Episode 24
“It will be over soon.”
Harman Tethron smiled as he watched the battlefield proceed as expected.
Even the prepared operations matched the overwhelming difference in troops, one by one.
Among them, the highlight was, of course, the presence of Senior Knight Raoul, who blocked Padric McLane.
‘It’s a good thing I didn’t make it public.’
Are there any senior knights or how many there are?
That was the biggest criterion that differentiated the intermediate knights from the advanced knights.
It was the modern era to judge the military power of a nobleman based on the number and rank of the knights.
The existence of a high-ranking knight was directly related to the prestige of the nobility, so ordinary lords boasted about it and did not try to hide it.
‘But if you’re going to use it like this, it’s better to hide it.’
He looked at the knights pushing down on Padric McLane with happy eyes.
Then, when he saw that the infantry’s encirclement was taking shape and the cavalry was catching the enemy’s back, he clenched his fists.
In addition, the enemy’s infantry was completely held in check by our archers.
“finished!”
Haman Tethron was confident of victory in the war.
‘Now all we have to do is destroy Padric and conquer McLane Castle. And if you just take that with you… you don’t need anything else.’
The moment when I imagined such happy thoughts.
A strange sound was heard from behind.
Doo doo doo doo.
“A cavalry unit has appeared in the rear! There are over 300 cavalry units!”
“Cavalry? Were there any more elite members of the MacLine family left?”
It was natural for the Viscount to think so.
The cavalry of the modern era was a high-class class of soldiers, usually comprised of regular soldiers who also trained as knights.
In fact, excluding the knights and rarer wizards, they were the most elite troops.
But…
“It’s not iron armor. It doesn’t even have a spear! They’re wearing leather armor, the only weapon they have is a small crossbow, and they’re only loaded with wooden boxes. They don’t look like regular McLane troops.”
“crossbow?”
Are you talking about the weapon that the hunter uses?
At those words, the Viscount chuckled and let go of the tension.
“Order a part of the rear troops and the archers to drop them. They are not elite troops, but miscellaneous troops.”
The Viscount gave common-sense instructions, and the adjutant took them for granted.
But after a while, the Viscount saw his common sense crumble.
Pabababak.
“Ugh!”
Dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers were falling to the ground as screams spread to the rear.
“What the hell is that? Damn it! Stop them! Stop them now!”
The war, which was thought to have already been won or lost, was taking an unexpected turn.
* * * A mercenary group rushes out. There was nothing blocking its path.
The enemy could be seen preparing something, but the distance was already close enough.
‘I’ll kill you! ‘Motherfuckers.’
The distance between the enemy’s rear and the mercenaries was about 400 meters.
It was a distance that could not be reached with the longbows that ordinary archers had, even if they fired at the best firing angle.
But there was no hesitation in Logan’s command.
“listen!”
Cha cha chak.
The entire mercenary unit moved as one body and aimed at the enemy.
“Shoot!”
Logan’s crossbow was fired first.
A bolt with a subtle golden light pierced the head of the last soldier.
What followed was a storm of hundreds of bolts turning the Tethron soldiers into a hive.
“Ugh!”
“What is it?”
“What came flying?!”
“On that street?”
The bodies of the surrounding colleagues are mercilessly pierced by something that flies out of nowhere.
The faces of the soldiers who managed to survive turned blue.
“It’s magic!”
The shouts of someone embarrassed by an unknown attack caused further confusion at the rear of the Tethron camp.
“Rear! It’s a surprise attack by a wizard!”
It was a ridiculous mistake, but the enemy’s subsequent movements were enough to make the mistake even worse.
Doo doo doo doo.
“Run horizontally!”
Heehee!
The mercenary corps, which was charging toward the rear, quickly turned at a right angle and headed north.
“Starting with archers!”
At the same time as the shout, the mercenaries aimed their crossbows towards their left side.
Cheok.
314 repeating crossbows lined up, each aiming at its own target.
“Kill them all!”
The anger that had been suppressed erupted like an active volcano, and the crossbow filled with anger sprayed down the rain of death and devastated the enemies.
Papa papapak.
“Ugh!”
“It’s an arrow!”
“Fire back! Fire back!”
“Shoot your bow!”
With urgent voices, the longbowmen fired their arrows into the air, but they were not able to aim properly and their arrows were fired in vain in an unoccupied place.
But even if you aimed correctly, it was meaningless.
Logan’s mercenary force was crossing the battlefield to the north, maintaining a distance of over 300m, which their arrows could not reach even if they used dragons.
Of course, in the meantime, the continuous shooting was literally knocking down the enemy’s rear troops like straw.
‘good. Just as you think!’
The one-sided attacks continued at a distance where the enemy’s attacks could not reach.
An overwhelming new weapon was ravaging the battlefield and demonstrating its power.
Viscount Tethron’s rear soldiers were startled by the disaster that flew from an unseen distance and scattered in all directions.
The archers, who were making a meaningless counterattack, were quickly destroyed by the pouring concentrated fire.
‘I have endured this entire time to create this situation. So now… I’m going to kill them all.’
Logan, with a cruel smile, screamed again.
“reversal!”
“Reverse!”
Kai’s double chant followed Logan’s dock, and the mercenaries gently turned their horses to the right from the direction they were heading toward the north of the battlefield.
Logan, the leader, turned south again, maintaining the minimum turning radius to maintain maximum acceleration, and sprinted at an angle with all his might.
Then, the mercenaries lined up once again, only in a different direction than before.
“Listen! Shoot!”
At the signal, the mercenaries fired beams of light again.
“Aaaahhh!”
“Counterattack, counterattack! We shoot bows too!”
“too far!”
“What are they!”
“How on earth!”
I was truly helpless. They had no way to do anything about the cavalry running outside the maximum range of the longbow.
More than a hundred people fell in one concentrated fire, and Logan’s mercenary force showered three or four bolts in one sprint.
Logan’s mercenary force went back and forth behind the enemy’s rear in a figure 8 shape, raining down arrows one after another.
Thanks to Kai’s training, they were always able to skillfully maintain a distance that was out of the enemy’s range.
“Run!”
“Where?!”
“Oh, run forward!”
“You crazy guy! This is a battlefield!”
Training and everything else was useless if we couldn’t engage properly and ended up dying unilaterally.
As soldiers deserted from the extreme rear, the battle line collapsed, creating a flow that soon penetrated the battlefield.
Even people who knew nothing were swept away by the atmosphere and began to escape.
And the effect was immediate.
“Cavalry! Turn the cavalry! Catch them!”
If we don’t catch those guys, it’s over.
Haman Thethron, barely able to come to his senses from what felt like a nightmare, shouted.
No matter how urgent the situation was, the Knights could not be removed.
A fight between Force users is a battle that can end in an instant the moment an empty loophole appears.
So for now, it was best to divert the cavalry attacking the rear of McLane’s camp.
The adjutant next to him eagerly waved a flag to signal, and soon the cavalry at the enemy’s rear came out of the line and began to detour.
“Must! We must finish them off!”
Instead of saying that such detailed orders cannot be sent as signals, the adjutant simply nodded and waved his flag frantically.
I hoped that at least some sense of urgency could be conveyed.
And their cavalry lived up to expectations, at least in terms of speed.
“Hey!”
Doo doo doo doo.
The Theron horsemen rushed like the wind.
Although all of the flashy armor was flashy, it was thinner and lighter than the knight’s heavy armor, so its defensive power was correspondingly lower.
However, it was the best weapon for mounted assault troops because it put less strain on the horse.
And now the advantages of light armament were clearly being demonstrated by the Tethron cavalry.
It took only about ten minutes for them, who were massacring infantrymen at the rear of McLane’s army, to bypass the battlefield and attack Logan’s mercenaries.
That’s how agile their movements were.
However, Logan did not blink even as he saw nearly 1,000 Tethron cavalry charging towards them at incredible speed.
Rather, he welcomed his enemies with a murderous smile.
“They come to you on their own.”
Puzzle.
Logan gritted his teeth as he watched his pre-planned primary targets rush to find a place to kill themselves.
I waited for them to get far enough out of fear that those silver flies would catch me before I could completely destroy the rear.
How many young people died in the meantime?
Logan was ready to explode his accumulated anger at those guys several times over.
“Now let’s go! “Side move!”
“Side move!”
As they chanted, the mercenaries changed direction all at once. The mercenaries, who were in the shape of rushing toward the battlefield, bypassed the center and aimed their crossbows in a row at the approaching enemy
cavalry .
At that moment, the horsemen who were running took out their shields from their horses.
‘Shields…’
The typical tactic used to catch horsemen was a unit of archers. The
standard equipment prepared to deal with the archers was a person’s forearm. It was a kite shield that could cover more than half of the upper body
by inserting it into the shield. When they took out the shield and placed it in front of them and slightly lowered their upper bodies, a defensive stance was completed that would not show the correct angle when shooting from the front.
However, Logan looked at it with a relaxed attitude. ‘ As expected
…’
Logan grinned and shouted to the mercenaries.
“Aim diagonally downward!”
“Down!”
“Aim for the horse!”
The mercenaries who were confused but followed Logan’s instructions immediately responded to his instructions. He recognized this and smiled cruelly, similar to Logan.
“Shoot!”
At Logan’s mocking command, the crossbows were fired.
Hehehe!
Dozens of cavalrymen riding at the front fell from their horses with one volley of fire
. Argh!”
The horsemen who followed him flew through the air with their fallen comrades on their horses.
“Surp…!”
Their shields may be strong enough to block crossbows, but they cannot protect against arrows fired at their horses.
And If soldiers who were not force users had fallen from a horse running at full speed, the result would have been obvious.
Crash. Their
necks would be broken as soon as they fell.
Knock! Squeak!
They would just be cruelly crushed by the horses’ hooves that rushed after them.
Logan laughed coldly as he looked at the devastation he had created. .
“Assholes.”
Archer units that deal with cavalry usually choose howling to maximize the range.
If the cavalry enters the range of about 100m, which is the effective direct firing range of a regular longbow, the unit will kill them before they can even aim their bows properly. It is clear that they will be annihilated, so they fire howitzers from as far away as possible.
Naturally, the tactic of mounted troops to defend against arrows was to raise their shields diagonally above their heads to block arrows coming from above.
That alone was enough to protect both people and horses.
Of course, you would never have thought of an arrow that can hit an enemy directly from a distance of over 300 meters.
But there was no reason why Logan should look after their situation.
“Keep shooting! Aim for those who stand up even if they fall off their horses!”
Among them, there were those who were strong enough to be close to knights, and there were also those who staggered to their feet even after falling down from a galloping horse and being trampled by their comrades.
They were once again showered with bolts to praise their tenacity.
“Ugh!”
As more than a hundred cavalrymen at the front collapsed at once and even the rear was shattered by bolts fired in succession, the remaining soldiers were also unable to maintain their line and split up.
Perhaps because the command team was crowded at the forefront, they seemed to be in a panic, unable to even figure out the direction in which they were charging.
“Run horizontally!”
Logan’s horse, staring at the enemies and turning at a right angle to them, ran without hesitation, and about 300 mercenaries followed behind.
“Say!”
“Protect your horse!”
The Tethron cavalry, with its new leader barely in control, ran again in a straight line toward Logan and the mercenaries.
In a similar distance to before, the Tethron horsemen lowered their heads in unison, raising their shields to cover their heads and the horses’ heads at an angle.
It protects the vital areas of both the rider and horse while preserving the horse’s field of vision as much as possible.
It clearly showed how well trained they were.
But Logan gave orders without hesitation.
“Shoot!”
Heehee!
“Aaaah!”
A similar scene as before was repeated in the response of the Tethron cavalry.
A shield that was large enough to cover a person’s upper body could barely protect a horse’s head.
The arrows of the mercenaries ruthlessly penetrated the gap that was inevitably created.
As the display was disorganized and widened, the area hit also expanded, causing nearly two hundred horses to collapse on the spot this time.
And as expected, a similar number of cavalrymen following behind were caught by their companion’s horse and were rolling around on the floor.
The mercenary attack did not stop and bolts rained down endlessly towards them.
‘If this continues, we will all die.’
The expressions of the surviving cavalrymen suddenly darkened.
In that short moment of discovering the enemy and charging in, as much as half of the troops disappeared.
As the absurd deaths of my colleagues continued, fear began to grow more than anger.
But now I couldn’t talk back.
The remaining cavalrymen gritted their teeth and rushed towards the mercenaries, but they shouted,
“Listen! Shoot!”
The enemies’ crossbows once again poured out bolts like lightning with an incredible rate of fire.
“Aaaah!”
Due to this attack, the number of Tethron horsemen was reduced even more than that of the mercenaries.
From then on, the mercenaries no longer targeted those who had fallen from their horses.
He just fired arrows again, targeting the remaining horses.
Those who barely survived finally stopped charging and retreated, looking at them in vain.
The Tethron cavalry had already disintegrated.
The cavalrymen who had been roaming the battlefield like the wind had fallen in vain like the wind.
Of course, there were some people who were not satisfied with just that.
“Logan! Those who stand up even after falling from a horse are quite strong. If you leave them like that…” ”
Just leave them alone! It would be better to save my soldiers and my territory residents at least a little during that time!”
Logan’s thoughts were firm.
* * *
“Hey, what is that? What are they?”
No one responded to the Viscount’s yelling as if he were yelling evilly.
Feeling a chill down your spine. Because everyone here felt that the atmosphere on the battlefield had completely changed.
However, it was not easy for the camp’s owner to accept the reality.
“The rear is being breached!”
“The soldiers are running away!”
“If things continue like this, those guys and knights…”
“Stop talking nonsense!”
Knights can’t be defeated by crossbows or anything like that.
Harman Tethron could be sure of that.
“Turn back the knights! The enemy knights are not the problem. We have to catch them first!”
It was a belated order. Moreover, even if instructions were given, there was no way the enemy knights would just let go.
It was the moment when the adjutant, who had to deliver instructions that bordered on self-destruction, was helplessly trying to raise the flag.
“They’re moving this way!”
“what?!”
The Viscount’s mind was filled with confusion as his mind became anxious due to the adjutant’s scream-like shout.
‘I’ll move the knights to kill them… or before that, if I’m in danger…’
After a brief conflict, the Viscount ended up choosing the worst strategic move.
“Lower the flag! Hide among the soldiers. Secure the retreat route!”
There is hope only if I survive.
I am Tethron.
Despite virtually giving up on the war, Harman Tethron was busy rationalizing himself.
From then on, the Tethron camp began to collapse helplessly.
