Chapter 500: Chapter 373: The Battle with a Grip in Hand_2
The road between Kyoto and Tsukawa had long been opened, and now travel between the two places is very convenient, so after confirming safety, Kyoto sent military support directly.
This also provided a good opportunity to train the troops, especially since regular martial artists had basically emerged due to the trade with Pengcheng involving all officially enlisted soldiers.
The support trip was also a training exercise, and after the battle ended, many departments of the Imperial Court had captured numerous Soldier Bugs and began various types of research.
Hence, while Kyoto may not have faced the insect swarm directly last time, different emergency plans had already been devised for various possible scenarios.
Moreover, the Imperial Court did not keep these plans secret but shared them with all survivors through video broadcasts."
Hearing Yara say this, Zachary expressed his doubt, "Since you all knew that Kyoto had made thorough preparations, then..."
Although Zachary only spoke halfway, from the way his gaze scanned the surroundings, Yara understood what he meant by the unsaid half.
So Yara shrugged, with a hint of helplessness in her voice, "Knowing is one thing, but since there has been no actual attack by an insect swarm, safety comes first.
After all, it’s well said that ’A wise man does not stand under a shaky wall.’ If we can wait anywhere for the battle to be over, why not do so in a safer place?"
Hearing Yara say this, Zachary smiled, didn’t reply, and continued watching the monitors.
As the monitors were quite distant from each other, only a very few of them displayed complete combat scenes at first.
But as more and more Soldier Bugs entered the suburbs, the number of fight scenes on the monitors increased.
Seeing this, everyone understood that the insect swarm had appeared; however, Kyoto only sounded the alarm once, indicating that the area was still relatively safe.
Unlike the Saxon County Camp where Zachary was originally based, the Officials there had been reorganized. Even with the military involved, the number of soldiers was not very large, and the numerous Hunting Teams of various sizes were the main force clearing ancient creatures around the camp.
In contrast, the situation in Kyoto was the exact opposite. Although there were some Hunting Teams formed by survivors, these were mostly loose units.
The primary combat forces were the soldiers directly under Imperial Court control, followed by the Guard Squads established by various families.
There’s no need to elaborate on the combat prowess of the government soldiers; even the family Guard Squads have members with at least Inner Breath Realm Cultivation Levels. These guards might be few, but they played the role of the Sharp Blade Team.
Should real danger arise, these Guard Squads, despite their small numbers, were incredibly useful whether for carving a lifeline through enemy encirclement or for executing decapitation missions.
In Kyoto, the depth of a family’s resources could be gauged by the Cultivation Levels of their Guard Squad members; after all, in these times, strength is the only thing that truly matters.
As the number of Soldier Bugs increased, the soldiers in light armor who had been using spears for strangulation began to decrease, replaced not by the hot-weapon-wielding soldiers Zachary had imagined, but by Archers.
Unlike the frail Archers of the past, the ones appearing on the monitors were robust, and they carried not just bows and arrows but also short spears on their backs.
Such equipment suggested that they could potentially switch to being spear-throwers if necessary.
Although their wooden arrows lacked metal tips, their lethality was not significantly reduced. Besides the Archers’ considerable Cultivation Levels, the most important factor was their modernized bows, which could launch arrows faster and with more lethal force than traditional bows with much less effort.
The Archers did not increase the distance between themselves and the Soldier Bugs. Instead, they deliberately moved closer. When the distance between them was less than twenty or thirty meters, they would draw their bows, nock their arrows, and aim directly at the bug’s eyes to shoot.
Facing the Archers’ close-range shooting, the Soldier Bugs were basically hit. Generally, Archers with higher cultivation levels could kill a Soldier Bug with a single arrow. Even if they didn’t kill it with one arrow, they usually needed at most one more strike to finish it off.
With the addition of these Archers, the number of Soldier Bugs invading the suburbs decreased rapidly.
However, because the nuclear peacemaker’s gift was rejected, the rift in the sky did not close in time, and more and more Soldier Bugs entered Blue Star through the crack in the sky.
Perhaps because the first rift had been closed promptly, many ancient creatures still lived in the forests far from Kyoto.
When faced with creatures that also emerged due to a natural disaster, they did not coexist peacefully. Instead, they started fighting the moment they encountered each other.
Like in other places, in one-on-one situations, there was not much difference between the small ancient creatures and the Soldier Bugs. However, the dishonorable Soldier Bugs hardly ever gave the small ancient creatures a chance to fight one-on-one, instead opting to attack in groups.
This way of fighting made it difficult for not only the small ancient creatures but also the medium ones to last long.
However, unlike in Saxon County, there were indeed large ancient creatures in the distant suburbs of Kyoto.
Even when facing large ancient creatures, the Soldier Bugs were not afraid but would instead call their comrades to attack together.
But unlike when facing the smaller and medium ancient creatures, the Soldier Bugs’ sharp forelimbs and pointed mandibles could not pierce the skin of the large ancient creatures.
In the face of the large ancient creatures, the numerical advantage of the Soldier Bugs dwindled significantly, and the large creatures didn’t even need to specifically attack them. Merely standing up and swishing their tails could deal heavy blows to the Soldier Bugs on the ground.
Besides, for some reason, the areas where the large ancient creatures roamed often had many powerful mutated plants.
When the Soldier Bugs were left battered by the careless movements of the large ancient creatures, they were then attacked by mutated plants disguised as ordinary flora.
For these various reasons, even though Soldier Bugs continued to enter Blue Star through the rift, many cities did not suffer from the onslaught of the bug wave immediately.
With the hindrance of ancient creatures and mutated plants in the wild forests, the majority of the survivors in the cities had enough time to prepare.
Also, because the last disaster involved the revival of ancient creatures, and although more than a year had passed since that disaster ended, the survivors’ battle habits had not changed, and they were essentially in a state where everyone was a soldier.
Furthermore, after the Imperial Court released the information about the wonders, many people, despite knowing the side effects of becoming an Awakener, chose to refine these wonders out of concern for their families or themselves, becoming Awakeners without looking back.
Most Awakeners who actively refined the wonders chose those with great practical use, so in battle, they generally performed very impressively.
In the surveillance footage, Dong Tianyu saw an Awakener who, while fighting a Soldier Bug, directly used agile movements to approach it and attacked it with palm strikes.
Although the exoskeleton of the Soldier Bug was very tough, for some reason, every time that Awakener’s palm struck the Soldier Bug, the body part hit would immediately suffer a displaced fracture, treating the bug’s shell and limbs without distinction.
Apart from this Awakener, Dong Tianyu also noticed another interesting Awakener who exhibited an ability to elementalize similar to that seen in a certain anime.
Additionally, the surveillance captured many different abilities of various Awakeners.
