Since you want it and I want it too, it’s only natural to do it! Reaching out and playing with the pair of fruits on Xiao Ai's chest, the girl couldn't help but let out a sweet moan from the corner of her mouth under Dick's caress. The sound revealed pleasure and she was obviously enjoying it. Xiao Ai felt like she was having an embarrassing erotic dream at this moment. She was about to say goodbye to her first experience as a young girl, and actually she would be flying in the clouds with a beautiful elf boy. This scene was so romantic and exciting that ordinary people would not even dare to be so extravagant in their dreams! At this moment, Xiao Ai's little hand was groping around, and suddenly she touched a hard object on Dick's body. That thing was emitting an astonishing amount of heat, and its size made Xiao Ai a little worried. However, Dick did not let Xiao Ai worry for too long. He directly proved to her with practical actions that the human body is very magical and its expandability is often beyond their own imagination. "Dear mother, your daughter now understands what is the fate of our family!" Xiao Ai felt like she was flying, both mentally and physically. Dick was slightly surprised by Xiao Ai's physique. The two of them had a very good physical compatibility, and perhaps Xiao Ai's inner desire to learn magic made her body fall (in a positive sense). Xiao Ai was almost half-demonized on the spot, and her slave contract was covered by a higher-level clan mark, which also gave Xiao Ai the ability to learn magic. As for the price to pay for this... Dick looked at the pink little hearts in Xiao Ai's eyes that were materialized by magic, and thought that this child really had the potential to be a succubus. It was the middle of the night and there were clouds covering the sky, so no matter how loud the noise the two men made in the sky, they did not disturb the normal rest of the people on the ground.
But the next morning, an old lady in the city got up to sweep the snow and found a tattered pair of black stockings hanging on her balcony. Then she turned around and gave her man a loving beating. That’s another story. In short, when Dick brought Xiao Ai back to the bedroom in the castle, Xiao Ai was as soft as mud and couldn't stand up at all. She looked at Dick with tenderness, but also with love and fear. Her two chubby thighs didn't have the strength to clamp together. At this time, Dick saw that Rita came into the bedroom at some point. After looking at Xiao Ai's miserable appearance, she couldn't help but frowned and scolded Dick. "You've gone too far." "Well... this can't be entirely blamed on me." Dick, who was holding Xiao Ai, felt a little aggrieved, because to be fair, he was not the craziest one tonight. If it weren't for his strong skills and abilities, it's hard to say who would defeat whom. But before he could say any words in his defense, he was glared back at by Rita, who stood up, walked in front of Dick, and took the disabled little Aidao. "You're taking advantage of me. If this happens again, I'll have to be there to supervise!" Rita's words sounded righteous, but to Dick, it felt as if his face was being smashed by an abacus bead. 144. Belated Fatherly Love Although he had left the coalition and returned to Laguge, Dick's intelligence personnel were still paying close attention to the coalition's movements in real time, and would bring him some "melons" from time to time. As Dick expected, after he left the coalition, the coalition began to fall into a bloody power struggle. The Marquis Richard who replaced Dick as the commander-in-chief did not have much military talent, but he was very good at playing power games. He formed cliques and factions within the coalition, excluded dissidents, and fought with great pleasure. Perhaps in the eyes of these lords, the most difficult time has passed, the orcs' sweeping corps has been severely damaged, and only less than 10,000 of the 30,000 orcs remain. This loss is an irreversible rout for the human race, and it is almost impossible to organize a decent offensive. However, the coalition forces' strength has expanded to more than 50,000 men, and they have strong fortresses to defend. Their advantage is so great that they don't know how they can lose! What's even more ridiculous is that it seems that Marquis Richard really wants to take credit for the success, and wants to take all the credit for the achievements that the coalition forces had made under Dick's command. It was he who commanded the surprise attack on the orc camp and was present in the battle to defend the city. Marquis Richard's people tried to spread such news in order to achieve the effect of "the history book of the years". However, in terms of actual results, the Marquis was obviously too eager for quick success, because it had only been a few days since these battles were fought, and he now dared to lie in front of thousands of eyewitnesses in the Allied camp. So many people below did not suffer from collective amnesia, so who would believe his fabricated victory in the subspace? In short, Marquis Richard's goal of picking peaches did not achieve what he expected, which also caused him to inexplicably resent Dick more and more. Meanwhile, on the orc side, Ramon's main force made slow progress. The Pass Fortress was much more difficult to capture than they had imagined because the fortress defenders received some support from the Lords of Shannan.
The nobles of the empire are still very brave when it comes to their own interests. The lords in the south of the mountain knew very well that once the fortress was breached and the orcs rushed through the central mountains, they would be the first to suffer, so they were very concerned about supporting the fortress, providing people and food, just like the united northern coalition forces at the beginning. Dick judged that if the Pass Fortress could hold out until the end of winter without being breached, the orcs would most likely choose to quit while they were ahead and retreat to the wilderness before the spring, taking the people and supplies they had captured. The Empire will then achieve a superficial victory, but the price will be that most of the northern region of the Empire will be smashed to pieces by the orc invaders, there will be millions of displaced refugees waiting for the Empire's relief, and the entire northern region will not be able to recover in the next three to five years. This was not the result Dick wanted to see. He did see this war as an opportunity, but if most of the North was rotten, then Lagug would not be able to remain unscathed in this catastrophe. So Dick planned to attack the orcs' lair and force them to withdraw early. By using the "Great Memory Recovery Technique" on the orc captives, Dick has now mastered the exact location of the orcs' lair. After Ramon largely unified the orcs of the wasteland, he gathered all the tribes together and built an orc city deep in the wasteland. It is not only the orcs' base camp, but also their religious holy place. If the orc shamans want to obtain power from the gods, they must complete the so-called ascension ceremony in the holy place. Therefore, that place has extraordinary significance to the orcs. In addition, Dick also learned about and studied the internal political structure of the orcs through these captives, and found that they were not united internally, and there were various factional disputes just like the human race. The mysterious behavior of the previous mopping-up legion that sent heads flying seemed to be Ramon's intentional act. Ramon, the Beast King, is essentially more like the leader of a tribal alliance. Ramon is only the nominal supreme leader of the orcs. For the sake of political balance, there is also a Council of Elders under him. The members of the Council of Elders are mainly the chiefs of powerful tribes and great shamans who are highly respected in the religious world. The responsibility of the Elder Council is to supervise the Beast King and to some extent provide a check and balance on Ramon. Ramon wanted to realize centralization within the Beastmen and have his word truly rule, so he disliked the Council of Elders that restricted him in every way. However, he could not do anything about these elders in a short period of time, and could not fall out with them for the sake of internal unity. Once Dick leads his troops deep into the wilderness and poses a threat to the orcs' lair, their elders' council will definitely ask Ramon to return for support immediately, or even bypass Ramon and transfer the front-line troops without authorization. Therefore, the attack on the Orc City is equivalent to "besieging Wei to save Zhao"! But the problem now is that even if Ramon took the main force of the orcs to invade the empire, there are still hundreds of thousands of orcs in their lair. Unlike humans, the orcs' old, weak, women and children still have a certain combat power, and the entire orc tribe has almost become a soldier. At this time, Ruby Eye gave Dick a suggestion. If they had to march into the wilderness, the troops would have to travel 1,600 kilometers by land after crossing the fjord to reach the orc city. In the middle of the way was a large uninhabited Gobi desert, where it was difficult to obtain food and water. The risk of this march was too great. It would be better to take a boat north along the coastline for more than a thousand kilometers and land in the heart of the wilderness, where the straight-line distance to the Orc City is only more than a hundred kilometers. The logistical pressure on the troops will be greatly reduced, and they can also equip those war horses that were originally responsible for carrying supplies with combat cavalry. Dick thought about it and thought that this plan was indeed a good one, but the problem was where would the troop transport ships come from? The ship girls under his command only have ship outfit forms and cannot actually transform into ships. Ruby Eyes answered concisely. "Borrow it from your family!" "what?" Ruby Eyes reminded Dick that according to what the first transport team said, the second batch of supplies from the south of the empire would arrive in fifteen days. The scale would be the same as the first batch, with a total of ten 8,000-ton paddle steamers. After that, a fleet would arrive every twenty to twenty-five days until the war in the north was over. The grain and cotton and linen in the south are not worth much money. The real big investment is in transportation capacity. According to the frequency of material transportation, the Best family has mobilized at least three fleets to circulate this route on the sea to ensure that such a large amount of materials can be continuously transported to Laguge. This cost is not something that Laguge can afford now. So for this generous material support, Dick had to sincerely thank the old Duke for his belated fatherly love. But ironically, Dick later found out that it was him who was behind the imperial central government's repeated waffling on sending reinforcements to the north and constantly making trouble behind the scenes. Counting the days, the second transport fleet is expected to arrive in Laguge in four days, and it will take another two days to unload the cargo in the new port. The coal needed by the paddle steamer can be replenished on the spot in Laguge. By then, the vacant transport capacity will be enough to carry 3,000 cavalrymen and their war horses.
145. Northern United Front On the coalition side, Marquis Richard felt that his job as commander was not as smooth as he had expected, because the people under him clearly lacked the proper respect for his noble status. Especially after that lowly bastard embarrassed him in public, several lords withdrew from the coalition one after another because they were unwilling to obey his orders, and the Marquis was so angry that he was jumping up and down. He couldn't understand. He was the only marquis in the entire northern region, his sister was the fourth queen of the empire, and he was the brother-in-law of Hesse VII. Why did these petty nobles dare to disobey such a noble man, and even gossip about him in private, slandering him as being no better than that little bastard named Best, saying that he didn't have the courage to face the orcs and take the initiative to attack. This made Richard, who thought highly of himself, very angry, so he decided to make a big move and win a bigger victory than Dick, in order to prove himself and let those blind idiots see clearly that his greatness, Ad Richard, was in no way comparable to that ridiculous little bastard! Richard personally took action for this purpose, using the amazing wisdom of his noble brain to formulate a combat plan to mobilize all the coalition forces to wipe out the remnants of the orc mopping-up legion in one fell swoop, aiming to recover the lost lands on the west bank of the Nie River. However, when the Marquis proudly announced his great ambitions in public, the nobles below quickly split into two factions. One group supported Richard's plan. Some of these supporters were former lords of the west coast, who very much hoped to regain their fiefdoms with the help of the coalition forces. Others, like Richard, were speculators who joined the coalition forces later. They had never faced the fierce orcs directly and did not understand the true strength of the orcs. Opponents, on the other hand, felt that Richard's battle plan of "the whole family going all in one go" was unreliable, and they were worried that their own troops would be used as cannon fodder by Richard. And in fact...Richard really planned this in his mind. "If you have any opinions, feel free to speak up." "Mr. Marquis, we support you!" "But...taking the initiative is too risky. Shouldn't we play it safe?" "What are you afraid of? Those orcs have been defeated. They are nothing to be afraid of now." The nobles present spoke one after another, and without exception, everyone's speech was based on the premise of ensuring their own interests, and they could not reach a consensus on whether to attack or defend. Richard's eyes were on Peter Hoffman and Eugene Banner, who were sitting on his left and right. These two were only below him, the Marquis, in terms of both title and strength, so their opinions were relatively more important. As for the opinions of the other small lords, he actually didn't care at all. Hoffman's original idea was to be defensive, and he was more inclined to seek stability. However, as the number of refugees taken in by the coalition forces increased, their logistics had begun to become seriously strained. The daily relief food distributed to the refugees was reduced again and again, and the security situation in the camp deteriorated rapidly. This made Hoffman want to reduce the number of refugees in the camp. One of the ways was to recruit young and middle-aged men from the refugees as soldiers, and then let these people be "consumed" in the counterattack. The remaining women and children could be absorbed by his Hoffman family on the spot, which was a win-win situation. Therefore, Hoffman chose to support Richard, and his respectful attitude pleased the Marquis greatly. Old Banner, who was sitting on Richard's right, remained silent throughout the whole process. After a long while, he suddenly stood up and spoke. "Everyone, I'm sorry, but my Banner family will also withdraw from the coalition." "Marquis Banner, what do you mean by this!?" Seeing that the old earl suddenly chose this time to announce the withdrawal of the coalition, Richard suddenly felt that he was a little embarrassed and couldn't help but slamming the table and questioning the other party. "Lord Banner, are you afraid?" "Afraid? Haha! I'm really afraid of being sold out if I fight with a bunch of insects like you." "What did you say!?" Hearing what Count Banner said, Richard's retainers were immediately furious, and the old Count's sons also stepped forward, holding the hilts of their swords and glaring back without showing any weakness. The atmosphere in the hall suddenly became tense, forcing Hoffman to step out to smooth things over. The old earl snorted coldly and looked at the Marquis Richard who was sitting in the first seat and trembling with anger. In the northern territory, the Banner family is also a first-tier powerful family. In terms of strength, it is not much worse than the Richard family who relied on marrying off their daughters to improve their titles, so they are not afraid of the other party at all.
Hoffman still wanted to keep them, he really didn't want the Banner family to quit the team. Hoffman initially lured Richard's family into the coalition in order to balance Dick and old Banner, but the result was counterproductive and he simply drove the two families away. Their departure meant that the balance within the coalition was broken, allowing the Richard family to take over and in turn suppress the Hoffman family. This was definitely a big mistake! However, no matter how Hoffman tried to persuade them to stay, the Banner family was determined to leave, and Richard also lost his temper and threatened that Count Banner should not come back after he left. As a result, the two sides parted unhappily in public, causing many silent lords to no longer be optimistic about the future of the coalition. After the Banner family withdrew, the coalition's voice was completely controlled by the more powerful Richard family. Many fence-sitters also sided with him, further sidelining Hoffman. Richard was a little crazy at this time. He was determined to push forward his marching plan. He began to forcibly expand the army in the Allied camp without considering the consequences. He set a "small goal" of recruiting soldiers to raise an army of 100,000 people, and forced those refugees who had originally only sought asylum from the Allied forces to join the army. When some refugees refused to obey, Richard's recruiting team resorted to violence against them, even resulting in many deaths. In fact, these refugees were not unwilling to fight or to recover their homeland, but they had their own worries, which should have been solved for them by the lords. However, the "traditional conscription model" promoted by Richard was too rough, and those conscripts took advantage of their positions and openly demanded bribes in the camp. If you don't want to be cannon fodder, you have to give them benefits, but these people have to complete the conscription quota, so they can only oppress the poor who have no money to exploit. Under normal circumstances, feudal lords would recruit soldiers on a family basis, selecting one or two men of appropriate age depending on the situation. If there were too few men, they would not be recruited, or they could provide some food and fodder to replace them. But Richard's bad behavior was that he ordered his men to capture refugees as much as possible, not the people in their own territory, so there was no need to worry about anything at all. Some refugee families had all their male members taken away at once, leaving behind a few helpless orphans and widows. In this camp where the moral level was rapidly deteriorating, they were almost like fish on a chopping block, and if they were not careful, they would be eaten up physically by other hungry refugees. When people are faced with survival issues, it is very easy for them to degenerate into beasts in a moment! In order to survive, many refugees were forced to start a second escape. At the same time that Richard was forcibly conscripting soldiers, Lagug was also preparing for war on the other side, but the whole process was much more civilized and formal. All new recruits who enlisted in the army not only received a considerable salary, but the conscription office would also distribute a full 100 kilograms of food to their families in the name of the lord, and promise to reduce taxes by half in the coming year. In addition, conscription also applies to refugees, and their basic treatment is the same as that of local people. At the same time, they will also be given the right to purchase land in Laguge, which means they have the opportunity to become naturalized subjects. The tangible benefits made the conscription process extremely smooth, and the registration office was almost overcrowded. "See, as long as there is food, there is no shortage of soldiers." Dick's large-scale expansion of the army was mainly for defending the territory. Although the coalition forces on the Nie River defense line were impregnable, there were actually some small groups of orc troops infiltrating eastwards. There were even traces of their activities in Laguge, but their numbers were very small. It seemed that they were a few unlucky guys who got lost and were chopped into pieces by militiamen whose numbers were more than a hundred times theirs. Dick plans to expand the army by 5,000 people to replace the regular troops to perform homeland guard tasks, and the old soldiers who are replaced will accompany Dick on the northern expedition. This time he is ready to send out all his elite troops. At this time, the second supply fleet arrived as scheduled and docked at the new port in the fjord. On the same day, Dick also received a letter from Count Banner, in which the old man withdrew from the increasingly chaotic coalition. He called up a few guys he got along with and asked Dick if there was any big job that he could let them get involved in. Dick replied decisively—"Come!" Just one day later, Banner led the armies of several other lords to Laguge, and apparently headed straight for Dick as soon as he left the coalition gate. Several lords were old friends who had fought side by side with Dick before. Their character remained to be examined, but at least they had the courage to fight bravely. Dick immediately revealed his plan to raid the orcs' hometown, and said that he had already prepared the ships and food, but this battle only required cavalry, which was the most elite armed force of each family.
After listening to this, old Banner pondered for a moment, then looked up and asked Dick. "You've put all your assets on the line?" "About that. Two thousand five hundred in total. These are all the horses I have." "That's nothing to say. I'll risk my life to take this gamble with you! I've brought 600 horses with me. If you can wait for me for three days, I can bring another 1,000 from home." "I followed too."