Chapter 1980: Retreat
1980 Retreat
"Retreat," Leonel said calmly.
He took a glance at the distance just a single time before turning away. With a leap, he landed on Little Blackstar's back, his expression calm.
In the distance, an army led by Huon, Droet, Hulot, Druid, and most obviously, Keiza, had appeared. They rode on the backs of beasts that were all quite shocking and powerful, so much so that although he had long since looked away, Leonel's eyes couldn't help but narrow.
Leonel didn't recognize those beasts, but the people of the Human Domain most definitely did. Those were the very beasts that the Lio family had prepared beforehand, beasts that had given them a great advantage previously, but had suddenly now come under the control of the Gemin and Libra families.
The Lio family's only choice was to be quite devastated about this. They were among the rare few that had two members of the Cataclysm Generation with both Conon and Gunter, but neither of them were strategists and they were both quite simple minded.
In order to defeat them and claim their beasts, Keiza and the Libra twins only needed to defeat Conon. So long as Conon's badge was shattered, his beasts would be left behind. This was the difference between using a kill exchange for a beast and using points. If these beasts had been exchanged with kill exchanges, then they would have disappeared along with Conon and Gunter when they exited the Heir Wars following their loss.
The Lio family had used a loophole to gather a large amount of beast subordinates for just one point each. By the time Keiza had gotten to them, they had already gathered over a hundred thousand in this way.
Normally, it should have been impossible for these beasts to so easily follow a new master like this, but the Gemin family had an advantage that the others didn't... And that was their comprehension of the soul. Controlling such low talent beasts was actually extremely easy for them.
Now, a great hoard was charging after Leonel and the others.
Leonel had thought that something like this might happen after he ran into the Libra twins. The two of them already had his general location, and they also had methods of relaying this information back, so that meant for as long as Leonel didn't notice, those two had probably been monitoring his movements. After they died and the connection was severed, the Libra and Gemin families had probably decided it was time to press forward.
'Those beasts... Their constitutions are weak, but they're all in the Seventh Dimension. It must have taken quite a bit of investment to do that, that's also a decent loophole to exploit as well... But those beasts shouldn't be native to the Gemin or Libra territories, so it must have been claimed from another family.
'The only families or organizations with enough capital to use this method have to be among the few most powerful. It could only be one of the Constellation families.
"Why are you running, great Emperor Leonel?! You've seen me! Are you not going to kill me?!"
Leonel's expression flickered. He recognized this voice, it was one of the Libra family twins that he had met during the True Selection. His gaze became colder, but he didn't respond.
The speed of the beasts the coming army charged with were not slow. They had just appeared over the horizon, but they were already rapidly closing the distance. Although it was true that if it wasn't for their inhuman abilities, even seeing or hearing one another would be impossible right this moment, this distance was still close enough for them to close within a quarter hour.
The only reason Leonel had been able to cover so many hundreds of kilometers of territory to begin with was because of the speed of the Seventh Dimension. But now that very speed was coming back to bite him.
There was no way for him to make it back to his own territory in that time.
If he abandoned the soul constructs, their speed would be much faster, but they would still be caught. And if they were caught without the soul constructs present, well that ending could be imagined.
Little Blackstar was especially fast, but that was in his normal form. In this form, where he used his mimicry to imagine a much larger, more powerful creature, he wasn't even a tenth as fast.
The best option seemed to be to stop and fight. Their army was just shy of
200 000 strong and Leonel still outnumbered them greatly with things the way they were. However, Leonel abandoned that idea instantly.
They weren't 200 000 strong, they were 400 000 strong. Each of them rode atop of beasts that multiplied their power. On top of that, half of them were Libra family members who were charging forth in tandem. When they worked together, their power was worth at least three people on the lower end, far more depending on their level of genius.
This size of army was already enough to clash head on with Leonel's soul construct army and not lose out. These were true geniuses of the Constellation families, a large segment of whom had made quite a name for themselves in the Void Palace.
The Morales Ancestors frowned when they saw this scene. They had already known that Leonel's actions were risky, and his timing of retreat wasn't bad either, the problem was that this Keiza's timing was even better.
She seemed to have been lounging around until she suddenly decided to pounce, even using a teleportation reward they had received from a dungeon to press their advantage and make sure they caught up.
The Lio family had lost so miserably and yet she had hardly needed to lift a finger. Now it looked as though Leonel was about to suffer the same fate.
Even now, the young woman reclined in a sedan, sipping a drink as the twins continued to roar out derogatory comments.
It seemed that the Libra and Gemin family were intent on ripping down all of the shock and awe Leonel's actions had brought to this moment. If he ended up falling this way, running in his final moments, everything else would seem to have become meaningless.
The man in question, though, continued to look forward, his gaze sharp.