Way of the Knights

Chapter 783: The Exiles’ Army

“…there had been many changes in the sect during the past couple decades.” Raven stated this in front of Sect Officials.

Currently, all of them are inside the Grand Hall where the meetings takes place. Everyone was present since whatever’s being discussed currently is an important matter for the sect. 

“The changes brought us many advantages. From this, I can confidently say that our sect can easily rank amongst the top once we decided to open up our borders. Although we are far from perfect, we are doing good already.” 

“That being said, our enemies aren’t so idle either…” Raven took this time to announce the important part of this topic. 

“As all of you knows, I have been monitoring the movements of our enemies since we discovered their existence. Fifty years had already passed since then and the amount of preparation they had were not any less than ours. With our combined efforts, we managed to even-out the playing field but this will still be a hard battle to overcome even with our preparations. Do take a couple of minutes to inspect this image.” 

Raven waved a hand and a projection appeared in front of him. This projection displayed the territory of their enemies -The Exiles. 

During the past 50 years, they weren’t so idle either. They continued to accumulate their strength by using foul means to abduct people and force them to do their bidding. 

The territory of The Exiles are pretty far away from where the sect is. Additionally, they are also hidden from the public’s view. They locked themselves up inside a Secret Realm that can only be opened and closed by their sole Leader. 

Thankfully, Raven managed to plant countless of spies in their ranks without their knowledge. In fact, the spies themselves doesn’t even know that they were spies. 

Raven achieved this during the last time that they sent out badges for the Sect’s disciple recruitment. He attached a spying rune in the comets that acted like a virus, those saw the comets will be infected. There will be an indiscernible rune planted on their consciousness. It won’t harm them in any way, shape or form. It will only act as a monitoring device, one that could easily tamper with their vision and share what they could see with Raven.

Not even their leader could’ve guessed that such a method was feasible, hence until now, nobody discovered them. This, along with the sect’s announcement of shutting-in, prevented their enemies from potentially sending spies inside their ranks while they every move was monitored by Raven’s avatars.

The Secret Realm of The Exiles was huge. They have millions of disciples who were all abducted or conned into joining their ranks. They can’t refuse or else they will be executed on the spot. Even if they willingly joined, they are still required to be put on a tight leash. 

A Brain Devouring Parasite was planted in them. The moment they think about escaping or disobeying orders, the parasite will be triggered and they will turn into a mindless puppet for The Exile’s use. 

“Based from what we’ve gathered so far, The Exiles had a total amount of five million disciples.” Raven stated expressionlessly, “Two million of these disciples are mindless puppets while the rest are just some terrified people who were forced to follow orders.”

“If our disciples were to fight them one on one, I can confidently say that we will dismantle their ranks without even breaking a sweat. They’re united not by strength or leadership but because of fear, these people didn’t want any of this, they simply weren’t given any choice in this matter.”

“However, the enemy of course would let that kind of weakness stop them from their conquest.” Raven shook his head solemnly. “In order to eliminate this glaring weakness, they taught a unique formation to their disciples. The result of the formation is the one that you’re seeing right now.”

The image Raven presented to them was that of Great Demons lined-up in an orderly manner. Each demons released a heart-palpitating aura and wore fierce expressions. They took on different forms and held different kinds of weaponry. They were large, the shortest of them was at least twenty meters tall while the largest was at least a hundred meters in height. 

This is the result of the formation that The Exiles taught to their disciples. Each formation needed the cooperation of at least 200 to 500 disciples. 

“They call this formation; Wretched Demon Formation. It allows Wretched Demons to descend and lay waste on everything that’s in front of them.” Raven explained, “Each Demon is at least an early Knight Monarch Realm, the larger ones could reached late stage.”

“Above them are what they call the 6 Demon Princes and 6 Princesses. Their core members are the 6 Demons Lords, Demon Kings and 3 Demon Emperors.”

“The Princes and Princesses are at least peak Knight Monarch Experts. The Demon Kings and Lords are somewhere between early to late stage Empyrean Knight, Demon Emperors are at Peak Empyreans while their absolute leader – the Allfather, is comparable to a Divine Knight.” 

Hearing the strength of the enemies army caused a solemn atmosphere to descend. What Raven stated earlier was right, this will indeed still be a difficult battle to win. Their enemies are prepared to go for an all out war.

Unlike the sect, they don’t care about casualties at all. Whether the disciples die or not is none of their concerns, their goal is simple. 

“In the end, what they wanted is to free the Devil Emperor from its prison.” Raven revealed. 

With fifty years of spying their enemies, it’s no surprising that Raven was managed to discover their true aim. 

“As we all know, the appearance of The Exiles was because of the Devil’s Emperor. The founder of The Exiles was once a disciple of our sect. The Devil seduced him and told him all kinds of promises in exchange of his freedom.”

“The Devil Emperor corrupted the founder’s mind and nearly succeeded on freeing the Devil Emperor, thankfully, our predecessors found this out and managed to stop him before its too late.”

“That being said, the damage is already done. The seed of evil has already been planted. The founder of the exiles managed to escape and hid, slowly gathering strength to finish what he started.”

“Now, that seed of evil already fostered and became the Allfather.” Raven concluded, “The Allfather probably has no idea about the fate of the Devil Emperor. If he does know though, I wouldn’t be too surprised.”

“While I do have confidence in my Sealing Runes, the Allfather is still a genuine Divine Knight powerhouse. He might have some means to free the Devil Emperor so we have to on guard around him.” 

“As for the rest of the army. I believe that under your leadership, we can cinch victory while making sure our casualties remaining on low side.” 

“I previously mentioned this but I’ll remind you again…” Raven’s tone became firm at this point, “I wouldn’t personally participate in this war. I’ll leave most of the decisions to all of you. This war is bad but we can also view it as an opportunity. The baptism of blood is a great catalyst for the disciples’ growth.”

“Rest assured, I wouldn’t be so idle.” Raven stated, “I’ll keep the Allfather in check along with the Sect Master and the other Divine Knights. We can’t let him free the Devil Emperor after all. If that happens, we will lose our immortal energy supply, that would be bad for business.” 

The listeners were speechless. Raven legitimately just treated the Devil Emperor as an infinite energy source, not a threat. Perhaps, in this whole wide world, only him has the capabilities to say something like this. 

“I’ll leave the briefing of the disciples to you all. I know that you guys will do a better job than me in that regard.”

“To conclude my part, I want to remind everybody here that the goal of this war isn’t the extermination of The Exiles, that’s our second priority. Our main goal is to prevent them from succeeding at their plans.”

“Don’t weigh your lives at the same value as theirs, that’s not a fair comparison.” Raven shook his head, “Killing the enemies is preferable but keeping you alive is important. After all, you guys would be more useful to the sect alive rather than dead.” 

“If there’s really a scenario where escape is impossible, go out with a big bang. Take as many as you can down with you.”

“Again, our goal is to prevent them from freeing the Devil Emperor. Don’t be afraid to prolong the battle, we’re not pressed on time as much as they are.”

“As for the Grand Formation they planned to use to pry open our defenses. Leave that to me. I already made sufficient preparations for it.” 

“So, that’s about it for me. I’ll let you guys take the stage, next. Once you planned out the offence and defense, just report the final decision to me. You know where to find me.” 

After saying that, Raven immediately disappeared from their view. The others couldn’t only smile wryly and discuss the details of the war by themselves. 

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