Chapter 215 – Eventful Period Pt.1
Dawn City’s battle of attack and defense ended quietly, just like that. Dawn City had achieved the perfect conclusion of absolutely no losses, and obtained victory. They had also gained a large amount of armors and weapons. Most importantly, they had obtained 20,000 crossbows. Those things were precious treasures; even among the entire Thief Alliance, only the 20,000 Flying Locusts had them.
The crossbows were extremely small and exquisite. They were only about the size of a plate, and had a fitting grip. One crossbow could be armed with 10 arrows, and their shooting range was 50 meters. The arrows were as fast as lightning, and had an extremely powerful penetrating ability, as they were the sharp weapons that had been produced by the combined efforts of elves and dwarves.
A single crossbow had a ridiculous value of a million gold. 20,000 of them would be 20 billion, a frightening value. Most importantly, these things couldn’t possibly be distributed. These had been privately bought by the thieves. Otherwise, even if one spent an entire decade saving up money, they couldn’t possibly get their hands on so many crossbows!
The crossbows were things specifically made for thieves. In addition, they were items that couldn’t just be bought anywhere. Majority of them had been passed down through families, or one could by them at some remote shops. This kind of handicraft had long since disappeared. It could be said that the Flying Locusts were the strongest types of soldiers in the thief army, yet because of their leader’s instructions, they had all lost to Dawn City.
Suo Jia didn’t waste the 20,000 crossbows. He directly distributed them between the 10,000 swordsmen and lance users. That way, when they were defending the city, they also had the ability to suppress their enemies at mid-range. This would increase their battle abilities to a frightening level.
After the battle, the corpses outside the city were all gathered in one place. Tree oils were poured on them, and all were burned in order to avoid diseases from spreading. The thick black smoke could be seen by anyone within 100 kilometers. After all…it was from the burning of 60,000 corpses.
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The later generations would remember the smoke from Dawn to have risen continuously for an entire day before finally dispersing. The air around Dawn had been completely covered with black, but everyone knew that this was only the beginning. Dawn would have to face much, much more in the future.
Despite having to face future trials and hardships, the people of Dawn City weren’t afraid at all. That perfect victory had filled all of them with confidence. At the same time, their faith in Suo Jia had exponentially increased to a ridiculous level. Suo Jia’s every order was completely carried out; nobody ever protested.
Perhaps others would find this an exaggeration, but in a battle of 100,000 vs.100,000, Dawn City had managed to keep all their soldiers. If that wasn’t a miracle, then what was? Moreover, the miracle was performed because of a miraculous person. A normal man couldn’t possibly create such an event.
Dawn’s military campaign of their great victory increased all of the slave soldiers’ confidence by 100%. They began to work harder, and became much more active as well. They took the initiative to go out and excavate rocks every day to transport back to the walls and improve them in both height and sturdiness. Dawn’s city walls continued to improve at an unfathomable speed.
A few weeks later, the day that Suo Jia turned 13, the Angelic Six-Winged Phoenixes rushed back. Actually, they were supposed to have returned before the great battle. However, they had delayed so much that they only now returned. Suo Jia was extremely unhappy with this.
Duo Mei carefully explained what had happened in response to Suo Jia’s inquiries. After escorting Naifa Lian’s family to the appointed location, they had immediately rushed to the Atomic Alchemy Labs to bring back all the remaining Magic Automatons. However…at that moment, they had received bad news from the mercenary union.
Because they had left for too long, some thief groups seemed to have forgotten how terrifying the Blood Angels were, and went to steal from merchant groups within the Gold Triangle. In half a month, they had suffered from major losses. In order to prevent any more, the Angelic Six-Winged Phoenixes had to rush over and plunder the thief groups. All of them were pulled up by the roots, and were killed so cleanly that no trace of them remained. Only after that did they rush back, but by then, they were already late by half a month.
Hearing Duo Mei’s explanation, Suo Jia not only didn’t punish them, but also greatly praised them. Suo Jia’s current income was half from the Life Potions, and half from the Gold Triangle. These two major sources of revenue were too important to Suo Jia. Otherwise, where would he get the money for constructing Dawn?
The Empire would ignore the 100,000 slave soldiers’ costs in the future. These slave soldiers were all like lords that could eat and drink without end. In a single meal, they could eat more than Suo Jia could ever eat in an entire day.
With the addition of their weapons, armors, and training feeds, they needed money everywhere. In a single day, each one of them consumed up 10 gold coins. 100,000 slave soldiers would be a million gold coins, and this was just daily costs.
In terms of the most typical military equipment, there was a set of armor that costed 100,000, a longbow that costed 100,000, and a war blade that costed 100,000. Just these equipments alone costed 30 billion! In addition, these weapons and armors had short life expectancies; they’d break within a few months. That required exchanges. If their military campaigns were often, they’d have to replace with new sets every 2 battles.
However, would Suo Jia purchase the most typical, bad quality goods? What Suo Jia had ordered were upper grade longbows, blades, and armors. An entire set was worth 3 million, not 300,000. The total amount of money spent was 300 billion!
And this wasn’t the most frightening part. Suo Jia had actually spent the most money on the arrows. In Dawn’s last battle, Suo Jia’s army had shot out over 100,000 arrows. The price of a single arrow was 10 gold, so in that short moment, he’d used up a million gold.
Suo Jia now ordered the best arrows made of refined iron. A single one was worth 100,000 gold, and pretty much wouldn’t break even with repeated usage. Suo Jia had ordered 100 million of them. This amount already costed a massive price of a trillion, so essentially all of Suo Jia’s money had been used up.
Why would Suo Jia spend so much money to purchase weapons and ammunition? This actually wasn’t anything strange. If Dawn City couldn’t secure itself so that it was invulnerable to attack, no matter how good their constructions were, they would still instantly be broken through by other parties. If Dawn wanted to protect everything, they needed a powerful armed force. Otherwise, the money would just attract thieves!
Under Suo Jia’s command, a batch of Life Potions were sent from Holy Light City. Each one of the slave soldiers were fitted with a belt that had 30 Life Potions in them. If they got injured, they’d be able to just heal themselves. This was basically equivalent to them having the support of a water elemental healing mage. Thus, Dawn City’s military power had substantially increased.
This wasn’t the only thing. Suo Jia had also specially manufactured a batch of Spirit Potions, Magic Potions, and Endurance Potions, distributing them among the slave soldiers. He also clarified that none of them were to secretly spread them around. If anyone dared to let it slip, they’d die right there and then!
Actually, there was no need for Suo Jia to say this; nobody would’ve sold them anyways. These things were equivalent to having extra lives; only idiots would sell them. Just like that, the slave soldiers all obtained 30 Life Potions, 2 Spirit, Endurance, and Magic Potions on their belts. This wholly supported large-scale, long period battles. But how much did this cost?
Fortunately, Suo Jia could create these himself, and didn’t need to purchase them. Otherwise, he couldn’t possibly get enough money. 3 million Life Potions was already worth millions! In addition, how long would that much last?
The current situation was that only high ranked adventurers or warriors had the qualifications to use Life Potions. A mere soldier wasn’t provided for by the Empire. It could be said that only the Dawn Army was currently fitted with Life Potions and the other four colored potions. Of course, this was obvious; even if one searched the entire world, they wouldn’t find anyone other than the Dawn Army in possession of these things.
Having considered the fact that the Thief Alliance’s army would definitely not use righteous means, Suo Jia urged the Angelic Six-Winged Phoenixes to gather large amounts of magic crystals for all four elements, and spent day and night producing the potions. His magic power also increased at an abnormally fast speed. Enchanted Zhiyao was really just training in magic and spirit power. No matter what, using it more often meant that one would naturally experience improvements. For example, lifting buckets of water every day meant that one’s arm strength would naturally improve.
Finally, at the same time the Thief Alliance’s army had begun to stir, the ordered 100,000 sets of equipment were shipped to Dawn. The over millions of arrows had also arrived, and had been distributed amongst the soldiers. The 70,000 official and unofficial archers spent all their time on training their spirit power or doing labor.
Although these 10 million refined arrows had a total value of a billion gold, they didn’t really break. This actually made everyone’s training processes progress faster, as they didn’t have to worry about using up the arrows. They could endlessly and wildly continue shooting, so their one day of training was enough to compare to a typical archer’s week long training. With this extremely intense and highly frequent training, everyone improved very quickly. Now, they were just waiting for the enemies to come.
Finally, news came in. The Thief Alliance seemed to have formed a collaboration with Oz City. They had gathered 300,000 soldiers, and prepared to encircle and annihilate Dawn City. This news completely stunned Suo Jia. He just couldn’t understand the situation; did Dawn and Oz have any enmity between them? Why would they dispatch soldiers and attack?
Naifa Lian explained the reason for the situation. Actually, the person that had first slapped Suo Jia twice, but was then beaten until he was half-dead in return, Kaos, was the young master of Oz City. That meant Marquis Karuda, Kaos’s father, was Oz City’s lord!