Chapter 654: Bloody Passage
Maya led the charge with one hundred and fifty thousand troops, forming the vanguard as they stormed toward Verdant Leaf World.
Trailing slightly in the rhythm of their charge were the four Rank Three Knights from the Magus World, who nonetheless served as the backbone of the assault.
These four Sky Knights from House Ernst far surpassed the Rank Three Centaurs of Centaurworld in terms of individual strength.
Almost midway through the charge, the other three knights activated their bloodline transformations, much like Sein’s mother-in-law, significantly amplifying their strength and aura to their fullest capacity.
As these knights and their legions of enslaved creatures pressed forward, the mage forces from the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring just outside the plane also advanced.
Nearly a thousand full-fledged mages, led by five Rank Three grand mages, joined the charge and were among the first wave to enter Verdant Leaf World.
Once inside, these mages were tasked with establishing the fortress, building fortifications, and opening the spatial channel that led outside.
Sein was among these nearly one thousand full-fledged mages, representing the elite of the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring, who were entrusted with this dangerous mission.
The Verdant Leaf World War saw the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring mobilizing more forces than initially anticipated, with 3,271 full-fledged mages participating— seven hundred more than Lorianne’s original estimate.
These additional mages were comprised of Viridescent Land’s hedge mages and various hired external support.
Lorianne did not seek assistance from her faction or personal contacts; hence, these additional mages were an unexpected boon.
It appeared that the foundation of Viridescent Land was stronger than presumed.
Once all the well-known mage councils in Viridescent Land accepted the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring’s “invitation” and joined the microplane battle, even the hesitant medium and small mage councils decided to participate.
After all, serving as a divine tower mage offered more advantages than fighting alone.
In Magus World, only divine towers and orders of knights could wage legitimate wars against foreign planes.
For those ordinary mages within the divine towers, the benefits clearly outweighed the drawbacks.
The success of this mobilization also meant that the total number of registered mages at the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring would surpass 3,200 following their victory in Verdant Leaf World!
In fact, this number was likely to be even higher, as some academy mages were not joining the Verdant Leaf World war.
The figure of 3,271 represented only those mages actively participating in the war, not the total number of mages registered at the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring.
Sein was among the thousands of vanguard mages, all wielding a variety of elemental shields, surrounded by hundreds of knights.
These knights were all “old buddies” from the Thunderfall World War.
Sein had not directly invited them; he had merely notified the knights of House Ernst before the Verdant Leaf World War began.
It was Gould and others who had rallied these old comrades.
Knights prized brotherhood highly, and these had weathered many battles alongside Sein during the Thunderfall World War, honing their skills through countless conflicts.
Thanks to Sein’s efforts in building connections in Thunderfall World, as well as his notable alchemy and apothecary skills, nearly all the knights who knew him owed him a favor.
With Gould taking the initiative, those knights still capable of fighting answered the call of the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring.
Given that Verdant Leaf World was a dendro elemental microplane poorly suited for combat, it was anticipated that the war there would not be as intense as the one in Thunderfall World.
While they valued brotherhood, the knights were equally motivated by the promise of tangible profits.
In this Verdant Leaf World War, nearly a thousand ranked knights from the Magus World joined the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring’s mission.
Most of them were from the Order of the Steel Fist.
Apart from Sein’s friends and the knights of House Ernst, several hundred others joined on their own accord.
As Gould put it bluntly— “The number of mages nearly triples that of knights. How can we possibly lose this interplanar war? This isn’t a dangerous conflict; it’s a money grab. Only a fool would miss out!”
While Gould’s words were coarse, his logic was sound.
These knights had joined the Divine Tower of Verdant Spring’s campaign primarily for the potential rewards.
The wages Lorianne offered these hired knights were modest; she did not have the resources to employ a large force of knights.
However, the participating ranked knights from the Order of the Steel Fist did not mind as they were motivated by the potential spoils from the Verdant Leaf World.
They swiftly joined the conflict in Verdant Leaf World right after the conclusion of the Thunderfall World conflict.
Sein suspected that this rapid mobilization might have been facilitated by Steel Fist, the Rank Four knight.
Although Steel Fist could not lead the entire order or personally participate in Lorianne’s initial plan to attack the low-level plane, he could still spare some help to Lorianne for this microplane war as a favor.
A pale green energy passage soon appeared in Sein’s field of vision.
It was an elongated, cylindrical conduit leading to the other side of the Verdant Leaf World's planar barrier.
The fragments of the shattered barrier, along with the powerful gusts sweeping through at high altitude, signaled that this was no safe haven.
Even Rank One mages risked death if they lingered here; their magic shields might fail to withstand the planar barrier fragments and sharp hurricane winds squeezing through.
Only Rank Two or above mages like Sein, who had mastered the elemental body, could better adapt to the harsh environment.
The light green energy passage served as a lifeline for Sein and the other invading legions into the Verdant Leaf World.
Within this sturdy passage, the shapes of leaves emerged—a manifestation of Lorianne’s power involving elemental truths beyond Sein’s current level to grasp.
This corridor of life leading straight into the heart of Verdant Leaf World was also a corridor of death.
As Sein swiftly flew through this passageway, he noticed that the path beneath him was strewn with bloody corpses.
The first 150,000 centaurs to charge into Verdant Leaf World had clearly faced a brutal confrontation with the native creatures of this plane.
The native creatures of this microplane had reacted swiftly.
Just beneath the breach in the planar barrier, a demigod-level Bamboo Leaf Dragonfly, along with nearly a thousand ranked Bamboo Leaf Dragonflies and other insect creatures, had gathered.
Below them, more than three hundred thousand lower-ranked native creatures of the Verdant Leaf World had also gathered, attempting to act as a meat shield against the onslaught of the Magus World’s vanguard.