Chapter 315: Chapter 215: Attacking the Mind, Part 2
It was a good thing bullets were hard to make these days; the more advanced the firearm, the more useless it became without ammunition. Otherwise, the distance they’d retreated to was still within easy range for a sniper to pick them off!
But that wasn’t the case now.
They could still launch their superpowers from a distance.
In this situation, the only available tactic was attrition. When one group grew tired, another would take their place. The city walls couldn’t hold forever!
Norgate also sent out its Earth Ability Users to defend, but unfortunately, their lack of numbers was a critical weakness.
While the battle on the ground raged fiercely, the Skyfire Squadron wasn’t idle.
They had lost a significant number of members on their last trip to Norgate, but some remained. With Sheldon Reid missing and their only option being to serve the current military commander, they had no choice but to apply themselves fully.
The Skyfire Squadron leader’s initial plan was to use their temporary flight ability to drop bombs into the city, serving to both inflict casualties and act as a deterrent.
But Seth Howell vetoed it.
He believed that instead of dropping bombs, it would be better to drop surrender leaflets!
He had made extensive preparations for this day and had gathered a great deal of intelligence.
And according to this intelligence, while Norgate’s City Lord, Gryphon Lowell, was keen on recruiting Superpower Users and all sorts of researchers by granting them special privileges, life for ordinary people—those without superpowers—was quite terrible!
This was something that could be easily inferred.
Many of the Superpower Users’ privileges, for instance, allowed them to buy on credit from shops owned by ordinary people, as long as they paid up within a certain time. In another example, if a Superpower User got into a dispute with an ordinary person, the punishment for the commoner was almost always more severe.
These privileges were, without a doubt, built on the backs of the common people!
If this continued, the status of ordinary people would only sink lower and lower.
And when oppressed to the point where they could barely survive, even ordinary people would fight for a way out!
As long as their surrender leaflets emphasized the Central City Government’s protection of ordinary citizens, these "little people" could very well play a decisive role in the battle!
Furthermore, there was another crucial point.
Besides the Superpower Users, the city’s researchers were another burden weighing down on the common folk.
The medicine Sheldon Reid had previously publicized in Central City—the one that could supposedly unlock an ordinary person’s potential and turn them into a Superpower User—had been confirmed by the Skyfire Squadron to be real.
Supposedly, Norgate had paid a steep price for this. They had captured countless ordinary people for experiments, with a survival rate of maybe one in a hundred, or even one in a thousand.
Many people inside the city surely still didn’t know about this.
The surrender leaflets had to emphatically expose Gryphon Lowell’s cruelty!
It would make them panic, make them afraid! It would make them feel that this City Lord couldn’t offer them the slightest bit of security, that he treated them no better than livestock!
Scattering such leaflets throughout the city would be far more devastating than any bomb!
Seth Howell’s methodical analysis quickly convinced Kiera Walsh and the other two division commanders. The surrender leaflet they had drafted based on his points was incredibly inflammatory.
Using the downtime while they waited out the rain over the past few days, they made over ten thousand copies of the leaflet.
Looking at the stacks of leaflets, Kiera Walsh gave the order: as soon as the battle started, the Skyfire Squadron was to move out. They absolutely had to succeed in scattering these leaflets throughout Norgate.
So, while the other Superpower Users were fighting, the Skyfire Squadron’s mission was to be aerial postmen.
They targeted residential areas where commoners gathered, letting the crude sheets of paper flutter down from the sky before making a swift retreat.
It had to be said, the move was incredibly effective—and for Gryphon Lowell, incredibly vicious.
Upon seeing these "truths," the common people erupted in outrage. Many of them had long harbored resentment for their oppressed lives, and now, this leaflet pushed their fury to its absolute peak.
Even though Norgate was protected by Superpower Users, many ordinary people still toiled away within the city. Manufacturing, the service industry... was there any sector that didn’t rely on their labor?
But if they couldn’t even survive like this, then... where was their way out?
Now, someone was telling them: the way out was right outside the walls!
If they just opened the city gates and let the Central Army in, they could live the same lives as the common people in Central City. It might be hard, it might be a struggle, but they would never just mysteriously disappear and become test subjects!
Inside the city, when City Lord Gryphon Lowell first saw the leaflet, he was so shocked and furious that he knocked over his cup. He never imagined the Central Army would resort to such a psychological tactic!
Immediately, he grew worried that the city’s commoners would use this as a chance to riot.
But they didn’t.
His subordinates reported that while the people who read the leaflets were furious, they had dispersed shortly after. They went back to their routines, and aside from some furtive whispers, there were no signs of concrete action.
This news didn’t reassure Gryphon Lowell. In fact, it made him even more anxious.
’This feels more like the calm before the storm!’
He wasn’t that old, not yet fifty, and as a Superpower User, he appeared even younger. His handsome, well-defined features were still quite charming as he frowned in thought.
Just as Cecilia Underwood entered the study, she saw this very scene, and her gaze softened. "Gryphon, what’s wrong? I heard..."
"Take a look! Those bastards from the Central Army are absolutely despicable!" The research institute in Norgate was Cecilia Underwood’s responsibility, and Gryphon Lowell trusted her deeply. He handed her the leaflet from his desk before she could even finish her sentence.
Cecilia Underwood scanned the document, her expression turning grim for a moment. But soon after, she chuckled softly.
"Oh, this? This is actually quite simple to handle."
Gryphon Lowell immediately looked up. "How so?"
Cecilia Underwood smiled gently. "All they’re afraid of is becoming the test subjects mentioned in these leaflets. People fear what they don’t understand. So, why don’t we just give them the right to know? The lab just finished a new batch of the Superpower Potion. Becoming a Superpower User is a dream come true for countless ordinary people. We can hold a public selection for volunteers and let them try it for themselves."
"But the way they looked afterward..." He had witnessed an experiment once, and the subjects’ appearance after drinking the potion was so grotesque that even he had been disturbed.
Cecilia Underwood reached out and placed a hand on his forearm. "Don’t worry, it’s been improved. I guarantee it won’t be like what you saw last time. The effects are very mild. Extremely mild."
