Chapter 137: Chapter 136: Secret Weapon? They’re Not Worthy of Us Using It
"No!"
Elf Corps Commander Feiyana rejected her deputy’s suggestion. "That is the Magic Giant Crossbow, painstakingly created by the joint efforts of Elf Mages and Dwarf Craftsmen under the command of the great God of Nature! If we use the Magic Giant Crossbow now, any surviving Elves will likely leak this information to the Moon Elves, putting them on guard! Then, it won’t be so easy for us to use this method to forcibly blast open the gates of the five cities controlled by the Moon Elves! Therefore, this Neutral Elf City isn’t important enough to warrant revealing our trump card!"
Hearing Elf Corps Commander Feiyana’s explanation, her deputy nodded. "But I’ve heard that in the Divine Realm, after creating the Magic Giant Crossbow, the Elf Mages and Dwarf Craftsmen have already begun developing new Magical Weapons under the great God of Nature’s command! The Magical Weapons they develop will surely be even more powerful than the current Magic Giant Crossbow!"
Elf Corps Commander Feiyana nodded, then shook her head. "That is true," she first confirmed, but then added, "However, the new secret weapon the great God of Nature has tasked them with creating is far more difficult to build than the Magic Giant Crossbow! Who knows if it’s even possible to develop the new weapon within a year? As army leaders, we must guard against relying on such uncertainties. Gathering useful intel, advancing steadily, and striking at the opportune moment—that is the only path to victory in war!"
Elf Corps Commander Feiyana was not a rash or aggressive general. On the contrary, she commanded the Elf Corps with a very steady hand. This was also why Zhang Yi felt completely at ease entrusting his entire force to her command. When Elf Corps Commander Feiyana launched a charge, it was always because the enemy had revealed a fatal weakness and was powerless to turn the tide.
After Elf Corps Commander Feiyana’s explanation, the deputy nodded. "So what’s our next move?"
Elf Corps Commander Feiyana stared at the map of the Neutral Elf City in her hand. "Simple. We wait for nightfall. The Dark Elf Scouts in our Elf Corps aren’t here for nothing! At three or four in the morning, have the Dark Elf Scouts move out. They will eliminate all the hidden sentries outside the Neutral Elf City!
"If they can use the cover of darkness and their tools to quietly scale the walls of the Elf City, all the better. Even if the Dark Elf Scouts’ infiltration isn’t successful, after a night’s rest, the fatigue from the forced march during the day will have mostly dissipated. At that point, we will deploy all the secret weapons developed under the guidance of the great God of Nature! We’ll use everything—except for the Magic Giant Crossbow!"
Looking at the ten-meter-high wall across from her, Elf Corps Commander Feiyana recalled the scene in the Divine Realm where they had tested the new Magical Weapons. The new Magical Weapons could launch attacks directly over the city walls and into the city itself, and they were immensely powerful, causing massive explosions! Perfect siege weapons!
「At the cusp of midnight and dawn.」
It was the dead of night, the hour when watchmen fought hardest against sleep. The hidden Elven sentries dispatched from the Neutral Elf City didn’t even have a moment to feel relieved about another safe night passing when the assassinations from the Dark Elf Scouts arrived right on schedule.
Of course, the Dark Elf Scouts didn’t spend the entire night just on assassinations. Reconnaissance, pinpointing the locations of the enemy’s hidden sentries, and identifying advantageous retreat routes were all part of their mission. Things went smoothly. From three to four in the morning, for that entire hour, none of the hidden sentries managed to send an alarm before being eliminated. Following Elf Corps Commander Feiyana’s orders, the Dark Elf Scouts relayed the information to the Elf Corps at the rear after they finished clearing out the sentries. Then, they crept all the way to the base of the city walls.
Before they could even toss their grappling hooks onto the ramparts, the Dark Elves triggered a Magic Alert. As the sound of the Magic Alert rang out, the Dark Elves knew they had been exposed and quickly fell back, using the predawn darkness for cover. Fortunately, although the Elves of the Neutral Elf City had set up a Magic Alert that triggered whenever an unauthorized person approached the base of the wall, this was the first time they had ever encountered such a situation. Consequently, the Elves rushing to the walls to prepare a defense were not particularly fast. This delay, combined with the Dark Elves’ own Talents, allowed them to return to the main Elf Corps without suffering a single death.
Jolted awake between three and four in the morning by the sound of the Magic Alert, the Guard Army of the Neutral Elf City had no time to be angry. The next moment, they were fully armored and rushing to the walls. In less than two minutes, the walls were lined with soldiers.
Having received the report from the Dark Elf Scouts, Elf Corps Commander Feiyana had already ordered the rested Elf Corps to advance. They took up a position one kilometer outside the Neutral Elf City. Seizing this opportunity, Elf Corps Commander Feiyana used a Magic Telescope to get a clear count of the Guard Army on the walls. There were about two hundred soldiers stationed on each wall. This more or less matched the intelligence report from Stuck, the head of the intelligence bureau.
The report had stated an Elf Army of ten thousand, but in reality, only one-third—three thousand Elves—were professional, full-time soldiers responsible for the city’s daily security. This number had only been reached due to increasing pressure from the Moon Elves to the north, which had ultimately forced the city of neutral Elves to expand their army from the original one thousand five hundred to the current three thousand. The remaining seven thousand Elves were part-time soldiers, usually busy working in the fields. After all, the autumn harvest was approaching, and the regular and Magic Plants were about to ripen.
After confirming that the intelligence was largely accurate, Elf Corps Commander Feiyana gave the order to attack without a moment’s hesitation.
However, the first wave of the attack was not to send the Elf Corps’ Warriors charging to their deaths. Under Elf Corps Commander Feiyana’s command, the warriors began to pull various-sized pieces of equipment engraved with Magic Runes from their logistics train and assemble them. After ten minutes of work by the trained Elf Warriors, a row of Magic Elf Stone-Throwing Cannons, each over four meters tall, appeared outside the Neutral Elf City.
The Elf Defense Army in the Neutral Elf City first heard the sound of the Magic Alert, which had never been triggered before. Within a minute of the alert, every soldier was awake, and within two minutes, they had all rushed to the top of the walls. But when they got there, they discovered that the opposing Elf Corps, formed south of the Moonlight Forest, hadn’t taken this golden opportunity to bring their main force to the base of the walls and begin climbing with Vine Spells. Instead, they were about a thousand meters away, setting up strange-looking contraptions.
Could those strange contraptions possibly help their Elf Corps scale the walls from a thousand meters away?
"This Elf Corps scraped together by the small southern Elf Alliances has pitiful military discipline," an Elf Guard on the wall remarked, shaking his head as he watched the scene outside the city. "They don’t even know to take a golden opportunity like this to get close and scale the walls!"
His tone even held a hint of pity. The other Elf Guards beside him chimed in. "Yeah, you’re right!"
"How tough can an Elf Corps be when it’s just cobbled together from a few small Elf Tribes?" another scoffed.
"The way I see it, this battle’s going to be a cakewalk!"
"Haha!"
Laughter directed at the Elf Corps outside the city periodically erupted from the guards nearby.
