"Win first, then think about it later."
Only if I can win... can I think about what's next. The Saint thought about it, and the Witch just smiled more happily:
"Hehehe... That's true... Think about it after we win - isn't that what we Romans always think? In the end, we can't change anything... Nothing."
For the witch, even if she wins, it would be fine. If winning doesn't change anything, then it would be better to just lose the battle and then run away or die.
The former could at least allow her to linger on, and the latter could at least die happily - her only memory of this world was her magic research, but since magic research could not change the current Roman people, why couldn't she escape or die for herself
At least she has the power to live or die for herself.
"At least this battle of ours can make an evil god busy. That's enough. If we can really win, we will have plenty of opportunities to change our ideas in the future. But now... Priscilla, I order you to calm down."
And facing Priscilla's self-abandonment.
Cecilia gave her orders as if she had become a different person.
At this moment, she looked more like a tyrant than a merciful saint. Facing her order, Priscilla smiled again:
"Yes, yes... Calm down, calm down - at least you are the leader of the new religion, and I am just your staff... That's it. Prepare to face our next death or life. But Cecilia...
We can’t even change anyone except the ascetic nun behind us. The previous king didn’t do it, and Yang Hao didn’t do it either... What do you think we can do?"
"have no idea."
"Haha... I knew it."
The Night Witch took a step back and stabbed her staff on the ground. They watched silently as the army of the Old Church killed the last of the living dead. Although the number of the remaining army of the Old Church was large, it was much smaller than before.
If the army of the Old Church could completely overwhelm the New Church by just using human wave tactics at the beginning, then if the army of the Old Church really rushed forward all at once now, there would be a risk of being pushed back.
In the siege warfare during the cold weapon era, even an earthen wall less than one meter high could cause the attacker to suffer extremely heavy casualties, let alone the solid earthen ramparts several meters high under the feet of the Protestants
With both sides lacking long-range weapons or means of warfare, the Protestant conscripts could easily use their spears to pierce the attacking soldiers below through the cracks deliberately dug in the earth ramparts to achieve the goal of waiting for the enemy to tire themselves out, while the Old Church soldiers could only carry small ladders made from their shields and launch attacks from several intersections with difficulty...
It was impossible for Patriarch Peter not to see that he was doomed to fail in this situation. He needed the army and the enemy to be in a stalemate or even unable to advance the results of the war, but it did not mean that he had to accept this defeat and let the God of Light punish him before he appeared.
So after much thought, Patriarch Peter focused his attention on the skeleton demon.
These creatures, dumber than the dumbest golems, don't understand human language and probably won't make any evasive moves on the battlefield - but that's enough.
Let the God of Light consume his own power, make the Saint run around for life, and in the end, maybe even let the Witch consume the magic power of the area and become an ordinary mortal.
That’s enough…
That was enough - so Patriarch Peter patiently did not let his army attack, but waited, waited for the second oracle of the God of Light, waited for the extremely impatient third oracle of the God of Light to come down.
The leader pretended to be terrified and knelt on the ground, begging:
"My great Lord, we have lost the ability to break through the enemy's defenses due to the attacks of the living dead. Please let the skeleton messengers launch a swift attack. Under their leadership, we can break through the Protestant defenses and gain the victory and prisoners you want!"
The God of Light did not send a reply, but watching the skeleton demon, who had been silent for a while, in the dark night before dawn, under the illumination of the light magic released by the new saint, he directly ran over the edge of his own army and launched an attack...
The leader knew that his plan had succeeded. He ordered his army to follow the skeleton demon, but never get too close.
This is not about caring about the lives of soldiers.
It's simply because he wants to finish his work.
“Cecilia… you are a saint who has great power without relying on the God of Light—Go ahead, use up my Lord’s power so that I can have the foundation to become a god… Quick, do it!”
Patriarch Peter opened his eyes wide and looked at the Protestant position with great excitement.
Then he saw a silver-white spear of light appear on the highest observation tower of the earth fortress.
Under his gaze, the spear of light was thrown directly into the head of the skeleton demon who was running in front. With a flash of light, the skeleton demon's forward momentum stopped.
This was just a tentative attack - Patriarch Peter thought, it was not even a murderous attack from the saint.
Because if the Saint really wanted to kill someone, she would not throw the spear of light at the place where the skeleton demon looked the hardest.
The saint was testing the toughness of the skeleton demon. Just when Patriarch Peter was feeling a little nervous about his plan, he saw that the skeleton demon that was hit attacked again.
"It seems to be a unit that is extremely resistant to divine magic... Haha, it's a good thing I have you as a target."
Patriarch Peter stated.
Seeing the skeleton demon attacking again, Saint Cecilia casually summoned a thicker spear of light and gave the order to shoot to the ascetic nuns beside her.
Silver-white spears of light appeared in the sky above the earthen fortress. Following the order of the Saint, a torrential rain of spears of light instantly filled the array of skeleton demons.
Among them, only one skeleton demon was truly destroyed.
The demon that was deliberately thrown at the core by the Saint with a spear of light that used up almost one twentieth of her divine power exploded into countless skeletons on the spot. The flying weapons and shields even almost knocked down several of the front members of the Old Church army - but after thinking about it, these demons were still incredibly hard.
"Divine magic has little effect on them. Except for me, the Ascetics must concentrate their firepower to stop or kill one of them... Priscilla, try your magic. I will try to continue to "cut off" the power of the God of Light, but we need to know their weaknesses."
Cecilia turned around and said, after she condensed the divine power flowing from the God of Light into a spear of light and threw it out again, she found that the divine power flowing through her was becoming less and less.
It seemed that the God of Light had found a way to prevent the leakage of divine power as much as possible - although Cecilia knew that this was not good news, she no longer had any reason to panic.
She confirmed again and again that she could only condense the spear of light through her own strength, while the Witch of Night threw a crystal condensed by magic power towards the skeleton demon in the distance.
The black crystals were too conspicuous in the light, but the skeleton demons had no intention of dodging and just ran straight into the gift that Priscilla had prepared for them.
The magic power was directly applied to the hideous body of the Skeleton Demon. It easily destroyed the skeleton shell that even Cecilia's Light Spear had difficulty breaking, and easily shattered the inner core, finally causing the Skeleton Demon to explode directly from the inside.
Even more violent than the explosion caused by Cecilia - Priscilla looked thoughtfully at the Old Church's army being knocked down by the debris, and then gave his own opinion:
"They are not very resistant to magic. But the magic reserve of the parish is not high. I can kill at most twenty of them, or even less than twenty."
"That's enough—I can take out twenty, too."
"What about the remaining ten?"
“We are not alone.”
Cecilia signaled the Ascetic Sister who was waiting beside her to blow the horn. With the sound of the horn, the conscripts who were resting in the rear timidly walked onto the battlefield and stood at the front of the earthen rampart with their spears in hand under the supervision of the Ascetic Sister.
Looking at this group of rabble who were barely able to fight under the threat of the wolves, Priscilla shook his head and said nothing in the end.
Cecilia knew that her statement was a bit exaggerated - but, together they could kill forty. That was enough...
There are only seven or eight ascetics left to deal with.
The only thing these conscripts had to do was to prevent the Old Church's army from climbing up the earthen ramparts and causing trouble for the nuns.
If they can do this... if they can find a way to maintain morale for a while... they can win.
As long as the God of Light does not come.
Cecilia gritted her teeth and once again condensed a spear of light that was powerful enough to kill the skeleton demon, fighting for survival and her last bit of faith.
And in Constantinople in Bayezid.
The Bayerjans cheered wildly and threw flowers and blessings on the army that was ready to go.
Their king will lead the army in person to kill the God of Light who blasphemed their ancestors in this world.
Chapter 14: 1/5 The Army of the United Nations-8K
May 20th, the night before dawn.
Cecily had to keep the battlefield lit to guide the targets of the nun and the witch, and at the same time she had to personally destroy the approaching skeleton demons in front of the earthen ramparts.
She had to do two things at the same time and also take care of the command tasks. If the witch had not provided help, perhaps the Protestant Church would have been defeated on the front line because of the confusion.
Although those skeleton demons had no intelligence to dodge, their speed of charging headfirst was shockingly fast.
Although the Protestant nuns and Cecilia herself were able to use magic to stop them from advancing quickly, these obstacles would ultimately be useless if they could not be killed directly.
"Like puppets under control... these guys will just rush forward and wave their weapons around randomly while charging - but if that's all... they're not that threatening."
The Night Witch murmured as she released magic once again to completely destroy the nearest skeleton demon.
Although these demons are not very effective in fighting against magical attacks, the magic reserves in the parish are not as abundant as those in the royal capital.
In the royal capital, he had a wizard's tower with the assistance of a group of magicians, and even some magic power stored inside the tower for emergency use - but in the parish, the magic reserves here were almost used up.
The speed of magic power recovery is not optimistic, and what is even more pessimistic is the speed of the skeleton demon's attack.
Although the Sisters had begun to concentrate their forces against the same skeleton demon and successfully reduced its numbers, more demons took advantage of the lack of fire suppression to launch a surprise attack on the front.
At least five demons will arrive at the fortress. After calculating and destroying the demons that might head toward where she and Cecilia are, the Night Witch turned around and shouted:
“Cecilia?! They are almost reaching the city wall—stop using the spear of light against them, and cast tranquility spells on the conscripts quickly, quickly!”
Rather than killing the Skeleton Demons that were unstoppable and were confirmed to crash into the earthen ramparts and create an attack gap for the Old Church soldiers, it was more important to prioritize ensuring that the morale of one's own soldiers would not collapse as a result.
The Trappist Sisters had nothing to worry about. The morale of the Trappist Sisters was so high that they simply would never be defeated.
But the class of conscripts under the Ascetic Sisters, lacking the command of middle-level officers, is a real destabilizing bomb.
Once their morale collapsed, it would lead to a chain reaction. In order to avoid a chain reaction, Cecilia had to find time to use magic to suppress their urge to escape.
This was a test for Cecilia, who was already good at multitasking - but Cecilia persevered in the end.
While shooting the skeleton demons, ensuring the battlefield was well lit, and maintaining command of the battlefield, Cecilia used a tranquilization spell on her own soldiers.
The saint's powerful tranquility spell immediately calmed the conscripted soldiers, who were originally restless and about to collapse due to the demon's sudden attack.
Feeling neither fear nor anger, the conscripts calmed down and began to do their duty under the orders of the Sister Ascetic, preparing for the coming attack.
Tranquility is a widespread but rarely used divine spell. Most priests use it as a trick to fool civilians, but for Cecilia and Priscilla, it is a divine skill on the battlefield.
The Protestant conscripts were not adequately trained and had poor equipment; their only chance of victory against the Catholic army was if their morale was strong enough.
But it is impossible to expect a group of new recruits to have strong morale - but on the other hand, it is feasible to force them to grow quickly in a short period of time.
This is the art of tranquility. As long as the emotions of "fear" and "anger" are eliminated, even the weakest people will follow their orders without feeling any fear, and they will hardly run away when facing a strong enemy.
Of course, this is just a premise.
"He who retreats will die!"
The most critical guarantee for the Protestant conscripts to stay at the front line was that a group of ascetic nuns stood in the rear to supervise the battle.
For the conscripted soldiers, if the old religion attacked the fortress they would die, and if they retreated they would also die. Since they would die anyway, why not pin their hopes on a possible victory
In this way, the Protestant conscripts returned to their posts and performed their duties diligently, but their temporary spiritual strength could not make up for the material gap.
Thanks to the efforts of the ascetic nuns, although the number of skeleton demons has been reduced to single digits, in the end there are still six skeleton demons that crash into the earth rampart.
Their impact caused a small earthquake to Cecilia and the others. As the earth ramparts cracked, the first skeleton demon climbed up the not-so-high curtain wall, creating a steep slope for people to climb directly under its body, and then it began to kill the Protestant army.
Its bloated body could not stop it from moving flexibly. It was spinning like a top, and the shield and sword in its hands would turn the Protestant conscripts into fragmented corpses at any moment.
They were moving very quickly, and almost every skeleton demon that landed created a gap more than three meters wide at their landing point - but they were running too fast.
While catching the Protestants off guard, their formation was also separated too far from the main force of the Catholic army.
So Cecilia acted decisively and sent some of the Sisters to deal with the Skeleton Demons that had already rushed to the back of her line. She then ordered the conscripts to fill the gaps immediately and try to block the Old Church soldiers in the six steep slope gaps.
Although steep slopes are easier to climb than vertical walls, most people are unable to block the spears stabbing at them during the climbing process. Not only that, she also deliberately created a flashing light source behind the gap.
The Protestant warriors who turned their backs to the light source would hardly be affected by the flash, but for the Old Testament soldiers who had to climb towards the light, they could only choose to move forward with their eyes closed. But whether this would be effective... That was another good question.
Skeleton demons are wreaking havoc in the rear, and the conscripts on the front are regrouping with the help of tranquility magic.
Hundreds of Protestants died in the Skeleton Demon's sudden attack, but the casualties stopped immediately after they broke into the rear and the Ascetic Sisters started hunting them down.
"Without intelligence, the originally terrifying war machine can only be used as a one-time breakthrough weapon, and it ended up being out of touch with the main force...
It seems that the God of Light is much weaker than we thought. Even if he personally controlled a skeleton demon to attack, we would not be able to easily survive the most terrifying enemy. "
The Witch of Night curled her lips as she looked at the Old Church army ahead, which would take at least two minutes to reach the front line.
At the beginning, the skeleton demons were not far away from the Old Church army, but after being attacked and accelerated, they advanced faster and faster.
The Old Church soldiers maintained a balanced pace of advance. They tried to keep up with the skeleton demons, but how could two-legged people outrun a construct that had more legs than spiders
They ran out of breath, but the skeleton demons were still getting farther and farther away from them. After creating six gaps, the soldiers of the Old Church could only stare at them from afar. In order to avoid having no strength to climb the earth wall when they had to go to the front line, they even had to slow down and walk slowly...
If the God of Light personally controlled a Skeleton Demon, allowing it to evade attacks while waiting for the Old Church army to catch up, the New Church would not be able to create an advantageous battlefield separated from the Skeleton Demons and ordinary soldiers...
In a sense, the God of Light personally gave away his greatest fighting power. This is truly unheard of!
But rather than being happy, Priscilla was more worried at this moment whether Patriarch Peter would take the opportunity to do something...
Approaching Patriarch Peter is not as foolish as approaching the God of Light. He is a truly capable Patriarch, although greedy, but at least he is Roman's first... or second in conspiracy.
He deliberately let his army die, he must have his own ideas. But what exactly is this idea... Priscilla is not sure. All she can do is to increase her precautions.
In response to Priscilla's words, Cecilia simply nodded twice and no longer focused her attention on the skeleton demon wreaking havoc in the back.
Sooner or later, the demon will be dealt with by the Ascetic Sister. The key point now is how to withstand the attack of the Old Church.