Chapter 010: One Night

Reclaiming seven cities in just one night? This news shocked the upper ranks of the Gavin Empire. Everyone wondered if their ears were working properly—or if they were hallucinating. But the messenger who brought the news indeed said exactly that, and he repeated it three times! If it wasn’t a hallucination, then it must be true!

Orders were issued one after another, with all spies targeting the same place: Lucius City! Then, more messages came back. Just that day, the cost of using special magical items to send and receive messages through covert channels exceeded one million gold coins. Yet they only received two messages: one stating that Du Fan had launched a night attack, and the other confirming that Du Fan had indeed reclaimed the seven cities.

Was this true? It was truly a miracle! What made it even harder to believe was that these messages included conditions—namely, the attackers were merely the new recruits trained by Du Fan over the past three months, only a hundred thousand of them!

Du Fan was a genius! That’s what almost everyone thought. Still, they had no idea how he had done it.

Prince Fischer sent a letter of consolation and inquired about Du Fan’s situation, under the pretense of allowing the empire’s soldiers to learn from Du Fan’s tactics. When Du Fan read Prince Fischer’s letter, a faint smile appeared on his face.

He checked the traps below the city—everything was ready. Aside from three-meter-wide passages in front of the four city gates, traps were set every three steps elsewhere, surrounded by spikes pointing upward. Even that wasn’t enough. The city walls had been coated with a potion that would temporarily disable opponents’ combat energy. No matter how skilled they were, unless a Saint-level warrior intervened, they would surely perish! Du Fan was afraid the Lani Empire might use the same tactics.

The one hundred fifty thousand troops who had been training were also brought to the front lines. The city could be captured, but it also had to be defended!

After seeing that everything was prepared below, Du Fan slowly wrote back to Prince Fischer. The letter explained his tactics and the number of troops he had at the time.

Prince Fischer read Du Fan’s reply: three hundred experts above level six, plus a hundred thousand well-trained soldiers. He also took advantage of the Lani Empire’s assumption that Du Fan wouldn’t launch an attack at such a critical moment when they were reaping great gains on their own territory! Additionally, Du Fan claimed he had lost ten thousand elite soldiers.

As for the note attached, almost no one took the time to read it carefully. In war, deaths are inevitable. Trading ten thousand soldiers for seven cities was still worth it, and those were Du Fan’s troops—whether they died or not didn’t really matter to them. Of course, they wouldn’t tell Du Fan this idea.

On the second page of the letter, Du Fan also shared his methods for training new recruits with Fisher. Fisher took a quick look and gave up on using Du Fan’s approach. Although Du Fan didn’t mention how much equipment was used, just by looking at their daily training routines, who would be willing to endure such hellish training without substantial subsidies? And the equipment used for training cost no less than a million per month!

If there was a shortage of troops and immediate reinforcement was needed, it might make sense. So Fisher dismissed this overly inefficient training method after just one glance.

Take Du Fan’s timing for example—none of them had expected him to launch a war at this moment. After all, the harvest season in the south was still half a month away. And if those troops were to be sustained using Du Fan’s financial resources, it would be impossible. So they should have been harvesting crops rather than going to war!

You have to deceive your own people first to deceive the enemy! Du Fan executed this move exceptionally well!

Although the old monsters in the capital kept urging Du Fan to send troops, they knew deep down that he was unlikely to go. Yet they never expected him to actually do it! Still, he grasped the timing quite well. If even they hadn’t anticipated it, then the Laney Empire certainly wouldn’t have either.

It was said that 300 experts at level six or above would first scale the city walls to create a breach, after which the elite troops would advance to massacre the seven cities. Ten thousand elite troops might not seem much, but even combining them with an entire million-strong army still wouldn’t equal those 300 experts at level six or above! So apart from Du Fan, no one else could pull this off!

It was originally impossible, but with those 300 experts, along with ten thousand elite troops and a surprise attack, Du Fan turned the impossible into possible!

Analyzing it, Du Fan’s success in this battle was naturally due to the advantage of those 300 experts. So there’s nothing strange about it. Even though it was just seven small cities, it still gave the people of the Gavin Empire a huge sense of satisfaction!

Although Du Fan described it as a massacre, he didn’t kill all the soldiers of the Lani Empire. After all, the Lani Empire didn’t go to such extreme measures either. If he did this, it would not only anger the Lani Empire; if they followed his example and killed all their prisoners, how many families in the Gavin Empire would hang white flags? It wasn’t that Du Fan was kind—it was that he couldn’t do such a thing! He couldn’t bear the public outrage either. Besides, leaving over a hundred prisoners wouldn’t be a big deal, right?

Duke Green was naturally pleased to hear about his son’s achievements, but he was also worried. Such an excellent army could arouse envy and fear. While his son had indeed accomplished great feats, it also brought trouble upon himself.

Elder Duke Green knew his son well. He said ten thousand died? Ten thousand out of a hundred thousand? That was a mortality rate of 10%, which was extremely high. In that case, trading ten thousand lives for seven cities could be considered a bitter victory.

Regardless of whether the ten thousand deaths were true or not, this approach made people think Du Fan had done well, at least giving the impression that his army was “normal.”

It could be said that everything Du Fan had done over the past half month had gone smoothly, though there were still two things that annoyed him. The first was the leader of the thief gang—Flying Wolf. Du Fan already knew that the person who fought him to the end that day was Flying Wolf. He also knew things weren’t as bad as he had imagined—at least not every thief gang had members of the Dark Magic race. But Flying Wolf, who was neither seen alive nor dead, made Du Fan feel as if there was a thorn stuck in his flesh!

Where on earth had he gone? Du Fan couldn’t help but wonder.

The second issue was that the people from Divine Might Prison had told Du Fan that they had already spotted the army of the Lani Empire—fifteen thousand strong!

Just fifteen thousand? Du Fan sneered. He thought there would be more, after all, he had killed so many of them. If not thirty thousand, then at least twenty thousand, right? With only fifteen thousand coming, he had two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers at his disposal, and none of them were inferior to their army! His troops weren’t useless like those of the Southern Legion! Hmph! Coming with only fifteen thousand—were they underestimating him?

Du Fan thought resentfully. He wouldn’t yield just because the enemy was fewer in number. He would overwhelm them with absolute strength. If they wanted to die, he had no problem taking a few more tens of thousands to serve the God of Light!

Du Fan received the latest intelligence that while sending troops, the Lanny Empire also stationed itself in Mastan Castle, which was closest to him, thus keeping Du Fan at a distance. Even without fighting, this situation trapped Du Fan there. As they took hold of that area, they also sent envoys to the capital of the Gavin Empire. It was now the harvest season, for reasons similar to those they had used to push for peace back then—they couldn’t leave! When Du Fan’s territory entered the harvest season, theirs did too! So it was not yet time to go to war.