Chapter 313: Return to the Surface

Sage took some time to climb his way back up the wall of the fissure. It wasn’t a quick ascent, but it was faster than running up the paths that switched back and forth. Eventually, he found the area where the tar pit was. Then he retreated a bit and hid within a small cave, rebuilding and applying his Human Seal before walking out to check up on the situation. Without their leader, the remaining Slavers had been taken care of. Sage activated the Timeless Eyes, peering into the past with Hindsight to track the course of what he’d missed.

His men were successful in defeating the Slavers, though it was a very bloody affair. Many Hoplites died, and quite a few slaves got caught in the crossfire. Sage watched as one of the Centurions proved to be quite merciless. The Slavers tried to use a few slaves as hostages, threatening to kill them to keep the Jade Horde back. When that didn’t work, they even tried to use them as human shields against the Jade Horde. The Centurion had a grim look on his face, but he didn’t let his unit slow down in the least. They cut down the slaves and then the Slavers with ruthless efficiency. After that, the Slavers didn’t waste their time with the other slaves and ran for their lives.

The order was terrible, but saved more lives in the long run. Sage wasn’t sure if he could make such a purely ruthless decision. He would have probably tried to work out a trick of some sort. He made a mental note to keep track of the fellow, and continued to watch the events play out around the tar pit. The Slavers in the area were scattered, but the Jade Horde wasn’t complacent. They quickly rounded up all the Slaves in the area and moved to the place they had found the highest concentration of slave pens.

Sage watched these events play out with one eye while using the other to keep a lookout in the present. He followed their path and saw them in the past, freeing the rest of the slaves and fighting off a few counter attacks from Slaver teams. They took some casualties and even armed a few of the slaves before pushing their way to one of the entrances. The Slavers were fighting off the teams that were harassing the entrances from the outside, and they took this chance to pincer them. Trapping the Slaver group between the outside forces and their heavily injured squads. The Slavers fought ferociously as they had no escape path. Eventually, they were eradicated and the four squads led hundreds of slaves out. Four squads of ten, along with two Centurions had accompanied Sage in, but only a little more than half of them walked back out.

At this point, Sage no longer needed to keep watching the past events as he also left the cave exit and stepped out into the cool night air. In the distance he could see the flames from many campfires so he picked up the pace and moved quickly to rejoin the troops. He smiled when he was stopped by the guards on watch, glad they weren’t shirking their duties even after a hard battle. Of course, after he got close enough and they saw his armor they were very respectful. Finally, after confirming his identity token he sped into the camp and moved towards the center. Heading for the largest tent, the command tent. He gave an order to the guards to summon the officers and went inside.

After a few minutes the two Legionnaires and twenty Centurions had assembled. Sage got a post battle report from them. They had held out against the monstrous tar people for nearly an hour before they all just dissolved into black puddles all at the same time for no apparent reason. Shortly afterwards, the two Centurions led their squads out of the cave entrance and brought along the newly released slaves. Then they set up camp and tended to the large number of wounded. There had been a short debate about whether or not to push into the cave system to look for more slaves and also Sage himself. Zhang Tu, the Legionnaire in charge, had decided it was more imperative to take care of their wounded troops and the newly released slaves. He’d been given orders to control the battlefield, and not to commit to an underground exploration.

Sage commended his choice, “Well done. In the morning I want you all leading your best squads in clearing out the whole nest down there. If there are other slaves trapped down there we can’t leave them behind. There might also be valuable resources or clues that will tell us more about these Slavers. Everybody rest and heal. Dismissed.”

Everyone was far too tired to argue. They had in fact just ended a similar meeting and were called away from their beds to have the same meeting a second time. The next day the operation proceeded as planned, while messages were sent and received from the other two teams. They hadn’t run into the problems Sage had and they had taken their first target locations successfully. The underground exploration went smoothly, though there was deep sorrow at the number of bodies they found. They were happy to learn that they’d already freed the majority of the slaves the previous night, and only a few were still trapped down there. Thankfully, the Slavers were too busy worrying about escaping to take them along or kill them.

They cleared the place out pretty quickly and Sage used another Warp Worm to check it more thoroughly without worrying about making noise and alarming anyone. Amazingly, the underground crevice was massive and the path wound its way all the way down to the bottom of it. There was an underground river flowing through, but they realized that only part of the area was inhabited. It was likely that the area was built and later abandoned by some other group in the past and the Slavers just found it. After finding nothing valuable down there, they sent a detachment of a few Centuries to lead the freed civilians back to the nearest city. They offered to escort them back to their hometowns or villages later, but first they had a task to accomplish. Those with nowhere to go could accompany them back to Lionheart Town, where they would help them as best they could.

In the meanwhile, Sage led the majority of the two legions to their second target. On the third day, he received the news that the other groups were successful. Wu Chang had run into a little trouble, but given that he was now the strongest person in the Jade Horde, he was able to handle it. They sustained a high number of casualties, but they were victorious in the end. Black Saber had faced a few Core Formation cultivators at each of the two locations, but he’d worked with the legions to take them out before they caused large losses. Wu Chang had run into a similar explosive ambush as Sage had on the first attack, and then lost more men while up against a pair of very vicious Core Formation cultivators, that took turns restricting his movement while the other killed the soldiers of the Jade Horde.

Sage then led the attack on his team’s second target site and avoided an ambush with his Foresight. The Slavers had left their gates open, making their compound look deserted. Slaves were kept in a huge pen in the center of their base, which they used as bait to draw the Jade Horde in. Sage was halfway through the town when he finally saw something unusual and he immediately gave an order, stopping the legion in its tracks and putting them on guard. The view to the center of this distribution point was clear, but it was also built on a hill with only one path up. It made it hard for the slaves to escape when they were all kept on a large pedestal in the center of town, like they were stuck on a stage and easily visible from every direction.

The problem was that this distribution point was far from empty. The Slavers had set up booby traps everywhere. As soon as they advanced a bit further they were going to start setting them off, which Sage saw and immediately called them back. They couldn’t just turn around and run, because their enemy was likely hiding in all the buildings around them, waiting for their traps to be sprung so they could rush out and start grinding up the Jade Horde.

Too bad for them, Sage saw through their traps and pulled back the Jade Horde before they entered the most deadly part of the compound. He saw the soldiers falling into concealed pits and their enemies rushing out of the buildings like maniacs. Sage pulled the men back and they all slowly retreated from the compound. Instead of a frontal attack, they surrounded the distribution point and put them under siege. They had War Falcons intercept all the messages the Slavers tried to send out, and then set up a larger perimeter to keep watch for any secret reinforcements.

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