Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 307 Preparing for War
Selia, the temple of the mystic arts.

If you hadn't seen it with your own eyes, you would never have thought that such a world-famous magic altar was actually just a three-story building with an unremarkable appearance. The entire building was made of the most common granite, and its shape and structure were also very ordinary. It looked like an inconspicuous house in a magic town full of tall buildings.

Once you step through the door, you will find that the furnishings inside are almost as plain as those outside. The only special thing is the nearly one hundred huge bookshelves connecting three floors and the ingenious mechanical central axis in the center of the building.

Twelve mechanical arms are arranged compatible with each other above and below the central axis, with a seat fixed at the end of each arm. The armrests are equipped with buttons and joysticks for controlling the direction. Students only need to sit here to easily reach any corner of the bookshelf and read at will those precious and unique books that would cause a sensation in the magic world if any one of them was thrown out.

Latan was not unfamiliar with this layout. Many years ago, when his mother, Queen Reinara, was still the crown prince, she had visited the Palace of Mystics and brought back a considerable portion of the research manuscripts as well as the design drawings of this set of magic machinery. She also modified the Kalia Royal Library into a similar appearance.

It is said that at that time, the old men of the Temple of Mysticism were not very happy, and claimed that only the King of Kalia was qualified to use the treasures of the Temple of Mysticism, so the two sides held a series of friendly consultations and discussions on the ownership of the right to speak.

As a result, not long after, several elders in charge publicly announced in the newspaper that the magical skills of Her Highness Reinara, the Crown Princess of Kalia, were far superior to theirs. In addition to fulfilling all their requests, there was also a rumor that several elderly people had caught a cold and had to rest for a month.

Later, when Lani just started to understand things, she insisted on changing her room into the same style. As her brother, Latan even participated in the renovation work himself and did a lot of hard work for it.

I don't know what's so good about this shabby place. When practicing, one can only sit on a few narrow and torn mats on the edge of each floor. No wonder there are only three disciples in the entire Hall of Mystic Arts from top to bottom of this generation - including himself.

Originally, Latan should have been ranked the youngest, but fortunately, the second senior brother Gaia had only been a disciple for a few months. As soon as they met, he dragged him to a magic duel, saying that he wanted to test the quality of these demigods and see how much of the bragging in the rumors outside was.

With this test, Gaia was demoted from the second senior brother to the third senior brother. As for the eldest senior brother Gaius Latan, he had not spoken more than ten sentences to him since he joined the sect.

Recently, several teachers were often absent from the Hall of Mystic Arts. Gaia could not stand loneliness and was always clamoring to go out for patrol to guard against further attacks from Fallen Star Beasts. Therefore, most of the time, there were only Latan and Gaius in the hall.

Every time they met, Gaius was wearing a set of heavy black iron armor that concealed his face, and silently sat in the highest position to practice.

His way of practicing was very special. He never used heavy objects to practice the endurance of gravity magic like Latan and Gaia. Instead, he only used a handful of finely ground iron sand, and used gravity and repulsion to control the iron sand to float up and down around him. Sometimes it was still, sometimes it was compressed into an iron ball, and sometimes it transformed into all kinds of strange shapes.

Latan knew that he was far from being able to achieve such precise control.

After practicing for a while, he stood up and walked to the window to look outside. Patrolling night mages could be seen everywhere on the streets, and in the distance he could vaguely see some soldiers belonging to the three major dynasties.

After returning from the Tomb of the Buried Gods, the three dynasties immediately launched a joint war preparation operation against the resurrection of Esti. The 12,000 garrison troops of the Blazing Sun Legion stationed in Stonewell arrived at the Eastern Garrison along the land route first, and then the Ancient Dragon Dynasty quickly recruited the first batch of 20,000 advance troops from the Far Eastern Islands and arrived at Torrens Port on a magical sailing ship. On the western front, Kalia was relatively far away, so the only way to use a large space portal for long-distance delivery was to use it. However, the energy required to deliver tens of thousands of troops in a short period of time was extremely huge. Including the time to assemble troops, mobilize resources, and build the portal energy array, it would take at least half a month to prepare.

However, in order to demonstrate Kalia's sincerity in dealing with the resurrection of the evil god, Latan has ordered all of his three siblings' guards to be deployed in the defense of the city of Seria.

As for their own safety, Latan was absolutely confident in his own strength, and it didn't matter whether he had guards or not. His sister was with the dragon from morning till night anyway, and before someone successfully slayed the dragon, I don't think that kid would dare to hurt Lani in the slightest.

As for Lacard, he is still very young, so it is normal for him to encounter some dangers and hardships. There is no need to make a fuss.

He once again reviewed the military layout from the Tomb of the Gods to the Selia region and then to the entire Gaileid continent. Now Chief Cassius has handed over the management of Selia to Master Lusert, while he and two other Selia elders and a group of high-level night wizards are guarding the Tomb of the Gods.

In the outer mountainous area within a hundred kilometers around the city of Selia, there are 10,000 elite troops including six demigod guards stationed. This is also the main battlefield designated after consultation between the three major dynasties and Selia.

Correspondingly, in the face of Esti's sudden accelerated recovery, non-combatants and civilians who came to participate in the Magic Expo have been evacuated in batches to other city-states in Gaileid during this period, as far away from the center of the battle as possible.

The outer two thousand kilometers area has been designated as a pan-combat zone. The three dynasties are gathering conventional troops and deploying them in squadrons of 500 people, preparing to wipe out the increasing number of evil gods' followers who will respond to Esti's call and descend.

At the same time, the three major dynasties established marching camps in the northeast, south and west of the pan-battle zone, and each of them would assemble 30,000 mobile troops within the next month to deal with the star beast tide that would surge from the main battlefield to the periphery after the full-scale outbreak of the war, and to serve as emergency reserve forces after the core troops were frustrated.

In the final analysis, the overall strategy is that the three dynasties will mobilize their absolute superior forces to surround half of Galid with Selia as the axis. At that time, the demigods and heroes will fight against the evil god's blade head-on, and the elite troops will serve as auxiliary. The role of the more than 200,000 regular troops on the periphery is only to kill the beast tide that follows.

Latan took a deep breath. This strategy, from the overall deployment of troops to the personnel arrangements in each defense zone, was the conclusion reached by him, Lucia and Michaela after analyzing and discussing overnight these days.

Commanding an army of 300,000 is by no means an easy task, especially when this force is divided into three parties. Faced with the first joint military operation of such a scale since the alliance of the three dynasties, the three fledgling demigods have also put in a lot of effort.

What is different from the situation a thousand years ago is that Esti no longer has the power of her heyday, nor does she have the opportunity to launch a sudden attack from outer space. The people of Selia have blocked the door of the "resurrection point". Once the seal is broken, they will be able to respond as quickly as possible, defeat Esti, and then carry out a new round of sealing.

However, for some reason, even though he had perfected all the details, Latan still felt a vague sense of uneasiness in his heart these days, as if he had forgotten a fatal key.
(End of this chapter)