Soul of Searing Steel
chapter-57

Winter was coming to an end. Glimpses of light passed through the dense clouds, shining onto the passageway where the three people stood.

All three of them were standing in front of the tower. The current situation had created a sense of curiosity to those who passed by, causing a lot of soldiers and civilians to pay attention to what was happening. However, some individuals knew that the two people who were standing right in front of them were their superiors. Without hesitation, they decided to leave the area. After a while, the crowd slowly dispersed and all the people went back to minding their own business.

Chiri's tone was not that stern as if he was just asking a normal question. After all, the silver-haired girl looks like someone who was only slightly over ten years old. She did not seem to pose a threat, thus Chiri did not have his guard up against her. He was only curious that a little girl would follow them all the way here.

However, this does not apply to the other person.

"Hold on!"

Feng was a mage, although he was considered an old one, his perception and memory were far stronger than Chiri's. He frowned and noticed something very surprising. "Silver tier! This young one is a Silver tier... No wonder… Chiri, look at the style of her clothes!"

As Ying did not try to hide her presence, it was not surprising that she was found out by both.

However, after hearing Feng's words both Chiri and Ying were baffled for a moment. Ying took another glance at her own clothing. She was wearing a blazer dress at the moment. Although it was not very glamorous, it was still a quite good looking design overall. She does not feel anything weird about her current dressing and everything seemed to be perfectly normal for her.

On the other hand, Chiri finally examined her clothing carefully and seemed to notice something. He nodded in agreement and said, "You're right. I have neglected this issue just now. The design and style of her clothes are identical."

What in the world is wrong with these two guys here?

Ying frowned as she does not know what the other party was discussing about. At first, the masked man asked why she was following. Now, out of nowhere, they appeared to be discussing the design of her attire, which greatly confused her.

She had the urge to explain her current status to them, telling them that she was also serving the Count of Moldavia. The only downside of this was she's going to expose that she was lost. This was something that made her feel embarrassed.

"Erhem..."

After staying silent for a moment, Feng walked in front of Ying and lowered his body to match her height. He stared directly at Ying and asked, "What is your relationship with Mr. Amos?"

"Mr. Amos? You mean Fang?" Ying replied instinctively. That time, she finally understood why they were discussing her clothing. When a Divine Armament exposed their form, they would always have that same style and wearing nearly identical clothing.

It was not difficult to compare her current outfit to the old Divine Armament's as they all wore the same style in the first place.

"As expected."

Although he did not get a direct answer, he understood. The old mage nodded his head, as if he was quite pleased with his own judgment. "No matter if it is Fang or the older butler, the servant family of Moldavia had a very similar servant-like design in terms of their uniform. Even the female outfit seems to be the same."

"For all these years, the representative of the servant family who had served the Radcliffe is now led by a female." The half-elf warrior finally understood the reason Ying appeared before them. "You must be looking for the young master. Come, this way."

These people had some minor misunderstandings about the existence of Divine Armaments.

Ying who was too lazy to explain everything, sighed. After that, she agreed to follow them. "Let's go then."

A few minutes later in the meeting room.

"This Dark Tide was led by a Gold-tier mammoth. It had led the invasion causing the destruction of the wall up to 25%. Currently, our wall is being temporarily fixed by the elemental mages using petrification. Based on the information and reports gathered, a total of seven knights had died in the line of duty. A total of one hundred and forty foot soldiers were sacrificed in the process, up to seven hundred injured personnel."

All the reports were compiled during the time when the white-haired mage sent Zorgen for medical assistance. With only slightly more than two thousand military personnel within the fortress, it was not hard to them to compile all the information. Although there might be some minor mistakes here and there, it won't affect the overall result by a huge margin.

"As the city wall was breached at a certain point, there were minimal amounts of successful invasions by the Berserk Daemons. This situation caused minor injuries to some civilians. The good news is that no civilians lost their lives during the battle."

Joshua was looking at the report sent by Feng on the main seat of the meeting room. After glancing through the reports, Joshua paused in doubt. "When I was rushing here, I saw the invasion from the breached wall. While I do not really understand the whole scenario during that time, the number stated in the report does not really reflect and match what I saw during that period of time. While the numbers reported may be small and insignificant casualties, this result does not really tally with what I've witnessed."

When Joshua saw the city wall being breached, he thought that up to thousands of people were already been killed during the process. Thus he chose the most reckless plan, which was directly challenging the Gold-tier mammoth to disrupt the plans of the Berserk Daemon. Under normal circumstances, Joshua would actually make the decision to slowly grind for a while until he noticed the weakness of the opponent. Once the weakness is found, he would use that opportunity to control the battle. He would not have risked his life and used brute force to directly counter the invasion.

"If we were to look at the final results today, we were considered lucky that we only sacrificed only this many people. Facing a fifty thousand Berserk Daemon invasion, it could be considered a very good outcome."

Chiri who was on the frontline for the most of the time knew exactly what was going on all these time. He shook his head and said, "Daemons do not have any special plans or tactics to invade a city. Other than using brute force, they would usually climb over the city walls. With our city wall having a T-shaped design, we were able defend against the daemons."

"Although we had the upper hand against the daemons in terms of terrain together with the non-stop rotation of Silver-tier warriors on the city wall, the reckless and suicidal assault from the Berserk Daemon had caused a great amount of structural damage and resource expenses. We had lost all the satellite forts and a huge amount resource such as enchanted arrows and alchemy products. With such ferocious attack launched by the daemons, we might not have many survivors left at the end of the day if it wasn't young master who came and save us."

What Chiri said was not exaggeration or lies. If Joshua was not able to reach in time, no one would stop the onslaught once the city wall was completely breached by the Berserk Daemons.

Luckily, humans are not the brainless type of lifeform. By utilizing tools and equipment, humans had created a lot of opportunities and ways to defend themselves against the daemons. With an army of two thousand combined with the effort of the civilians who were trained before, they are completely capable of defending a city or fortress without being breached or trampled within a short time frame. Despite facing the invasion of fifty thousand Berserk Daemons, the forces available were capable to hold on for quite some time before the daemons could successfully destroy everything on their path.

During the time when the mammoth attacked, it did not care about the things that it trampled. Whether it was a daemon or a human, it does not make any difference to it. Thus, during the time it broke down a part of the city wall, the Berserk Daemons that dared to enter directly through the gap were too few to count. As soon as that happened, Joshua descended from the sky and proceeded to slay the Gold-tier daemon. The death of the mammoth had already scared the wits out of all the Berserk Daemons.

Looking at all the events happened previously, it was not surprising that the human losses were minimal. However, as Chiri mentioned, the number of enchanted arrows and magic cannons was almost depleted. Joshua was worried about the financial state of Moldavia, wondering if Moldavia would have enough funds to resupply enough for future battles.

In this battle, casualties were unavoidable. However, some things were actually salvageable if things were done properly.

There were some key elements of this world which were definitely not the same as the game world, which it was not a game itself but a real living world. This world was nothing like the virtual world as death was permanent here. Everyone living in this land only had one life.

Precisely due to these facts and differences occurring in this world, it had given some sort of direction or goal for Joshua to pursue; to live his life with achievement in mind.

"Thank you, both of you, for the report."

Joshua then folded up the report and handed it over to Ying who was standing behind him. After thinking for a moment, he said to both of them, "Although some of the information was not complete, we may still come to an end on this reporting portion. I've noticed that both of you are extremely tired currently.

"Feng, prepare me an official report and submit it to me after a few days. I will end this meeting at this point."

"Yes! My lord."

Before Feng left the meeting room, he had the urge to ask some questions. At the end of the day, he held back and only talked to Chiri after they exited the main door of the meeting room.

"Maybe it was just my imagination," said the old mage. "The presence that I noticed during the time when you extracted an item out of the mammoth, I believe that I had felt it somewhere before."

"Feng, are you sure?"

He has felt the presence of this Marine Abyssal Spawn before?

Joshua's expression was grim after hearing Feng's words. He then took out the silvery white egg-shaped item from his pocket and pondered for a bit. Later on, he passed it to Feng. "Try to think harder about this piece of item. Try to remember, where have you felt its presence before?"

"... White Dragon."

After receiving the silver egg that contained the Marine Abyssal Spawn, the white-haired mage used his spirit to sense the item. Certain about the identity of the item, he said, "A few months back in the snowy plain, I encountered a group of White Dragons. I feel the same presence and aura of the White Dragons from this item."