Chapter 854: Act 32 – The Knights Again
A silver line appeared on the horizon, stretching over hills and valleys. Thunder rolled as it approached, revealing countless silver steeds. These graceful and slender Fran battle horses slowed to a stop at the edge of the forest, shaking their ears as they frolicked on the meadow outside the woods. The tallest among them raised its head and gazed toward the forest.
The wind rangers, witnessing this scene, were almost stunned. They cast curious glances at Medisa, filled with admiration for the princess commander.
Medisa’s face flushed slightly, but she quickly regained her composure and calmly commanded, “Lingsong Guard, heed my orders, mount up.”
Upon hearing the command, the girls quickly slung their longbows over their shoulders, carefully stepping out of the forest one by one, approaching the remarkably handsome battle horses. They soon discovered that the horses were unusually friendly toward them, showing no hostility but lowering their heads to nuzzle, as if they were old comrades rather than strangers. The girls were both surprised and curious; they pulled down their hoods and affectionately stroked their mounts’ manes before grabbing the saddles and stepping into the stirrups, mounting one after another.
Their movements were extremely practiced, as if they had been trained for this.
The last to mount was Phini, the chief treant archer, who initially appeared hesitant but soon became spirited after getting on horseback, cheerfully stating, “So that’s why Lord commanded us to train in horsemanship every day! It was for today!”
Brendel, holding the reins, glanced back at her. “I wonder who complained during training.”
Phini replied nonchalantly, “But I’m riding now! This horse is so docile; I’ve never seen such a good horse. It feels like we share a bond the moment I ride it.”
The other girls nodded in agreement.
Brendel knew that the effect description of the Fran knight’s “Cavalry Preparation” card was “Pay X wealth, Fran knights transform X followers into cavalry; if already cavalry, gain flying ability.” The literal interpretation was to convert infantry into cavalry, not merely to summon battle horses, which was why the wind rangers felt the way they did. However, even someone who had never ridden before would feel baffled when suddenly gaining horsemanship skills; the first time sitting on a horse would still be disorienting, thus basic riding training remained essential, even if it did not have immediate effects in a short time—it was at least to familiarize them with the feeling of being on horseback.
All for this moment.
In the linden forest—
“Mounted archers?” Earl Zilin asked incredulously.
Earl Jack shook his head gently; clearly, Zilin was the type who knew nothing about military tactics but liked to speculate. “The bows they bear are over one and a half meters long; this is typical of infantry longbows. There’s no way to effectively use them from horseback unless they have short bows as well, so they can’t be mounted archers.”
“Maybe they brought short bows; otherwise, why summon these horses?”
“That is a possibility as well,” Earl Jack responded after a moment’s thought. He was at a loss regarding the thoughts of the Tonigers. Yet, the lord could summon a contingent of cavalry, reigniting his hope; he stroked the hilt of his sword, pondering at what moment to cooperate with the Tonigers for a counterattack to turn the tide.
Meanwhile, on the opposing side at the Madara stronghold, Bloodstaff had reached the same conclusion: the sudden appearance of a cavalry unit threatening its flank made it uneasy. The opposing army was far too strange; it pondered what the commander intended to do with that mounted archer unit, but it couldn’t comprehend.
Other dark lords also found it unbelievable. They reached a consensus—the mounted archer unit could very likely be a diversion sent by the Erluin people; if they truly separated their forces, the five large divisions of the White Lion infantry would likely break through the central position. However, allowing such a ‘mounted archer’ army to roam about seemed unwise as well. Ultimately, Bloodstaff ordered the last remaining skeleton warrior unit to advance, at least to prevent any disturbances to its flank.
Seeing Bloodstaff still acting methodically, Brendel chuckled, “Now it’s your turn, Medisa.”
“My lord, the outcome is already decided. This time, please lead us personally into the charge,” the Silver Elf Princess replied softly.
Brendel nodded, “Call Husher and the others out.”
Medisa whistled softly, like a nightingale. After a moment, more than ten knights rode out from behind the trees, approaching. It was Husher and his team, but their attire had changed significantly since then. Husher wore a set of exquisite and heavy armor, somewhat resembling the style of White City; the shoulder pads and arm plates were connected, adorned with white paint depicting sea monster patterns. He wielded a lance, with a sheathed longsword and a battle axe hanging at his waist, looking more like a knight than a mercenary. However, Brendel knew this was the elite knight attire of the Far-Eagle mercenary group, the most famous in the White City area.
The others were similarly attired, except for the Flour sisters. The older sister among the wild elves now wore a gray leather robe, with a cape made of numerous woven strips, each beneath adorned with a brass ring. This peculiar cloak was a notable mage’s robe, with each brass ring engraved with corresponding spells for immediate casting in battle, a typical attire for combat mages. Meanwhile, the younger sister, Tia, wore a loose white robe with a pointed witch’s hat, having now become a formal elven messenger, happily grinning at her lord from horseback.
Husher smiled at Brendel, “My lord, long time no see! We’ve been so bored with training for such a long time. The scenery on the Gem Plains might be beautiful, and the evenings in Roshar superbly vibrant, but they cannot compare to the thrill of real combat!”
“Husher, since when did you start speaking so poetically?” Brendel replied with a touch of guilt, “It won’t happen again.”
“Really?” Tia asked excitedly.
“Of course it’s true.”
In fact, maintaining the White City Forward Guard only required paying Wind 5 and Medisa 20 mana daily. Brendel nodded, but Flour let out a soft hum beside him. He looked over in surprise; the older sister among the wild elves had turned her face away, revealing only her pointed ears. “She’s clearly upset,” Brendel thought; card creatures possess emotions. He wondered how Medephis and Andrigraphis were faring; the former was fine, but the latter might very well be intent on killing him now.
He glanced toward the riverbank; the battle had evolved slowly to this point. The Madara side was like a massive turntable, slowly rotating in the rain, while Freya commanded the White Lion Guard, attempting to break through the already fragmented defenses of the Spider Swordsmen. However, the undead were fundamentally different from humans; despite the situation, they continued to pose significant challenges for Freya.
Brendel tightened his grip on his horse’s flank, urging it forward to the front of the Lingsong Guard. He turned the horse’s head to face the Madara army, quietly commanding, “Avoid the direction the White Lion Guard is attacking; follow me.”
The army began to move.
Close to a thousand pure silver steeds and the girls riding behind them slowly maneuvered past the direct assault of the White Lion Guard, circling to the flank of the Bloodstaff army. The Vieiro people and the Madara undead closely watched this scene. Although they knew it was unlikely to be a fearsome mounted archer force, allowing such a large army to directly threaten their hollow flank still caused Bloodstaff to feel uneasy. “Let our archers keep an eye on that direction,” it commanded a nearby necromancer, “Don’t let the Erluin people get too reckless.”
“Our archers may not be a match for them,” a dark noble responded in a hoarse voice.
“Of course, they aren’t a match; those are elf archers, and our archers are merely targets before them! But if they truly have short bows, then the short bows will be at a disadvantage against our long bows, understand, you fool?!”
Brendel watched Bloodstaff’s movements, thinking that the old leader of Madara was certainly meticulous. However, unfortunately, certain things were beyond what its hollow mind could imagine. The Lingsong Guard gradually advanced and stopped about a thousand feet from the Bloodstaff army. Everyone was puzzled about what these mounted infantry with longbows intended to do at this distance, but their actions soon provided the answer. Under everyone’s gaze, the wind rangers swiftly dismounted, as if rehearsed countless times, then ran forward to form ranks in the open space, raising their longbows at the command. Before Bloodstaff could react, the Erluin people’s feathered arrows had already soared into the sky.
The undead commanders gazed up at the densely packed glowing points. They reached their peak height, paused slightly, then whistled down, and in an instant, it was as if a rain of light fell upon Bloodstaff’s flank. Unlike the volley of Vieiro crossbowmen, the wind ranger’s arrows were faster, more penetrating, and more accurate, and all were imbued with holy attributes. After a round of arrows, Bloodstaff’s flank seemed combed through, with several rows of skeleton archers falling down like blades in the wind.
Bloodstaff couldn’t take it anymore; at this distance, its skeleton archers couldn’t shoot back at all, they could only take hits. It never dreamed that this would be infantry on horseback; at this moment, it felt as if the opposing commander was utterly baffled, pondering what on earth they were thinking, couldn’t they just fight properly? But thoughts aside, this long-established dark lord had to order the skeleton warriors to charge forward, to drive off that elf archer army; otherwise, allowing those archers to shoot freely would surely drive it mad.
Seeing the skeleton army charge, the wind rangers under Brendel remained calm, orderly retreating back into formation. They remounted and galloped away, leaving only a distant silhouette for the approaching skeleton army; after a distance, under Brendel’s command, they stopped their horses once more, forming ranks and preparing to unleash another volley at the skeleton army.
The undead commanders were stunned. What to do? Pursue, but they couldn’t catch up. Shoot, but they couldn’t shoot back. If only they had phantoms; they could send them to entangle the enemy first and then have the skeleton army catch up to annihilate them. But the phantoms had long since been exhausted, and the remaining dozen creeping toward the enemy wouldn’t be enough for even a single volley. Of course, they still had cavalry, but pulling the cavalry over meant allowing the Lantonrand people to attack their other flank, which would only lead to a quicker collapse.
Bloodstaff’s head throbbed; how could this battle continue? If the opponent were mere ordinary cavalry, it could rely on the undead’s nearly limitless endurance to wear down their mounts’ stamina. The problem was that the enemy’s steeds were clearly summoned; when has it ever heard of summoned creatures having stamina limits? Summoning was one thing, but each archer had three steeds; losing one or two wouldn’t matter. It now somewhat envisioned the mindset of Viskag just prior; it could only cry without tears, wondering what sort of army this was, infantry running faster than cavalry, and worse, foot archers each equipped with three steeds, plainly a configuration of elite cavalry. What was the enemy commander thinking?
“This…” Earl Jack stood at a distance, stunned upon witnessing this scene. “This is Fanzan’s dragoon tactics…”
“Earl Jack, providing a single archer with three steeds; this lord is quite wealthy,” Earl Zilin commented with a sigh.
“Those steeds are summoned.” Earl Jack, seeing his colleague misunderstanding, had to explain, but he couldn’t help but marvel internally, realizing that anyone who could employ such tactics in Erluin could only be this lord. He still couldn’t figure out how the other party summoned those fine steeds; just who was this Earl of Toniger? Yet, he suddenly began to understand that only such a figure could single-handedly turn around the situation in Ampere Seale.
“We’ve underestimated them, Zilin.” He couldn’t help but shake his head in lament.
The battlefield began to clarify.
Overwhelmed, Bloodstaff had no choice but to send one of its skeleton warrior units to stall the enemy’s wind rangers—or as it might be better said, to serve them up as a meal. Its sole hope was that the enemy’s elf archers would slow down slightly, allowing it to address the White Lion infantry on the riverbank; although the elf archer unit was bothersome, it wasn’t the army that would decide the battle’s outcome. Its plan was manifestly successful. Brendel’s wind rangers still had two units of holy attribute enchanted arrows, of course, they couldn’t waste them on this skeleton horde; they could only expend regular arrows from a distance to slowly chip away at their “living” forces. This way, Bloodstaff had finally bought itself some time.
It finally assembled two units of spider swordsmen to the front, along with its original skeleton warrior unit and two skeleton archer units, giving Madara for the first time an absolutely overwhelming strength against Brendel’s White Lion Guard.
At this moment, the White Lion Guard had just cleaned up the remnants of Viskag and Mergen’s forces, with two large divisions led by Himelam and Freya as the tip of the spear, directly charging toward Madara’s main formation. The moment that would decide the battle’s outcome appeared to be presenting itself; the two armies locked in a clash. The Erluin mages once again unleashed their magic, with fireballs soaring across the entire valley, landing in droplets among the Madara army.
Then, the necromancers and skeleton mages, after nearly half an hour of silence, finally started to retaliate for the first time, green and golden beams crossing overhead with increasing intensity. Soon, the Erluin mages began to fall silent.
“Ha ha!” The dark mercenaries from the Sea of Night understood all too well what this meant, and couldn’t help but excitedly cheer, “Their mages have run out of mana!”
Confidence seemed to suddenly return to these dark nobles; for a moment, they almost believed they had already won. “Martha, by your name, victory ultimately belongs to the Black Rose of Broamente!” someone even shouted. Unfortunately, the undead army lacked morale; otherwise, at this moment, they would have surely rallied, and might have swept the White Lion army into disarray.
In stark contrast to the relief among the Madara nobles, the Vieiro people were far more despondent. Earl Zilin had already demanded several times that they immediately dispatch troops to assist the Tonigers. Ironically, the one who had initially insisted on retreating was the same one now fervently calling for action. However, Earl Jack had long seen through Zilin’s nature and coldly shook his head. He gazed at the battlefield; the moment was still far from ripe, and he believed that the lord still had a reserve strategy.
Charles stood among the mage formation, watching the brilliant green light in the necromancer formation toward Madara. He had a good guess about what they were thinking, but remained calm until the enemy’s third round of attack passed before snapping his fingers to signal his men.
“The magic barrier can be lifted now.”
In conventional wizard duels, the wizards’ first three rounds of attacks were the most intense and concentrated, and especially upon realizing their enemy had exhausted their mana, the latter would exert themselves even harder to eliminate them in one go. All their assumptions were correct, yet they had one critical mistake: upon the removal of the magic barrier, all the mages of the Toniger forces performed the same action.
They opened the leather pouches on their belts—three in total—and took out vials filled with light blue liquid, wrinkling their brows and pinching their noses before downing them. In the next moment, the previously exhausted mental energies of these mages surged back to life.
Bloodstaff, being a necromancer, could clearly see such a scene from several miles away due to the power of the rules it was sheltered under. It naturally understood what the enemy’s mages were drinking; it had seen mana potions before, but it had never seen so many. Hundreds of potions disappeared in an instant, and the sole reason for consuming them was to defeat it. Only those truly dealing with magic would understand what this implied. At that moment, Bloodstaff could only want to wail; if possible, it wanted to run over and punch the enemy commander in the face: had it known it was so valuable, it would have simply let the other side send those mana potions to it and would have directly surrendered.
