74 Chapter 74. First day of battle

The dawning rosy red sun rose from rocky brown cliffs that surrounded the valley, it's rays glistening as it shone on the clean unstained armor of the Ruby and Lapis soldiers. Lapis soldiers wearing a blue tinted armor while the ruby soldiers wore red, the officers and unit leaders stood in front of their respective units. The Lapis front lines were structured like so, soldiers were split up into twenty units with each unit containing around ten thousand condensing realm soldiers each with a peak condensing or emission realm general leading them, then came the sect disciples, mercenaries and medical officers.

An eerie tense silence fell on the battlefield as a deathly suspense occurred, each side waiting for the specific signal to commence their own attack.

Toot!

A huge battle horn was blown, causing an incredibly loud soundwave to resonate, igniting countless battle spirits and immediately both sides charged forwards as they tightly grasped their weapons while archers began to draw their bows, channeling their energy into their bow as they waited for the enemies to be in their attack range.

"RAHHHH!!!" the soldiers screamed in unison as both sides violently clashed and began swinging their swords, halberd, spears, etc. An immediate bloodbath occurred as both victorious and pained deafening screams filled the slowly blood filling battlefield.

"RAHH!!" Garrick screamed as he swung his heavy metal tree-cutting axe towards a small weak-looking soldier that had luckily managed to make it past the front lines. Swoosh! A clean execution happened as a head flew off the body of the poor soldier leaving a bloodied fresh body that slowly fell to the ground.

Wenella was standing next to Garrick and managed to witness this and she was immediately amazed. She had only seen Garrick carry the axe on his back and never use it so she did not expect it to be so sharp.

"That is an extremely sharp axe, you must sharpen that often," Wenella commented as she was also silently surprised by Garrick's strength.

"You guessed right. This axe is a family heirloom! It has been passed down to me from my grandfather, my son will inherit it from me when I am too old to work," Garrick proudly replied as he caringly stroked the axe's shiny blade, suddenly falling into a trance as he just kept lovingly rubbed the axe blade for a few seconds.

"I'm going to start guys! See you all later! Garrick! Wenella will take care of you!" Leo spoke as he waved goodbye and charged off to the front line to find anyone who was harshly harmed or about to lose a fight.

"Hahaha! Sure!" Garrick laughed, "Join me, Wenella. Let's make these people regret destroying brother Leo's village."

"Hm," Wenella replied with a resolute nod as she felt deep injustice for the commoners and peasants.

She used Leo's sword and began to strike down people. But she made sure did not strike anyone fatally so Garrick could finish them off causing him to get some of her kill credit.

Meanwhile, Leo was charging furiously across the frontlines as he quickly dragged the injured soldiers who were impaled, stabbed or amputated. Deeply angering the ruby soldiers in the process as their kills were literally taken away from their clutches but they could do nothing, with Leo's cultivation, the only people that would be able to harm him with his concealed cultivation currently were emission realm experts but Leo made sure that he did not bump into one.

His attention was immediately shifted to a soldier who was down on the ground in front of a ruby soldier.

"Any last words?" a soldier arrogantly asked as he pointed his steel sword at the chest of a wounded soldier who had his arms sliced off and was lying on the ground in pain.

"Please! Please sp-spare me. I have kids!" the fallen soldier weakly replied as he constantly choked on his own blood.

"Too late!" the arrogant ruby soldier mockingly replied as he interrupted the man as he raised his sword which was imbued with red energy and savagely stabbed it towards the man.

"Hahahahaha!! Why would I care about your kids?" the soldier rebuked as he completed the stab. "Eh? What happened?" the man asked as he did not feel the pleasuring sensation of his sword intruding into a body, instead he felt the sensation of hitting a solid rock.

"Being too ruthless is not a good thing, you should've left him as he was. He wouldn't join the battle again with his injury," a cold voice sounded from beside him.

Alarmed, the ruby soldier immediately looked up and turned around to see Leo holding the bloodied man who he was just attempted to kill in his arms.

"How dare you steal my kill!!" the man angrily shouted loudly but half a second later his voice immediately stopped and no sound came out as an extremely terrified expression replaced the previous arrogant smug look on his face as all the blood seemed to disappear from his face turning him as pale as a ghost.

Leo's golden eye turned into a bloody-red color as a wisp of an evil overbearing killing red aura was released from his body for a split second hitting the man.

The ruby soldier then instantly closed his eyes and dropped to the floor in complete fear as he laid there unresponsive as he thought that he had met his end. But Leo didd not kill him and immediate disappeared nowhere to be found in the soldier's field of view.

About a hundred meter back behind the front lines, Leo appeared with the injured Lapis soldier in his arms.

"You should be fine here, the medical team will come to collect you so just lay here quietly," Leo informed the man as he quietly laid him down.

Ackh! The man spit out a mouthful of blood as he tried to force out the words, "Thank you! I probably would've died there without your help!"

"Don't worry! There's more people to save in the battlefield I need to go again! Just stay here?" Leo replied before yelling out, "Vanessa!" as he turned around and disappeared.

Immediately, Vanessa appeared in the man's field of sight and she immediately got down and began bandaging the man arm. She had countless streams of sweat on her face but she forced herself to stay calm as she instructed the man, "If you stay calm and adjust your breathing properly then you should be able to live to see your children again."

The man immediately obeyed her instruction and calmed his breathing and found that the bleeding had considerably lessened as his heart beat rate was relaxed.

"Vanessa!"

Immediately, Leo's voice sounded again, grabbing the man's attention as Vanessa got up again and walked over to where the voice was coming from. Curious, the man forced his neck to turn to looked around and amazement and shock filled his face.

A dozen… no at least three dozens of injured soldiers were all carefully laid out next to him. Each with a grievous injury that they could not continue fighting anymore, some had their legs missing, some had huge slashes on their bodies and some had missing arms.

'No wonder she was sweating so much. She must have given first-aid to all these soldiers,' he thought as he now saw Vanessa as a guardian angel. But then the image of Leo appeared in his thoughts.

'To do all this by himself. How is this possible? He managed to save so many people…' the man thought as he looked over to the other men who also had their eyes fixed on him.

"Did you all get saved by that man?" he curiously asked, wanting to know if what he was thinking was real.

The fallen injured soldier all nodded in unison and one of them replied with a cheerful smile, "Yes that's not all. Most of us have already been taken back by the doctors. We all were about to die but we're saved by that man. We are a very fortunate bunch."

"Amazing! He really did save you all. I am truly indebted to him," the man whispered as he sat up and gave a respectful bow towards the battlefield.

As evening neared...

"Toot!" the warhorn of both kingdoms sounded as the official first day of battle for the trio came to a close. Both sides immediately stopped fighting and walked off towards their own camps and began resting.

And back at camp, Leo, Wenella, Garrick, and their newest member, Vanessa, were sitting down discussing their yields of the long day. It had surprisingly fortunately turned out that Aurora and Garrick had killed over five thousand soldiers today and this made their name widespread in the Lapis army camp in the first day, although they were still quite unknown along the reinforcements.

Garrick, with the help of Wenella, had unbelievably made his way into the top five hundred thousands spot on the rankings while she settled for a place in the top six hundred thousandth rankings. This completely blew Garrick's mind open when he found out that he had gotten this much points. Garrick immediately tried to split his points with Wenella but she simply denied it and joked about it saying that she had no interest in taking in a princess as a wife. After reporting about it on their side, Leo informed them on what had happened on their side. He and Vanessa had managed to save over a thousand soldiers but since Vanessa was the person to have saved them, she made her way into the top top eight hundred thousand in the stone rankings instead of Leo. Vanessa desperately tried to get Leo to accept the points but then Leo simply denied them as his mind was at a different place.

He excused himself from the large tent that they were all staying in and walked out.

His head completely filled with sad thoughts as he recalled all the people that he had failed to save. The blood curdling screams, the look of desperation for life but the powerlessness as they faced death had deeply etched into his head. He looked up the bright sky that was scattered with many beautiful stars and a vague wisp of a galaxy.

"I'm still so weak..." he whispered as he gazed upon the stars and felt how small and insignificant he was.

'I want to contribute more but it will alert the other army and I'm still unsure about my killing intent. I can only continue like this, I'll wait for Garrick and Wenella to get into the top hundreds before I make your move,' he convinced himself with a heavy heart as he felt how stupid and wrong he was. He was afraid of his killing intent tribulation. he had seen the look on the soldiers who he had shown his killing intent to and a vague image of all their ghostly faces appeared in the back of his mind.

But he quickly shook his head furiously and shook it off as he returned and prepared to sleep.