novelraw Chapter 483: The Cruel Battlefield
Chapter 483: The Cruel Battlefield
“So…”
Saladin withdrew his finger. “They can only gamble—gamble that the defensive line will hold, gamble that we won’t locate their hidden positions so quickly.”
He swept his gaze across the room. Beneath the shroud, the corners of his mouth seemed to curve into an icy arc.
“Then… how should we respond to this ‘expectation’ of theirs?”
After a brief silence, a seventh-ring wizard of the Chaos Secret Cult spoke up, his voice carrying a trace of excitement:
“Take the initiative. Seek out their hidden locations and destroy them before they can fully play their trump cards!”
“Correct… but not entirely.” Saladin slowly shook his head. “Finding the hidden locations is necessary, but sending the main army to storm them carries far too much risk… Who knows how many traps and defensive measures those cunning old foxes have prepared in their lairs?”
“If we get bogged down in a bitter fight there, and the main force on the Noren Workshop defensive line seizes the chance to sally forth, we’ll be caught in a two-front battle.”
He paused, then revealed the true plan:
“My suggestion is—dual-line operations.” “First: Deploy a portion of our sixth-ring wizards, leading mid- and low-tier forces, to conduct ‘harassing attacks’ on the Noren Workshop defensive line every day. This serves three purposes: one, to draw their attention and make them believe we remain fixated on a frontal breakthrough; two, to prevent them from enjoying any peace, continuously draining their energy and resources; three, to constantly monitor internal changes in the defensive line and guard against any secret redeployment of troops or other tricks.”
“Second—and most important: Detach our elite fifth- and sixth-ring wizards to form reconnaissance teams. Centered on our current position, conduct a radiating outward search.”
Saladin’s finger traced several wedge-shaped sectors across the battlefield situation map:
“Assign three to five reconnaissance teams per sector. Each team is led by an experienced sixth-ring wizard and includes four to six fifth-ring wizards skilled in concealment, tracking, and survival.”
“Their mission is to locate the positions where Noren Workshop has concealed their trump-card arrangements. But at the same time… they themselves will serve as ‘bait’.”
“Bait?” A wizard murmured the word, instantly grasping the implication.
“Exactly. Bait.” Saladin’s voice grew several degrees colder.
The wizards present had mostly understood by now.
If Noren Workshop discovered that the coalition forces were searching for their hidden bases, what would they do?
Without question, they would deploy interception forces as far outward as possible to eliminate those reconnaissance teams.
And that very reaction would provide the coalition with information—by tallying the ‘death rate’ and ‘missing rate’ of reconnaissance teams across each sector, they could reverse-engineer which directions Noren Workshop had concentrated its interception strength.
The sector where reconnaissance teams suffered the heaviest losses, or where contact was lost fastest, would indicate where Noren Workshop had committed the most blocking forces.
And why commit heavy troops to intercept in that particular direction?
Precisely because… that direction was closest to their true hiding place.
Once they understood the plan, the eyes of the wizards present lit up.
Simple, yet effective.
“Of course, the cost of doing this is…” Saladin’s tone remained flat, “…even with us seventh-ring wizards stationed in the rear, ready to provide support at any moment, the death rate among those fifth-ring wizards serving as ‘bait’ will likely skyrocket to an appalling level.”
He paused, then added:
“Conservative estimate: among the fifth-ring wizards participating in reconnaissance missions, the final survival rate may not exceed ten percent.”
Ten percent.
The number caused some of the Chaos Secret Cult wizards to furrow their brows.
A mortality rate like that approached what green recruits faced during their first planar war.
The problem was that the ones dying would not be the abundant new talents produced every few years, but genuine elites who had already survived multiple rounds of brutal selection.
Yet Saladin’s next words caused those furrowed brows to smooth out again:
“However, consider it from another angle—any fifth-ring wizard who can survive this kind of high-intensity reconnaissance combat will possess, without question, the strength, mentality, and luck required to advance to sixth-ring. In other words… we are using the enemy’s strength to help us screen for promising seeds.”
“Those who live will be true elites. Those who die… will be counted as necessary sacrifices for the war.”
Cruel, yet rational.
That was the way of wizards.
After a short silence, the seventh-ring wizards present began to nod one after another.
“Agreed.”
“Feasible.”
“I concur as well.”
The high-ring wizards quickly reached consensus. Orders were promptly compiled and transmitted downward.
Three days later.
Noren Workshop defensive line, Fortress No. 7.
After seventy-two consecutive hours of uninterrupted construction, the entire steel defensive line had finally “come alive.”
The energy circuits linking over a hundred fortresses were now fully connected. The completeness of the super-gigantic composite defensive array had reached 97%.
The pale golden barrier had transformed from semi-transparent to a solid amber hue. Its thickness had increased fivefold, and the number of flowing runes on its surface was now twenty times what it had been at the start of the war.
From high altitude, the defensive line resembled a golden Great Wall stretching across the gray-white wasteland, radiating an energy fluctuation that made hearts palpitate.
Inside the fortress, Clark stood in the newly expanded control room, gazing at the five-times-larger holographic tactical sandbox before him, his brows slightly furrowed.
On the sandbox, the golden area representing their own defensive line stood immovable as a mountain.
But in the outer perimeter—especially in the annular zone between one hundred and five hundred kilometers from the line—dense clusters of red light points were constantly appearing, vanishing, and reappearing like swarms of locusts.
Those were the “harassment forces” dispatched by the Chaos Secret Cult and the Tower of Annihilation.
Their numbers were not large—each wave ranged from tens of millions to a few hundred million, mostly third- and fourth-ring with a small admixture of fifth-ring.
Their tactics were particularly nasty: they avoided direct assault, instead splitting into dozens of small squads that approached from multiple directions. Upon reaching the edge of turret range, they would unleash several rapid volleys of long-range witchcraft before immediately withdrawing.
By the time the fortress turrets charged and aimed, the attackers had already fled beyond optimal firing distance.
If pursuit forces were sent out, they would fight while retreating, luring the pursuers into pre-prepared trap zones.
One sixth-ring wizard had already fallen to such tactics earlier.
Noren Workshop had considered sending reinforcements, but whenever they prepared to move, the enemy’s high-ring wizards reacted in sync.
After all, both sides’ seventh-ring wizards—and a certain sixth-ring wizard who somewhat exceeded normal standards—were mutually monitoring each other. Any movement could trigger a chain reaction.
Although Noren Workshop possessed Clark as a powerful combat asset, their overall fighting strength still lagged behind.
Fighting away from the defensive line would put victory in serious doubt.
Moreover, the orders received by the workshop’s wizards were to delay as long as possible. Launching the final decisive battle ahead of schedule was hardly a rational choice.
Thus the seventh-ring wizards could only hold position.
Yet if they ignored the enemy’s low-ring wizards, those foes would buzz around like flies, harassing the line twenty-four hours a day without cease, denying the defenders even a moment’s peace.
“A classic war of attrition.”
In the center of the control room, Dionysius Spencer hovered in midair, observing the red dots on the sandbox. His voice carried no discernible emotion:
“The enemy knows they cannot break through by force, so they’ve switched to this energy-draining harassment. On one hand, it prevents us from focusing on construction; on the other… it tests our defensive line’s reaction speed, searching for potential weak points.”
Clark nodded, but his gaze drifted toward the even more distant regions of the sandbox.
There, the blue light points representing Noren Workshop’s reconnaissance teams were constantly clashing, exchanging fire, and vanishing upon contact with the deep-crimson points of the enemy scouts.
The intensity of those engagements… was terrifyingly high.
“The outer reconnaissance war has already lasted two days,” Clark said in a low voice. “According to statistics, in the past twenty-four hours, the encounter rate between our reconnaissance teams and theirs has increased by 300%. And… the casualty ratio is far from ideal.”
Dionysius was silent for several seconds before slowly speaking:
“They are searching for our ‘hidden positions’.”
Clark’s heart tightened.
As one of the core operators of the fortress defense system, he naturally knew—Noren Workshop had a portion of its seventh-ring wizards and five hundred sixth-ring wizards who were not present on the defensive line.
Their whereabouts were the highest-level secret; even the vast majority of sixth-ring wizards lacked clearance to know.
But everyone could guess that those missing high-ring wizards must be carrying out some vitally important “trump-card deployment.”
And the enemy had clearly realized this as well—and had begun a frenzied search.
“Our forces are insufficient; the troops we can disperse are limited. If this continues, even if we stop them, they will still be able to infer the general direction based on our casualty patterns,” Clark said gravely.
“Therefore, the reconnaissance teams we’ve sent out have two missions,” Dionysius replied calmly. “First, to locate any similar ‘hidden positions’ the enemy might possess. Second… to intercept and eliminate the enemy’s search forces in as many directions as possible, doing everything we can to delay the speed at which they discover our hidden sites.”
“But doing so will cause the combat intensity in this region to rise sharply.”
As if to confirm his words…
At the edge of the sandbox, a blue light point representing one of their reconnaissance teams flickered violently several times under the encirclement of three deep-crimson points, then…
Went dark.
That signified the fall of one elite fifth-ring wizard.
Dionysius Spencer turned his head toward his unusually calm junior brother:
“If I remember correctly, both of your students volunteered to join the fighting, didn’t they? Aren’t you worried about them?”
“Those two little fellows have excellent aptitude. It would be a real pity to lose them.”
Clark nodded expressionlessly:
“It’s fine. They both have revival items.”
Dionysius Spencer, who had originally intended to offer a few comforting words to his junior brother, suddenly choked on them.
He opened his mouth, closed it again, struggled to find words…
Finally, he clicked his tongue, exuding sourness from every pore, and left the room.
On the sandbox, another blue light point extinguished amid a ring of deep-crimson points.
Yet almost immediately, fresh blue light points launched from the defensive line, charging without hesitation into that blood-soaked outer region.