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“What?!” Kanaru could not believe what he is hearing, and the shock had made him completely awake. He could clearly hear the noise coming from outside the house, “Enemy?! Where are the enemies?! Is it the Consentians?!” Kanaru was at a loss due to the sudden change, and it was not without reason that he subconsciously thought that the enemy was Consentia. Because of the terrain, the Greeks had never trespassed the territory of Besidiae. However, Consentia had fought with them many times. In order to defend against Consentia, Besidiae had built a small fortress to the west side of the plateau leading to Consentia. However, because Bruttii was moving towards unification, and for them to show their sincerity, Likumu removed the fortress and had kept only one sentry post. For this reason, Kanaru had quarrelled with his father.

Kanaru became furious at his clueless men, “Get out of here! Check it out and report back to me! Wait”

“Go and inform Chieftain Baripiri and Chieftain Burim to bring their tribesmen to the assembly hall!”

“Blow the horn and tell everyone to gather here!”

“Have everyone arm themselves and follow me to drive away the enemy!”

Kanaru’s orders were decisive, but it was difficult to carry out. The people of Besidiae had never encountered such difficulties, so they lacked the means to cope with it, hence why the people in the assembly hall were panicked and confused.

After managing to organise a few dozen tribesmen, Kanaru hurried outside and bumped into an enemy who had pounced at him aggressively.

Kanaru shouted and rushed up, brandishing his iron rod first. When his iron rod struck down, it knocked down the enemy in front of him, which made even the enemy’s wooden shield to be knocked down, showing his great strength.

“Don’t fight him head-on. Go around him and deal with the others first!” Seeing this, Adrianus made an instant decision.

‘Greek!’ At this time, Kanaru managed to look at the enemy in detail, which greatly surprised him. But at this moment, he had no time to think about how the Theonians intruded into Besidiae.

Adrianus giving order had made Kanaru think that he was the leader of the Greeks, so he immediately rushed into Adrianus’ direction.

The experienced Adrianus did not panic, and he continued commanding the soldiers around him to quickly retreat and not engage Kanaru head-on.

Kanaru became anxious and pursued him at every step, but he didn’t realise that the Theonian soldiers had blocked his men and separated them from him.

He became infuriated at Adrianus, who kept evading h. It wasn’t until Kanaru heard the shrill screams of his men that he had come around. He turned around and found that the Greeks had scattered his men, so he had to turn back to rescue them.

Adrianus commanded the soldiers to give chase and continued the entanglement.

At this time, the other two teams had arrived one after another from the other streets.

Seeing that the enemy outnumbered them, Kanaru no longer dared to continue fighting and immediately led his surviving tribesmen back to the assembly hall. In the process of their retreat, a javelin hit him, and it pierced into his cheek. However, he had still managed to fight back the Theonian soldiers, who had tried to take advantage of the opportunity and enter the assembly hall.

After retreating into the assembly hall and closing the door, Kanaru could no longer stand on his feet and fell to the ground, causing his tribesmen to be shocked from seeing it.

“Reporting. Strategos, we had captured the injured Burim, a chieftain of Besidiae!” The centurion of the first centuria of the first brigade reported to Adrianus.

Adrianus had divided the seven hundred soldiers who entered the city into three teams for a purpose. According to the information they have gotten, he knew that there were three tribes in the city of Besidiae. After asking Adepiges to interrogate the captives, they find out where the three chieftains lived, and so he immediately began to carry out the “decapitation strike*”. It seems that everything is going well. (T/N: Carrying out a targeted attack against the enemy.)

‘Burim’s residence is the closest to the city gate and should have been unprepared, but how come the other team had also arrived so quickly?’

The centurion of the second centuria gave the answer, “Before we could even start our attack, a chieftain of Besidiae led his people to surrender!”

‘Surrender!’ Adrianus did not expect such a situation. He remembered that this chieftain should be called Baripiri, and he had tried his best to assist the great chieftain of Besidiae over the past ten years and is quite famous among the people of Besidiae. Thinking of Davos’ instruction, Adrianus immediately asked his men to invite Baripiri.

The 50-year-old Baripiri had white hair and beard, which shows his age. When he saw Adrianus talk to him with a favourable attitude, he calmed down and immediately agreed to speak for Theonia to make the people in the residence of the great chieftain to surrender.

Baripiri was good at judging the situation. When Likumu’s tribe was strong, he gave up being the candidate for the great chieftain and had instead fully supported Likumu as the great chieftain of Besidiae. Thus gain Likumu’s trust over the years and benefiting his tribe a lot. At the beginning of the war between Bruttii and Theonia, because the city of Besidiae was only a river away from Thurii, he made great efforts to understand this strong neighbour. Realising that Bruttii could never defeat Theonia, but relying on the terrain, they might be able to force a peace agreement. However, during the chaos in the city, the people told him in panic that based on the appearance of the enemy, ‘the attackers may be Greeks’. After calmly thinking, he felt that the defeat of the Brutians was inevitable as they had lost their geographical advantage, so he immediately ordered his tribesmen to take the initiative to surrender. The words of a tribal chieftain who had served for 30 years had made most of them expressed their obedience while those few who objected were taken down on the spot under his order.

His surrender had caused the resistance in the city to reduce quickly.

Now, standing in front of the great chieftain’s residence, he shouted at the people inside. When the Bruttians, who were lying on the courtyard’s wall, peep out, they saw that even Baripiri had surrendered to the Greeks. One can imagine the shock in their hearts.

Only Kanaru, who was lying on his sickbed, cursed after learning the betrayal of Baripiri and vowed that after the Greeks were destroyed, Baripiri would be cut into pieces!

Kanaru endured his wounds and ordered his men to gather everyone in the courtyard to stand firm and defend to the last, only to be greeted by icy glare.

Shortly after Baripiri’s shouting, the gate opened, and Kanaru’s men went out to surrender together with the body of Kanaru, who, according to them, have died due to his wounds.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

The three troops of the first brigade in charge of raiding the defensive camp had a relatively smooth start. After all, the camp was constructed to defend against the attack on the east, and they could not even expect the enemy to attack from the west. For a moment, they were caught unprepared and allowed the Theonian soldiers to enter the camp easily.

However, as it was during the war and this was the front line of Besidiae, the warriors were still alert and quickly organised their resistance. In particular, the four towering sentry towers in the camp, which were initially used to shower the river trail with arrows and attack the enemy’s middle and rear from a distance, are now using its height advantage to slow down the fierce attack of the Theonians with their arrows, who suffered some casualties because the second legion soldiers were not wearing armours.

The Bruttians fought hard to resist, while the Theonian soldiers, though more numerous, could not fully capture the camp in a short time.

The fighting lasted for some time until the warriors of Besidiae saw the fire in the city, which made them gradually lost their morale.

When the main force of the second legion trekked through the river trail and reached the defensive camp of Besidiae, the battle had already ceased, and so the troops entered the territory of Besidiae smoothly.

When Drakos heard the report that Adrianus was leading his brigade to attack the city of Besidiae, he ignored his fatigue and led his troops to reinforce him in great haste.

Reaching the gates of Besidiae, he saw Adrianus standing there with a smile on his face, making Drakos unable to understand how a city could easily change hands.

“Adrianus, you sure have a lot of guts! That you did not even leave a small battle for us!” Drakos pointed to his friend, angry and annoyed, not knowing what to say.

“Legatus, please enter the city!” Capturing both the defensive camp and the city of Besidiae with only one brigade and achieving such a brilliant record made the gloom in Adrianus’ heart to dissipate, and he made an inviting gesture with a smile.

Drakos waved his hand and said seriously, “Once the Brutians find out that we have captured the city of Besidiae, they will certainly send a large army to capture it back again! If they failed, they would build another fortress in the west to prevent us from entering the Consentia Plateau! Now, we don’t have the time to rest and must quickly build a fortress to the west of Bruttii before the Brutians attack, and prevent the enemy from entering Besidiae and welcome the arrival of the main force led by Lord Davos!”

Adrianus jolted: This had been part of the plan, only he had gotten too carried away by his victory. Luckily, Drakos was still clear-headed!

“Hurry and call Adepiges!” Adrianus ordered his men to call the Theonian freeman, who acted as the guide for the troops.

On the other hand, Drakos told the whole army to not enter the city and continue going north and build a camp.

Even though some of the exhausted soldiers complained, they still obeyed the orders and marched westward.

As the representative of the side that had surrendered, Baripiri was also at the forefront of the group that left the city to greet Drakos. Seeing this, he could not help but sigh in dismay.

At this moment, Drakos approached him.

Baripiri knew the identity of the approaching man thanks to Adrianus – Drakos, the legatus of the second legion. He had a deep understanding of Theonia and knew that the entire Theonia Union has four legions, and each legion having seven thousand to eight thousand men, more than twice the total number of warriors in Besidiae. And Drakos was the one in command of such a number of troops and is the key to his own life, and the lives of his tribesmen are under his control. Thus Baripiri had to greet him respectfully.

Drakos hurriedly stepped forward and stopped him, “Chieftain of Besidiae, thank you so much! Because of your help, the casualties of our soldiers and the people of Besidiae has reduced. Once this war is over, Bruttii may become a part of Theonia, so once the Senate elects a new statesman from Bruttii, I would be glad to vote for you!”

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