. Let's get out of the city first."
"Alright, alright..." Balotelli also hurriedly agreed.
"They collapsed so quickly, we didn't even need to use the griffins..." Charlotte watched the one-sided battle around her and couldn't help but sigh with emotion.
"Your Excellency, we failed to capture the enemy commander," Herman Green, covered in enemy blood, came to Charlotte to plead for forgiveness.
"It doesn't matter," Charlotte said with a smile. "In this battle, the Badan army has suffered a great blow. Even if the enemy general escaped, it can still be called a great victory."
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