During this period, Celes had gained a sufficiently deep understanding of magic formations.
The foundation of all magic formations lay in the Laws of heaven and earth.
The key factor in determining how far a person could go on the path of magic formations was, above all else, their affinity with the Laws.
The higher one's affinity with the Laws, the more clearly one could sense them.
Then, by establishing nodes capable of bearing the Laws and drawing upon them, one could create all sorts of wondrous effects—this was the essence of a magic formation.
A magic battle formation was an upgraded form of a standard magic formation, transforming a fixed, stationary array into one that could move.
According to the records stored within the Sovereign Army, magic formations could achieve many things that gods themselves could not.
However, within the Sovereign Army, almost no one studied formations with other functions.
What everyone focused on was how to use the Laws to enhance defense, offense, and speed.
As a result, the records related to these three aspects were by far the most extensive.
When one devoted oneself completely to cultivation, time always seemed to slip away unnoticed.
Before he realized it, the number of squads under Celes's command had increased from five to seven.
Within the Sovereign Army encampment, Celes's divine sense spread out as he directed his soldiers to arrange themselves in a precise pattern.
Hum—!
The moment the soldiers finished taking their positions, they instantly felt an immense force from heaven and earth descend upon them.
This was… a magic battle formation?
In an instant, the eyes of the soldiers under Celes's command lit up.
Within this Sovereign Army, who didn't know how powerful magic battle formations were?
So, what if the battalion commander you followed was a Seven-Star Fiend?
Could he guarantee your survival in battle?
If you encountered a powerful enemy, death would still be death.
But if your commander was a Grandmaster of Magic Formations capable of constructing a magic battle formation, then congratulations—
your chances of survival would increase by at least tenfold.
This was also why so many Sovereign soldiers, even those without talent for studying magic formations, had still been willing to keep training alongside Celes.
"Congratulations, Captain Celes!"
"That's right, Captain Celes! Now that you can deploy a magic battle formation, you've officially become a Grandmaster of Magic Formations!"
The flattery and congratulations from the soldiers rang in Celes's ears.
A joyful smile appeared on his face.
After three thousand years of effort, Celes had finally succeeded in upgrading his magic formation into a magic battle formation—and successfully deploying it.
"Hahaha! The results I've achieved in magic battle formations today would not have been possible without everyone's support."
"Everyone, since we're all in excellent condition right now, why don't we first test the effectiveness of this formation?"
"Alright, Captain Celes! We'll follow your lead!"
Unlike Figroa, whose strength was only at the level of a Five-Star Fiend and whose divine sense and soul force were relatively limited—
Celes, as a Six-Star Fiend, far surpassed Figroa in both divine sense and soul strength.
As such, Celes did not take the indirect route.
Instead, he chose to personally control every node of the formation himself.
The advantage of this approach was that he could fully master the magic battle formation he had laid out and completely mobilize the Laws amplified within it.
The downside, however, was that the number of nodes in the formation could not exceed the limits of his divine sense.
Soon, the more than seven hundred soldiers under Celes's command once again completed the formation under his direct guidance.
Boom!
The instant the battle formation was completed, every soldier within it felt their power undergo a tremendous boost.
At the same time, however, they lost control over their own bodies.
It was as though they had become puppets, their bodies entirely under Lord Celes's command within the formation.
"So strong!"
"With this power, I'm definitely no weaker than a Seven-Star Fiend!"
Feeling the immense strength now completely under his control, Celes let out a long roar.
Then, leading the entire formation, he soared into the air with overwhelming momentum and arrived before the main command tent of the Sovereign Army.
This was where the army's commander, Oakes, resided.
"Lord Oakes! Fifth Battalion, Seventh Company Commander Celes hereby requests a promotion battle for the rank of Battalion Commander!"
Within Locke's Sovereign Army, there were currently already six battalions.
However, there were only four battalion commanders at present.
The commanders of the First, Second, and Third Battalions were all Seven-Star Fiends.
The Fourth Battalion Commander was Figroa, who had earned his rank by defeating the Second Battalion through his magic battle formation.
When Celes first joined the army, he had been assigned to the Fifth Battalion.
But because no new Seven-Star Fiend had joined since then, the positions of commander for the Fifth and Sixth Battalions had remained vacant.
Now that he had successfully constructed a magic battle formation, Celes's confidence had soared.
Thus, he had come here to apply for promotion.
In Locke's Sovereign Army, there were two methods for promotion to Battalion Commander.
The first was to demonstrate the strength of a Seven-Star Fiend.
The second was to lead one's own unit to defeat a force commanded by a Seven-Star Fiend, thereby proving one possessed the ability to command an entire battalion.
Figroa had been promoted through the second method.
Now, Celes intended to do the same.
Within the Sovereign Army, battalion commanders promoted through the second method were considered far more valuable than those promoted through the first.
Unlike wandering experts, the Sovereign Army was a true military legion.
The battles it fought were always against forces of the same scale.
Thus, what the soldiers truly valued was a commander who could lead them to victory and bring them back alive.
Those Seven-Star Fiends who knew nothing of magic battle formations might win many battles—
but the casualty rates among their soldiers would always be the highest.
Every soldier who had witnessed a magic battle formation knew that this was the true way an army should fight.
Amplified by the magic battle formation, Celes's voice resounded not only through the entire Sovereign Army camp, but even reached the wandering experts outside.
"Celes?"
"I remember him. He came here together with Lady Mira, but later gave up entering the mist to cultivate and joined the Sovereign Army."
"From the sound of it, has he already completed a magic battle formation and is now challenging for the battalion commander position?"
"Ah… I'm so jealous. Battalion commander is a rank normally reserved for Seven-Star Fiends."
"It's only been a few thousand years, and he's already completed a magic battle formation… I can't compare, I really can't…"
The tone among the wandering experts was filled with envy.
There had once been a period when many people, inspired by Figroa, joined Locke's Sovereign Army with the mindset of if he can do it, so can I.
But in the end, only a very small number had managed to successfully deploy even a standard magic formation.
As for those who successfully upgraded one into a magic battle formation—
there had been none at all.
Ultimately, all those experts who had joined the Sovereign Army simply became cogs in Locke's great machine…
Having learned from the failures of those pioneers, later wandering experts had become much more cautious about joining.
Unfortunately, magic formations were the Sovereign Army's greatest trump card.
The cultivation methods were tightly controlled by the army.
Only by joining could one test whether one possessed talent for magic formations.
And once you joined—
if you lacked the talent, you could not even withdraw.
Celes was the first person after Figroa to successfully master a magic battle formation.
Under everyone's watchful gaze, two armies rose into the air from the camp.
Yet what surprised everyone was this:
one of the armies was led by a Seven-Star Fiend and numbered over ten thousand men.
The other, however, had only a little over seven hundred soldiers—not even enough to fill a full-strength company.
Seeing this, everyone felt a wave of disbelief.
After all, they had all witnessed Figroa's promotion battles.
Those had been large-scale battle formations composed of ten thousand soldiers.
And now, Celes was attempting a promotion challenge with only seven hundred men.
Even if Celes himself were ten times stronger than Figroa, the gap in numbers was simply too enormous.
However, once they sensed the aura emanating from Celes's force, they immediately understood the difference.
The formation Figroa constructed had far greater numbers and thus greater amplification.
But its aura was somewhat mixed and impure, making control less fluid.
By contrast, the formation Celes had built, while more than ten times smaller, had an aura that was perfectly unified and seamless.
Clearly, this was something only possible because Celes had complete control over the formation.
Even Oakes, upon seeing this, had a trace of surprise flash through his eyes.
He too had not expected that, after Lord Locke had bestowed the cultivation records for magic formations, someone would reach this level so quickly.
It wasn't that Figroa was incapable of fully controlling a formation.
Rather, because of the limitations of his own strength, a fully controlled formation would only be able to raise his power to about the level of a Six-Star Fiend.
Naturally, Figroa found that unacceptable.
In order to surpass Oakes, Figroa had taken another path.
He had every subordinate under him with talent for magic formations cultivate them as well.
Then, within his own formation, he treated the squad and company commanders' formations as nodes within his larger formation, controlling ten major nodes through them and indirectly commanding a far greater number of soldiers.
That was how he had elevated his legion's strength beyond that of an ordinary Seven-Star Fiend.
Rising into the sky, Oakes waved his hand.
"The promotion assessment for Fifth Battalion, Seventh Company Commander Celes for the rank of Battalion Commander… begins now!"
Boom!
The moment Oakes announced the start of the battle, the Seven-Star Fiend assigned to test Celes immediately broke away from his own legion and launched an attack toward Celes and his men.
(End of Chapter)
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