While the Ika Kingdom gathers heavy forces, looking as if it will not rest until Peace Haven is destroyed, new changes appear on the Ironwood Fort side.
Divarak's army as if by coincidence appears outside Ironwood Fort at the sa ti as the troops Lumir has urgently gathered.
Before Lumir's army can step forward to communicate, Ironwood Fort's southern gate suddenly opens. Justice Army troops pour out in file and begin gathering outside the city.
It looks as if they are preparing for a fight both sides at once.
Then the Justice Army unexpectedly begins marching south.
Divarak shouts, "The rebels are escaping! Stop them!"
The Fire Wolf Legion and the Blue Fist Legion each send out one warband, charging toward the Justice Army.
This causes many people in the Justice Army to panic. But under the suppression of three cavalry battalions, they finally maintain their formation.
This situation originally makes the commanders of Lumir's army let out a breath of relief. They are prepared to stand aside and watch and not get involved in this battle.
After the battle ends, they can confront the Ogiro army and force it out of their territory.
But very soon, they sense that sothing is wrong.
The two Ogiro warbands do not directly strike the Justice Army's weak flank. Instead, they head toward the noncombatants in the rear.
This leaves the commanders of the three legions very puzzled. They do not understand what the Ogiro army is trying to do.
"Could they be trying to kill innocents to claim credit? Slaughtering these unard people to use them as rit?"
"Perhaps they want to create even greater chaos among the rebels. After all, the rebel vanguard is still maintaining a complete formation."
The commander of the third legion suddenly reacts. "Not good! The Ogiro people are trying to seize Ironwood Fort!"
"Quickly! We cannot let them take this city, or they will nail themselves here!"
Lumir's three legions imdiately move. The cavalry units charge forward first, trying to intercept the enemy before they enter the city.
But when the cavalry charge reaches that area, the warband from the Fire Wolf Legion suddenly stops in place and raises shields and levels long spears.
At this point, it is already too late for the cavalry to stop.
These two cavalry units crash straight into the Fire Wolf Legion.
Another Lumir legion commander suddenly snaps awake. "It is over! This is bad! We fell for it!"
At this point, Divarak roars, "Lumir is supporting the rebels. They helped the rebels flee and even brazenly attacked us to buy ti for the rebels' escape."
"Pass my order!"
"All troops attack!"
"Defeat the despicable Lumir army!"
The cavalry of three legions, combined with Prince Sundike's personal guards, forms a cavalry group of four thousand n and imdiately charges toward Lumir's two cavalry units.
At the sa ti, the remaining two warbands of the Fire Wolf Legion and the Blue Fist Legion line up on the two wings of the Sixteenth Legion and press toward Lumir's main formation.
The Ogiro army that has fully mobilized leaves only Sundike's personal guard warband to protect the command core.
The tactic is simple and brutal. Let the Sixteenth Legion withstand the enemy's first impact.
Then use the two elite warbands from the Blue Fist Legion and the Fire Wolf Legion to strike the enemy's two wings.
After the cavalry group sweeps away those two cavalry units, it will imdiately turn direction and look for an opportunity to tear open the enemy's rear formation.
Ogiro's army is already better at fighting than Lumir's.
The Fire Wolf Legion and the Blue Fist Legion are elite troops that Divarak and the others spent enormous effort building.
Even the Sixteenth Legion serving as the center army is no weakling. Within the Ogiro Kingdom, it can be considered a force with high combat strength.
More importantly, Lumir's army has not made any preparation for a decisive battle with Ogiro's army.
In addition, their earlier judgnt was wrong. They believed the Ogiro army was trying to seize Ironwood Fort.
As a result, the focus of their attack is still on taking Ironwood Fort. Now that they are temporarily changing formation, there is enough ti, but their preparation is quite insufficient.
The result is obvious. Lumir's three legions hold on for only a little more than an hour before they begin a full rout.
Divarak does not order the pursuit to go too far. He only has the cavalry group scatter and break the enemy.
Right now, their urgent priority is to enter Ironwood Fort and build a defensive system, waiting for Ogiro troops to co reinforce them.
Before that, they still have several hard battles to fight, so they must preserve as much strength as possible.
After Divarak enters Ironwood Fort, he discovers that everything here has been preserved intact, along with a large number of defensive weapons.
All of this was left for him by Browning according to their agreent. The ample food and military supplies are enough for him to hold out for a long ti.
Next, the prisoners are made to begin building three camps based on Ironwood Fort.
These are Ironwood Fort's outer defense lines. Fighting with the city at their back gives them many advantages. They cannot simply defend the city to the death.
Just like cavalry, cavalry is useless inside the city. Only in the wild can it pin down many of the enemy's forces.
But cavalry also cannot fight independently too far away from the city for too long, and it needs infantry to protect the camps.
Ironwood Fort is not a large city. For city defense, even two warbands are sowhat too many.
Divarak leaves one warband in each of the three camps outside the city. They are all the most elite warbands from the three legions.
The remaining three warbands all enter the city to rest.
The weather has already turned cool. Even though this is the southern part of the continent, almost a month has passed since the Harvest Festival, and the nights already carry cold dew.
There are houses inside the city, which helps greatly in preserving the soldiers' combat strength.
This may well beco a prolonged war. The troops outside the city also need rotating rest, and the city is a very good choice for that.
Like Browning, Divarak announces very strict military discipline, doing his best to reduce the hostility of the city's people and avoid troubleso incidents.
Two days later, Holy Lake City learns of this terrible news.
They realize this is no misunderstanding. Ogiro truly intends to act.
At the sa ti, Lumir's intelligence organization, Coral Reef, sends back information.
Ogiro is gathering large numbers of elites and moving them toward the border region.
Lumir now knows that the country is entering a state of war.
A few days later, war horns sound across Lumir. Nobles everywhere begin gathering armies and moving toward the duchy's eastern territory.
At this point, the whereabouts of the Justice Army, the trigger for all this, are no longer the focus of anyone's attention.
The Justice Army heads south all the way and reaches a small town near Lumir's East Bay, where they gain a foothold.
At this point, the Justice Army has even more people. Before the war began, Browning had already t with Divarak once.
The serfs and civilians seized earlier had already crossed Divarak's defense zone and moved south first.
The Justice Army, dragging nearly thirty thousand civilians with it, arrives at a place called Saltwater Town and begins setting up camp there.
The reason it is called Saltwater Town is that the water quality underground is terrible. The water drawn from wells is salty and bitter.
Farming is difficult, and the population is pitifully small. There is no proper city within a hundred li around it.
And this is exactly what Peace Haven needs. So equipnt has long since been arranged here.
For example, steam engines. For example, more than a dozen sets of purification runes worth tens of thousands of gold coins.
But what Browning needs to do first is build a harbor on the coast to the south.
For a short ti, the food and supplies needed to feed nearly one hundred thousand people will must be delivered by sea.
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