TALES OF A WITCHER - Season 9 episode 53

After a night’s sleep, the three witches set out on their journey again. After a half-day flight, Lorgar finally saw the “Abandoned City”.

She could not help but hold her breath.

The city was much larger than she had imagined!

She saw a vast expanse of green land below and some damaged brown walls standing down there. Lightning had told her this city had been abandoned over 400 years ago, but even now, Lorgar could still discern the incomplete sections of the city walls.

She found that the ruins of this city covered an area that was five or six times larger than Iron Sand City and was big enough for over 100,000 people to live in. Looking at its fragmented wreckage, she could still sense its greatness. Based on the rule that each person in the city needed to be supported by 10 people in the surrounding towns and villages, she was surprised to find that there might have been nearly 1,000,000 people living in this wild land.

This is incredible!

How did a kingdom that built such a large city lose to the demons in the end?

Lorgar suddenly recalled what His Majesty had told her. “The Battle of Divine Will isn’t a clash between two tribes, but a comprehensive war that determines which civilization can survive.” At the time, she had been irritated hearing it, but now she somehow understood. At this moment, she now believed that the king had not been trying to intimidate her when he had said “I don’t want to send you to die.”

All of a sudden, she felt much better.

When Lightning gestured, they started to lower their height. In the end, they landed on a relatively complete section of the city wall.

The top of the wall, though damaged, was still as wide as 20 plus steps which was wide enough for two four-wheeled carriages to travel side by side. In the walls covered by moss and vines, they saw a few round holes and wondered how much force was required to create such damage to these huge stone walls.

The little girl came over and said, “You may know this already, but this city was the last line of defense for the witch empire. Unfortunately, they failed to resist the demons’ attack in the end.”

Does this mean that the over 400-year-old witches mentioned by Ashes are actually survivors of this witch empire? Did the Four Kingdoms and the church that treated the witches as heretics all rise after the failure of those witches?

The Wolf Girl suppressed these questions since she believed that the ones who knew the story must have been deliberately blocking this information. She had never heard anything related to it from the traveling traders and even the residents of Neverwinter seemed to know nothing about it. She thought she had better not get to the bottom of it as she was not a member of the Witch Union.

She opened the map Lightning had given her yesterday. “Is Taquila located on the edge of your patrol area? If demons want to attack Neverwinter, which direction will they usually come from?”

“They’ll come from anywhere to the west of the ruins, but it’s extremely dangerous for us to go that deep into the Barbarian Land even though we can fly.”

The Wolf Girl asked, “Why?”

Maggie replied, “It’s because of the mist. Sometimes even the sky will turn red.”

“What’s… that?” Lorgar frowned.

“It’s a life-support thing for demons, just like the air we breathe.” Lightning looked to the northwest. “Today’s a nice day, so the sky looks blue. But if it’s rainy or cloudy, especially when dark clouds gathering in the sky, we’ll clearly see the red mist on the horizon when we’re high up in the sky. This mist is toxic to witches. Even if we manage not to inhale any of it, we may still get badly hurt simply by touching it. Since we don’t know how far it can reach, we seldom cross Taquila to go further west.”

After that, the little girl outlined some weak points of demons.

“I see.” The Wolf Girls wiggled her ears. “As long as I can pull out the pipes behind them, they’ll become weak and vulnerable.”

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Lightning added, “But it’s not easy to do so. Just like the Senior Demon I told you about last night, it has almost no flaws in a fight. If you really meet the enemy, you’d better retreat immediately and inform His Majesty, Roland.”

“Don’t worry. I know how to deal with it properly.”

Lorgar patted her own chest, full of fighting spirit.

Demons are tough opponents, but that’s what makes fighting stimulating and rewarding. Besides, being invincible as a group on the battlefield doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re strong as individuals. I can seize a chance to hunt a solitary demon and even if no demons appear on my journey, I can still fight the hybrid demonic beasts.

She had already spotted several big demonic beasts when she was on Maggie’s back flying up in the sky. She looked out at the uninhabited wildland, feeling excited about her journey again.

The road she had dreamed about had become much clearer now. It extended further, with the sand replaced by green areas.

She believed that she was going to stay here for a long time.

…

Every day, Roland had one or two meetings to attend since he had issued the order to go out to battle. From the battle plan to the logistics arrangements, everything needed his approval. He had enjoyed this tingling feeling of absolute power at first, but he soon got overwhelmed by the heavy workload as he got deeper into this preparation process.

Now that Neverwinter managed more than just a city, a whole team had to work on plans that had previously been made by one person. After discussing such trivial matters everyday, Roland gradually came to understand and even sympathize with those “brainless leaders” in the history, who did not like to deal with state affairs. Imagine that you have to listen to some people nagging about things that you neither remember nor understand every day. You would naturally get annoyed with it. Had Scroll not integrated and filtered the numbers in the reports for him, he would have also preferred to be a distant leader.

After all, he had been just a mechanical engineer before traveling into this world.

As compared to the complicated logistics arrangements, he paid more attention to the battle plan proposed by the Ministry of Defense.

The First Army planned to concentrate all its fire on the Holy City of Hermes that was surrounded by tall and thick city walls. They made a plan based on their experience in the Great Snow Mountain and were going to prepare enough cannons and ammunition for this attack. It was a joint operation involving the First Army soldiers, witches and the Taquila survivors.

Roland had to admit that the Pearl of the Northern Region was indeed talented. In the plan, she put forward the concept of collaborative operation, such as utilizing the abilities of the witches and Taquila survivors to launch surprise raids in all directions. She suggested that by doing so, Neverwinter troops could quickly disrupt the defensive formation of the enemy and could attack them from both the sky and the ground. Though many of her ideas were not yet prepared enough, they were certainly impressive ones to have in this era.

Roland believed that it was a wise decision to put her in the Ministry of Defense.

To successfully implement this plan, he had to make sure that the God’s Punishment Witches of Taquila would willingly obey orders rather than doing whatever they wanted regardless of the commands.

This was the first problem he needed to solve while everyone was busy preparing for the battle.

The solution was very simple.

For instance, he could invite all the survivors who were going to participate in the upcoming battle to enter his Dream World.