Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 381 The Remnant of the Past
"Report!" There were hurried footsteps outside the hall. The messenger authorized by the royal power broke open the door, knelt on the ground and presented the latest battle report.

"Your Majesty! Report to the High Priest and all the ancestors! Lord Rexar of the Central Corps has an urgent report - abnormal energy fluctuations have appeared in the direction of the Thor portal. According to our army's observations, there are at least 30,000 troops at the other end of the channel. The time it takes to travel through it is only half a day at most!"

"Coming straight towards us?"

The shirtless burly man, the third ancestor, Moserlo, grinned, revealing his white teeth. "Although it's stupid, I like this kind of recklessness."

"Your Majesty, I am willing to bring three first-generation Titans and thirty second-generation Titans to help you. Within five days, I will capture the leader of the bandits for your Majesty!"

Moserlo was followed by the eighth ancestor Heldiron who stepped out and said in a deep voice.

"Your Majesty! I am willing to go too! I don't need a single soldier. I will go north alone to help Lord Rexar. Three days will be enough to kill Lucia Sanx!"

The one who expressed his opinion this time was Adonis, the tenth ancestor at the end of the high priest's side, who was also the tallest one in the hall in terms of humanoid figure.

"What's the hurry?" High Priest Gulag scolded, "You are all just thinking about vying for credit, not seeing clearly whether what is in front of you is a trick set up by the enemy!"

"Your Majesty..." He turned to Callelius, bowed slightly and said, "I have objections!"

The Giant King quickly helped the old man up and said to him in a soothing tone, "If the High Priest has any instructions for you, just tell me directly. How can I ask an elder to bow to me?"

"Etiquette and law cannot be abolished!" The old man looked at Karelius with his hollow eyes, as if staring into his eyes, and said meaningfully: "The giants are not the tyrannical beasts rumored by the world, but the oldest rulers of this land. Like the dragons, they are the eternal fire that guides the world's past, present and future. Your Majesty must always remember this more deeply than any other minister."

Kalerius stared into Gulag's dark eye sockets, and through the shriveled eyelids he could even see the broken tendons and gouges that had long since grown together with the flesh.

He took a deep breath, slightly increased the strength of his palms, nodded seriously and said: "The high priest's teachings are always in my mind."

"Ah."

Gulag slowly straightened up, moved his "eyes" to the sand table, and deduced: "We discussed earlier that from west to east, there are four entrances to the North: Lord, Otina, Sol, and Odysseus. The army marching north in four directions at the same time is a stupid strategy like Ossarion's, so it can be ruled out."

"Right now, Lord, Thor, and Odysseus all have suspicious troops. They may seem powerful, but they are just trying to deceive people."

"Lucia is definitely not ignorant of military affairs. From his perspective, the entire northern region has been occupied and chaos has already occurred. The war in the eastern region has just ended and the situation is not stable. The Golden Dynasty is currently ruled by a new party that is diametrically opposed to him. Even Fam Yazra is undercurrent. Regardless of national strength, situation, time, and people's hearts, he will inevitably have to lead tens of thousands of elite troops through the space portal to break into the heartland of our dynasty, use his mobility advantage to quickly attack, and seek an opportunity for a decisive battle with the intention of decapitation."

"Of the two routes, Sol and Otina, Sol is located in the center of the North, only 2,000 kilometers away from Saint Oronia. Even if he couldn't guess that the palace was here, he would definitely regard the North Guard House as the most important strategic target. Therefore, it is reasonable to send troops out of Sol's portal." "But - I have observed their style of behavior in the past three years. They always do surprising things that go against common sense. Whether it is Kawen Duoris or Beta, including the two old guys who have been hiding in the gutter for a hundred years, they are all extraordinary. When facing him, they often don't even have the chance to confront him head-on. They are inexplicably forced into a dilemma and controlled in one move."

"There are four channels this time, three of which are attacking from different directions, two of which are visible and one is hidden, two are slow and one is fast. If our army did not have the secret information from Rodel, and only relied on the experience and common sense of fighting against the generals of the Golden Dynasty, it is very likely that we would miss the opportunity to capture Thor's enemy situation and let him successfully break in. Therefore, no matter how you look at it, Thor seems to be the truth that we have captured after tearing off the surface."

"What does the high priest want to say?" Moserlo on the opposite side interrupted impatiently.

"After all, isn't this what has already been written in the war report? Lord's 50,000 men and the large number of ships in the East China Sea are obviously fake. Now their sword is about to hit Rexar's head, and we still have to worry about whether this sword is real or not? If we have to drag it out and let him break in and join up with that old dog Neo, how long will the battle in Sol City drag on? Should we still fight?"

"What I'm afraid of is that you are so disrespectful!" Gulag's whole body suddenly exuded a suffocating pressure. Except for the giant king Kalelius, five of the eight people present couldn't help but retreat half a step!
"In the Giant Cemetery, when we were hiding in the cracks of the underground magma and dodging Duoris's cavalry like dogs, I warned you more than once that you should not hesitate to use the most terrible possible methods to calculate our opponents, every one of them! If we had been patient last time and endured for another two years, until Duoris was recalled by the Golden Dynasty and until Pilak was killed by Xiren, our great cause could have been achieved earlier, and not so many of our compatriots would have died before!"

"Now, facing a powerful enemy who crushed Duoris like an ant and is rushing towards us with full concentration, how can you still be so arrogant? Where do you get the qualifications to be arrogant! You are so arrogant just because you occupy two-thirds of the ice field. If you were in Lucia Shanks' position, would you also look at us as if we were ants?!"

The old man seemed to be very angry, and his chest was twitching violently like an old bellows. It was not until Moserlo forced himself to show a hint of "shame" and bowed to apologize that Gulag barely calmed down his anger.

"I think the three false troops are all false. With Lucia's ability, he would not fail to consider that we have spies in Rodel. It is even possible that he has been eyeing us since the last time our troops entered Roghar. Thor's 30,000 troops are just bait he threw to us again."

When these words were spoken, everyone in the room was horrified.

"The high priest means that his final choice is Otina?" The fifth ancestor Vikia whispered beside the old man.

"When you think about it, it's really terrifying." The charming woman, the fourth ancestor Hilber, also lost some of her charm in her strange eyes and began to seriously think about this possibility.

"Otiana is connected to the Holy Tree Forest in the west, controls the Erunga River in the south, and borders the Kurbandya Avenue in the east. It is only 1,500 kilometers away from the Flame Temple. If he abandons the decapitation plan and instead fights a guerrilla war and a protracted war with us, relying on the forests and mountains in the northwest to connect with Sol City and the Frozen Lake, and taking in the Northern Legion and the Samir Clan that we have dispersed, he will become a serious threat in the long run."

"Have you forgotten one thing--" Below Vikia, the sixth ancestor Ophelia was almost the opposite of Hilber. Her cold and beautiful appearance and temperament were like a piece of solid ice that would never melt.

"Lucia Sanx is the ancient dragon quasi-king, and the land under our feet is the ancestral land that the Storm Dynasty has managed for 500 years. When the group of Storm survivors saw that the one who came to quell the rebellion was not a general of the Golden Dynasty, but the Dragon King served by their ancestors for generations, they saw that he was not going to put down the chaos and hurriedly returned south. Instead, he took root here like Odysseus, standing in front of them and fighting until the end of time. At that time, can we really defend the North?"

This time, the hall was completely silent.

Even though the giants have always been proud of their eternal flames, the upstarts at this moment realized for the first time that they, who ignited the first fire in the North, might not be burned to ashes by an older and more intense ember.

(End of this chapter)