*Thump!*
*Thump!*
*Thump!*
The footfalls of Rodara army drummed against the dew-wet morning grass as Drogo ordered them to march toward the Caegon capital city!
With their shields held high the frontline invaders bravely protected the line of ladder bearers and archers behind them.
Drogo left no man in reserve as he spurred his men forward knowing he would need to hit the enemy walls with every man he could throw at them.
Ben had made his preparations and had strategically set his men out like chess pieces on the battlefield, now ready to meet his opponent's moves. The only flaw in his plan was that his men were too scattered apart due to the sheer number of Caegon defenders on the city walls.
This city and these lands were not his to make an important decision on where troops would be placed in the defense of this city. He could only fill the gaps with his men in the most strategic placement as was provided.
For now, he had his archers on the walls filling the gaps and his footmen were below the walls ready to switch places with his archers if needed. The city gate was defended by the light cavalry javelin who had left their horses in the city to stand on top of the walls.
Ben had spread out his cultivator/magi along the walls with orders to use their crowd control spells to keep the defenders back from the walls and to physically engage them if they made it onto the walls. The Half-Giants were outside the city walls just south of the city where the enemy could not see them.
They would not be in any danger unless the invaders marched past the city and decided to attack from the south which would be highly unlikely seeing they had already staged on the northern side of the capital.
Ben was impressed by the Rodara troops who almost formed up into formations they still marched forward with sloppy uneven lines, but they were not the undisciplined bunched up mobs he had fought against back home.
The enemy frontline even made use of wooden shields to defend against arrow attacks. Still they were far from using techniques like a moving shield wall or a testudo. The lower part of their torso and legs were still exposed and they linked their shields in a way to wherein they could not see where they were marching.
The highly trained Elven archers began to aim at the lower area of the wooden shields they held. As their arrows were released they dropped a few inches over the distance they traveled to pierce through the abdomen and thighs of the frontline shieldmen.
Any shieldman who fell was quickly replaced by a shieldman from the rear thus keeping the archers and ladder bearers safe. This was a decent tactic if you have plenty of troops to spare which the invaders did not have due to Ben's cavalry attacks and night raid.
The invaders began taking unforgivable losses to the men they would need to climb the ladders and fight the city defenders just to keep their troops safe who could not carry a shield.
When the invaders were in range the cultivator/magi began tossing out chain lightning and lake of lava spells.
At this point, Drogo gave out a series of commands and his troops split off into three large divisions. The center division continued toward the northern wall while the outer two divisions broke off to head toward the eastern and western walls.
This move surprised Ben but it made sense from the enemy's point of view. They had so many troops that if they were to directly attack the northern wall they would only be sitting targets as they waited for the front lines to scale the ladders.
By the time the invaders had reached the walls, they had lost over a quarter of their remaining troops due to the defending archers and crowd control spells.
Before they could bring the ladder bearers forward Ben used his Voice Projection spell to order his generals to switch out the archers for the footmen.
The knights and spearmen quickly placed ladders against the walls to allow the Elven archers to climb down into the city. The heavily armored footmen let them clear out before they began climbing up onto the city walls.
The Avalon troops were so heavily armored they could stand on the edge of the wall with a shield in hand as the invaders shot arrows into their ranks from behind the ladder men they were covering.
Drogo attempted to use his archers behind the ladder bearers to push the defenders back from the edge of the wall so they could not interfere with his troops as they climbed up the ladders.
It worked well against the poorly armored Caegon troops who were forced back from the edge of the wall to hide behind their shields while the invaders began to climb up to them.
The Avalon knights and spearmen stood solid in the small areas between the Caegon troops and prevented the attackers from climbing up to them. Unfortunately, a chain is only a strong as its weakest link and the mass majority of the Caegon troops made up a lot of weak links.
It wasn't long before the invaders began to stand on top of the city walls and to clear out a defendable area to allow their comrades to climb up and join in the assault.
Ben saw how poorly the Caegon troops were defending the walls and it would not be long before Drogo had driven all of his remaining men up the ladders. He had to make a move instead of sitting back and allowing the Caegon troops to allow the attackers to gain the walls.
He ran along the walls and gathered twenty of his cultivator/magi and ran to the southern end of the city. They all jumped down from the walls to stand outside of the city where the fifty Half-Giants casually sat around relaxing.
The sounds of the battle could be heard in the distance even from here. When they jumped down from the walls the heavily armored Half-Giants excitedly stood up hoping Ben was going to finally send them into the battle.
Ben relayed the situation to everyone around him and explained they were about to lead a sortie against the invaders. There were still approximately ten thousand enemy troops on the ground attempting to gain the city walls.
These ten thousand troops were spread out along the northern, eastern, and western walls. This would allow Ben and his squad to fight each separated division of three thousand enemy troops individually.
_____________________________________
Drogo still sat on his cart while being protected by layers of shieldmen from the remaining archers still on the northern wall. His creatures used to pull his cart had been killed by Ben's archers earlier, but he had managed to survive their storm of arrows.
As he watched his men making decent progress at gaining the city walls, he didn't see Ben had led twenty cultivator/magi and fifty Half-Giants from the south along the eastern wall.
The enemy was so focused on gaining the walls they never dreamed to be attacked by ground forces outside the city.
They were oblivious to Ben's sortie up until firebolts and chain lightning began to explode all around them. Ben had even tossed out one of his deadly Reverse Gravity spells to send enemy troops spiraling through the sky.
When the invaders looked over to see a small group being led by men who were half the height of the city walls they were trying to scale carrying swords and axes the size of a regular man they almost couldn't believe their eyes.
Some of them had seen the large savage beast-men from the northern snow regions who could fight against five men at a time, but the Half-Giants running toward them now made them look like teddy bears. To make the situation even more frightening there was a group of lightly armored people following them who were tossing out fire and lightning spells.
The invaders were forced to abandon climbing the ladders to turn and meet the attack Ben was directing at them.
The invaders braced their shields in a line and planted their feet just before the line of Half-Giants collided with them.
*BOOM!*
The sound of metal and wood impacting rang out across the battlefield. The attempt to hold back the Half-Giants was a futile attempt. They originally weighed over 700 pounds each and had eaten the Iron Indigo Fruit along with body strengthening pills like candies.
They had the same impact force of a herd of war elephants as they blasted through the frontline and waded deep into the enemy ranks.
Ben along with the twenty cultivator/magi followed them into the enemy ranks and split off into separate directions with swords drawn looking to cause the most chaos as they could.
Each swing of the enormous weapons swung by the Half-Giants sent men and body parts flying out yards in every direction. They were an unstoppable force of bloodthirsty killing machines that undermined the enemy's morale.
If the Half-Giants were not threatening enough the twenty cultivators along with Ben were just as unstoppable. They used Aura Assault to suppress everyone around them as they zipped from one target to the next using Whirlwind Maneuver.
Ben's impromptu sortie had instantly dealt mass casualties to the invaders along the eastern wall. The civilian troops who had only the most basic of training for battle could even tell they were in a losing battle and were only seeking death if they continued to fight against this squad of monsters.
Their black armor and mirror polished weapons glistened with a coating of blood making them appear to be demons sent from the lower levels of hell. It was enough after three minutes of fighting back against them to know they would only die if they remained here.
The more cool-headed of the invaders began to slowly retreat back to the northern wall to link up with the division of men Commander Drogo was leading. A large number of the invaders had, had enough and simply ran off to the east to escape the fighting all together.
Ben had his men ignore those who ran off and continued to pursue the men who were retreating toward the northern division until they were able to continue a new attack on the troops along the northern wall.
Drogo was beyond shocked when he saw the armored Half-Giants come around the eastern corner of the city wall and charge straight into his men. Just looking at the Giants was enough to shake most men, but to see them in battle was a terrifying experience for them.
Ladders were smashed and men followed along with them. It was a strange a chilling sight to see a full-grown man sent sailing through the air to land ten or so yards away after being mercilessly slashed by those over-sized Mythril weapons.
Once Drogo saw this devastation, he knew they had lost. His eastern wall division had retreated and it would not be long before the northern wall division was dealt with. Even if Ben's sortie did not continue on to attack the final western wall division there was no way for them to conquer the city with the three thousand men they had over there.
Drogo knew if they continued fighting his forces would be wiped out completely. He did not want to give up because it meant the end of his military career, but he could not bear to force his troops into a pointless death with no hope of winning.
He stood up in his cart and began to wave the Rodara Kingdom's banner while shouting out for his men to drop their weapons and surrender. It was difficult for him to be heard over the roar of battle but the message was passed through the ranks.
The Rodara troops began to kneel down and drop their weapons hoping the enemy would discontinue their attack and allow them to live.
Ben used his voice projection at this point to command his troops to stop attacking. The men on the walls continued to fight since they were separated from their forces and were unaware of Drogo's call to surrender.
It didn't take long for them all to notice how quite it had gotten. The men on the walls paused when they saw that the troops on the ground had thrown down their weapons.
Some were bitter some were joyous, but they all knew the battle had ended.
_______________________________________________
The invaders had been lost the fight and the Caegon Dynasty continued to exist as a separate realm from the Rodara Kingdom.
Ben had the surviving invaders rounded up and left them to be guarded by the Caegon troops. This was this war and it would be up to them on how they planned to deal with the Rodara military officers and troops.
The Avalon generals were assembled inside the city walls and ordered to find out how many of their men were dead and injured. Ben sat down in the makeshift camp his troops had erected against the northern wall and waited for his generals to return with their reports.