The first to act wasn’t any witch beside Yun Dao, but the giant crocodile that stealthily lurked underground using its superpower.
With the inherent stealth effect of the earth and its precise operation, the giant crocodile brought a few witches close without being noticed until the moment of action.
The giant crocodile first went for the newly arrived Beast King.
According to the plan, what the giant crocodile needed to do was to stall this unexpected combat power.
And probe the Beast King’s superpowers and abilities in battle.
This was to eliminate other soldiers without surprises for the witches and to gather more intelligence.
So the witches could respond better and target this unknown Beast King with their advantages.
Using earth waves and the advantage of surprise, the giant crocodile instantly flipped the Big Cat aside.
This was one of its tasks, to drag this Big Cat away from the battlefield as much as possible.
Although it was frustrating to face yet another Big Cat, it only made the giant crocodile strike harder.
After the giant crocodile acted, Yun Dao no longer hid. Without even waiting for a Magic Radiance warning, orange-red Fireballs flew from the hillside toward the valley, transforming into blazing flowers.
At this moment, Yun Dao also had a crimson feather fan in hand, made from materials from that owl, it’s the Fire Fan!
Using the Tier Six feather fan as a magic wand guidance, a flame hotter than all previous Fireballs landed below with a wave of the fan.
To the crowd below, these attacks seemed to appear suddenly in the dark. Only when the attacks were launched did they finally notice, leaving barely any time to react.
That was also part of Yun Dao’s design, relying on a few extra witches to cast a weakened version of Dark Fog. Though lacking a complete effect, the Magic Radiance from such casting was already sufficient.
For the witches themselves, with other witches providing visual support, their vision was irrelevant.
The cattle herd benefited from the Beast King ability’s protection, and these scattered probing attacks were relatively harmless.
But for the human soldiers and Mutant Creatures below, these flames were deadly reapers!
Tier Six spells, even though group damage types, weren’t something below Tier Five could withstand.
Even Tier Five units, most of which barely broke through and hadn’t had time to upgrade two levels, found them hard to fend off.
Ordinary soldiers didn’t have the strong passive talents of Hero Units. Even being Tier Five, not every-tier-five soldier had Bai Yi’s strengthening capabilities.
Most could only rely on upgraded Barracks buildings. What they could evolve into depended entirely on fate.
Only some powerful Lords would proactively invest some special Advanced materials during upgrades, potentially gaining a few talents.
However, compared to Bai Yi’s witches and Insect Swarm, it’s still a world of difference.
In fact, neither ordinary soldier units nor even Hero Units could necessarily match Bai Yi’s Insect Swarm and ordinary witches considered low status.
Such weak soldiers quickly perished under the fiery scorch without much opportunity to react.
Only those units with true Tier Five power could rely on themselves to withstand or dodge successfully.
But Yun Dao’s wave of probing attacks aimed at large-scale clearing of Low-tier soldiers.
As for targets above Tier Five, they were reserved for the next wave of attacks.
Yet this round of spells hadn’t ended.
With the firelight illuminating, the remaining witches cast spells more precisely at the weakest units, fulfilling Yun Dao’s strategic goal of clearing those potentially interfering soldiers.
At this stage, Yun Dao didn’t even restrict the type of spells, letting each witch casting squad leader freely choose the most suitable spell.
For the moment, the richness of spells Yun Dao had researched for the expeditionary army was fully reflected on the battlefield.
On-site witches could even perform a Tier Six spell [Thunderstorm] in twelve different ways; more than a hundred different casting squads showed at least seventy different spells.
The chaotic spell types left the combat units below unable to come up with an effective defense strategy.
This spell might be Fire Series. But once the corresponding defense was deployed, the next could be Thunder Series, Ice Series...
Attack patterns with no rhythm forced all capable Hero Units to focus entirely on self-protection.
Even the cattle herd was forced to abandon some weak units of newborns and wounded, concentrating on protecting more of the family in this "probing" attack.
Seeing that these deliberately not fully exerted spells couldn’t achieve initial results, the seamless second wave of spells commenced.
With Fireball Technique, combining various visual and physical impacts, bombing began from the valley’s edge, continually compressing the activity range.
And when some Hero Units, depending on their strength, attempted to rush out of this ever-shrinking "poison circle," prepared Lightning would immediately target them for precision strikes.
Over 150,000 witches on the surrounding mountains had no issues with insufficient Magic Power.
Unlike the battle targeting the Beast King earlier, every squad was formed into a standard team of a hundred casters to ensure spells could still achieve sufficient effects even from a vigilant distance.