Chapter 38：Battle Of Salamis part 3

The battle was now in full throttle, Xiao Li was doing everything in his power to get out of being surrounded in all sides by Baron's forces. There was an entire fleet behind them which he had already sent a few of his own to counter. Then there were the repeating crossbow units which were unleashing a torrent of unrelenting bolts from both sides. The only path that they could take was the path in front of them, but Xiao Li knew all too well that Baron was planning on him taking that route. So, to not fall into an even bigger mess than he was already in, Xiao Li decided to stay his hand and to just see how things panned out for now.

This turned out to be a major mistake on his part since he found out that the Greek soldiers that he was fighting turned out to be more ferocious than what he had experienced before. Since he had been on this sim before, he already knew that the Persian sailors under him were nowhere near the seafarers like the Greeks were, but this new level of insane skills was something that he was having trouble believing in.

This went beyond what he had predicted and sent in more of his ships to aid in countering the fleet that appeared behind them. To the left and right of his army though, things were looking up, the repeating crossbow units that were posted were not as adept at fighting and were very slowly being overwhelmed. Hence why they were left with the easiest task of pointing and shooting. In front of his army, were a couple of Greek Triremes that were just sitting on the docks not moving at all. This type of fighting persisted for nearly an hour before the next major development took place of which Xiao Li felt he was close enough to launch his missiles.

To the amazement of the fighting soldiers of both sides, multiple missiles were aimed and shot down the docked triremes and sunk them in record time. For this maneuver, he had used up all but 3 of his missiles which he felt was just enough to end the sim for good. From what he could tell, he had sunk nearly 100 of Baron's ships and that was no small number considering that Baron had less than 400 to begin with and at this point in time, Xiao Li still had over 600.

Xiao Li thought this type of behaviour was a tad too suspicious. If his opponent just retreated like that, he was essentially giving up since one of the objectives was to get past the strait and claim the lands past it. Though he was unsure of what Baron was doing, he still decided to go for it. The amount of damage that he had done to the Greek fleet was not a small number, in fact, going by his estimates, he had already taken out 40% of the enemy's ships.

He ordered his fleet to move forward while simultaneously getting a quick recount of how many ships and men he had left after the last battle. It took a while but he got his answer, he had lost more than he thought, 525 ships along with 10,000 men. This was surprising to him since the proportion of men lost to ships lost was way off. The reason was most likely due to the repeating crossbow units that were waiting for them in ambush and managed to let loose quite a few thousand rounds before retreating. None of this mattered though, all he had to do to win this sim was to claim the land that he was fast approaching. Every moment that passed by he knew there was something that Baron was planning. No one would be willing to give up in a sim, even if it was a low-level one that no one paid any attention to. Thus, he had ordered his men to stay on guard and report the tiniest of movements back to him.

It was as he expected, once he came within a few kilometers of the shore, another batch of ships came in from behind and yet another came in from the port that he thought he had destroyed with his missiles just a few hours prior. On either side of them once again appeared many men, however, this time they were not armed with crossbows, but rather, flaming arrows. It seemed as though there were only about a hundred ships that were preparing to engage him, which meant that either there were a few dozen more hiding somewhere else, or they weren't going to use them.

The flaming arrows were let loose volley after volley tens of thousands filled up the sky then the waters and ships as more and more came down upon his Persian fleet. Xiao Li once again sent the rear guard to intercept the ships behind them and a few ships to the sides to take care of the archers. Then he moved to the front of his fleet to better deal with the enemies to the front. He became so entangled with these enemies that he did not see that nearly all of his rear guard was getting overpowered.

What he did not expect was the speed at which his entire detachment was burned to a crisp. However, once he got the news, he immediately realized that no flaming arrows could do this kind of damage this fast. He was correct since Baron was the one to use his ancient flamethrower to burn down the ships in record time.