Published: March 12, 2025
Chapter 140: The Top Priority
While Zhao Hai and Galen were releasing the insects underground, the mages and soldiers dispatched by the Versailles Family also arrived in Nate's jurisdiction.
The Versailles Family keeps records of the personnel in charge of each relay station, so as soon as Nate reported, the people from the Versailles Family immediately knew which area was in trouble.
This time, the five mages and the one hundred cavalry did not bring Nate along. Due to Nate's lack of strength, taking him would only slow them down, so he was left at Charging Bull Fortress.
The Versailles Family took the insect plague very seriously, otherwise, they wouldn't have sent five mages to assess the situation. While mages are not weak in individual combat, their group attack capabilities are even stronger. If it were just an ordinary insect plague, a few spells would suffice to extinguish it instantly.
However, when these people arrived at Nate's jurisdiction, they were stunned. What once was a wheat field now resembled a battlefield, with a fierce battle between humans and insects unfolding. Although the participants were merely slaves, the intensity of the conflict exceeded their imagination.
Across the wheat field, insects were feasting on the seedlings, while the slaves desperately fought to smash the insects into the ground and stomp them to death. Not far away, many slaves lay still, their bodies straight and their faces pale, with only slight movements of their chests indicating they were merely exhausted to the point of fainting.
The scene further away made the mages and soldiers gasp in shock; not only Nate's jurisdiction was affected, but other areas were also suffering from the insect plague, and the affected area was far beyond the mages' imagination.
The leading Fire Mage quickly turned to a soldier beside him and said, "Immediately return to Charging Bull Fortress and report to the elder. The situation here exceeds expectations. Please elevate this crisis to a level one strategic emergency. It would be best to request reinforcements from the family immediately; otherwise, the Ika Plain will face a total crop failure today."
The soldier, who was the captain of the squad and a level six warrior, did not dare to delay. He quickly turned his horse back toward Charging Bull Fortress.
The leading mage did not immediately start exterminating the insects; instead, he turned to the soldiers and commanded, "Everyone, retreat fifty meters, clear the seedlings there, and establish a ten-meter wide isolation zone. Bring those slaves over. Weng, heal these slaves and have them help establish the isolation zone. Send people to notify other areas; all regions affected by the insect plague should be dealt with in the same way."
Several warriors responded and rode off to spread the news while the others rushed into the fields to carry out the exhausted slaves. Weng, a water mage, began to heal them. Meanwhile, the leading Fire Mage, wielding his magic staff, murmured a few incantations, summoning a fire serpent. He pointed, and the fire serpent dashed toward the wheat field, creating a horizontal isolation zone that spanned nearly a hundred meters, demonstrating the power of his spell.
The other mages also employed their own techniques to establish isolation zones between the infested and unaffected wheat fields.
This mage clearly had experience dealing with insect plagues. At this moment, establishing isolation zones was the best method to combat these crawling pests.
The soldiers took out their weapons and began to create the isolation zone as instructed by the mage. The zone spanned nearly ten meters wide, and just establishing this zone would waste a significant amount of wheat.
These mages had not considered that this insect plague was man-made, so they treated the situation as an ordinary outbreak. The methods they employed were indeed effective against regular insect plagues but were futile against a man-made one.
Zhao Hai and Galen, on the other hand, were not tired. Once they entered the space, they remained very attentive to the external situation. However, to avoid being discovered by others, they only entered the space after reaching the windbreak forest. Now, they could only see what was happening within a five hundred-meter radius.