Chương 36: 36:A Disparity in Tactics

Soren's gaze fell once again upon the priest's corpse floating on the water's surface. The high priest was dead, but the spectral skull—the one that had issued the retreat order before melting into the dense fog to escape—had carved a stark line of vigilance into Soren's mind. Bows and halberds could tear through flesh, but they were utterly powerless against a spellcaster's soul. He needed to incorporate magical countermeasures.

Next time, he absolutely could not allow the enemy to escape with battlefield intelligence. Just then, the sound of churning water echoed from deep within the dense fog. Splash. Splash. It was accompanied by the heavy snorting of warhorses and the continuous, rhythmic clinking of iron plates grinding together. Ein abruptly dropped to his stomach in the shallows, pressing his ear to the water's surface.

"Northeast. Less than a hundred paces. Horses and heavy armor, " Ein reported, looking up. His fingers dug tightly into the wet grip of his bow. Soren raised his right hand. No further verbal commands were needed. The sixty-five men, having just concluded their brief rest, instantly straightened up. Stepping through the water, forming ranks, raising their halberds. The movements flowed in flawless unison.

Sixty-five figures, smeared head-to-toe in black mud, formed a bristling forest of steel within the morning mist. A dozen paces ahead, the mist was violently parted by the broad chest of a warhorse. Galahad yanked hard on his reins. The horse's hooves sank into the thick muck of the Sunken Bone Shallows, emitting loud, sucking noises as they pulled free. Behind Galahad, thirty swordsmen gripped their hilts, their boots splashing heavily into the waterlogged ground.

Ahead of them, blocking the shallow waters, stood an incredibly bizarre formation. The faces of the men were obscured. All that could be seen were rows of exceedingly long, crescent-moon halberd blades glinting with a deadly light beneath the pale sky.

"Halt! Draw swords!" Galahad swiftly unsheathed the broadsword at his waist. The thirty swordsmen immediately fanned out, raising their swords and shields to guard their chests.

"You there, in front! State your unit designation!" Galahad's voice tore through the dense fog, laced with the hoarse vigilance of a man who hadn't slept all night.

"This is the Silvermoon Kingdom's Ironwood Fortress Garrison, conducting a purging operation!" There was no response from the opposing side. The only sound was the gentle lapping of water against their greaves. Dead silence. A full sixty-five men, standing a mere thirty paces away, yet Galahad couldn't hear a single ragged breath or panicked whisper among them. Soren parted the ranks from the rear of the halberd phalanx. Stepping past Gary's shoulder, he walked to the very front of the formation.

With his left hand, he unclipped a bronze identification tag from his waist and held it aloft.

"Silvermoon Kingdom, Crimson Moon Knights. Captain of the First Spearhead Battalion, Soren." Galahad's tightly corded shoulders immediately slumped as he let out a long, heavy exhale. He angled his blade and smoothly slid it back into its scabbard.

"Sheathe your swords!" Galahad raised a hand, signaling the men behind him to stand down. Before departing the royal capital, Galahad had browsed through the military archives. He knew that while the Crimson Moon Knights were an order comprised of commoners, under Leona's leadership, their combat style was renowned for being extraordinarily fierce.

Though he had no idea why the Crimson Moon Knights were also operating in the Misty Swamp, encountering friendly forces from the Silvermoon Kingdom provided a massive relief to the frazzled nerves that had plagued him all night. Galahad dismounted, his boots splashing into the muddy shallows.

"Commander of the Ironwood Fortress, Galahad." He strode toward Soren, intending to exchange frontline intelligence with his fellow officer. As Galahad took his fourth step, the toe of his boot struck a massive, solid object beneath the surface. The water was murky but shallow, and initially, he assumed it was just a massive log washed downstream. Galahad looked down. His pupils instantly contracted. It was no sunken log. It was a gargantuan arm, entirely covered in a thick layer of yellowish-brown, rocky skin.

A towering three-meter-tall carcass lay sprawled across the bottom of the depression. The rocky armor on its back was completely pulverized, leaving behind a dense cluster of gruesome puncture wounds, the foul-smelling, ruined flesh peeling outward. Lodged deep within the monster's eye socket was the splintered half of a whitewood arrow shaft. Galahad froze mid-step. Muddy water splashed up, soaking his kneeguards. Slowly, he turned his head to look at another patch of stagnant water a short distance away.

Sprawled over there was yet another three-meter-tall behemoth—this one a headless corpse. Large chunks of blackened fat floated grimly on the water's surface around it. Son of Titan. The very same elite shock troops that had smashed through the main gates of his Ironwood Fortress with their bare hands. The beasts that had crushed over fifty of his shielded spearmen like overripe persimmons. Galahad's breathing completely unraveled.

He jerked his head up, his eyes filled with shock and disbelief as his gaze bypassed Soren's shoulder, locking onto the sixty-five soldiers formed up in the murky water. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Sixty-five men. Clad in nothing but crude, unevenly stitched leather armor. They possessed no forged steel breastplates, nor heavy face-concealing helms.

All they had were grayish-black javelins slung across their backs, and the two-and-a-half-meter armor-piercing heavy halberds gripped tightly in their hands. Galahad's Adam's apple bobbed. He pointed a trembling finger at the Son of Titan at his feet.

"Captain Soren... this pack of Orcs. Was it you who killed them?"

"It was, " Soren replied smoothly.

"How many casualties did you take?" Galahad scrutinized the mud-caked men, his eyes desperately scanning their ranks for missing limbs or the corpses of fallen comrades.

"Fourteen severely wounded."

"Deaths... zero." Oomph. It felt as if Galahad's brain had just been violently struck by a heavy siege ram. He spun around in utter disbelief, scanning the environment. There was nothing to be seen but fetid stagnant water, mushy muck, and a few strands of rotting reeds near the bottom. There was absolutely nothing else. No high ground. No massive boulders. Not even a simple waist-high ring of wooden palisades or chevaux-de-frise. It was completely flat terrain. An absolute death trap.

Galahad roughly tugged at the chainmail around his collar, suddenly feeling as though he were suffocating. Just hours ago, within his painstakingly fortified Ironwood Fortress—complete with high walls and anti-cavalry defenses—he had deployed a textbook hundred-man spearmen phalanx. Yet, it had turned into a unilateral slaughter at the hands of these very beasts. The mutilated remains of over fifty shielded spearmen were still lying in the blood-soaked mud of his fortress right at this moment.

Yet here, just a few hours later... On these barren, exposed shallows with absolutely zero cover... A mixed company of sixty-five men, equipped with armor inferior even to a standard fortress militia, had pulled off a zero-fatality, completely one-sided massacre. The sheer absurdity of this contrast completely shattered half a lifetime of military strategy Galahad had studied.

"Zero casualties..." Galahad muttered to himself, struggling to comprehend an outcome that completely defied common sense.

"That's impossible! Did you even clearly see what you were fighting?! They don't wear armor, but standard swords can't even strike a spark against their skin! They don't even feel pain!" Faced with Galahad's frantic, almost interrogative outburst, Soren's expression remained as placid as an unruffled lake. Soren pointed at the pulverized stone fragments clinging to the Titan's corpse.

"That is a high-tier defensive spell."

"The enemy's supreme commander was a high-tier Shadow Priest."

"These ten monsters were injected with Titan bloodlines, heavily augmented through long-term alchemical modifications." Soren coldly delivered the intelligence he had previously tortured out of the Wolf Rider scouts, combined with the combat data derived from their tactical probing, directly into Galahad's ears.

"The Earth Magic covering their bodies is [Rock Shield]. They were perpetually locked in a state of [Bloodlust Frenzy], rendering them incapable of feeling pain and utterly tireless. The Blackstone Warband calls them the Son of Titan." As he listened to this horrifyingly precise tactical data, Galahad's face flushed from a sickly pale to a deep, embarrassed red. He knew Soren was entirely correct. The warped and crumpled steel kite shields back at his fortress were the perfect proof.

He had sacrificed fifty of his men at the Ironwood Fortress and hadn't even managed to figure out the enemy's basic capabilities.

"I... I suffered a devastating loss, " Galahad admitted, hanging his head. His voice was bitter as he swallowed his pride." This squad of the Son of Titan is, without a doubt, the most elite Greenskin unit in the entire Misty Swamp." But the moment the words left his mouth, an electric shock jolted through Galahad's brain. A terrifying chain of logic clicked into place within his mind, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

These ten monsters were unbelievably powerful, capable of massacring heavy-shielded spearmen at will. Yet, these ten top-tier elites—whose physical and magical resistances were maxed out—had just been entirely wiped out by sixty-five lightly armored infantrymen. And they hadn't managed to kill a single one of them in return. Galahad stiffly raised his head, looking past Soren. Armor-piercing halberds, angled downward toward the earth. Sixty-five pairs of entirely emotionless eyes.

The individual combat prowess and sheer military discipline of this unit... were ten times more terrifying than those painless Titan monsters. Galahad looked deeply at Soren. Soren stood perfectly still. He had seen right through Galahad from the start. A noble-born knight. One who valued honor and understood textbook troop formations, but was rigid to a fault.

When faced with unbelievably strong, highly defensive solo-assault units, trying to block them head-on with a static spearmen phalanx was tactical suicide—it was pitting your own weaknesses directly against the enemy's strengths. However, Soren chose not to point out the commander's fatal blunder, allowing him to keep his dignity. Suddenly, Galahad looked up and asked,"But there is one thing I don't understand. Why would an elite force like this launch such a costly, suicidal assault on the Ironwood Fortress?"