Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 407 The Art of Command
"Your Majesty, the battle report from Marshal Leoponis of the Holy Land Regiment has arrived."

The messenger knelt on the ground, holding in his hands a battle report that was sealed tightly in a mithril cylinder.

Theoretically, no one knew the specific content of the battle report until Kalelius opened it himself, but the messenger's back soaked with cold sweat and his trembling body revealed everything.

The news of the defeat was delivered to the Holy Land Corps headquarters by scouts from the front line. After Leoponis and the General Staff confirmed it, it was then delivered thousands of miles away by several messengers. Some rumors that could not be blocked in the first place could not be hidden after all.

Moreover, the Giant King's Court has never been a monolithic entity since its inception. When the defeat took place no longer in the insignificant Far East region, but moved to the edge of the holy land where the lives of the entire clan were at stake, the panic brought by the Northern Expedition had already spread among the high-level officials of the King's Court.

From the moment this chaos began to grow, the instability within the Royal Court began to magnify wildly, to the point that before the central government could react, the news of the Holy Land Regiment's defeat and the Northern Expedition's approach to the Giant's Cemetery had already spread all over the Snow Ridge Route.

At this time, the Western Division far away in Otina and the Central Division led by Karelius himself might be better off, but the Southern and Eastern Divisions that were close by were already in a panic. As for Hilber's Northern Division - the fourth-generation giant messenger in front of him came from the Northern Division, so there was no need to worry about whether they knew about it.

Kalelius raised his eyes from behind the battle report and stared at the messenger for a long time. After a while, he waved his hand and asked the guards to drag the guy who almost collapsed to the ground to rest.

He had never hated the complex internal forces of the giants as much as he did now, and he had never been so angry at Lucia and the Northern Expedition Army of only 30,000 people as he did now.

He was angry that after he misjudged Lucia's actions, the other party seemed to have seen through his thoughts and always hit him where he was most vulnerable and most dangerous, and the ruthlessness of his attacks far exceeded his understanding of this opponent.

Why? Why did he only have 30,000 men, and had to leave people to protect the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians? He also dared to give up breaking out to the north, give up the chance to meet up with Polyleus in such a close distance, and turn south to attack the Holy Land Regiment that was pinning down the Watcher Fortress?

Going south from Guntherfred, even if taking the ridge route, it is still a full 4,500 miles, and the dragon did not just fight and run away at the Watcher Fortress, but instead successively penetrated the Holy Land Regiment troops with a strength of more than 20,000 troops near the South Pass, around the fortress, and in the southwest of the fortress.

According to Leoponius' latest report, he had just killed Hedias, the commander of the Lucar Fortress at the northern end of the Holy Land - which was only six hundred miles away from the core of the Holy Land!

Going far away instead of near, and advancing alone in deep territory. Lucia committed all the military taboos that Calelius could think of. Every option calculated by the royal court that had such a low probability that it would be a waste of time to even consider was woven together to barely form this meaningless route of advance.

With the ten thousand or at most twenty thousand troops in his hands, could he really break through the entire cemetery, fight to the top of the Giant Mountain and attack the Flaming Cauldron?
He wants to accomplish what the Northern Legion of the Golden Dynasty and the Flame Temple have failed to do in twenty years within two months?

Even if the opposing coach was replaced by Ge Fulei, everyone knew that this was simply impossible, and Lucia herself was absolutely clear about it!
Both sides also understood that if the Northern Expeditionary Army's southward troops encountered any small problem, such as being delayed for a few hours at any small checkpoint, or encountering a trap in the cemetery and suffering heavy losses, even if it was just a case of acclimatization or a small-scale flu,
If any of the above situations happens, they will be firmly held by the Holy Land Regiment and the Southern Regiment like a loach stuck in a net. When the royal court goes south, crushing them will be as easy as crushing an ant.

You know, before the war broke out, Kalelius even ordered people to collect detailed information about all of Lucia's performance in the Star Shattering Battle. With the royal court already prepared, it was impossible for him to get the protection of many gods like he did in the final moments of the battle against Esti, and he would never have the chance to use external forces to launch a star-severing attack.

Isolated and helpless, Lucia could not be stronger than Godwin, and the royal court had prepared a plan to kill Godwin. But Lucia chose that path, a path that was not even worth licking blood from the tip of a knife, but was a gamble of the entire army's lives on that glimmer of hope.

That's right, even if he was allowed to flee all the way south, at best he would only have a glimmer of hope for survival, not a chance of victory.

The road to Lorde to the south has been completely blocked. Allowing them to continue their guerrilla warfare is nothing more than replacing direct killing with the gentle method of killing them with time, wind and snow. Without the response from Sol City and the frozen lake, Lucia will never be able to overturn the situation in her lifetime.

But what's disgusting about this operation is that he not only put his own head on the gambling table, but also put the heads of the entire Giant King's Court on the gambling table.

Kalelius knew that the Northern Expedition Army would not be able to achieve anything around the Holy Land. High Priest Gulag knew it, and perhaps most of the ancestors and first generations knew it as well, but the people below did not know and would not believe it.

As a new regime that had just risen from the gutter and ruins, the ruling foundation of the royal court was still too weak compared to the three major dynasties.

Lucia swore by the reputation of Fam Azra and was willing to let tens of millions of people die for her at any time. But if Calerius dared to gamble with the safety of the holy land and the survival of the giants, he would be torn to pieces by a group of mad beasts in the next second.

After all, a few months ago, 99% of them were really just a group of irrational beasts, and the remaining 1%, including him, Kalelius, were just intelligent beasts dressed in false "ancient" clothes and relying on fire to gather people's hearts.

The one who truly inherited the royal blood was never him, but even if he was that person, it would be impossible for him to make everyone ignore their fears just by relying on his bloodline.

The new giants may be extremely powerful, but behind this extreme power is also extreme cowardice.

More than any other race or civilization, they fear returning to their primitive state, to the days before this transformation when they lingered on like ants and ghosts.

The key to determining the future of the race lies precisely in the holy land, under the threat of Lucia Shanks's non-existent blade.

Therefore, from the moment the Northern Expedition Army suddenly split up and marched south, breaking through the twelve checkpoints between the Watcher Fortress and the Ridgeline Road before the Royal Court became aware of the threat, and bringing the war to the edge of the Holy Land, the command of this local war was no longer in the hands of the Royal Court.

To put it in a more humiliating but more appropriate way, Lucia forcibly snatched the command of the giant army from them, forcing them to mobilize heavy troops to the south to encircle the bandit group of no more than 10,000 people.

To disobey his orders is to become an enemy of the entire new dynasty of giants.

(End of this chapter)