School Transmigration: I, Chosen as the Saint by Dragons at the Start-Chapter 198 --Decapitation Strike

The demon army landed successfully, sweeping northward.

Whitelion Kingdom’s forces lost a fifth of their number to this venomous onslaught.

Had Des not ordered a retreat in advance, the outcome could have been total annihilation.

Such is the formidable power of the demon’s top echelons, capable of altering the course of a battle at a critical juncture.

Unlike Mokeni’s shallow jubilation, Evan felt no joy in military achievements; they meant nothing to him.

He even found himself bored, as there was no one on this battlefield who could match him.

"The target is Wanhill. Advance," Evan commanded, looking towards the endless plains to the east.

Let’s see what’s there, he thought.

Perhaps there will be individuals of sturdier will.

...

Gerald was confident he had seized the initiative in the war.

The demon army on the western front was significantly tied down by Mingate and Glazed Pavilion.

With a large number of demon army reserves moving towards the Mingate Glazed Pavilion line, and the western front under attack by the allied forces, the central demon forces were compelled to redeploy westward.

For Gerald, the heart of the opportunity had arrived.

"All forces, forward!" Gerald mounted his warhorse and issued the command.

The demon army arrayed before them was ready, elite against elite, general against general, with no reason for the demon forces to retreat.

Despite some troops being redeployed to the western line, the demon army on the central front still outnumbered the Imperial Alliance.

The faith-based magic of the high priest was a linchpin for the demon army’s morale, boosting their spirits to unprecedented heights.

Five hundred meters, two hundred meters, one hundred meters—the sky was already raining arrows down on the soldiers of both sides.

Thunderous roars filled the battlefield as the infantry charged, the clashing of metal resounding without end, heralding the start of a massive slaughter.

Within the demon army, the caliber of officers was roughly equivalent to that of the Imperial Alliance, allowing them to hold their own across the expansive battlefield.

The commanding capabilities of the Imperial Alliance officers generally surpassed those of the demon army, likely due to the demon soldiers’ fierce and fearless nature, making them more challenging to direct.

Coupled with the advantage in weaponry, the empire might have had the upper hand had the numbers been equal.

Unfortunately, the demon army’s ranks were indeed greater than the Imperial Alliance’s, with a continuous stream of reserves replenishing the front lines.

More disadvantageous for the empire was the presence of nearly twenty formidable experts within the demon army, compared to a mere seven joining the battlefield for the empire.

Half an hour into the combat, the empire’s disadvantage had solidified into an irreversible situation.

However, at this critical juncture, two legendary cursebinders suddenly appeared behind the demon army’s lines.

They then dispelled some sort of illusion, revealing twenty of the empire’s experts surrounding the demon high priest, presenting a strategic encirclement.

Normally, twenty individuals surrounding a thousand would seem laughable, but when those twenty are meticulously selected experts, the situation is no joke.

These twenty experts burst into the high priest’s military array, instantly unleashing a storm of blood and carnage.

The demon army’s high priest was primarily guarded by hundreds of elite orc infantry, jackal archers, and four giants.

This was supplemented by a small contingent of guards and dozens of members from the wizard legion, forming the last line of defense.

As the Imperial Alliance’s twenty experts initiated close combat, the archers were rendered nearly useless.

Swordsmen danced through the archers’ ranks, their blades painting the air with mists of blood.

Had it not been for the fact that these were the demon army’s elite, battle-hardened troops, a rout might have ensued.

The infantry quickly engaged in combat with Gerald’s twenty-man squad, a key force in this campaign, known as the "Heartpluckers Squad."

The orc infantry could only delay their advance, hardly inflicting any effective damage on them.

The real threat to the Heartpluckers Squad came from the demon’s wizard legion.

As the squad penetrated the main formation, the legion’s priests activated an ancient and sinister magic array within their ranks.

Dirty tendrils frequently burst from the ground, stabbing at the members of the Heartpluckers Squad.

These repulsive entities, even if cut down, would swiftly regenerate.

Poisonous gas spewed from the center of the formation, seemingly alive as it chased after the human warriors.

Wherever it passed, soldiers of the demon army also collapsed, frothing at the mouth and dying.

However, every magic array has its counter, and among the Heartpluckers Squad were four individuals specifically selected by Gerald to deal with the demon army’s peculiar magic arrays.

The pure white mist emanating from their sleeves neutralized the toxic air, and the tendrils withered upon contact with the mist.

With the magic array broken, the wizard legion revealed various magical instruments, launching an array of attack spells of different forms.

The four giants, enhanced by various strengthening spells by the wizards, shifted from their initial sluggishness to match the swordsmen of the Heartpluckers Squad in fierce combat.

A quarter of an hour later, the twenty-man squad had suffered seven casualties, but the demon army’s formation’s key point was breached, and three of the four giants had fallen.

Only one injured giant and the threatened priests remained in front of the high priest, with most of their soldiers dead.

The priests, not adept at close combat, faced significant threats once the vanguard was broken.

At this moment, the priests of the wizard legion felt not only fear but also confusion.

The melee had raged for a quarter of an hour, yet there was no sign of movement from the young reserves at the rear, nor did it seem that anyone at the front had noticed the trouble here.

Unbeknownst to them, the empire’s two cursebinders were exerting their full power to maintain a grand illusion.

To the troops both ahead and behind, this area appeared entirely normal.

The battle raged on without reinforcements.

The last giant fell with a thunderous crash, and several mystic swordsmen, like flashes of light, broke through the priests’ formation.

Under their sword energy, the unprotected priests were either slain or severely wounded.

A specially appointed executioner from the Heartpluckers Squad, dragging his guillotine blade, moved about delivering the coup de grâce, ensuring that all who lay on the ground were dead.

Finally, thirteen experts encircled the high priest at the center.

"Kill!" they shouted in unison, charging at the high priest.

Amid the flurry of blades and sword shadows, the high priest emitted a shroud of black energy, enveloping himself so densely that the thirteen attackers couldn’t get close.

The moment their weapons touched the black mist, they corroded into dust.

One swordsman couldn’t retract his arm in time, and it dissolved into blood instantly, with a gush of black blood from his mouth, he fell dead on the spot.

The remaining twelve retreated, and after a brief standoff, the executioner stepped forward while the others channeled their power into him.

The guillotine blade glowed with a golden light, suspended mid-air, as a golden aura burst forth towards the high priest.

On the other side, the high priest condensed black mist into his palm, forming a dark sphere.

He thrust it forward towards the golden light, causing a fierce collision between the darkness and the light.

For the thirteen people present, the ensuing two-minute standoff felt interminably long.

Eventually, the darkness could not withstand the light, and the moment the dark sphere was pierced by the golden light, a guillotine blade flew swiftly, penetrating the high priest’s chest.

"Is he dead?" The executioner stepped forward to confirm, hearing the high priest murmuring something.

"What a pity, what a pity..." The high priest’s eyes gradually lost their vitality, yet his lips curled into a mocking smile.

"Is it him?" the executioner asked, though he wasn’t sure whom he was questioning.

No one in the Imperial Army had ever seen the high priest in person.

The next second, a massive explosion provided the answer.

There was no longer a living soul in sight.

Gerald had never anticipated that the high priest within the demon army’s main camp would be a decoy.

His Heartpluckers Squad perished in the demon army’s camp, a classic case of a plan backfiring spectacularly.

What offered him some consolation was that the two cursebinders he had dispatched to assist the Heartpluckers Squad had safely withdrawn.

Had there been any mishap with these two, the loss would have been truly grievous.

For a strategist like Gerald, twenty elites could not compare to these two cursebinders, whose strategic significance far outweighed that of mere shock troops.

After the explosion at the high priest’s location, there was a brief moment of chaos among the demon army’s front-line soldiers.

The Imperial Alliance seized this opportunity to advance towards the site of the explosion.

However, as the true high priest made his appearance on the battlefield, the demon army’s command structure swiftly recovered, and their morale was greatly boosted, especially among the orcs, who seemed even more ferocious than before.

Upon observing the situation, Gerald ordered a steady retreat of the legions back to their original positions, relying on the fortifications of their camps to hold against the demon army.

In the siege warfare, the demon army gained little advantage, leaving behind some of their dead before withdrawing to their previous lines.

In the following days, they were busy with the repair and reinforcement of their camps.

It was an advance followed by a retreat.

After these series of fierce battles, the central front ultimately returned to the status quo.

Mixed news came from other fronts.

On the western part of the allied front, thanks to the efforts of Mingate and Glazed Pavilion restraining and annihilating a large number of demon forces, significant achievements were made.

The forces of the Milan Kingdom, with the distraction provided by Blight and Stone, broke through the demon army’s defenses at Glazed Pavilion and advanced easily to Mingate.

Mingate was almost left deserted, as the demon army’s troops attacking Mingate suffered near-total annihilation due to Messy’s valiant defense, leaving it nearly empty.

Thus, the territory of Snow Kingdom from north of Mingate to the line of Glazed Pavilion was entirely reclaimed by the empire.

However, the King of Milan did not achieve greater results; the demon army organized a second line of defense, and the two armies returned to a stalemate on the western front.