In Duocal's view, the fall of Ionia was only a matter of time. The people of this land had almost forgotten how to fight; even with swords in their hands, these people, warmed through by gentle breezes, had no idea how to swing them.
Just look at those young men fleeing inland with their families, abandoning the land that raised them. Would they really just hand over their ancestral lands like that?
He thought this, but as a confidant of Swain, Duocal did not let this confidence cloud his mind or lead to irrationality. Quite the opposite; he maintained a high degree of alertness. After all, if someone like Lord Swain, the Grand General, took this so seriously, what right did he—someone far inferior in ability and command—have to be arrogant?
Duocal slammed his iron gauntlet onto the center of the military map, staring coldly at the sigil of the Xan estate, which had been mapped out with the help of the Kiilash Vastaya.
"Crush them," Duocal's voice sounded like rusting gears grinding together. "I will turn their embroidery threads into nooses. Leave none alive."
With Duocal's order, the Noxian legions flooded over the hills like a tide of steel. Heavy shield-bearers in black plate armor formed a moving wall, and ballista carriages made the sound of breaking straw as they rolled over the rice fields. Originally, Duocal imagined this unremarkable village would fall into chaos the moment they sensed the scent of war—just like the coastal residents who surrendered their ancestral lands without a shred of resistance.
But to Duocal's surprise, as he stood on his dragon-bone war chariot and squinted at the village—which still had cooking smoke rising and a giant ancient tree growing at its center—he noticed an abnormal silence.
However, continuous victories had made Duocal a bit careless. Although he noticed the silence, he didn't feel much of an emotional response. He simply waved his hand, and a group of robust crossbowmen pulled back their heavy bows and readied the ballistae. With the sound of arrows slicing through the air, the sky over the village darkened for a moment.
Iron bolts slammed into wooden walls, pierced through water vats, and overturned drying racks of medicine. But to Duocal's shock, the expected wails of terror did not come. Instead, pairs of angry eyes emerged from behind the walls.
Looking at the villagers clad in crude armor and holding farming tools as weapons, Duocal froze for a second before his mouth tore into a grotesque grin.
"Haha! It seems Ionia still has a few people with guts—this saves me the trouble of explaining to the Grand General why I had to implement a scorched-earth policy!" Duocal did not view these villagers as civilians. He shouted loudly, "Slaughter these rebels! Leave none alive!!"
At Duocal's words, a feral bloodlust appeared in the eyes of the Noxian soldiers. In the Noxian army, killing a farmer or a peasant was one thing, but killing a "rebel" yielded entirely different military merits!
Driven by glory, the soldiers charged. The massive clamor echoed across the fields, causing those who had never experienced true legion warfare to pale with fear. But at that moment, with a loud thump!, a dense, dark-white smoke bomb exploded on the Noxian right flank. The spreading mist was only slightly pungent and contained no lethal toxins.
But within it, the Noxians seemed to see the manifestation of death. A sharp cross-chain kama whirled through the smoke in arcs of eerie green light. A small figure leaped back and forth, appearing and disappearing; with every flicker, helmets and heads flew into the air, accompanied by sprays of fresh blood.
"Not bad. This blinding effect is strong," Faen noted with surprise as he launched his own attack from within the smoke.
It was currently high noon with the sun at its brightest, yet inside the smoke, even the sunlight couldn't penetrate. Only Faen, with his Spirit Realm vision, could observe the world through pure perception. For anyone else—especially those not trained in the secret arts of the Fist of Shadow—being in this smoke would turn them into a blind man instantly.
Akali replied with pride, "Of course! Those evil spirits have vision and perception far beyond mortals. To blind them, you have to put some effort into the material ingredients!"
As she spoke, Akali flicked her wrist, sending several kunai whistling through the air. Though they didn't look heavy or hard, under her extraordinary magic-conversion efficiency, her seemingly frail arms erupted with terrifying power. Upon contact, they pierced straight through heavy Noxian plate armor, leaving bleeding holes in strong bodies that quickly became corpses.
At the front, Usan (Zed) led the Kinkou disciples who had decided to fight, wielding spirit blades alongside Ionian farmers and villagers. Though he wore armor, Usan's fighting style was markedly different from Shen's. While he also fought head-on, Usan was significantly more flexible. He moved through the gaps in the battlefield, his blade slicing through the air, either cutting flesh through armor gaps or straightforwardly seizing an opening to slit a throat. His killing efficiency was visibly higher than Shen's more traditional, grounded style.
On the other side, though hesitant to initiate an attack, Shen raised his arm as the Noxian arrow rain fell. With a low chant, the spirit blade behind him whistled out, forming an invisible barrier that suspended the arrows aimed at the village in mid-air. With a flip of his palm, he threw the arrow rain to the side.
Inside the black fog created by Akali, Faen did not wait any longer. He fixed his gaze on Duocal, his eyes filled with a terrifying calm.
In a sense, unless it was an ultra-large-scale coordinated spellcasting, numerical advantage meant very little to Faen. The only reason he was doing this was to further stimulate the people's sense of war and struggle.
As for now...
The Ionians had been away from war for too long. Even if they could muster the courage to fight, their equipment quality and unit discipline were far inferior to Noxus. To avoid meaningless sacrifice, he decided to "prune" their command layer first.