Still furious, Patria did not forget to deal with the matter as quickly as possible.
The stench in the air was already starting to spread. Patria gave the order in a low voice, "Send out the Windwing Falcons immediately. Go deal with those damned dragonbirds!"
"Yes, sir!"
The adjutant accepted the order at once and hurried off.
Windwing Falcons were a kind of large bird found in Noxus. They had respectable attack power and were easy to tame.
Noxus generally used them to make up for its weak air force.
Very soon, more than a hundred Windwing Falcons spread their wings and took off through the shit-rain, surging upward in a sweeping wave that looked fairly imposing.
But while Windwing Falcons had decent combat ability in the air, how could they possibly compare to dragonbirds?
Dragonbirds carried a trace of draconic blood. They were born rulers of the sky.
And with Dragonbird Riders working alongside them, their combat strength was even greater.
It did not take long before Windwing Falcon after Windwing Falcon started dropping out of the sky. From deep within the clouds came the roar of dragonbirds fighting the wind, declaring their place as untouchable lords of the air.
Watching the Windwing Falcons fall one after another, Patria clenched his fists, livid with rage.
The adjutant ran over and asked, "General, the enemy has at least thirty dragonbirds in the air. The Windwing Falcons can't beat them. Please make a decision quickly."
Patria shot him a sideways glance. "Do you happen to have a way to knock them out of the sky?"
An oppressive aura rolled off him as he barely kept his anger in check.
The adjutant lowered his head. A sour smell drifted off him. "I... urgh..."
He did not even finish speaking before a dry heave tore out of him.
After the shit-rain had fallen for a while, the smell had started to ferment. Now all kinds of foul odors were mixing together everywhere, making scalps tingle and noses ache.
It was even starting to reach the point where it stung the eyes.
Some people tried breathing through their mouths, only to feel their throats burn the next second, like they had literally eaten shit.
They immediately started retching.
"Forget the dragonbirds. Move quickly and use water to wash this filth away!"
Patria's face was dark as he issued another order.
The dragonbirds were flying at least five hundred meters above the Gates of Mourning. With Noxus's weak anti-air capabilities, they simply could not reach that height and shoot the Dragonbird Riders down.
Which meant they could do nothing but stand there and watch them dump shit all over the city.
For Patria, this was utter humiliation.
He had been leading troops and fighting wars for years.
But damn it, this was the first time he had ever seen one side in a war attack the other by dumping shit on them.
Even in the whole sweep of history, this kind of move would be astonishing.
Though Patria had never fought Demacia before, based on what he knew, Demacia should not have been this kind of nation.
Right now, he wanted to know one thing only, which bastard had come up with this tactic.
He knew perfectly well the other side was doing this on purpose just to disgust them, and the most infuriating part was that he had no real way to stop it.
"Demacia!"
Watching the adjutant turn and leave while the stench still lingered behind, Patria's face turned ashen. He felt like the good mood he had carried all this time had been completely ruined by this one day.
The shit-rain had lasted less than half an hour, but after the Dragonbird Riders had spread it on such a scale, it now covered every corner of the Gates of Mourning.
No matter where anyone went, they could smell that unbearable, soul-piercing reek shooting straight to the top of the skull.
Very quickly, a massive cleanup operation began across the city.
And everywhere, the same scene played out.
"Fuck! Those De-urgh-macians!"
"Urgh... what kind of animal... urgh... came up with this..."
"Urgh... it fucking stinks... urgh..."
"It's worse than underwear I haven't washed in ten years... urgh..."
The Noxian soldiers gagged while endlessly throwing water over everything.
As they scrubbed, they found themselves thinking,
Could a human being even come up with something this hellish?
All the water in the city was put to use, wave after wave washing away the traces of the shit-rain.
Soon, the soldiers in the city made a horrifying discovery.
The stains were gone.
But the smell remained.
That blend of shit, rotten eggs, and sewer stink clung to the city like a swarm of flies that refused to leave. It was still everywhere.
The stench had eased a little, but even the softened version was enough to make people's scalps crawl.
Before long, all the spices and herbs in the entire city, anything with even a hint of fragrance, got pressed into service.
But fragrance in front of that stench was like a delicate naked little beauty getting shoved down by an overbearing king of foulness and ravaged again and again.
In the end, all it could do was sob, "I'm ruined."
In simple terms, it was useless.
The scent worked for a little while, but once the stink swallowed it whole, that familiar smell crept right back into everyone's noses again.
Patria was furious about the situation, but there was nothing he could do.
At his side, the adjutant could not help asking, "General, what do we do about this?"
"Ignore it." Patria stared coldly at the sky and snorted. The aura of a true powerhouse flared around him as he said flatly, "They're nothing but low, filthy tricks that can't stand in the open. So what if it smells bad, urgh..."
A dry heave interrupted him, but his expression only grew colder as he continued, "This kind of petty nonsense isn't worth worrying about."
Any soldier who could make it onto a battlefield had crawled out of piles of corpses.
It was just a little stink.
They could endure it.
That was what he told himself, but hearing the dry heaves rising from all over the city, Patria's face looked anything but good.
It was not until deep into the night that the smell drifting across the city finally began to fade.
A great many soldiers who had been unable to sleep because of it finally let out a sigh of relief.
And then, right at that moment, drip.
That familiar feeling returned.
"The enemy's dumping shit on us again!"
Someone shouted it out.
Patria had been asleep in his room, only to smell the stench seeping in through every crack in the door, every slit in the windows, every opening there was.
Even though he had scattered plenty of spices and herbs all through the room, none of it had stopped the smell.
He was forcibly woken by the stench. His face looked as ugly as someone suffering from severe constipation, and his bloodshot eyes turned toward the direction of Hill City, murderous intent spilling from them.
"Demacia, you damned bastards!"
His furious roar shook the room as he ground the words out through clenched teeth.
Meanwhile, on the other side, the people of Hill City were sleeping soundly.
The next day.
Luke slept just as well as usual. After waking up, he lazed around in the warm blankets for a while, changed clothes inside them, and only then finally got up.
After breakfast, he headed to the dragonbird grounds.
In a few more hours, Cithria and the others would be setting out again.
"You'll have to keep working hard for a while longer. The most important thing in all of this is protecting yourselves first."
Luke looked at Cithria as he spoke slowly.
Cithria replied, "For us, having a mission is exactly what we want most."
When she had first learned what Luke was planning, she had been pretty stunned too.
But after actually carrying it out, she had discovered that while the move was vicious, it also felt strangely satisfying.
As for just how vicious Luke's tactic was...
It was so vicious that even his own side felt like it had reached the absolute peak of cruelty.
Looking across all of history, the move was spectacularly outrageous.
Not long after this battle, Luke would probably become famous in a single stroke.
History had no shortage of mighty armies and brave generals, yet many impressive figures had still failed to leave their names on its pages.
But Luke was different.
As the first man in history to wage war by dumping shit, his name was destined to leave a mark on history for later generations to admire.
Even though, aside from him, no one else would ever want to become famous that way.
Anyone who knew him understood, this really was the kind of thing he would do.
Luke himself did not care at all about any of that.
He had always lived one day at a time. It was just like his attitude toward spending money, if he had it, he would enjoy it to the fullest.
Who knew if one day he might get buried before spending it all? Wouldn't that be a lifetime regret?
The same applied to happiness.
There was no need to care about other people's opinions or judgments. If you could find happiness without harming anyone, what was wrong with that?
Of course, the lovely neighbors next door were being very heavily affected right now.
Which was exactly why Luke was in an exceptionally good mood.
After being mixed and prepared, the smell could usually linger for five to eight hours. Cithria and the others only needed to make three trips a day.
The odor was hard to remove, which meant that for quite some time to come, it would keep the lovely neighbors next door company.
Luke had actually considered just making poison gas and tossing that over instead. Wouldn't that be even simpler?
But once poison gas dispersed, the effect would vanish with it. Spending time to make it would only waste time and effort.
What Luke had put together here could only be considered a cheap imitation of a stink bomb.
Compared to real battlefield weapons of mass misery, it was still far behind.
Whether it was poison gas bombs or stink bombs, both required fine equipment and proper materials, which obviously were not easy to come by.
Although Luke's toxicology was solid, pulling an actual gas bomb out of thin air was still a very difficult thing.
After watching this whole thing unfold since yesterday, Katarina finally could not help speaking up. "So this is what all of that was for? You're planning to force the Noxian troops out of the Gates of Mourning like this?"
Her eyes stayed on Luke as he stood there yawning lazily.
The tactic was nasty, no doubt about it.
But after finding out what Luke was doing, Katarina was not even surprised.
If anything, she felt it was exactly the sort of thing he would do.
This time, the man in front of her had completely rewritten her understanding of Demacians.
Though she had never really interacted with Demacians before, she had heard from rumor that most of them were conservative, restrained, steady, and unassuming.
Noxus believed they were nothing more than incompetent fools shouting empty slogans about justice.
But looking at their military record through history, Demacia clearly had real strength. At the very least, they were not afraid of Noxus.
And yet Luke's existence had completely overturned Katarina's understanding of Demacians.
She had never imagined that in a place like this, there could be a person like him.
Again and again, she found herself doubting whether he really was a prince.
But the consistent respect shown to him by everyone around them kept confirming that he was.
Coming back to herself, and looking at it purely from a strategic perspective, the tactic really was well used.
Still, if the goal was to force the Noxian army out with something like this, that probably would not happen.
Because this alone was not enough.
At the end of the day, it was still a method that did not cause any real damage.
Hearing her, Luke glanced sideways at her and smiled. "Nope. I just wanted to disgust them, plain and simple."
Katarina looked at him speechlessly and said nothing more.
At the very least, Luke's move was undeniably effective.
Three days passed in a flash.
December 9th.
The Gates of Mourning.
After three full days of this treatment, the city had truly become the City of Flying Shit.
The stench was everywhere. The entire place had turned into one gigantic sewer.
It was midday.
In the military camp, soldiers sat there with pale faces, eating the food in their hands, while dry heaves kept sounding from all around.
Under the smell hanging in the air now, food that should have tasted delicious felt no different to them than eating shit.
Three days.
A full three days.
They had spent more than three whole days in that smell.
Even after getting used to it, the moment it drifted into their noses, their bodies still reacted with involuntary nausea.
The smell was just too damn strong.
At this point, they were basically sleeping inside a latrine. Most people could still manage to fall asleep, but every now and then they would get woken up again by the stench.
By now, many of them had noticeably worse sleep.
And more than their declining sleep quality, what they wanted to know most was which bastard had come up with this damned filthy tactic.
They had not even met him, and yet every last one of them already hated him with a passion.
Patria was sleeping badly too.
Lately, his face had grown darker and darker. The stench hanging in the air had made his temper even more irritable than usual.
How was this tactic any different from shitting on their heads?
Its destructive power was not all that high, but the humiliation factor was overwhelming.
The facts proved that the one who had come up with this move had achieved exactly what he wanted.
At this very moment, the heart of every person in the city was burning with anger.
Over the past few days, Patria had tried every method he could think of to shoot the Dragonbird Riders out of the sky, but he had failed every single time.
For all the troops he had at his command, all he could do was let the enemy dump shit over their heads.
That was the most infuriating part of all.
Right now, all he wanted was to drag out the one responsible for the shit-dumping and beat the living hell out of him.
Otherwise, the frustration crawling through his body felt like ants under his skin, unbearable and maddening.
For one brief moment, he had even wanted to send his army directly at Hill City.
But in the end, he forced himself to hold back.
Doing that would mean giving up the advantage he already held. There was no need for it.
Of course, Patria had no intention of letting the enemy keep shitting over their heads forever. He had already sent word back to Noxus.
Before long, Noxus would dispatch a specialized anti-air squad. Even if they could not defeat those Dragonbird Riders outright, they could at least stop them from showing up whenever they wanted, leaving whenever they wanted, and dropping shit all over the city at will.
For now, all he had to do was endure.
And then wait for the perfect opportunity. When it came, he would make Demacia pay.
"Demacia... just you urgh... wait!"
Patria clenched his fists and suppressed the fury boiling in his chest.
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