There were thousands, even tens of thousands of orcs after the Elemental Ten members, but the Three Great Generals didn't have their backs empty either. Along with receiving the news that the Golden City gates had fallen, they gathered all the forces under their command here, to the Middle Region, and formed a single and powerful defense line.
They didn't care about the other parts anyway; their civilization had long crossed the threshold of destruction, now all they could do was fight to live. And they wanted to do this with the greatest power in their hands because it was impossible for them to slip through the giant crowd formed by the orcs alone.
The final moments of General Head still hadn't faded from before their eyes. The consequence of his being caught off guard, perhaps due to a tiny, just a momentary distraction, perhaps exhaustion, had been heavy. Ten thousand people under their command were enough to cause a distraction. They thought if they could stay alive until the heat of the battle rose and the big heads clashed, they could catch an opportunity to escape too.
This was in the nature of being a Mercenary; whether you were the lowest ranking soldier or one of the Three Great Generals, it didn't matter, you always had to get the chance to start a new life in a new place. Loyalty was neither to a person nor to an institution; loyalty could only be to the brightly shining yellow gold coins.
Their aim was clear, and from within the Orc Empire Armies forces, relatively the weakest ones had come against them. Druids were always known for taking a pro-peace, pacifist stance; their confidence that they would pass them somehow was reflected on their faces.
"Siomha, stay behind and make sure not even one of them escapes!"
Alator gave his command to his assistant, who organized things in his stead when he wasn't around and was a Dark Element user. The people he mentioned weren't low-ranking mercenaries; he didn't want to let even one of the Three Great Generals escape his grasp.
"Eireachdail!"
When the young woman called out to her element, the black mist beginning to disperse from under her feet started to concentrate in an area of three steps in diameter. After a while, it lost its gas form property and the darkness, taking a liquid, fluid state, looked as if it would dart forward at any moment.
"You will kill Tongue, you will kill Hair. Eye is mine, you have one hour to finish your job!"
Alator divided his ten-person team into four parts. Even though one person took the duty of preventing the enemy's escape, she would also watch their backs at the same time. Four Druid mages headed towards General Hair, the direction of the other four was the other general cracking his tongue like a whip.
The leader of the Elemental Ten was going to face General Eye, the greatest general of the Golden Leaf Merchant Guild, alone. Along with the first dungeon he entered on the Mercenaries' Home, when powers he had never tasted before awakened in his body, Alator's mood underwent changes.
While two magic circles appearing on his palms shone with green and blue colors, he locked eyes with his enemy. Golden glimmers began to appear between the two men; it was as if the whole battlefield shrank, only the area between the duo maintained its existence.
General Eye took a step; his body, thin according to mercenary standards but could be considered burly for druids, grew a fold larger. When he took one more step, the event repeated; General Eye grew even larger with each of his steps and finally, when he came before Alator, he stood magnificent enough to crush him under his foot.
"Do you think you can scare me with this nonsense?"
While a breeze, coming from who knows where, intensified in seconds and hit General Eye, Alator's words scattered in all directions along with the storm. General Eye's body, which had grown almost as large as the Golden City walls, joined these words too; the terrifying image popped like a balloon.
"The news that illusion techniques don't work on you was true. You can form a layer a millimeter outside your body with the power of the wind and protect your mind against all effects, but it's not enough to measure up to me!"
General Eye sharpened his gazes once more; while dozens of golden energy needles spurted from within them, he didn't blink them even once. Alator only settled for watching the attacks until they came a few steps before him, but when he realized he would be the target a breath later, he swung his hand, and the water droplets fulfilled their duty by trapping some needles inside them.
"Humans, even mages, wouldn't be able to tell which needle was an illusion and which was real, but you managed to attack only the real ones. It seems such tricks are truly worthless before you; we can start playing with the toys the Machine Empire gave us now!"
After General Eye displayed a part of his skills, he wanted to continue the struggle using weapons, but unlike him, the other two generals were fighting directly with the attributes they took their names from. Alator was strong, he was the most powerful mage within the Elemental Ten, but fighting to the death against four people was another story too.
If Alator, commanding two elements, was counted as two mages, General Tongue and Hair were dealing with four of them at the same time. These people, Great Generals, hadn't not fought a mage before, but this time everything was completely different.
Under normal conditions, mages would draw the element power the magic circle they drew on the ground gathered from the environment into their bodies and direct it to the target with the help of the staffs in their hands. For this to happen, the mage's body, forming the most important part of the transfer, had to stand stationary at a point.
For this reason, fighting a mage was almost impossible. Since the defense and attack methods of mages, who generally wandered in teams where they could set up formations, were predictable, even though the Three Great Generals were glad to see the Druids, they weren't so happy as things reversed.
"Die! I will melt all of you down to your bones!"
General Tongue, whose tongue's length exceeded two steps and swung out of his mouth like a whip, could speak without putting his tongue inside his mouth. The green liquids scattered from the piece of flesh, which turned green, was flexible, had serrated edges, and cut where it touched like a razor, also possessed an incredible erosion capability.
So much so that even though some of the Volunteer orcs fighting the other mercenaries wanted to block the green liquids using their shields capable of withstanding energy attacks, their end was dying screaming in pain.
It was hard to know if there was a metal capable of withstanding the liquid General Tongue scattered, but the four mages of the Elemental Ten had some methods that would drive him crazy. When Alator gave the command to divide into two groups, the Druid mages didn't fulfill the command by moving to a random side. The mages, possessing the attributes of their opponents, formed the most perfect combination among themselves.
They had the cure for the green liquid that recognized no obstacle thanks to its corrosive property. All four mages possessed expertise in the Fire Element, and General Tongue's attacks evaporated and vanished sometimes among the flames, sometimes among the lavas.
When General Tongue, whose sharp tongue was ultimately a piece of flesh, wanted to tear the enemy's body apart, what awaited him was the Fire Element again. Even if the struggle seemed to have entered a deadlock, no one could underestimate the damage the Fire Element caused by spreading over time; the Druid mages, who could cast magic while on the move, were hitting the enemy, whom they didn't let out of the circle, with his own weapon.
While the corrosive green liquid remained ineffective, the heat radiated by the Flames and the heat wave created by the lavas covering the ground were bringing General Tongue, who possessed a weak physique, closer to death at any moment. The Great General was experiencing hard times, he had to manage to escape as soon as possible, but he wasn't the only person in this situation on the battlefield.