This Is War

Deon's fast and fatal actions were the most shocking, but his personally trained soldiers were nothing to scoff at either. He had engrained into them the idea that survival was key, so his soldiers were more well rounded than most. Instead of giving them roles like 'close combat', 'defence', 'ranged attack', 'healing', 'movement and positioning' and so on, he instead split them into groups based on their actual roles.

For example, the vanguard, the home-guard and the guerrilla squad. Of course, those who strongly specialised in healing were still essential, as were scouts who specialised in stealth.

Deon simply didn't agree with the idea that shamans should only develop in a single aspect. Under this system, some shamans focussed on ranged combat, whilst others helped to defend those people, and others buffed and supported them. To Deon, those three roles should just be combined into one role, that way, everyone was responsible for their own lives and their survival instincts would be properly honed.

Of course, his men still practised battle formations, and there were certainly those who specialised in ranged combat and those who specialised in close combat, but nobody in his unit was completely incompetent in any regard.

Some people doubted Deon's methods at first, thinking that it would negatively impact unity and trust, but he proved them wrong quite quickly. Everyone in his unit had their own role, but it was based on their best qualities, rather than forcing people to base their best qualities upon the even more specialised role they were assigned.

In this battle, Deon left a few elites back to defend the base camp. They would be able to hold off, even against a small army, for at least half an hour; plenty of time to fire off shots to call for backup.

Then there were the guerrilla troops, who often doubled up as scouts. Deon's scouts weren't useless in combat like most, they closer resembled assassins, specialising in sneak attacks and quickly escaping, making them excellent to position in hidden locations throughout the forest hill.

As for the backup, the 30 odd soldiers waiting behind the forest line to charge forth should the battle escalate to a new level, they were excellent at working as a united team. They all possessed similar abilities and they were brilliant when it came to working as one. They all had excellent defence, whilst half specialised in ranged combat, half in close combat.

This split was similar to the vanguard that Deon led himself. However, the members in this squad were the elites of the elites, they were the most well rounded and powerful fighters, each shaman in the vanguard clearly preferred to fight their own battles, whilst occasionally jumping in to assist an ally in a moment of need.

Deon nodded, watching calmly as his men crazily leapt into the air, impaling the cavalrymen with swords, spears and daggers. Some attacked from afar with bows, others used specialised offensive spirits, but all contributed to the rising number of corpses falling down to the ground.

As such, it was no surprise that the cavalrymen were all slaughtered like livestock in less than a minute. The vanguard, led by Deon's blood soaked figure as he held the evil looking ancient demon sword up above his head, then charged towards the approaching Fan Kingdom foot soldiers, who followed behind the cavalry and were now almost upon them.

The vanguard held their melee weapons high above their heads whilst releasing shocking and terrifying war cries. Seeing this blood soaked team approach them after watching their rapid slaughter of the cavalry, the charging enemy soldiers came to a full stop. After a couple of seconds, they even began to retreat as they readied their melee weapons!

Every single soldier in Deon's vanguard looked at him in amazement. Earlier, Deon gave a subtle signal to them that they had learned beforehand. This signal meant…

Charge forwards crazily with melee weapons on display, then when the enemy falters and steps back, quickly take out your ranged weapons and slaughter them all whilst continuing to charge forth!

BANG BANG BANG!

Out of the 20 members of the vanguard, only 3 still used single shot rifles as their ranged weapon; these people were clearly shamans specialised in melee though, they didn't possess proper ranged attacking spirits and relied on the rifles for their long ranged attacks. Anyway, these were highly modified rifles, they actually shot out a storm of multiple bullets at once, each weighing twice that of a normal musket shot!

The other side descended into chaos immediately, but this was only the beginning of the destruction. Before the bodies had even dropped to the floor, continuous flashes of light exploded out and shot forwards in rapid succession for a 3 second period as Deon's soldiers activated their ranged offensive spirits.

A couple of seconds passed by as the Fan soldiers regathered themselves, then a second volley of these lights shot out. Just as the Restari excitedly prepared a third volley, Deon suddenly rushed to the front and yelled back:

"Shield!"

Everyone's expression changed and became solemn as they acted on this order. Every single one of them possessed some sort of serious defensive protection spirit, that was one of Deon's criteria for you to enter the vanguard. The reason for this was shown shortly after.

BANG BANG BANG!

First came the volley of musket fire from the survivors, but Deon glanced up and his expression changed.

"Cannons, evade at all costs!"

BOOM BOOM BOOM…

Multiple cannons stationed atop the enemy camp walls were set off in rapid succession. The projectiles hurtled through the air and some people were forced to give up their defensive positions in order to move to a safer location. However, those people quickly found their nearest comrade with a defensive spirit that could protect multiple people, taking shelter under their wing.

Some defensive methods were powerful but left the user unable to move. There probably weren't many 1-Star defensive spirits that could actually defend against direct cannon fire, but these stationary defensive 1-Star spirits were sufficient to defend a small group of shamans from the explosion of a nearby shell.

BANG!

The first ball hit the ground, nearly hitting someone and blasting them to the side from the explosive impact. One shaman dropped back to heal and defend them as everyone else rushed forwards.

BANG BANG BANG!

Nobody was hit by the slow but powerful cannon balls. However, the cannon balls were filled with explosives, some people were thrust from their feet as the ground beneath and around them erupted chaotically.

"Now men, fire!"

Hearing the enemy command issued to a line of riflemen, Deon grimaced, but didn't say anything to his men. Instead, he rushed forwards an attempt to attract the majority of the attacks. It was somewhat successful, but still…it seemed that avoiding any casualties would be an impossibility this time.

Nobody was directly killed by a cannon blast, but one of Deon's female subordinates was blown to the side, then proceeded to get torn apart in midair by the volley of musket fire.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

That wasn't the end though. Another man managed to avoid the cannon balls, but dropped his defensive spirit for a moment after hearing the musket fire come to a stop. He couldn't move and defend simultaneously, so he attempted to rush forwards like Vice Commander Deon to reach the enemy before they-

WHOOSH!

Ah.

Countless lights flashed past. This assault was clearly caused by the elite Fan shamans specialising in long ranged attacks. The man was struck in the chest and died on the spot before he even reached the enemy lines.

Another burly soldier evaded as a dart shot past him, but he was too careless, he raised his sword and grinned, but just as he was about to slash down at the scared looking Fan soldier, that dart he evaded came back around and penetrated through his brain.

Blood sprayed all around the battlefield, both Fan and Restari dropped to the floor, injured, maimed, dead.

"Tch." Deon clicked his tongue. In all, 3 of his men were killed and another 5 injured, 2 of those were seriously maimed. He didn't say anything for now though, because he needed to create an impact first if he wanted to save the situation.

Deon was met with 2 peak 1-Star shamans, along with 6 late stage 1-Star shamans. He immediately saw through the plan as the 2 peak stage fellows rushed forwards and 4 of the late stage ranged attackers hid behind the golden shields of the final two.

It was a shame for the Fan soldiers that even this sort of sturdy formation was merely child's play to Deon.

'Sigh, unfortunately I won't be able to take these two's origin souls, what a pity.' As he thought this, he suddenly remembered that he did have one way to not completely waste the souls.

He could always just feed them directly to the soul refinement spirit, couldn't he?

Even in the midst of war, Deon was still trying to extract the greatest reward he could find. This had become like second nature to him, it was something he now did without even thinking about it.

"Vile blood child, prepare to meet your…wh-where did he-?!"

BANG!

Deon held nothing back, suddenly accelerating beyond any speed he had shown until now, making use of his swift leaf spirit and his powerful strength to circumvent the bearded and muscular captain by distracting him with a flash of darkness from his core spirit.

He appeared by the bearded man's side and slashed with his full strength, holding nothing back. He also activated the new unknown spirit, causing a red light to combine with the darkness, shooting past the bearded man, towards one of his men behind him.

The captain was caught off guard, but hurriedly blocked in time using the four leaf clover spirit.

Deon had some experience fighting against this spirit. Back when he first entered the upper region, his opponent was only able to summon 3 clovers. This captain was clearly more formidable as he summoned 4, all to defend against Deon's attack.

Bang bang bang bang!

Shockingly, all four were shattered and the man was still hit by the residual shockwave and blown back slightly. By the time he regained his bearings and looked around, he roared out in pain and grief.

"Soldier Steven, no-!"

Silence…

As the bearded man looked around he realised that not only Steven, but Sarah, Franklin, Jonan….all seven members of his team were lying in the mud, their corpses fresh, stained with blood and decorated with missing limbs!

"You killed them…you killed all of my closest friends…you, do you feel nothing, you damned murderer?!"

Facing the bearded captain's rage, Deon just smirked.

"Murderer? Hahaha…this is war, who here is not a murderer?" Deon spoke casually as he approached the lone shaman, forming a smile that sent chills down the veteran captain's spine.