"Ninth Team, heed the order!"
"All personnel move out and station yourselves beyond the defensive line!"
With the arrival of a single military order, over ten thousand people moved at once, like Heavenly Soldiers and Generals, neatly cutting through the skies in formation.
They passed over the wilderness camp zone, passed over the War God Mansion, passed over the cannon batteries that towered into the clouds, then over that city wall that stretched like a continuous mountain range, then descended according to the assigned sectors and set up simple camps by area.
Beyond the wall was the war zone!
Here, there was no protection from giant Formations; aside from themselves, no one had any other defense.
From this moment on, they would face the Demon Race head-on, face death head-on!
Carson Flores swept his gaze around; small encampments rose one after another, looking as if they had no end.
"This can’t be just our Ninth Battalion, right?"
Carradine answered, "It should be the entire First Legion. It depends on how intense the fighting gets. If the battle is very fierce, then the rotations will be fast; it’s impossible to have people charging and fighting on the very front line the whole time. After all, there’s fighting every single day—no one can keep battling continuously without rest or recovery."
Carson Flores asked, "Then Commander Murphy is here too?"
Carradine smiled and said, "He’s the Army Commander; of course he has to sit in town and oversee things."
Carson Flores smiled and said, "I’ve heard the Army Commander’s stories, I want to see his bearing in person!"
Jarett Roth laughed and said, "You’ll definitely see him, just not right now. After all, if even the Army Commander has personally joined the battle, that means the situation has already become extremely intense."
Just as everyone finished setting up camp, a dense black mass of figures flew over from the horizon. Before they even drew near, a terrifying aura had already surged over like a tidal wave.
The Demon Race!
"Alwyn Briarwood is here—who’s come to die?"
The black mass of demons had yet to approach, but their voice had already rolled over like thunder, shaking the Heavenly Dome, brimming with wild domineering arrogance.
Very soon, a thousand-strong unit from the First Legion rose into the sky and flew up to meet them.
Without any useless chatter, the two sides plunged straight into a bloody and ferocious slaughter.
The entire Heavenly Dome looked as if it was about to be smashed through; yet whether it was because Position channels overlapped here or not, this continent, this stretch of space, actually withstood such intensity of battle without collapsing.
Amid the fierce fighting, some screamed in misery as they fled from the battlefield covered in wounds, some fought drenched in blood, and some didn’t even have time to utter a sound before they were wiped out on the spot, their lives snuffed out and their paths ending.
The battle lasted for nearly an hour before victory and defeat were decided. The Demon Race clearly had the upper hand; they pressed forward madly, trying to completely crush this thousand-strong unit and then devour them.
The Immortal Realm squad that had gone out was abnormally tenacious. They shrank their formation, protected their injured comrades, and broke out toward the encampments here. After paying a hefty price, they finally all withdrew back.
They had set out a full thousand strong; by the end of the battle, not even four hundred returned unscathed. Around another four hundred were wounded, while the remaining two hundred were completely buried in this fight.
Carson Flores watched this scene, his heart growing heavy.
This was only a clash between small units, and yet the death rate had already reached twenty percent, with forty percent wounded—adding it up, more than half were casualties!
These four hundred wounded clearly couldn’t recover and return to the battlefield in just a few days. You could say that this single battle had nearly wiped out two-thirds of this unit!
Too cruel!
Carson Flores knew that the dead in this unit would be buried, the wounded would be sent for treatment, and the vacancies would quickly be filled by Reserves, then they’d wait for the next round of war.
In the short term, this squad wouldn’t go back onto the battlefield. They would use this period to train Newcomers, build coordination, and wait for their second battle after the rotation.
By comparison, the Demon Race’s numbers of dead and wounded were much lower. Around a hundred died, and the number of wounded was also much smaller.
This battle was clearly a win for the Demon Race.
Alwyn Briarwood, leader of the demon squad, laughed loudly and said, "Immortals are nothing more than this. You lot had better hurry and submit to my Demon Race, lest you die and never know reincarnation!"
At this point, because Alwyn Briarwood’s demon squad had pursued the Immortal squad, they were much closer to the encampment here, and Carson Flores finally saw the appearance of the Demon Race clearly.
Their bodies were about the same as the Human Race, but demon males were generally taller—basically all over two meters—with burly builds. The most striking thing about them was their eyes: blood-red pupils, and every demon had a Single Horn on their forehead!
Demon females were shorter relative to the males, about the same height as the Human Race. Their figures seemed much more delicate, and the horns on their heads were also much shorter.
Purely in terms of looks, most demon males were masculine and imposing; the females were charming and alluring, quite attractive. It was just that those blood-red pupils made the men all look murderous, while the women’s seductive faces paired with those blood eyes formed an extremely intense exotic beauty.
In the camp, yet another thousand-strong squad shot into the sky, moving to intercept the demon squad in the air.
"I don’t care if you’re a hundred li or a thousand li—if you keep yapping here, all of you can stay for good!"
A cold voice came from the mouth of the Immortal squad’s captain, laden with sky-piercing killing intent.
Seeing that the Immortal Realm had already sent out a new squad, Alwyn Briarwood didn’t dare keep putting on a show. He gave a cold snort and said, "I’ll go back, replenish my troops, and then come fight you again!"
Alwyn Briarwood led his team in retreat, and the thousand-strong Immortal unit didn’t pursue. After all, from the formation aspect, the small-unit clash just now had been fair, and they had not yet entered the stage of all-out slaughter with no rules whatsoever.
Watching this scene, Carson Flores sighed lightly and said, "They really do have rules. Since it’s a thousand-man unit, aren’t they worried the other side will just throw all their top experts together into one team?"
Jarett Roth explained, "The Immortal Demon War is a slaughter among tens of millions of Immortals and demons. If you want to just throw together a thousand-strong Superior Grade Great Land Prime Immortal squad, that’s not impossible—but the other side can do the same. Then what’s there left to fight?"
"If you send in your strongest to blood-battle right at the start, and only after they’re spent do you send in the grunts, that’s obviously impossible."
Carson Flores thought about it and realized that was true. On what battlefield would the grunts rest in the rear while the generals formed a unit, charged ahead, and madly hacked down the grunts?
In what kind of Dou Di Zhu game would someone ignore all their scattered low cards at the start, just throw down both Jokers and four twos, then slowly play the small cards afterward?
Carson Flores looked up at the Immortal squad that had rushed into the sky and asked, "Which unit is this now? Judging from where they came out, it doesn’t seem the same as just now."
Carradine answered, "Rotating deployment. The First Team’s ten squads won’t all go out one after another. If they fought like that, the First Team would be completely crippled. Under normal circumstances, a battalion selects one or two squads, and the different battalions rotate. That way, even if there are some losses, the battalion’s overall Combat Power remains."
"Drawing one or two out of ten?"
Carson Flores’s face suddenly turned rather unsightly. "When it’s our Ninth Battalion’s turn, could it end up being our Third Squad that gets sent out?"
The moment he said this, everyone’s expressions changed.
Earlier, their full attention had been on that battle in the sky. Plus, since they’d already come here, going into battle was inevitable, so they hadn’t thought much of it for the moment. But now, thinking back—
If they were picking people to go out, who would that nitpicking Theron Coffey, who was always looking for flaws like bones in an egg, send into battle? Did that even need to be asked?