Chapter 852: Act 30 – Forest Song
“Charge!”
The long swords raised in the rain stirred up mist, resembling arcs of silver light. Freya stood proudly amidst the rain, her Lionheart Holy Sword held high. The officers of the White Lion army looked toward her, simultaneously raising their long swords in unity. The mist thickened around the shimmering white blades, which suddenly revealed a forest glistening with a cold light; the formation began to flow, each person’s steps quickening, growing larger until they were almost running wild. Occasionally, someone sprinted ahead, only to be surpassed on either side. The front row of White Lion infantry, clad in silver-gray armor, appeared as a gleaming line in the rain.
This line kept changing and advancing.
The White Lion Guard finally erupted with terrifying speed, fully displaying the characteristics of this proud lion before everyone on the battlefield. Mogkin, another commander from the two undead swordsman squads of Madara, watched this spectacle with astonishment, as if witnessing a silver-gray torrent pouring down from the forest border. He thought of the scene when the White Wing Cavalry charged, but that memory paled in comparison to the shock of what he saw today in the rain. What kind of infantry was this?
A flash of fire erupted, and a fireball exploded not far away, splattering mud all over him, but Mogkin seemed entirely unaware.
The undead were the best army in this world. After the explosions and flames quieted, the first line of spider swordsmen still held their long swords, coldly standing firm in their original positions. The dispersed formation no longer resembled a line, appearing instead as scattered individuals spread across the battlefield. Stray flames began to weave over their heads, intertwining into a net of explosions behind them. Sir Viscag was hoarsely urging the reserve troops to advance, but it wasn’t that his orders lacked decisiveness or that the undead lacked courage. The spider swordsmen surged forward boldly into the flames of destruction, the fireballs landing on them, exploding, and reducing these skeletons to fragments; the high temperatures even melted their armor, the molten metal pouring onto the ground and solidifying in the rain, forming dark metal discs.
Only a few fortunate spider swordsmen managed to break through the fire net and reach the front line. The wizards of Erluin cunningly concentrated their firepower, repeatedly hammering the central area of the battlefield, causing Madara’s flanks to gradually become full, but a weak link always existed in the center. Sir Viscag finally looked on in despair, his mouth agape, for he had never fought a war like this. At this moment, he felt as helpless as a frail young girl. He knew what the Erluins were trying to do but did not know how to stop it.
“Lady Martha, Mother of Spiders, please save me!” Undead do not believe in tears, but Sir Viscag only wanted to cry.
The White Lion Guard finally pierced through Madara’s front line on the riverbank like a silver-gray blade. The young men at the front were no more than ten meters from the skeleton swordsmen standing proudly in the light rain. At this distance, they could even see the gray-white phosphorescent fire flickering in each other’s eye sockets, cold as iron, devoid of the emotions of the living. The White Lions were courageous and exceptional, yet seeing such opponents still made them tense. The officers loudly called out commands to inspire courage in everyone. Juliette, Vurn, Mars, and Carglis, who had arrived from the rear, partially eased the soldiers’ hesitations. The White Lion banner advanced through the rain, and beneath the banner was another lady leading the charge, donned in a white holy robe with chain mail, holding a crucifix—the attire of a battle priestess.
That was Himelam.
Others did not understand why the Lord allowed his personal maid to charge with the army, but the priestess maiden had already raised her crucifix high. Brendel, watching from the back of the formation, felt a slight stir in his heart, sensing the elemental foundation of the traveling mage world shaking, light and earth elements rising from the elemental pool and then vanishing into the ether. He looked up just in time to see the skeleton swordsmen of Madara moving. They began to move, their left hands firmly gripping the sword handles, swinging upward with force—hundreds of dark blades, aligned and united, swept upward—drawing hundreds of long arcs through the rain.
At a distance of ten meters, a visible wave of blade energy burst forth from the swords, creating a blade of qi that rushed forward and instantly transformed into a conical shockwave, parting the curtain of water and swirling up a vast spray, sweeping across the first row of White Lion guards. But at that very moment, a faint gray light flickered across the White Lion Guard. This light formed an oval sphere upon being hit by the shockwave; no matter how fiercely the shockwave collided, the sphere showed no signs of breaking. The shockwave swept past, nearly leveling the riverbank by an inch, completely uprooting the grass on the riverbank, leaving behind a dark, muddy ground, yet the human soldiers remaining on this muddy ground were unscathed.
The Blessing Hymn.
For the first time, the power of the traveling mage was displayed on this rain-soaked battlefield by Himelam, stunning everyone observing the battle—
“What is that?” Sir Viscag let out a piercing scream from his hollow chest.
What kind of spell could render an entire army immune to harm? In his empty mind, he could not fathom the level of power required for such an ability, even a sage could not master such a rule. Only a deity, only those beings existing above the rules of the mortal world could perform such miracles. Mogkin’s mind was also a blank; as a lich, he could more deeply understand the terror of the earlier scene. It was not a spell, but a power that transcended spells.
In that instant, he keenly sensed a shiver of existential law passing through the clouds.
Although he was undead, at that moment he still felt a sense of despair; for how many years had he not tasted such terrifying emotions? It was as if he had forgotten that feeling that originally belonged to living beings since he became a lich. The moment of shock allowed the unharmed White Lion Guard and spider swordsmen to mesh together. Both sides were third-tier armies, but even though the young White Lions were still in a phase of blending the old with the new, stumbling and learning, even though the formations of the Tonigers were far from the orderly undead, this newly born army had one advantage—the terrifying mage corps finally revealed their effects at this moment.
In “The Amber Sword,” most spells suitable for bestowing enhancements across the entire army generally had weaker effects, such as Courage and Inspire Morale.
True enhancement spells, such as Wings of Wind, Aegis of the Atmosphere, Blade of Heaven, Stoneskin, and Dragon’s Might, could only be cast on a few individuals at a time. These spells were better suited for squad battles; if several wizards or priestesses tried to bestow them on the whole army, they would exhaust themselves despite having enough mana. Even if they didn’t collapse, how could there be sufficient time on the battlefield to waste?
But this issue was not a problem for the White Lion Guard.
The entire White Lion army consisted of only fifteen hundred men, yet their mage corps numbered one hundred and twenty. Brendel had divided the entire army into one hundred zones beforehand, and each wizard only needed to be responsible for the area they were assigned. After only a few brief moments of casting time, these powerful enhancement spells would land on everyone. This was not his invention; following the Battle of Slanted Woods, as wizards began to participate in battles en masse, clever players started to summarize and create these standardized tactical formations. Every intricate detail was based on the experiences of previous wars, though this specific tactic was especially unique.
Because it originated from Madara.
This was the true magical army that arose during the upcoming War of the Future Tablets. Although the White Lion Army was still far from reaching that level, it had already transcended its time.
In a different timeline, the advanced undead of Madara used this tactic to defeat the Erluins, the Wind Elves, the Crusian, but today, they were to taste the fruit of their own labor. “I wonder if my student learned well,” Brendel thought to himself as he calmly watched the White Lion Guard cut into Viscag’s line. Though the undead were resilient, their weak line could not withstand the already charging White Lion Guard. The silver torrent surged into the black line, breaking through the levee and flooding over the dam, charging toward the rear of Madara’s army.
Before the black roses could bloom, they withered in the fine rain; the outnumbered spider swordsmen were engulfed one by one by the White Lion Guard. Under the cover of the advancing barrage, the Tonigers had begun to establish a localized advantage on the battlefield. Even under the full suite of spell enhancements, the individual strength of human soldiers had surpassed that of the undead swordsmen, with many skeleton swordsmen’s long swords shattering under the astonishing power of the White Lion soldiers, leading to fierce fragmentation and chaos. In such circumstances, it became difficult for Madara’s undead to effectively protect their corpses, with the corpses frequently being killed and skeletons collapsing in waves. Although the undead army was fearless in battle, it had a fatal weakness.
Its lower-tier undead, including structured forces like spider swordsmen and skeletal knights, were supported by soul power, rather than by truly soulful high-tier undead. The power of these undead stemmed from the corpses; once the corpses that called upon them perished, they too would dissipate into nothing once their soul fires were exhausted. At this moment, the White Lion Army was accomplishing exactly that. Madara’s undead line had been torn apart, leaving behind the commanding corpses exposed to sword and blade. Sir Pranchette’s unfinished task was now being completed by Freya.
At this moment, Freya had her sights set on Sir Viscag and the group of black knights beside him. After experiencing the battle in the Frost Forest, her Valkyrie bl**d had fully awakened; when activating the Valkyrie emblem, she possessed at least the combat power of a mid-level gold. In this era, she was almost indistinguishable from the growing Valkyries of history, and one year after meeting Veronika, she would officially cross the elemental gate and become Erluin’s true Valkyrie.
The Lady Knight turned her horse’s head and charged in that direction. On the other side, Mogkin, the Lich, noticed this scene and contemplated aiding, yet he quickly stopped; a stone scepter had unexpectedly collided from the side. He instinctively wove a dark magic to block this sudden attack, but a miraculous scene occurred; Mogkin watched as the scepter collided with his magical barrier. The black light shield, creaking like it was dying, had the threads of rules, magic formations, and inscriptions flashing madly before one by one shattering, leaving the light shield in tatters, allowing the stone scepter to smash into his head.
Without any reaction time, Mogkin’s head instantly shattered like glass, exploding into dust.
“What the hell kind of power is this?” it screamed from deep within its soul, its body swaying atop the skeletal steed and plummeting down to the ground.
Himelam finally stopped, setting down the mountainous scepter in her hand. She looked up at the lich’s soul shooting into the sky, returning to the unknown lair of its soul box, impressed by the power of the scepter she wielded.
This was the strength derived from the earth and the mountains—
A sharp howl pierced the skies.
Brendel instinctively looked up, catching sight of winged creatures emerging from the dark clouds. The dreadlings had arrived, each diving down from the air, their ear-piercing screeches echoing across the river valley, the penetrating wails chilling to the bone. Yet, unfortunately, this was of no consequence to the White Lion Guard. The courage of the White Lions had long been celebrated in the epic poems of Erluin, and the White Lion Guard inherently possessed immunity to fear, making them the best army against the undead, historical adversaries.
Erluin and today’s Madara could be said to epitomize this.
The dreadlings pierced through the rain and headed directly for the Toniger mage corps. Hundreds of dreadlings dived down in unison, generating an overwhelming intimidation effect. Some young wizards, frightened, quickly unleashed fireballs into the air, only for the flying undead creatures to effortlessly dodge with agile aerial maneuvers; before those wizards could even begin incanting, their heads were struck hard. When they turned back, they saw Lord Duncan and his duck familiar sternly glaring at them, “Don’t miss the target!” Lord Duncan was no longer the hapless apprentice of yore; after the battles of the Loop of Trade Winds, he had grown quickly, now approaching golden-level strength, one of the few wizards of this level under Charles, and had become the captain of the mage corps.
Such scenes were unfolding throughout the entire mage corps, while onlookers saw only that after a few fireballs, the wizards shifted their targets, continuing to focus on bombarding the skeletal swordsmen on the riverbank.
“They’re mad!” The Bloodstaff began to see a gradual reduction in forces at the front, and the Vieiro were briefly relieved, but when they realized this scene, they almost became paralyzed with shock: “Earl Toniger isn’t going to use the mage corps?!”
Earl Jack shared the same confusion, but he believed that the earl was not foolish enough to do such a thing; he must have a backup plan. But where could that backup be? His gaze fell upon the silent Black Forest.
The Bloodstaff also looked toward that Black Forest.
In fact, at this moment, both sides on the battlefield felt a certain foreboding, like sparks igniting in their minds, granting them the ability to foresee the future. Indeed, in an instant, a feathered arrow was launched high into the forest, the battlefield seemed to freeze as everyone watched the arrow ascending slowly, tracing an ugly parabolic arc without striking any dreadlings; half way, it lost its momentum and fell with a ‘thud’ onto Brendel’s shoulder plate.
Brendel glanced at the arrow and then inexplicably turned to the dark, dense linden forest behind him.
“My bad, I slipped,” Phinny stuck out her tongue, somewhat embarrassed as she looked at her commander, “It was those monsters’ cries that startled me.”
Medisa looked at her with an exasperated smile, shook her head, then turned and raised her wind bow.
But that crooked arrow acted as a signal on the battlefield.
The next moment.
The wail pierced the air—
In everyone’s gaze, a wall rose from the forest, a ghostly green wall made up of countless green dots, each one a gleaming arrow. “They plan to use archers against the dreadlings?” The Bloodstaff sighed with relief upon witnessing this scene. The Vieiro had once used crossbowmen to counter their dreadlings, but even when thousands of elite crossbowmen shot in volleys, only two dreadlings were slightly injured; the dreadlings flew too fast, too high, and like the skeletons, were resistant to arrows, posing no fear from such soft attacks.
Moreover, in such weather, archers were affected more than crossbowmen.
The contemptuous sneer on the skeleton’s split head hadn’t even had time to further widen when the next moment, it froze on its face. Because it saw those arrows did not follow the ordinary parabolic trajectory of ordinary archers — launching high, passing through the ranks of dreadlings, and then falling down — but rather that the green wall swept straight through the formation of flying dreadlings like a hurricane, flying for three or four miles before gradually losing energy, beginning to descend from its height.
But none of this was important.
What mattered was that after the rain of arrows, over twenty dreadlings fell like rain.
“Elf archers!” The Bloodstaff’s mind buzzed; only the most elite archer units among the elves could achieve such terrifying range. But whether Wind Elves or Wild Elves, none could possibly appear in this place. It clicked and rattled in its throat, staring hard at that unit, wanting to clarify one thing for a moment:
Where had this army come from?
At the same time, Earl Jack was equally astonished: “Enchanted arrows!” He stared, momentarily stunned by what he was witnessing, suddenly understanding where he went wrong earlier.
