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Chapter 778: Final Battle (Part 3)

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu

In any war, the side that started the fight first would always have many advantages. The most important benefit was the initiative. You would be able to fight at a location of your own choosing that you planned for.

If you still couldn’t gain an advantage from this, that meant there was a difference in power level that even strategy and tactics couldn’t make up for. It would be quite difficult for you to win in such a scenario.

Just as the humans’ command center expected, starting a pincer attack on two battlefronts pressured the devils greatly. The dragon knights, elite squads, and countless balls of Holy Light on the eastern battlefront that started the fight first suggested the humans were determined to make this the final battle, but this was actually just a distraction to attract some of the devils’ forces.

The powerful devils guarding the western battlefront received this news. The Devil Lords made them head to the eastern battlefront immediately, but just a few hours later, the western battlefront began an even fiercer battle.

The frozen sea became an ice bridge for the mages to land successfully at a place that nobody would ever expect to be used as a landing point. The devils’ fortresses on their original defense line became useless. Asolivis’s close proximity to the western shoreline became a critical weak spot.

As long as the humans attacked in full force, the forces on the western battlefront would soon reach Asolivis’s outskirts. The Dimensional Doors within Asolivis were the devils’ last hope.

This human attack could be described as really vicious, for the humans went immediately for their enemy’s greatest weak spot, forcing the devils to defend this place. Otherwise, the devils would be finished.

And so, the powerful devils and devil army that had just gone to the eastern battlefront overnight immediately received a new command to return and defend the western battlefront. In fact, the devils even sent forces from the eastern battlefront to reinforce the west.

From a commander’s standpoint, this was the correct decision, but when considering the actual situation on the battlefield, this was obviously foolish.

“Going east and then changing to west so quickly? Old Three-Heads (Sarwenstan) is getting senile in his old age,” commented a devil.

“Did you receive a command to go east or go west? I only received a command to go east, but I’m already on the eastern battlefront,” remarked another devil.

“Where’s squad #3? How am I supposed to know where they are? They might have gone into hiding to ambush the enemy. You want squad #3 to return to the eastern battlefront? Go look for them yourself,” said a mid-level devil commander.

In this generation, giving commands during battle typically relied on the primitive method of using messengers. At most, some would use magical items to transmit messages, but magical items capable of transmitting long-distance messages were quite rare. In normal wars, only generals and the overall commander would have such magical items. Even though devils were quite rich, only the high-level devils and powerful devils would have such magical items.

Meanwhile, humans were already using magical engineering inventions for long-distance communication. Other species were also imitating this and updating their own war messaging capabilities. However, the residents of the lower planes were all several centuries old at the very youngest. Having such age meant glorious combat achievements, but they were also far too shut-in and accustomed to their own system, along with being overconfident in themselves to the point of being distrustful of all new methods.

The devil army was still using the same method of fighting from several millennia ago. They sent messengers running around everywhere. However, the overly chaotic combat situation made it difficult for the messengers to complete their tasks. Thus, some devils received orders such as “return to defend the west” before they even received any orders to head east, which was a rather comical situation.

Some Devil Thanes who received two completely conflicting orders found themselves with no idea which order to follow. In the end, the Devil Thanes simply decided to randomly kill off one messenger and pretend that the messenger was a fake sent over to confuse them.

Devils were no good people at all. To them, weak mortals were completely beneath them, and only their own kind were the ones they needed to be most on guard against.

In the hierarchical devil society, a devil would always be most happy about their boss “suddenly dying” rather than anything like glory or victory. This would mean that the devil now had an opportunity to ascend the ladder. Thus, many high-level commanders suddenly “mysteriously” died in all this chaos.

Normally, the devils would treat this as “normal expenses” on the battlefield. Some devils even believed that this was useful to help devil society weed out the weak and determine the strong so that those who were useless would naturally be eliminated. However, the devils’ habit of backstabbing their own only brought even more chaos for them in this battle.

Most critical of all was the command to draw forces from the east to strengthen the defenses at Asolivis.

This command seemed quite normal, but if you were a devil who was facing frightening dragons and Holy Light while locked in a difficult battle, and your allied devils were also barely holding on nearby... What would happen if the other devils suddenly ran off? You would lose this territory and become surrounded.

“They’ve all run away? We’ve already been abandoned! We’d be idiots not to run!”

Chaos would always slow down messengers. The more emergency commands that were issued, the more chaos there would be unless there was an orderly command system in place.

In the past, this had never been a problem for the devils, since each devil squad was relatively independent. Every devil squad had its own fighting force and leaders, going up the ranking hierarchy one by one, all the way to a powerful devil swearing loyalty to some specific Devil Lord.

In the past, the Devil Lords would personally take action to control their own ace squadrons, which would then communicate with the lower-ranking devil squads. That was how devils could keep things under control. But now, there were only two remaining Devil Lords, so the leaders of most of the devils’ ace squadrons were absent. The most chaotic squadrons were thus the ones that lacked their highest-ranking leaders.

Sarwenstan might have been a decent devil ruler, but he was definitely no outstanding general. Since the other Devil Lords were no longer around, Sarwenstan had unhesitatingly stolen the other Devil Lords’ squadrons for himself, removing the highest-level members of those squadrons, and replacing them with devils who were loyal to him only.

Due to the establishment of Hell, a majority of Immemorial Devils who had experienced hundreds of battles before had all chosen to join Hell. The devil army thus lost its core fighters and elites, making the devil army far weaker than before already. With Sarwenstan also doing as he pleased with the devil squadrons, the ace squadrons now had less than 30% of their original strength.

Although Sarwenstan’s actions helped to cement his authority, this also meant that the old high-level devils who truly possessed authority and respect were no longer around in the devils’ command system. The commanders were nothing more than Sarwenstan’s lackeys who only knew how to suck up to him.

Plus, with the devils’ traditions... With many devil commanders who possessed high ranks but insufficient power going missing right now, well... The chaos only got worse because certain devils intentionally created more chaos rather than try to stop the chaos.

Drawing away the eastern battlefront’s main forces made the devils’ secondary forces on the eastern battlefront start panicking, believing that they had been abandoned. Many devil squads began retreating even without having received clear orders. The devils’ eastern battlefront was beginning to collapse completely, far before any decisive outcome had been reached in the west.

Even Bardi’s royal dragon knights and Auland’s White Wolves, who were the elite human forces fighting in the east, didn’t dare to believe that the legendary devil army was so easy to deal with. It seemed to them like the devils were imploding right after the battle began?

Of course, the devils wouldn’t simply watch and allow this to unfold. Sarwenstan personally went to the eastern battlefront to control the situation. The only other Devil Lord who remained with the devils was given the same task to control the situation on the western battlefront.

Right now, I was hesitating as I glanced at a gigantic golden phoenix that reached all the way into the clouds.

“He looks like delicious golden crispy fried chicken... Ahem, I mean, Little Tias won’t be mad at me if I kill off all the Devil Lords, right?”