The swarm of Dragoons moved through the air in a dense cloud. A swirling mass of metal and chitin that, from afar, looked like a billowing ball of silk. As if to further solidify this illusion, lines of energy sprang up between each of them, linking together to create a glowing shell to enclose them. This giant energy ball swirled and shifted into an oval shape, a flattened sphere that shot towards the defensive barrier that the Fu Clan had erected. The Chong Clan had already punched through a dozen of these Fu defensive lines, but it looked like there were many times more of them still remaining. After suffering so many losses, they let the Lang Clan suffer in this war of attrition.

Sage had long stopped worrying about the Dragoons. He always felt like he just had too much on his plate and relegated them to be used with wave tactics and a massive battery for Formation Armor. It was only when the Lang Clan’s Commander Academy was established that they were really put to use. This is especially true when they started the practice of using the Insect Immortal Index to link to a field commander. In line with Sage’s policy of keeping his Clan protected they could control the battle through a Dragoon on the front line while remaining perfectly safe in a command tent.

They also modified the ancestral memories that they were implanted with to improve upon their tactics and training. A Dragoon had a limited amount of knowledge it could be born with, so they created a number of different types of Dragoons, each with a different set of built in training. With hundreds of years of training and experimentation they even came up with very complex maneuvers that were implanted as ancestral memories. When the order for the ‘wheel right’ formation was given, half the members of a unit would instinctively form into a large central shield wall, while the other half would have the ancestral memories for performing a charge on the opponent’s right flank. There was no need to teach or drill on which of them were to perform each part of the maneuver, all they had to do was create a unit with half of Dragoon A and half of Dragoon B. Of course, they had a far more complicated set of nomenclature used on these troops, but Sage only browsed through the reference material. He was glad to see the Clan making good use of the forces he’d handed over to them.

Sage was very glad to have the Purple Mist Sect to himself. It was much more convenient for them to think for themselves and to perform tasks without his direct supervision. It was already tricky enough micromanaging the Blacksilver Pawns.

As he watched the Dragoons clash with the Fu Clan’s barrier, Sage was full of praise for the way they’d pushed Formation Armor forward. He’d thought that the Million Scale Shell formation was the best fit for the Dragoons and he was happy to see that they’d also come to a similar conclusion. He could see faint patterns upon the sphere of energy around the Dragoons, making the oblong shape look much like a scaly dragon’s egg smashing into a wall over and over again. At the same time, the Million Scale Shell was not anywhere near as flexible as the formation array they used so Sage could only assume they’d made some marvelous improvements.

After bashing against the wall a few times, the egg shape stopped retreating and remained pressed up against the energy barrier. Then the scales of the shell expanded, and concentric rings swept outward, opening up like the petals of a flower. These large petals that consisted of dozens of Dragoons started to rotate, brushing up against the wall. A bladed rose, each layer spinning in a different direction than the next. At the ‘edges’ of these giant petals, the Dragoons extended their halberds and they dragged against the wall, surrounded by a field of protective energy.

The Dragoon formations acted like giant cylindrical saws, cutting rings into the face of the Fu Clan’s defensive formation. The barrier started to fluctuate and the Fu Clansmen on the other side gritted their teeth and threw out Spirit Stones. The defensive barrier they were using consisted of many layers of wall and their move caused the outer layer to detonate. This blast also broke the second layer of the wall, but it sent a powerful shockwave towards the Dragoon formation. The giant ‘petals’ of the rose shaped formation were ‘shed’ in the face of this blast. The formation surrounding the Dragoons was blasted apart and they suffered injuries, flung backwards by the blast.

Then, a large column of Dragoons flew towards the remaining Dragoons and reinforced them, forming into another large sphere and ramming up against the defensive barrier once again. The injured Dragoons retreated from the front line, some of them flying and others limping on the ground. They returned to the healer’s tents near the Lang Clan command tent while others pushed to the front and took over, smashing up against the Fu Clan’s formations. Soon, the constant flood of reinforcements took the shape of a ‘stem’ on the large rose that was tilted to the side and drilling into the defensive wall.

From the looks of things, the Lang Clan had decided that there was no elegant way to subvert the Fu clan’s arrangements. Instead, they would use the simplest method, overwhelming them with superior numbers and support. What did it matter if the Fu Clan made them pay with blood for every step they took? The Lang Clan had a thousand times more blood than the Fu Clan did. Sage would have no qualms sacrificing Dragoons to defend those he cared for, but it was a little more ruthless to expend lives like that offensively. He was both proud and apprehensive of how ruthless his Clan was, but also wondered if that weakness of his held him back.

He’d grown quite callous in comparison to the tame earthling he once was, but he was still far from the vicious and shameless beings that sat at the top of the food chain in this world. What am I worried about, they’re just beetles, right? Just because they have humanoid bodies and can talk doesn’t mean they are sapient.

There was no doubt that animals, and Dragoons, were sentient. That is to say, they are conscious. They can perceive and feel things. The next level, sapience, was something that Sage was sure powerful Demonic Beasts had reached, just like humans, but normal animals were not quite there yet. Sapience, or wisdom, is more than just being able to identify the weather, ask for food, or even to care for one’s young. It is thought at a higher level, things like poetry, the questioning of one’s own existence, morality, ethics, judgement, and many other similarly abstract things. The Dragoons didn’t question why they existed or ponder the meaning of the universe. They thought only of performing well in battle to gather more merits and earn the right to reproduce.

Sage questioned his own ethics in quiet solitude, time that ran on for many days as blood spilled to the floor of the cave and many Dragoons lost their lives. Watching the bodies piling up for days quickly made him numb to the sight. Of course, it took only an hour for the Dragoons to smash through the first defensive position of the Fu Clan they encountered, but for Sage that equated to a whole month. The final push was the most gruesome, a dozen Fu Clansmen immolated themselves to fuel the final self-destruction of the defensive barrier and dozens of Dragoons acted as a shield for their comrades and absorbed the explosion in exchange for their lives.

The casualties were tallied and the Fu Clan had traded each of their lives for the lives of five Dragoons. Even so, the Lang Clan was unperturbed and the Dragoon formation pushed forward, constantly restored with fresh troops from the outside. The gruesome math of battle was heavily skewed against them, but how could the Fu Clan ever expect that the Lang Clan had more than a million Dragoons on their side?