Liberation Operation

Aside from messenger birds, there was another less common, but harder to prevent method of communication used amongst the shaman soldiers; spirit communication!

There were countless spirits in this world covering a near-infinite range of abilities, naturally, there were also spirits that could be used to communicate across distances! At 1-Star, these spirits were rare and generally had a poor range of effect, but the threat they posed to Deon's operation this time was very significant.

If word got out to any of the 9 camps that his unit was coming, the subsequent camps would be prepared, making it impossible to set up a 50 man formation without anyone noticing.

But as soon as the golden membrane spirits were activated, causing the golden suppression formation to cover the entire campsite, the enemy's fate was set in stone.

The 43rd unit naturally fell into panic, whilst the 37th unit men stood outside coldly, attacking the commanders and captains with ranged spirits whilst General Senlin and Lieutenant Reana made their presence known.

In this battle, they wanted to minimise the casualties. Their only targets were the rebels, everyone else within the camp was being deceived, they did not want to harm these loyal soldiers!

When the general and lieutenant revealed themselves, the soldiers within the 43rd unit fell into disarray, not understanding what was going on. They were unable and unwilling to fight back against the assault, causing the battle to end swiftly and without any unexpected mishaps.

As for Shi and Deon, nobody noticed their brief disappearance in the heat of battle.

Under the cover of the night sky, Shi dragged back 6 different half-dead peak stage 1-Star shamans for Deon, who promptly extracted their origin souls in an undamaged state.

After seeing him use the soul extraction spirit for the first time, Shi's eyes shone and her heart rate sped up. When Deon briefly proved to her that the origin souls were indeed preserved perfectly within the soul extraction spirit, she almost began salivating with greed.

Six peak stage 1-Star origin souls! Not only were they obtained so easily and all stored within a single spirit, but they were completely undamaged! This was completely unheard of to her!

Typically, extracting origin souls always caused them to sustain damage, whilst all origin soul storage spirits were imperfect, unable to prevent the gradual degradation of the origin souls over time.

The value of a typical extracted origin soul could not match the value of the undamaged origin souls harvested by the soul extraction spirit!

The pair retuned to their positions, out of sight from everyone else, and watched the battle come to an end. After killing the commander and almost all of the captains in the 43rd unit, they could rest easy, knowing that nobody else would be entrusted with a communication spirit.

With General Senlin's influence and prestige, the situation in the 43rd unit quickly calmed down. The battle immediately came to a stop, nobody here actually wanted to fight one another, they were all soldiers of the Kingdom of Restari after all.

The soldiers were all shocked to learn of the truth regarding their commander and captains, but they didn't hold any doubt towards General Senlin, and of course, Lieutenant Reana backed up his words.

Since they couldn't know for sure who the rebel soldiers were, Deon deliberately left a single rebel captain alive after Shi determined that he didn't possess any communication spirits.

Lietunatent Reana personally interrogated this captain in private using her infamous methods of torture, emerging 10 minutes later without the captain.

After extracting the information she needed, she executed the rebel without a shred of mercy. Clearly, Lieutenant Reana was not feeling good about the fact that her own units had been infiltrated so thoroughly by enemy spies.

She managed to uncover some spies during the interrogation, but the men given up by the captain were only ordinary soldiers. This method of interrogating a single person wasn't perfect, but it was the best they could do right now.

They executed those soldiers deemed to be certain spies, then proceeded to order a few soldiers to keep a close watch on the remaining potential rebel soldiers.

Anyone found to be a spy would be immediately and brutally executed, whilst those who were suspicious were detained.

The 37th unit didn't hang around for all that long. Deon left behind a few of his own men just to be sure, then they headed out to the 44th unit.

By making use of scouts, whilst also utilising Shi's abilities as an assassin in secret, the 37th unit had great success using the golden suppression formation to topple each unit's camp, one by one.

Everyone felt pleasantly surprised that they actually managed to liberate the 43rd through 49th camps without issue, without even losing a single man!

Deon and Shi were also pleased by this; they were able to gather many undamaged peak stage 1-Star origin souls from the rebel commanders and captains during these attacks.

Of course, Deon didn't tell her that he would eventually use these souls to refine a shaman into a spirit…well, so long as she continued to help him gather souls, they would also have plenty to sell.

As for the souls that were displaced from the soul extraction spirit, Deon fed them to the soul refinement spirit.

Shi caught a brief glimpse of the infernal tendrils sticking out from Deon's palm as he released the origin souls. It made her shudder in horror the first time she saw it…after all, seeing a spirit consume origin souls was simply too shocking!

She could immediately guess that those infernal tendrils belonged to Deon's other high class spirit, but he still refused to say anything about it. However, she felt that this spirit was even more terrifying than the soul extraction spirit!

After arriving at the 50th unit, their lucky streak finally came to an end.

Not only were they spotted before being able to set up the golden suppression formation, but the commander of this unit actually possessed a communication spirit! Fortunately, Deon was already prepared for this possibility and had many of his men spread out to search for the possible recipient.

1-Star communication spirits were limited, especially those found within the Kingdom of Restari. Deon knew that it was impossible for these communication spirits to send messages directly between camps, the range of effect was not that far.

He ended up discovering a person lingering 1,000 feet away. This was clearly the limit of the spirit's reach, the recipient's job was to pass along the received message to the 51st unit via messenger bird.

This soldier had managed to release a messenger bird, but he was shocked when Lieutenant Shi blurred through the air and cut the bird down before it could fly away from the mountain.

In the end, they prevented any messenger birds from being released to the outside world, allowing the 37th unit to maintain their secretive stance in the coming battles.

The difficulty in the battle against the 50th unit wasn't only limited to dealing with the escaped message. The 37th unit was spotted before completely setting up the golden suppression formation, they naturally came under attack by the 50th unit as soon as the 50th unit reacted to the presence of outsiders.

The difficulty of this battle was quite strange. They were not outnumbered by the 50th unit, nor were they outmatched. However, the 37th unit was being attacked by so many soldiers, but they actually couldn't retaliate, since those soldiers were merely being deceived, they were not enemy rebels under the false king!

Deon could not lead his soldiers to slaughter other loyal Restari soldiers, they would begin to lose faith in him if he issued such a cruel and heartless order. Especially considering that these soldiers were also under Lieutenant Reana, meaning they were all fellow comrades in the same platoon.

It was impossible to completely avoid casualties in this operation. In order to protect those soldiers with the golden membrane spirit whilst assisting them in getting into position, 5 soldiers in the 37th unit lost their lives.

Seeing the deaths of their close comrades enraged the other 37th unit soldiers…perhaps that was why they became less forgiving towards their opponents, leading to several loyal soldiers in the 50th unit dying miserably.

With everyone's efforts, they eventually suppressed the 50th unit camp with the golden suppression formation. From there, it was not difficult to completely subdue the 50th unit without sustaining further casualties.

After properly regathering themselves, the battle against the 51st unit also went smoothly.

By 1130 hours, there was just half an hour remaining before the true enemy was set to arrive.

Until now, they had avoided killing wantonly, because they were essentially attacking their own men; this was the difficulty of a liberation operation.

In the coming battle against the Fan Kingdom, the conflict would not be so smooth or peaceful.