My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World-Chapter 131: The Pain of War (Part 2)

After helping the soldiers of the empire push back the Kalusia army, the Aridonia forces arrived and flanked their position, which made them retreat almost immediately.

Except for some lesser demons who seemed to be entranced in fighting, the rest understood that it was a losing battle and ran back to the depths of the desert.

When I returned to the empress, she was talking with Samir, who was the man who had led the five thousand soldiers from Aridonia that we teleported closer to the battlefield.

Samir did say he would arrive early in the day, and he proved that he knew what he was talking about since they came at the exact time that he anticipated.

They were both discussing their next move, as they believed they should keep pushing all the way to the enemy’s camp, take control of it, and have them retreat even more.

However, that was only the enemy camp that was the closest to the empire, but there were several of them located all over the desert, so it wasn’t like all of their forces were concentrated on one spot.

We had five thousand of the Aridonia soldiers with us, but there were twenty thousand more that were sent to different areas to battle, plus the thousands that stayed in the country as the last line of defense.

The sultan wasn’t really a fighter like the empress, but he still had to mobilize along with his troops to take care of the enemy army camp that had been set close to one of their towns.

The Droman Empire had over sixty thousand soldiers, but their borders were so big that they all had to be allocated on different posts as there were too many gaps for the enemy to strike.

Thankfully, I left a voice crystal with the sultan, so we were able to communicate directly with him without worrying about our letters being intercepted.

I gave Vespera a special mission and asked her to go to the Droman capital and look for the Dawn’s Defenders, which were the ex-bandits that we saved, and told her to bring them to the battlefield.

Most of them specialized in stealthy missions, so I thought they would be helpful to have around. Besides, the main culprit for their previous curse was Zagor, which I knew they wanted to take down as payback for their suffering.

Vespera wouldn’t last long bringing them all to the camp, so I left with the empress to help on the following battle for control of the enemy encampment nearby.

Lysandra told me that in a typical war, they would have waited until nighttime to ambush them. However, the lesser demons would have an advantage if we did that, not because they got stronger in the dark but because they were much harder to see since their bodies were made of shadows.

As the empress marched with the army, I followed them from high in the air as it gave me a better view of our surroundings.

The desert was vast and sandy, sure, but that made it easier for me to spot people or buildings from the air, and after an hour of following the army, I spotted the Kalusian army camp in the distance.

I quickly descended and told the empress to keep walking on one side of a large dune that separated the incoming army from the enemy camp.

The reason was that I noticed that they had placed their base right under a few desert dunes that would allow them to spot any enemy coming from miles away.

However, if they went around it, the enemy wouldn’t be able to spot them until they were charging at their camp, giving them less time to flee.

Lysandra understood my plan and rerouted the soldiers to go around the dune while I went ahead to look for any enemy scouts guarding the area using my "search" spell.

As I expected, there were two beastkins standing between the dunes opening that the empire soldiers would use, so I descended and knocked them out with my bo before they could even discern what was happening.

Now that I had a few minutes to inspect the beastkin soldiers closer, I felt a weird energy coming from their bodies, which felt exactly like the one the cursed bandits had. However, these guys had no black flower tattoo, so I couldn’t tell how the curse worked.

When I focused on looking for the origin of the shadowy, eerie aura, I could see a trail going into their chests, but when I checked to see if they had a curse mark, they had nothing.

’Is it... going inside their bodies?’ I wondered, noticing the shadowy trail that came from the left side of their chests.

I suspected that the curse that had been placed on the beastkins was different than the ones on the bandits, but if it could be cured with the holy panaceas, then it made no difference.

As I opened my void pocket to grab one, I saw the empress and the soldiers arriving, so I decided to leave it for later.

We couldn’t keep wasting time since nighttime was only a few hours away, so the empress led the charge as the soldiers rushed toward the enemy camp.

The beastkin soldiers started retreating as soon as they saw the wave of people coming at them, mounting their horses and fleeing deeper into the desert. Meanwhile, the lesser demons stood their ground and charged head-first towards the empire’s soldiers.

I quickly flew to catch up to some of the fleeing beastkins and knocked them out before they got themselves killed.

Most soldiers from the empire were aware that the beastkins were cursed, and they tried their best to incapacitate them and not kill them. However, some beastkins were too strong for them to handle, so there were a few casualties here and there where the soldiers had no other choice.

At one point, I saw a lesser demon was about to attack a female soldier from behind, so I rushed using lightning magic and sliced its head with my mithril dagger.

"Thanks!" said the female soldier as she rushed to attack another demon.

’Man... this sucks...’ I thought as I stared at the shadowy corpse dissipating into thin air.