Hi Author here I released the last chapter before I could properly check it and edit it, as a result, Lucius' wife has Mythril axes, not titanium and I added the person for the quote thing I do at the start.
With that all said enjoy the chapter.
.....
The Chavarians are too powerful, though, for them to be able to create an empire; that is a given!
Horse Archers on a flat steppe are way too hard to fight, especially for an infantry-based army like the one I had to command with the orcs.
At least I had a decent ally, however….
Lucius Aurellion really picks up on small details that more arrogant commanders wouldn't.
Which makes him one of the most troublesome opponents I have ever fought.
Éric Gigot, the player behind Wurgoth and the orcish general who fights against Reginald.
…..
Zugbu swiftly rode back to the orcish camp clutching at the arrow wound in his right shoulder in a panic before calming down due to being safe from that demonic archer who nearly took his life.
'Damn, I really was not careful enough! Everyone knows that skilled and master archers are the bane of all magicians!'
Zugbu complained as the crude orc camp lit up by torches and braziers appeared before him; the bow-armed orc who guarded the gate quickly let him through as the small orc was easily recognised throughout the camp due to being the only one that was his size within the camp, and he promptly went to a tent where a healer was to get his wound seen too.
"FUCK!"
Soon after, a loud shriek came from the tent as Zugbus' pained cry resounded through the camp as the arrow was removed from his shoulder, leading to blood to start gushing from the open wound. With an orcish incantation, a bright greeny white appeared from the orcish healer's hands, leading to the skin stitching itself back together. The blood which was coming out and making a small puddle on the tent floor near where Zugbu was sitting stemmed, and a few drops which had just left the wound were magically manipulated to return to the shoulder.
Soon all that was left of the wound was a scar running across Zugbus' right shoulder where the arrow once was as the muscled meat of his right shoulder, which had been slightly ruptured by the arrow whose steel head spun when it made contact and pierced through Zugbus' leather armour, and flesh was mended as once cut nerves were reconnected and apart from the scar and bloody stench which permeated the air of the tent all evidence of the vicious wound existence had disappeared.
Zugbu's pained and laboured breathing quickly relaxed, and the distressed cries were silenced as he took a few deep breaths to calm his mind.
'I'm lucky!'
The small orc thought to himself as he recalled the countless skilled magicians that had died at the hands of experienced archers whose artillery-like arrows break through even the most potent magic shields to pierce the necks and hearts of the casters leading to a quick death. A perfect example of this was how the big faceless demon-like man nearly managed to shoot Zugbu through the heart.
If it were not for Zugbus' quick thinking, creativity and reaction, he would have become a corpse by now and turned into meat paste by the hooves of the Chavarian cavalry as they trample his body into the muddy ground to be washed away and forgotten as just another casualty in a war fought for the benefit of those in power.
Zugbus' mind relaxed, no longer concentrating on the pain which shot through his nervous system from his shoulder. A wave of mental clarity washed over him as he quickly got up from his sitting position and ran towards the command tent where his general Wurgoth resided, shouting his thanks for the treatment while striding swiftly towards the command tent. The older healer sighed and shook his head slightly at the small orcs' actions before preparing medicine for the soldiers that would be wounded in the battle to come.
'We need to quickly activate the anti-magic and crystal arrays as with me out of the fight; I doubt that the orcish army, which focuses on physical strength and not intelligence which helps stimulate and increase the effectiveness of magic, will be a match for the skilled magicians in the Chavarian army.'
'There's two who can stalemate me when working together at least for a short time, and one is even a master archer too! Our orcs will stand no chance against the Chavarians, who have fought wars constantly for a decade and who outclass them in magical abilities!'
Zugbu thought while he ran, taking out another flair which sent a small blue bullet-like light into the sky, which exploded, alerting the allied armies of the presence of a mighty warrior within the Chavarian ranks.
…..
After losing the frighteningly powerful small orcish magician, the Chavarian cavalry column continued to move forward and started to approach some long grass, its thin stems reaching for the skies while concealing hidden dangers.
Having scouted where all the enemy positions were in advance, Archtorius was relaxed; however, when his ears picked up the faint sound of a horses breath and a distant equine whinny which did not come from his own side, his eyes locked in suspicion, but before he could shout out to warn his allies of the coming unexpected attack torches were lit and thrown to light up the Chavarian cavalry acting like little lightbulbs in the night.
Immediately after the torches fell, the sound of bowstrings and firing mechanisms resounded through the darkness around them, releasing a storm of arrows and bolts which ruthlessly fell into the lit-up Chavarian cavalry, the torches allowing the archers and crossbowmen to be as accurate as they would be during the day allowing them to do large amounts of damage to the surprised Chavarians.
Archtorius' instincts, trained through years of battle, sensed a hidden, almost silent snake-like arrow which headed straight for his heart as he moved his body to avoid it and looked over to see a bright green plumed, Barbute helmeted man with a T-shaped gap in the front of the helmet allowing for easier breathing and sight holding a freshly fired ornate curved bow. The man's silver armour gleamed slightly as he was lit up by a torch held by a soldier next to him as he went to grab another arrow from a quiver attached to the side of his chestnut brown horse.
Seeing this, Archtorius quickly grabbed his own bow, the runes meticulously hand-carved into the bow's limbs flaring up with a green light as his hands which moved with lightning-fast speed, quickly drew and fired his bow, the arrow shooting like a star as it sped towards the silver armoured man.
As if sensing the shot, the man quickly grabbed a heater shield from the side of his saddle instead of an arrow, quickly moving it in front of him as a loud thunk came from where the shield and arrow collided. The immense power and speed of the shot leading to the arrow piercing through the shield slightly and the tip of the arrow making a slight tinking sound as it skimmed somewhat against the man's steel gauntleted hands, leaving a tiny scratch on the armour before being stopped by the shield.
While this small archery duel was taking place, the more sensitive and reactive Chavarian knights, who each were skilled in the use of magic, being the main trump card of a Chavarian army, protected themselves with magic shields. While they broke easily against the high penetrative power of the crossbow bolts, it lowered their speed and damage enough for the bolts to harmlessly bounce off the knight's heavy plate armour as a series of pinging sounds joined with the cries of death, creating a symphony of battle sounds in the silence of the night.
Some bolts hit the necks of the knights where the armour was weakest, easily piercing through it, leading to a hundred knights dying, coughing up blood from their punctured airways.
The Chavarian horse archers had it worse as with little magical ability, and lighter armour arrows and crossbow bolts were much more effective, while for the knights, only precise hits on weak points of the armour would lead to death and injury, for the horse archers two or three arrows or bolts hitting them represents a death sentence as they fell bodies filled with arrows to the muddy ground.
Lucius saw a crossbow bolt come straight for him as he moved his body to the side slightly, dodging the deadly bolt aimed for his chest, but as he did, Lucius felt two thumps hit his back as two arrows bounced off his armour as in the corner of his screen two system notifications appeared in front of Lucius.
0 damage received from iron arrow!
0 damage received from iron arrow!
"Knights' projectile protection array!"
A deep voice boomed clearly through the thundering rainy night and chaos of the battlefield which Lucius recognised as the captain whom he had sent to poison and pollute the nearby water sources to starve the enemy army and put a strain on the allied armies' logistics to force them into attacking his defensive position on the hill. A loud uniform shout then came from the knights.
"Yes, sir!"
The knights who were not shot and in pools of blood on the ground began to move into a formation as each cast a small magic shield which, when meticulously put together, can create a strong magic barrier that even a master archer like Leon would struggle to break even worse was that this barrier which had been refined through hundreds of years of war and conflict was one way allowing any Chavarian missile troops to fire at the enemy from this moving protective magic umbrella.
After the first volley of projectiles landed, felling the Chavarians in the hundreds as the arrows seemed to come from all directions. However, once the protective magic one-way shield was formed, the battle suddenly turned in the Chavrians favour as the allied army had now exposed their positions and, with the barrier, the allied army would not be able to do any more damage to the Chavarians.
After the knights created the magical formation, they immediately went into the long grass as the once uniform array tuned into five smaller ones, each with nearly 1000 knights, as they went looking for any archers to pick off using the trajectory of the arrows and crossbows to help them find their enemies. Finding Plurian crossbows on one side and orcish archers on the other though the crossbows seemed to be more prepared as it was their horses which led to Archtorius nearly finding their position if it were not for Archtorius supreme confidence in his abilities and his relaxed attitude, this attack would have been spotted way before it happened. The knights decided to split, sending three formations to attack the orcs while two went after the Plurian crossbows.
Seeing that the Chavarians had the magical barrier, the Plurian crossbows quickly ran and mounted the horses waiting nearby, knowing from their extensive experience that without artillery or a nearby anti-magic crystal, the Chavarian magical array was invincible. These magic formations are a core reason anti-magic formations arrays and crystals are brought to battlefields.
After a minute of chasing and finding that the Plurian crossbows, which the remaining Plurian horse archers further backed up, were faster than the heavily armoured knights, they quickly turned back, going left and right so that they could help to encircle the orcs and lead to their complete destruction. Seconds later, another red flair shot into the sky from the direction in which the Plurian forces had retreated.
On the orcish side, due to losing nearly 50% of their wolf riders, the only mounted and cavalry force they owned, and seeing that the Chavarian knights were far superior when it came to experience, skill in combat and armaments, Wurgoth decided to use a spear shield wall to help his archers to escape the ambush site as the orcish general knew that the ambushers would be hunted to extinction once there positions were exposed by firing instead of sending his wolf riders into the death trap which was the Chavarian cavalry.
Seeing the retreating orcish archers and the wall of spears and shields in front of him, the knight captain ordered his men to stop making the barrier to help conserve their limited mana.
As the knights fearlessly approached the 5000-man strong formation, horse archers began to circle around to fire arrows from all directions turning orc after orc into green-skinned corpses filled with steel-tipped arrows as the knight captain conjured a giant fireball in the sky, which like a fireball fired from a catapult, crashed down into the tight formation of the orcish spear wall exploding in flame as the fire ignored the rain and burned a hole in the formation roasting the orcs attacked by the raging flames alive as their blackened, charred corpses fell to the ground.
The orc who tried to shield his companions from the magical fire magically was shot by an eagle-eyed Leon, the orc clutching at his arrow-pierced neck as red blood flowed out, and his eyes widened as death's shadowy hands took him. One of the thousands who would be taken in the blood-filled night.
This gap was quickly exploited by the knights, who used their long lances to skewer the orcs whose spear formation was broken, then proceeded to draw out steel swords as, like hyenas on a hunt, they passed through the orcish formation to allow their starving swords to feast on the blood of the orc archers who could do nothing but be slaughtered by the faceless devil-like knights as heads and bodies littered the ground crushing the once beautiful long grass.
As a Chavarian steel sword slashed the last orc archer's body, his death throe silencing the screams of the dying orcs, which came from the battlefield but were muffled to most due to the rainy, stormy night as they rode back to finish off the spear and shield wielding orcs who mostly had become grey and green porcupines as they were shot by the horse archers led by Leon and were quickly finished off with less than 100 casualties on the Chavarian side giving them a decisive victory.
While the battle lingered for 20 minutes, Lucius, who had stayed out of the fight, had his eyes fixed on the sky where the flairs had gone up and exploded. He sighed lightly while the Chavarian raiding party revelled in their slaughter and began to head back towards him. However, Lucius' two vice generals, who protected him earlier from that small magically gifted orc, wore sombre expressions as a look of worry was clear to all on their gaunt faces.