Chapter 289: Controlling the Slave Cities
Chapter 289: Controlling the Slave Cities (Requesting Subscriptions, Favorites, and Votes)
The city of Meereen sits on a sandy promontory near the mouth of the Skahazadhan River, on the northern coast of Slaver's Bay. To the east, a series of hills give way to a sandstone mountain range. In the past, countless mercenaries used the Kissat Pass through these mountains to raid and pillage Lazareen.
On the bridge of the flagship, Liam gazed at the city through his telescope. The city was surrounded by a massive, thick wall built from colorful bricks, with defensive towers jutting out at regular intervals. According to former slaves who had escaped, the bronze harpy heads on the walls could spew boiling oil at enemies. The most striking feature of the city, however, was its towering Pyramids.
"It looks formidable, but I don't think this city can hold out against us for long", Liam said. He then ordered ten gunboats to advance into the harbor and sink any ships attempting to flee. Five more gunboats provided cover for the transport ships as they landed on the plains outside the city.
As Liam's forces landed, the city walls were a scene of chaos. Soldiers in copper scale armor, armed with long spears, ran back and forth along the fortifications.
This was a surprise attack, and the city was completely unprepared. Liam ordered 3,000 soldiers, accompanied by 600 robots, to sweep through the suburbs and mountains, liberating the enslaved Packmates from the slave manors. He himself led 5,000 men to set up camp outside the city gates.
The day passed without incident. Liam's forces needed time to free the slaves from the surrounding manors and mines, while the city was in disarray due to the sudden attack, unable to formulate a coherent response. This standoff continued for three days, during which the gunboats sank five or six ships attempting to leave the harbor. Meanwhile, the army sent to liberate the slaves eliminated nearly 1,200 slave guards with zero casualties and rescued over 20,000 Lazareen and several thousand people from other ethnic groups.
The liberated slaves underwent a brief medical examination before being transported back to Lazareen by steamship. Some soldiers even found their long-lost relatives among them, which only fueled their desire to fight.
On the third day, the city gates opened. The long spear regiment marched out of the city in several formations, slowly advancing toward Liam's camp. Under the protection of the army, a group of silk-clad slave masters sat on the seats along the city walls, laughing and pointing at the Lazareen army below, as if watching an entertaining play.
"Are they mad?" the staff officers beside Liam looked incredulous. Everyone knew the power of the weapons they held, and the Lazareen, enhanced by memory infusion and faith, were elite warriors. They couldn't understand why the Meereen army would abandon the safety of the walls to come out and die. Nor could they fathom why the city's rulers were watching like they were at a show.
But the enemy's stupidity was a blessing. Soon, the Lazareen army also formed into battalions, with steam cannon robots and steam machine gun robots filling the gaps between the formations.
As the long spear regiment moved a certain distance from the city gates, the Lazareen army opened fire. The battlefield was immediately shrouded in white steam. The dense spear formations were easily mowed down by the steam machine guns, and explosive cherries launched by the steam cannons created bloodied carnage both in the ranks and on the walls.
Each soldier was equipped with a wind rifle capable of firing 20 rounds in quick succession. These wind rifles had an effective range of about 300 meters, and their 13mm bullets could pierce a five-centimeter-thick wooden board at that distance. The soldiers affectionately named this miraculous weapon the Windslayer.
They used the Windslayers to easily take down the few stragglers who emerged from the smoke a hundred or two hundred meters away. Supply soldiers moved back and forth between the shooters and the steam stations, replacing the air bottles for the shooters.
Finally, no one emerged from the smoke, and the Lazareen soldiers, somewhat confused, lowered their rifles. While they knew from the memory infusion how to fight this kind of war, they never expected it to be so easy on a real battlefield.
Before setting out, these soldiers had been prepared to die. Years of invasion had left deep psychological scars, and this campaign was undertaken with the resolve to fight to the death for their Deity and homeland. They never imagined victory would come so easily.
As the smoke cleared, the battlefield before the city gates came into full view: the bodies of copper-armored pikemen lay thick on the ground, many of them felled in perfect formation. Limbs were scattered everywhere, and only a few fortunate survivors wandered the corpse-strewn field in a daze.
The battlefield fell into an absolute silence until a gust of wind blew the gate, riddled with bullet holes, to the ground, revealing the chaotic streets within.
"Charge, charge in!" At this moment, missing the opportunity would be foolish. Under the officers' command, the Lazareen army swiftly passed through the unguarded gate and stormed into the city. With the majority of their army and commanders gone—most of the slave masters who had fled to the walls were wiped out in the first artillery strike, leaving the city without any command—the Lazareen forces secured the city with single-digit casualties, eliminating all resistance.
After restoring order in the city, Liam's first action was to question a few slaves about why the slave masters had ordered their troops to fight in the open.
The answer was both amusing and disheartening. When the surrounding slave plantations were breached, some slave masters had fled into the city. Upon learning that the attackers were from Lazareen, they arrogantly assumed that the slaves were delivering themselves to be crushed. This led to the order for the army to march out and even for the masters to watch from the walls, viewing the battle as nothing more than a grand spectacle. They believed their forces could easily crush the Lazareen.
Unfortunately for them, Liam had rapidly industrialized Lazareen, leading to a war outcome far different from what the Meereen slave masters had imagined. They became the ones crushed by the wheels of history.
After the war, Rose Crystal arrived to absorb the unclaimed faith from the Temple of Benevolence using divine flame, and she planted her own faith in the city. With the divine miracle, most of the city's inhabitants converted to the worship of Rose Crystal, who now occupied the Supreme Shepherd godhood under the name of the Supreme Crystal.
This act had a significant side effect: Rose Crystal could easily gather information from her believers, making the subsequent purge of rebels much simpler.
Once the rebels were thoroughly eradicated, a large number of hastily trained administrators took over the city, initiating the process of modernization.
The army then moved south along the coast, and the other Slave Cities fell just as easily as Meereen. Within two months, Yunkai, Astapor, New Ghis, and numerous smaller settlements were captured and brought under control. Whether it was the lax mercenaries, the resilient Unsullied, or the elite New Ghis forces with their armored elephants, none could withstand the relentless barrage of the new army. Even the thick city walls could not withstand the combined attacks of magic and artillery, let alone the fact that the slaves and defenders within the cities were not united.
A few enemy casters with supernatural powers were either eliminated or captured by Liam and Rose Crystal, and Liam gained considerable knowledge of the extraordinary.
Finally, after securing the western part of the Slaver's Bay, centered around the four major Giss civilization cities, Liam returned to Meereen. There were more important matters awaiting him than war.
(End of Chapter)
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