Chapter 181

Chapter 181. Rout

Captain Buck’s steady voice rang across the roaring battlefield like an anchor pinning the sea, carrying clearly through their own line.

“Shield wall—advance! For Pendragon! For the Western Frontier!”

The instant the order was given, the shield-and-saber soldiers in the front row charged forward with the roar they had long been suppressing.

No longer satisfied with passive defense, they tensed every muscle in their bodies and thrust the heavy tower shields in their hands forward with all their might.

The originally tight shield wall instantly transformed into a moving steel embankment. With unstoppable momentum, it slammed hard into the Federation formation ahead, which had already been thrown into slight disorder because of Hammer.

BANG—!

The dull sound of impact, the crack of breaking bones, and shrill screams instantly wove together into the cruelest music.

The formation at the front of the Federation soldiers shattered in an instant, like porcelain struck by a giant hammer.

Many of them did not even have time to raise their weapons before they were knocked flying by that brutal force, or trampled by their companions behind them who could not stop in time.

Between the gaps in the shields, the spearmen who had long been waiting to strike had cold eyes.

They followed the rhythm of the shield-bearers’ advance, their arms repeating the motion of thrusting with mechanical efficiency.

Fine iron spearheads flashing with cold light stabbed fiercely from between the shields, then withdrew just as quickly, bringing out sprays of warm blood.

In only a few breaths, the narrow strip where the two armies met became a slaughterhouse in the truest sense.

Severed limbs, broken arms, and shattered weapons mixed together. Thick blood soaked into the withered yellow grass, and the air was filled with a nauseatingly heavy stench of blood.

......

At that moment, under the desperate protection of his subordinates, Hammer finally managed to barely escape the most dangerous part of the front line.

Wolfgang’s full-strength claw strike had not only left a wound on his chest deep enough to reveal bone.

That violent force had also shaken his internal organs until they churned, leaving his blood and breath in disorder.

The only thing worth celebrating was that the intense pain had instead sobered him somewhat from his fury, and his muddled brain began to think about the battle again.

He looked around. His own soldiers were falling in swaths beneath the assault of that absurdly solid shield wall and those tricky spears.

At the enemy’s two wings, those excessively well-equipped infantrymen were attempting to outflank them.

What made his heart tremble even more was the cavalry force of nearly a hundred men, along with the Wolf-kin warriors rampaging among them.

They roved along the edge of the battlefield like ghosts, and every brief charge could easily tear open a small section of the formation, leaving chaos and wreckage behind them.

“This cannot continue!” Hammer spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and roared hoarsely.

“Spread out! All of you, spread out! Attack their flanks! Do not crowd together and become targets!”

He tried to scatter his forces to stretch the enemy formation and search for weaknesses.

However, he had gravely underestimated the strength of the army under Eli’s command, especially their terrifying advantage in equipment.

The battle-axes and curved blades that Hofgard soldiers had once prided themselves on struck the enemy’s shields, which gleamed with a dark metallic sheen.

Most of the time, they could only leave shallow white marks, or even send out a few sparks, unable to shake them in the slightest.

Meanwhile, the enemy’s spears and swords could always easily pierce or hack through their relatively crude leather armor, and even some of their iron armor.

This was not a clash on the same level at all. It was a one-sided suppression through equipment.

Hammer’s order to scatter and attack not only failed to achieve the effect he expected, but instead gave Eli’s army even more room to operate.

Under Buck and Eli’s command, the soldiers instead took advantage of the enemy’s dispersal and forcibly cut the Federation army’s originally still-intact main force in two.

They split it into two sections that could no longer support each other from front and rear.

Once divided, the conclusion was almost predetermined.

The well-trained, well-equipped soldiers began to systematically strangle the isolated Federation troops.

Screams rose one after another, and resistance rapidly weakened.

Hammer was horrified. He had fought in countless battles, yet he had never seen such a troublesome army.

These soldiers were not only individually brave. More importantly, their coordination with one another had reached an extreme level of tacit understanding.

And the quality of their weapons and armor was probably beyond even Hofgard’s most elite Royal Guard.

“Lord Hammer! We cannot keep fighting!”

An officer covered in blood, his helmet long since lost somewhere unknown, staggered to Hammer’s side.

His voice was filled with despair. “Our losses are too heavy! Our plan has definitely been exposed!

“Their main force must be on the other side... We must retreat at once!”

Hearing this, Hammer swung his huge axe and swept away a Western Frontier soldier who had tried to approach, sending the man and his sword flying together. He panted heavily.

The wounds across his body kept tearing open because of his continued exertion. Blood seeped out without end, mixing with the blood of his enemies until his entire body had nearly been dyed into a bloody figure.

The intense pain and massive blood loss were rapidly draining his stamina.

Of course he wanted to retreat. But looking at this open plain, he gritted his teeth and cursed.

“Idiot! If we turn and flee now, we will be leaving our backs to their cavalry and those wolf pups! We will only die faster!”

A vicious light flashed through the officer’s eyes, and he lowered his voice urgently.

“My lord! Leave those Wanliu men, and those bastards from the other states, behind to cover our retreat!

“Let them buy time for us Hofgard warriors to withdraw! Their lives are worthless!”

Hammer’s muddy eyes suddenly lit up. Almost without hesitation, he growled, “Idiot! Then what are you waiting for?! Hurry and arrange it!”

“Yes!” The officer immediately turned, taking a squad of trusted men with him. He began shouting loudly, forcibly gathering the Hofgard soldiers scattered across the battlefield.

At the same time, he sent out supervising squads to drive the other Federation soldiers forward, forcing them to withstand the pressure.

The situation on the battlefield began to shift subtly.

The Hofgard soldiers began shrinking backward, whether intentionally or not, gradually gathering around Hammer and forming a relatively dense formation as they slowly disengaged from the fiercest contact zone with the Western Frontier army.

Meanwhile, soldiers from Wanliu and the other city-states were forced forward by Hofgard’s supervising troops with blades and swords, filling the ever-growing gaps at the front and desperately facing the steady advance of Eli’s army.

The screams grew even denser. These abandoned soldiers fell like harvested wheat.

Amid the chaotic crowd was an old man in a worn priest’s robe. He was none other than Priest John, who had once served Paul Botticelli.

His strength gave out, and he stumbled and fell to the ground.

Several Wanliu men around him hurriedly helped him up.

“Priest! You must hold on!” a young man shouted, his face full of fear and worry.

Just then, a Hofgard supervising soldier responsible for overseeing the battle rushed over, waving a bloodstained longsword, his face savage as he roared.

“You bastards! Who allowed you to retreat?! Pick up your weapons and get back to the front! Otherwise—”

Before he could finish, a bloody sword tip suddenly pierced out from his chest.

He lowered his head in disbelief. Then his body went limp, and he collapsed to the ground.

Behind him, a Wanliu soldier with a resolute gaze yanked his short sword back.

“Priest...” the Wanliu soldier who had struck panted, pointing toward the direction where the Hofgard men were gathering.

“The Hofgard men... they are running! They have abandoned us!”

Priest John struggled to lift his head and look over.

Sure enough, he saw that Hammer had already gathered nearly a thousand Hofgard soldiers and broken away from the main battlefield, swiftly retreating toward Storm City.

They had completely left him and the remaining several hundred soldiers from the various states on this hopeless killing field.

At that moment, Eli’s army had already completed its initial encirclement. Their destruction seemed to be right before their eyes.

Buck, who had been coordinating command from higher ground, keenly noticed this change. He quickly rode to Eli, who was fighting within the formation.

“My lord, their commander has escaped with a core unit.”

Eli had just pierced through a Federation officer still resisting stubbornly with Silver. Hearing this, he immediately raised his head and looked over.

Sure enough, a force of around one thousand men was retreating in collapse toward Storm City without looking back, having utterly abandoned a large number of their allies.

“Trying to run?” Eli’s brows tightened, and a cold light flashed in his eyes.

But he looked at the several hundred enemies still resisting stubbornly before him, as well as his own soldiers, who were likewise exhausted and had suffered no small number of casualties.

If the entire army pursued them now, it would not only likely cause even greater losses, but also might not be enough to stop that fresh force bent entirely on escape.

He made a swift decision and ordered Buck, “Order our cavalry and Wolfgang to pursue immediately! Leave behind as many of them as possible!

“The rest will follow me and deal with the enemies before us!”

“Yes!” Buck accepted the order and immediately sent men to relay it.

Then Eli drew in a deep breath of air thick with the stench of blood and raised Silver in his hand.

He gathered his strength and let his voice ring clearly across the battlefield.

“Lay down your weapons! Surrender, and you will not be killed! Your commander has already abandoned you like a coward! Do you still intend to die in vain for such a traitor?!”

The soldiers beside him immediately shouted in unison as well. Their voices struck the Federation soldiers, whose fighting spirit had already been shattered, like a heavy hammer.

“Lay down your weapons!”

“Surrender, and you will not be killed!”

The surviving Federation soldiers, whose will had long since been crushed by death and betrayal, heard those shouts that sounded like a pardon.

Almost without hesitation, they threw away their bloodstained weapons one after another.

The supervising troops who were still alive had either already been killed by their furious comrades, or wisely dropped their weapons too, kneeling with the crowd and burying their heads deeply.

Supported by the young man, Priest John forced out the last of his strength and spoke to the remaining Wanliu men around him in a hoarse voice.

“Lay down your weapons... my children... Do not make any more meaningless sacrifices... for Hofgard’s vileness...”

The Wanliu men had deep hatred for Hofgard to begin with. Now that the priest, who held considerable prestige among them, had spoken, they completely abandoned resistance and obediently became prisoners.

Eli, his face covered in blood, looked at the several hundred prisoners kneeling before him in a dark mass, and the taut string in his heart finally relaxed slightly.

His striking short white hair had long since been dyed dark red by enemy blood, sticking thickly to his forehead.

He looked around. Most of his own soldiers were also wounded, leaning tiredly on their weapons and panting. The dead and the gravely wounded were being carefully carried off the battlefield by their companions.

Although they had won this blocking battle, their casualties were also somewhat heavy. After all, the enemy’s numbers had far exceeded theirs.

Leaning on his sword, Eli looked in the direction Hammer had fled. The dust raised by the pursuing cavalry had not yet fully dispersed.

“Tie them all up first and keep strict watch over them,” Eli calmly instructed Buck beside him.

The battlefield temporarily quieted.

Only the groans of the wounded and the whimpering autumn wind blowing across the bloodstained plain remained.