Chapter 43: The Spiderweb System
Alfred, the new strategic advisor to the King of Thessaloniki, was also Boniface’s confidant.
As a former Norman pirate who had studied at the military academy of the Holy Solomon Empire, Alfred possessed both the cunning instincts of a Norman pirate and a mastery of various Holy Roman tactics and strategies.
Therefore, with the intruding mage assassin still at large, Boniface directly handed over command of his personal guard to Alfred and hurriedly left the base, returning to Thessaloniki under the escort of his guards.
“The enemy’s strengths and weaknesses are both obvious.” Inside the command building, Alfred stood in front of a sand table, on which the terrain and building distribution of the town had been roughly piled up.
“Arcane fire abilities, and control abilities similar to Mind, Desire, or Dream, make this assassin almost impossible to deal with in a one-on-one situation.”
“However, she must lack defensive measures against large-scale attacks, otherwise, she wouldn’t have to hide like this and hunt down our stationed knights everywhere – she could just attack directly.”
“In other words, as long as everyone avoids acting alone, the opponent will have no chance to strike.”
“All search teams will consist of one powered armor knight and two knight squires as the minimum unit, and conduct a clockwise search centered on this building. I have already set all the routes. You must strictly follow this information to arrange your patrol routes.”
“Every minute, all teams must report their location and search progress. If any unexpected situation is found, report it immediately.”
“Understood!” The knights saluted in unison.
Soon, the patrol routes of the knights in the base changed, like a spreading spiderweb, seemingly chaotic and disordered, yet full of hidden dangers.
“A new commander? All operating in small groups?” Behind the wall, Medusa looked at the heavily armed and vigilant knight squads passing by, reading the information from their shallow consciousness.
“Then, let me see what you’ve learned.” She stared at these three enemies and secretly manipulated their desires.
The knight squad was advancing when one of the squires suddenly felt a sore neck and twisted his neck to turn his head.
The moment his eyes met Medusa’s, his mental body immediately fell, his limbs moving as if beyond his control. He grabbed the fireproof asbestos cloth on the knight’s armor and quickly ripped it off.
This action was so sudden that the knight and the other squire didn’t even have time to react. The next moment, a huge flame engulfed the powered armor.
Inside the rapidly heating steel armor, the knight’s flesh was almost instantly charred. The remaining two squires began to fight each other, then were easily ignited by the flames Medusa threw.
“Nothing more than this.” Medusa sneered, looking at the two squires struggling in the flames.
“What, I’ve been exposed?” She suddenly muttered to herself in confusion. “Medea, my flame control is very precise, they couldn’t send out any signal from beginning to end…”
Medusa quickly rushed into the building next door and saw two squads appear simultaneously on both sides of the street, running towards the burning corpses.
“Corpses found in area G15, currently burning.” They seemed to be communicating with the command center via radio.
“Yes, immediately search according to the latest route.”
Medusa, watching from behind the shop window, saw the two knight squads outside. One stayed in place to monitor the entire street, while the other began searching the nearby buildings.
So she walked towards the back of the store, intending to escape through the back door, while talking to Medea in her mind:
“How was I exposed?”
“You’re saying it’s because I killed these knights?”
Leaving the building through the back door, she suddenly sensed dozens of mental bodies approaching from her spiritual vision and quickly dodged behind a garbage pile.
“The enemy has set up a spiderweb-like defense system using communication channels. Each patrol squad is like a spider on the web, maintaining regular contact with the commander.”
“Once I kill one of the spiders, the entire web will be alerted, and all the nearby spiders will gather in this direction.”
“This will undoubtedly greatly increase the difficulty of my concealment. To escape from the encirclement safely, I must avoid killing any patrol squads.”
“Otherwise, every successful kill is actually exposing and updating my own location.”
“However, my own ability must be based on the pain caused by killing.”
“I understand, Medea. It seems that to break the situation, I can only start by destroying the entire patrol system.”
She stared at the knight squads hurrying past outside and quietly activated her psychic abilities, quickly flipping through their shallow thoughts.
“I see, I just need to kill their commander, right?”
Ten minutes later, Medusa quietly avoided several patrol squads and stealthily approached the Crusader command center.
It was a low two-story villa with a delicate small garden and a swimming pool.
Two fully armed knights guarded the entrance, and Crusaders were constantly coming in and out. From a distance, Medea could see two men talking on the balcony on the second floor of the villa.
There seemed to be more figures moving in the bedroom behind the balcony.
She took a deep breath and began to mobilize her surging fire ability.
A few seconds later, a stream of cyan flames shot from a few hundred meters away towards the heavily guarded two-story garden villa.
The flames first washed over the front door, melting and burning through it in less than half a second, then rushed into the lobby on the first floor with terrifying force.
As the caster’s hands moved, the flames swept like a giant python. Wherever they passed, whether it was furniture, tables, and chairs, or concrete walls, they were either melted or instantly vaporized under the terrifying high-temperature flames.
In just a few seconds, the load-bearing walls and pillars on the first floor were completely destroyed, causing the upper floor to collapse, and along with the victims inside, they all fell into the burning sea of fire.
“So much pain!” Medusa covered her cheeks in intoxication. “There are at least twenty people inside, their screams and wails in the flames are continuously replenishing my power…”
The next second, her face turned pale. A massive, undisguised malicious intent swept towards her from all directions.
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