Chapter 630: Heading Back

Approximately half-an-hour after Christina first spotted their target, their own ship had closed to less than 1 kilometre of the smuggler’s vessel.

For a moment, it looked like things were going to go smoothly with today’s raid, until the enemy ship abruptly changed course and began rapidly accelerating.

Whether the enemy had realized what was going on and was now trying to escape, or they simply didn’t want to be approached was unclear, but it didn’t really matter.

“They’re running!” A shout rang out, followed by a command coming down from Charlotte, “Full sail! Man the oars!”

Within seconds, the ship lurched forward and gave chase to the escaping smugglers.

At the same time, Charlotte stopped restraining her cultivation aura and drew her bow.

They were still a bit far away, but with such a big, relatively slow-moving target, it wasn’t difficult for the Roth Family daughter to hit her mark.

A few well-placed arrows into the enemy’s sails and their speed dropped dramatically, allowing the Rockwell Kingdom ship to quickly close the distance between them.

No longer needing to hide, Christina brought her boarding part up on deck, along with enough ropes and planks to rapidly board the enemy ship.

The princess also ordered a couple Squads equipped with heavy shields, as well as a unit of archers, to the front of the formation, just in case.

Sure enough, a volley of arrows was fired at them when they got to within 200 metres, but having been well prepared, the Raging River and Piercing Sword soldiers took no casualties.

Christina gave the order to return fire, kicking off a brief exchange of arrows as the rowers pulled the ship to within point-blank range.

The difference in both firepower and skill quickly became apparent, with the professional soldiers of the Rockwell Kingdom swiftly overwhelming the smugglers, suppressing them to the point where the enemy could barely even lift their heads for fear of getting shot.

“Board them!” Charlotte ordered as she leapt out from the crow’s nest to the other ship’s mainmast, something that would have been dangerous or outright impossible for a Mortal, but was a simple feat for a Cultivator of her strength.

What followed could hardly be called a fight.

Even before the 200 soldiers led by Christina and another Battalion Captain from the Piercing Sword Legion finished crossing over to the smuggler’s vessel, the enemy had already surrendered.

This wasn’t too surprising seeing how there were only about 100 crew in total aboard the smuggler’s ship, and more than half of them seemed to be nothing more than low-level labourers with no idea what they were actually hauling.

Still, just to be on the safe side, the soldiers arrested everyone and tied all of them up securely before they began a thorough search of the ship.

Most of the cargo being transported was perfectly benign, but in the false bottoms of several crates and in a well-hidden secret compartment, a large number of weapons as well as some other contraband was found, all of which was promptly seized.

Unfortunately, despite searching the ship top to bottom, as well as the smugglers themselves, no additional documents were found other than two cargo manifests, one of them the ‘official’ record, the other a coded list of ‘illicit’ goods.

All-things-considered, it was a pretty small haul, but Christina took comfort in knowing that at least they had eliminated one more enemy ship.

With the raid complete, and no more targets currently on their list, Commander Charlotte ordered both ships back to Amherst where they would hand over the prisoners to a team of professionals for further questioning.

What happened to these smugglers after that was none of her concern.

As for Christina, honestly, she was just glad that this raid was over, and not just because it signaled the end of this mission.

She had left Misty City in early August, and it was now approaching the middle of December, which meant she had been deployed for over 4 months now, which was far longer than she had originally anticipated, but that would soon be over.

Christina and the First Regiment Third Battalion were supposed to be in Amherst as advisors for the anticipated large-scale, high-level anti-terrorism operation, providing their experiences about facing the mysterious enemy’s suicide soldiers, but somewhere along the way, that mission had morphed into more of a small-scale interdiction effort.

After several months in the Roth Dukedom, Christina and the rest of her subordinates had already taught the Piercing Sword Legion’s leaders everything they knew about the enemy, so there really wasn’t a reason for them to remain here any longer.

The Third Battalion might be an elite unit, but there were still only 99 of them with Lana Gage currently in seclusion. On the other hand, the Piercing Sword Legion was made up of 12,000 soldiers, and was just one of the 2 armies stationed in the North-East Province. Whether Christina and her unit remained or not wasn’t going to make much of a difference anymore.

Understanding that, General Kilian and General Balfour had agreed to recall the Third Battalion to Misty City.

Now, that didn’t mean the raids would stop, or that cooperation between the two armies was going to cease. If anything, efforts to keep the enemy organization in check were only going to ramp up from here.

To facilitate the broader counter-terrorism operation, the Second Regiments from both the Piercing Sword and Raging River Legions would temporarily be exchanging places.

This meant that Charlotte Roth would actually be accompanying Christina back to Misty City while Marcus Jennings and his Regiment would be heading up the Lorren to replace them.

Similar exchanges were happening between a number of the armies in the Rockwell Kingdom, the idea being to foster a spirit of cooperation and to help coordinate their efforts across the nation.

Christina wasn’t privy to the exact details of what the next phase of the operation would be, but she figured she would find out once she got home.

Thinking of the word ‘home’, Christina couldn’t help chuckling a bit as the first image that came to mind now wasn’t the opulent palace she had lived most of her life in back in Rockwell City, but the smaller, cozier Disciples House in Misty City.

When that image had changed, Christina didn’t know, but thinking of all her friends and family waiting for her back in the Balfour Manor, the princess found herself unconsciously smiling.

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