This should be the third time I've fought in person, Demilo thought.
While a commander was supposed to sit in the rear directing the troops, when those troops were wiped out, the commander naturally had to step onto the battlefield to fulfill the strategic objective. After all, even if you were killed in battle, the god would reawaken you from memory, and the merits earned in your previous life would even carry over.
To a god, suitable legion commanders were a scarce resource. Not all sorcerer projections qualified to become Heroic Spirits. Most sorcerer projections could never discover a command specialty, and even if they had one, it might not align with their faction. For example, a sorcerer specialized in commanding undead troops was utterly useless in the Star Hall, which had no undead units whatsoever.
Different sorcerer projections possessed different command specialties, but commanding was not yet a sorcery school recognized by the Void Realm. Consequently, it received no assistance from the Void Realm and could rely solely on the commander's personal talent.
For a commander like Demilo, who had spent over a century cultivating a specialty in Logistics, the god would never abandon him. There were barely any logistics commanders in the Star Hall, and every one of them accelerated the faction's resource-gathering speed.
If he fled... Fleeing wasn't an option. When commanders knew that dying in battle offered better value, no one chose to run. Ultimately, they were merely puppets endowed with memories; their mindset was a straight, one-way street that never executed redundant directives.
—Yet ever since encountering this group of sorcerers, he had been doing nothing but executing redundant directives.
Demilo looked at the greatbow gripped in his left hand, signifying that he had bestowed the Star Archer troop type upon himself. Much like knowledge creatures, a commander bestowed with a troop type would undergo mutations based on their personal traits. Because he had mastered the two miracles, Fierce Tyrant's Bow of Calamity and Diamond Split Arrow, the Star Archer form had mutated accordingly. A normal Star Archer possessed neither such a massive bow nor such dazzling arrows.
And compared to knowledge creatures, a commander held another undeniable advantage.
He could stack multiple soldiers of the same type onto himself simultaneously.
For instance, right now Demilo had accumulated the full Star Archer manpower capable of outfitting eight minions onto his own body. Doing so did not increase his damage, but armor could stack. While a Star Archer's armor had only 2 layers, stacking it eight times turned it into 16 layers.
This numerical increase meant more than just higher armor health; it signified an explosive surge in the armor's damage reduction coefficient!
The more armor layers one had, the higher the damage reduction on the outermost layer, and the more damage naturally required to blast through a single layer.
If each layer of armor had 100 health and 1 layer offered 10% damage reduction, shattering 1 layer required 112 damage. But with 2 layers of armor, the outermost second layer had 14% damage reduction, requiring 117 damage to shatter!
The damage reduction of every single layer differed, growing progressively higher with each layer!
Although the coefficient could not increase indefinitely, Demilo, with his 16 layers of armor, enjoyed nearly 50% damage reduction on his outermost layer. The ramming strike from that iron monster earlier—an impact potent enough to pierce three layers of armor—had only managed to tear through his sixteenth layer. Behind it remained the fifteenth, fourteenth...
This was precisely why soldiers were more important than minions. So long as there were enough soldiers, even if every minion fell, a Heroic Spirit could become an army of one!
During the two previous wars of the Grand Investiture of the Six Nations, Demilo had once stacked up to 300 units of Star Archer manpower on himself, standing on a tactical high point to single-handedly suppress multiple hostile legions. For that feat, he had earned the "Invincible Heroic Spirit" Medal and had been rewarded with triple merits by the god.
Before his armor shattered, he had plenty of time to slowly execute these sorcerers.
Drawing his bow into a full moon, Demilo aimed at the iron beast charging toward him.
Hum!
Suddenly, with a screeching squeal of tires, the sports car braked sharply and drifted just before impact, carving a doughnut of skid marks as it slid erratically before Demilo's eyes.
Trying to disrupt my aim, which means this iron monster can't take many hits from me either... Demilo deduced the enemy's intent and weakness in an instant. Yet right at that moment, one of the sorcerers suddenly poked his head out to observe!
Twang!
Though Demilo reacted with blinding speed, the opponent seemed to have baited him intentionally, ducking back the moment he popped up and tricking Demilo into wasting a shot. At the same time, the sports car took another vicious bite out of Demilo, stripping away his fifteenth layer of armor.
Cunning man.
Demilo adjusted his combat strategy once more, giving up on sniping the sorcerers to focus entirely on destroying the iron juggernaut. But as the iron beast circled around once more, the Star Shepherd suddenly realized he had walked into a trap.
Even after exiting the cave, the iron beast's rear continued to discharge toxic mist. Although the venomous vapor dissipated quickly in the open air, after several laps of accumulation, the concentration of dark-green poison had reached a level sufficient to obscure vision!
If he tried to fire from range, even if his arrows split into three, at most one would likely hit. After all, the iron beast moved with tremendous speed along an unpredictable path, and with his vision compromised, Demilo was by no means guaranteed to blow up their mount before his armor gave out.
In other words, to ensure his accuracy, Demilo had only one option left—
Hum!
As the sports car burst from the thick fog to crush its foe, Demilo, who had been waiting for this moment, released his bowstring!
A head-on clash!
He would wait until the iron beast reached point-blank range before firing, ensuring every arrow fulfilled its life's purpose!
Demilo was utterly convinced that before his armor shattered, the beast before him would be shredded to pieces by his arrows!
In theory, that was indeed how it should go.
Assuming no one interfered.
Just an instant before Demilo was struck aside by the blades, several water-like threads shot out from the sports car, wrapping around his waist like a tender embrace!
Then, a violent yank!
Unable to escape the threads' bind, Demilo was prevented from being launched into the air by the car's impact, forced instead to remain pressed intimately against Wicked Edge. He did not panic, only feeling somewhat puzzled. The terrifying aspect of this iron beast was not these two blades capable of easily slicing through souls, but rather its immense momentum amplified by velocity.
Now held fast by the threads, he certainly suffered sustained damage from the blades, but compared to the impact damage from earlier, the harm felt as negligible as being clipped by a pair of nail clippers.
Still, remaining controlled indefinitely was no solution. Demilo reached to draw a diamond arrow to sever the threads, only to realize the iron beast had already shoved him clear of the toxic mist.
Why did he willingly give up his visual advantage? In open terrain, they have zero capital to contend with me.
Could it be...?
Demilo felt a sudden premonition. Glancing back, he realized the cave wall was right behind him!
Chapter 243