Immediately following the announcement, Jack and the other lords were stunned.
'What did the system just say?' Jack couldn't believe it.
All lords on Prime had a similarly stunned expression as Jack.
New year event?
New ranking systems?
New opportunities?
And...
Hostile troops will be summoned, equal in number as what every single lord posses?
"This can't be right! If hostile troops will appear in the same number as every one of us posses! Doesn't that mean that a large army will appear here? We are so many gathered!"
Angelica was terrified as she spoke.
Ramises and the others shared her concerns deeply!
The only one who seemed to have lost his nerves completely, was Vance.
His eyes were empty and his mouth hang open.
'The million troop army that's on their way here... A hostile army of a million troops...'
He was petrified and drool began to hang from the right side of his mouth.
"We need to prepare! The lord system said shortly! Bring all civilians inside the walls! Gather all troops together!"
Brutus was very keen. He left no room for debate.
"Lords! We all need to work together now! Go out and bring the other lords together! Tell them to merge their armies! I will command them!"
Noone refused him. Many were in fact happy to let someone like Brutus take command in this moment.
Brutus was effective.
Soon all the 200ish lords and all the civilians were inside the walls and the gates closed.
Outside in a ring around the walls, the combined army was in formation with many lines.
About 10.000 archers of various rank and gear.
About 200.000 troops with swords and spears.
A few thousand on hourseback and 1000 centaurs.
In the front of the two gates, stood 10 giants.
It was a large army.
But Jack quickly understood that it wasn't a professional army like his own.
It was a messy mix of over 200 lords troops. No clear chain of command and no proper gear.
But they had run out of time to prepare.
The the deep dark of the night, blinding light shot out everywhere around the town.
And beyond the close hills, an extremely dense and bright light appeared.
The same happened all over Prime.
At the walls of Victory Hold, at Black mountain, at Eros and every single city and town.
Luckily. The system had been benevolent. Because at every settlement location, they always appeared beyond the walls. Giving the defenders a fighting chance.
However, Xena's troops were divided in three, and every section had to fight an army equal to their own.
--
Goran was 20 meters up the Bloodfall Mountains, hiding and resting on a section of protruding stone where he could clearly see the entire army camp below.
But his rest was short. Suddenly a bright light erupted just 200 meters away from the army.
And in the light of the many fires, he watched, just as all the troops below, how row after row of hostile trooped marched towards them.
The first arrows flew and stunned troops was shot down inside the camp.
This cleared the spell and the professional army became high alert.
"Form up at the palisades! Archers, bring the mobile arrow walls in position!"
General William was quick to restore order to his troops.
Hundreds of small wooden walls on wheel was moved into position.
They were used to cover behind and evade enemy arrows. The archers shot from behind of these while melee troops covered behind their shield.
They had made wooden palisades, a common thing for a large army camp.
It didn't take long before the hostile troops reached them and began to move between or directly over the palisades.
But even if the troops were the same rank and wore the same gear as the real troops, they were not professionally organised.
They were mindless and their only purpose was to kill the lord troops nearby.
Williams quick organising skills made the hostile troops meet a wall of spearmen and a rain of arrows.
'Just what the hell is happening!' Goran was stunned as he saw the armies clash!
His reptilian eyes made his vision many times more keen in the night compared to humans.
He could clearly see the thousands of troops approaching adjacent to the mountains.
'William has concentrated all the troops to the front! He is not aware that they are about to be heavily flanked!'
Goran was panicking, he couldn't let his father's army be annihilated.
--
Xena was truly scared..
After the flashing light appeared in the night, a dense wave of heavily armoured troops suddenly scaled the uprooted trees and began to attack her army.
She had tens of thousands of troops, and at first everyone thought they were just some squadrons of their own, but as they kept flooding over the fallen trees, they had become alerted.
So even if the first few hundreds of her troops had been killed in surprise, they quickly and professionally gathered around Xena and formed their battleformations.
Xena sat on her Highhorse, Falling Star, and could see her frontline of spearmen holding firm.
However the enemy was equally skilled and both sides lost troops in equal numbers.
In the north side the reptilian armies clashed in a firce and savage all-out battle where even Giants were trashing about in both armies.
Gunnar had the worst of it.
Even centaurs, when stationary, took very heavy losses after being charged by nearly 40.000 enemy centaurs.
And even here, there were giants on both sides.
All the towns and cities in Etal faced a siege, however the capital Eros had the worst of it as the main large gates were open as the enemy troops spawned.
19.000 enemy Citadel Guards and 5000 common troops had rushed inside to slaughter civilians.
The 5000 common troops on the Empires side were spread out and far too many of them fell before Dex had arrived with the citadels troops.
Eros was burning and every road between the houses had groups of citadel guards facing eachother.
--
Jack watched as 200.000 lords troops clashes with an equal number of troops.
The entire town was surrounded by a wall of fighting troop.
"My lords! Giants have broken trough on the east side!" A voice suddenly called.
Jack stood with all the lords in the center of town, his own giants outside and fighting.
"You betray os Jack! I knew it! We need to kill him before it's too late!"
Vance pointed at Jack with a straight finger and a scared face.
"Shut up you idiot! Jacks giants are on the west side near the harbour, trying to minimise the damage to the harbour and ships! These are clearly the enemy spawns!"
Angelica furiously rebuted any doubts the lords could have about Jack.
'She's even cute when she's mad! How can she... Enough! Focus on the fight Jack!'
Jack pulled himself together quickly.
"They are coming! Flee! We can't face such monsters!"
One of the lords pointed towards the east gate road, and surely, 20 Giants came towards them, thrashing everything in their way.
Houses completely destroyed by a single swing of their steel weapons, troops simply throdden on and squashed.
All the lords became frightened and began to run.
"Wait! I brought the giants here! So allow me to handle them! Don't flee, manage the troops and we will win this!"
Jack yelled loudly and dense killing intent spread around him as he prepared to face these monstrosities of pure steel.
When he first saw the giants equip their gear in Eros, even Jack had been worried if he ever faced something like these giants.
But that feeling naturally led him to speculate in ways to destroy them.
And the answer was way simpler than he originally thought.
While the lord's stopped panicking and watched this man capable of producing such an aura, Jack simply walked towards the giants.
He had plenty of practice with his earth control, and a lot of spirit power.
He raised a hand towards the nearest giant and everyone gasped as it's armour simply crushed into itself and the giants body inside it simply broke apart.
Then he raised the other hand and clenched his fist.
Another giant broke inward on itself, smashed into stew by the bending steel.
'Steel is basically rock in some form. I'm not sure if I can turn rock into any other form myself, yet, but bending it isn't a problem at all.'
The lords saw the smile on Jacks face as he just clenched his fists twenty times and all the giants suddenly lay in a broken pile on the road.
The lord's felt a chill so down their spines, so wholesome that they could't help but revere this man as something more than human from this point onwards.
But just as they were about to celebrate the quick deaths of these giants, a new wave of hostile troops suddenly reached the gates.
The one million troop army that the Slayers Alliance had gathered, had been instantly surrounded and butchered.
They were mostly trash troops, so being surrounded by a hostile army of one million and instantly ambushed...
They had lost more than a hundred thousand troops in mere seconds!
And this shock to the common troops had left them scared and wanted to flee.
It created a chain reaction of movement and stumbling that had cost another 400.000 troops their lives before the few commanders, lords or heroes who controlled them, could get them back into order.
But at this time the fight was already lost.
Half a million scared troops, densely surrounded by a whole million emotionless troops.
It truly was a slaughter.
More than 700.000 hostile troops had now reached the east gates!
Jack saw this, and could feel their auras with his ability. He knew just how far these numbers reached.
"Ramises! Brutus! We can't win this fight! There's more than half a million of them! We must retreat and reach the ships!"
Jack yelled.
All the lords hearing him, after witnessing his power, mediately turned and ran towards the harbour.
If such a character told them to run, they ran!
Jack ships and nearly 50 other large ships and a hundred smaller ones, quickly understood what was happening on the beach.
But they couldn't help!
Because as the ships were on water and also carried troops...
The hostile spawns had no other place to spawn than directly onto the ships themselves!
As Jack and the lords reacted the beach and harbour they also quickly realised what had happened.
Warcries and battleclamour arose from every single larger ship.
A few were already burning.
Jack had spend a lot of spirit power dealing with the giants, but his blood burned when he saw his flagship had caught fire at the balistae section.
His remaining troops had gathered around him and the lord's as they fled to the beach.
A few hundred centaurs remained, the same was true about the citadel guards.
Only a single giant had fallen, the one who had stood at the front and killed thousands by itself as the remaining outside civilians and lords had fled inside the town.
"Giants! Come here and kneel!"
The giants obeyed immediately and bowed down.
"Every lord who wants to live, climb the giants and hold on tightly!"
The ships were anchored just off the coast. The waters were about 10 meters deep and giants now each carried 5-10 lords on their broad shoulder, head and hands they kept above the water.
'Ill have to sacrifice my other troops and all the chests of gold. But it's a small price to pay for the lives of many fellow earth humans!'
Jack was furious and had begun swimming as the other lords climbed his giants.
He had climbed his flagship and not held an ounce of his 300 fortitude stat back, as he cleared the decks from hostile troops.
As the giants and lord climbed onboard, Jack turned to face the rest of his warships with a deathly stare.