Chapter 266: Battle

Raindrops, wrapped in a chill, pattered down onto the hillsides covered in shrubs and strange rocks, soon gathering into winding, twisting streams of water.

Armored Great Horned Goats darted and shifted on the muddy mountain paths, their lowered heads topped with two large horns that shimmered in the rain.

Agile in their movements, they carried their dwarf companions, charging forward amidst the dwarves' roars toward the Orcs, who had already begun to shift their formation.

Leaping and running through mountain ranges was the ability these Great Horned Goats relied on to survive; even on steeper, more treacherous slopes, they could tread as if on flat ground. This was a survival instinct carved into their very bones.

Compared to them, the steeds accustomed to galloping on plains appeared quite pathetic. Whether it was a ditch washed out by the rain or a suddenly rolling stone, both would hinder the warhorses' speed. Moreover, if one were not careful, the galloping hooves would lose their footing, resulting in devastating injuries.

Therefore, even though Allen had chosen the flattest nearby area when summoning the cavalry, the Swadian Knights, galloping to their hearts' content, still suffered constant incidents of men and horses rolling down the slopes.

Yet, this could not stop the knights' charging speed, for the order Allen had given was simply to charge until the Orcs and Trolls before them were thoroughly annihilated.

Even those knights who lost their horses would struggle to their feet in the mud, draw the two-handed swords from their saddles with hands stained by soil and moss, and silently continue to charge forward behind the main force.

Amidst the rolling sound of hooves, the two cavalry units constantly closed the distance with the Orcs. A moment later, both sides could even see each other's faces through the heavy rain.

Fear and excitement, roars and shrinking, collapse and calm—various emotions appeared on the faces of the humans, dwarves, and Orcs respectively.

"Kill!"

Before the cavalry and the Orcs made contact, waves of battle cries had already pierced the curtain of rain, reverberating through the dim mountain range.

This was the human infantry who had launched their charge a step earlier, already locked in melee with the Orcs.

The sharp blade in Allen's hand, shimmering with red light, carried gushing black blood as it hacked an Uruk wearing iron armor to the ground. Following this, his right foot, clad in a silver battle boot, kicked out violently, sending a Snaga that was about to pounce on him flying. A miserable howl accompanied by the sound of breaking bones rang out, and before long, the Orc that had fallen to the ground stopped moving.

Having finished all this, Allen looked at the enemies surrounding him, exhaled a breath of hot air, and then this bit of warmth was instantly extinguished by the cold rain.

This was already the thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth Orc he had killed.

And around Allen, because of his efficient and cruel slaughter, a blank zone with a diameter of over three meters had appeared, with the ground littered with Orc corpses.

Among them were poorly equipped Snagas and armored Uruks, but without exception, as long as these fellows entered Allen's attack range, their lives would be taken in an instant by the great sword shimmering with red light.

Black blood, cold rain, and thin mud mixed together, making the ground even more viscous and muddy.

And beyond this patch of mud were endless Orcs. Allen, deep in the mire, could no longer see the dwarves' support; he could only vaguely sense that the cavalry he had summoned was getting closer and closer to him. This made Allen, who had raised his great sword into a hacking stance, feel slightly distracted, his gaze drifting toward the Wolf Riders watching the battle from a distant hillside, his thoughts suddenly wandering elsewhere.

In the initial plan, Allen had not taken the dwarves' support into account, because the dwarves had no way of knowing about his support information. They might have known there would be reinforcements, but when they would arrive and from where they would come, the two sides had not exchanged information.

Therefore, the dwarves' sudden arrival was, in Allen's view, an unexpected surprise, which also made him determined to immediately lead his troops to launch a decisive battle against the confronting Orcs. However, while hacking at the Orcs, Allen spared a tiny bit of thought and immediately understood the reason for this.

The dwarves' arrival was a matter of course.

If nearly ten thousand Orcs plus dozens of Trolls were roaming and gathering in the mountains, and Thorin, who was bent on reclaiming his homeland, knew nothing about it, that would be a true joke, not to mention that this place was not that far from the area he was guarding.

However, even with the heavy cavalry and the dwarves' support, Allen still concluded that this battle would remain a bitter struggle.

Over 1,700 human elites plus about 300 dwarf cavalry against nearly 10,000 Orcs and a large group of Trolls—Allen knew that the casualties in this battle would definitely not be small, not to mention that there was a group of Wolf Riders on the opposite hillside eyeing them covetously. Although their numbers were not large, at a critical moment, they could definitely give him a big "surprise."

"Scum, get out of the way! Get out of the way!"

A sound as unpleasant as glass scratching a blackboard rang out, pulling Allen's thoughts back to the battlefield and returning his gaze, which had been tracking his subordinates, back to the battlefield. Beyond the heavy cavalry, he still had one card, a very dangerous card whose effect was not particularly stable.

Holimion, who was always by his side, was not in the ranks, and those twelve Twilight Knights were not there either. Clad in Elven cloaks, they were currently hiding among the mountains, and even Allen had lost track of them now.

At this moment, a unit composed of hundreds of Uruks was moving rapidly on the battlefield. They were equipped with pitch-black armor, and in their hands were either thick wooden clubs or black iron hammers. Their rapidly weaving figures were blurry in Allen's eyes.

Most Orcs were greyish-black, and Uruks were merely taller and stronger than the average Snaga. In the black, dense army, even if these fellows gathered together, they were not particularly conspicuous.

Not to mention that they were far smarter than average Orcs and were intentionally or unintentionally keeping their figures low, avoiding Allen's searching gaze.

If they could, they would rather do something meaningful; let those cowardly Snagas do the dirty work of dying to entangle human powerhouses.

These Uruk, whose numbers were not originally very large, generally shouldered the responsibilities of the provost guard and squad leaders under Lagash's command.

After all, this Wolf Rider who had been ordered to take command in a crisis was far less wealthy than his former master, who had an Uruk army of over ten thousand to charge at the dwarves and Elves who were prepared for battle.

At this moment, leading this Uruk unit was an Orc with a face full of scars. Besides the same pitch-black armor as the average Uruk, Balti also had a pair of scarlet eyes that seemed capable of dripping blood, which could definitely leave a deep impression on anyone who saw it.

Balti, with his scarlet eyes, in order to open a path, violently punched away a Snaga blocking his way. The man-eating expression made his peers who saw him reveal panicked expressions. Some cowardly fellows, in order not to face Balti again, began to push and shove their companions desperately to get themselves out of here.

And the path opened by the Snagas allowed these hundreds of Uruks to circle around the battlefield and rapidly reach the vicinity of their target.

That was a military formation composed of over a thousand human warriors wearing cyan armor. At the beginning, they followed closely behind Allen, waving the weapons in their hands amidst roars, hacking at the Orcs who were still stunned by the dwarves' arrival.

However, the Orcs' reaction was also extremely fast. After being attacked, they immediately responded. In the entanglement with the humans, the crescent-shaped square formation, which was originally thick in the middle and thin on the sides, was also changing rapidly, with the thickness on both sides constantly increasing and gradually closing in toward the center.

And the Orcs who were attacked earliest relied even more on their large numbers to take the lead in surrounding the humans who had taken the initiative to launch the battle against them. In the process of gathering, they constantly conducted probing attacks.

The human warriors maintained a circular square formation amidst the encirclement of a large number of Orcs. The heavy infantry clad in fine armor held shields to bear the area with the heaviest combat pressure, while the soldiers holding spears filled other gaps, guarding each other's backs.

Amidst roars and wails, spears and hammers constantly stabbed and swung, killing one Orc after another who attempted to charge the formation.

In a short time, a large number of Snagas and a small number of Uruks ended their filthy lives, once again proving with their lives the importance of forming a formation in melee.

However, as Lagash's adjutant, Balti certainly would not let this situation continue. Originally, he could have waited for the arrival of the Trolls, but just a moment ago, a human heavy cavalry unit appeared from nowhere, charging directly at the square formation on his west side on the rugged mountain slope, engaging in a fierce battle with the Orc army that had just mixed in with the Trolls.

Although Balti could see from afar the human soldiers being knocked away by the clubs in the Trolls' hands, he also understood that he probably could not count on the Trolls' support in the short term. Therefore, he gathered an army composed of Uruks, preparing to break through these square formations by way of a surprise attack.

Balti's combat experience could be considered rich; he knew that as long as one point of this kind of formation was violently torn open, the enemy would soon fall into a predicament of being unable to attend to both ends. Only then could the Orcs truly exert their numerical advantage, and he also hoped that this battle could end quickly.

Because he had other concerns in his heart. One must know that the number of dwarves in this mountain range was far more than just a few hundred cavalry. When the dwarves were chasing him back then, there were at least over a thousand dwarf veterans, otherwise the Orcs of the Grey Mountains would not have been beaten into such a state.

"Attack, kill them, tear them apart, use their flesh and blood to fill your bellies that never know satisfaction."

And after the order, a large number of Uruks squeezed away the Snagas blocking their front and ran desperately toward the spears shimmering with cold light. Soon, roars before death rang out, and pitch-black blood began to splash in the air. For a time, the Uruks paid nearly a hundred lives for the charge.

But the Orcs' charge did not stop because of this. They continuously charged at this area on the west side of the square formation. Soon, corpses piled up in the open space between the humans and the Orcs. While these corpses hindered the Orcs from approaching, they also made it more difficult for the human warriors in the square formation to attack.

And many of the Uruks who had sacrificed their lives earlier used the weapons in their hands to break the wooden handles of the spears before they died, and some simply used their own bodies to clamp the spears tightly, providing final help to the clansmen who continued to charge behind.

After all, they were not the small, wretched, and very cowardly Snagas; they were the battle-hardened Uruk clan, powerful Orcs who could confront dwarves and Elves head-on.

The human warriors holding spears also immediately felt tremendous pressure. These Uruks, who were similar in stature to humans, were completely different from the Snagas they had fought before.

Those small-statured fellows, after suffering a certain amount of casualties, would regardlessly flee backward, then gather again amidst the sound of whips and curses, and then continue to charge the square formation. Although their way of attacking was also very tricky and swift, at least there was a breathing space in between.

Now, this kind of continuous charge, as well as the act of trapping spears with their lives, was something most of these soldiers, whose combat experience was not particularly rich, had encountered for the first time. For a moment, they were actually somewhat panicked.

If they were the battle-hardened warriors from Gondor, they would probably roar and draw their melee weapons, hacking the Uruks approaching them to death with a counter-charge, using slaughter to deter the Snagas around them who dared not come forward, buying time for their comrades to reform the formation.

However, there were no "ifs" on the battlefield. The Rhovanion soldiers facing the sudden situation did not have the rich battlefield experience of the Gondor warriors.

After a short moment of being stunned, they immediately threw away the spears in their hands that could no longer be used, drew the battle swords from their waists, and began close-quarters combat with the increasingly close Uruks amidst roars. While struggling to confront the enemy, they inevitably fell into a disadvantage.

Their actions fully met the various requirements during training, but the ordinary longswords in their hands could not cause too much damage to the enemies wearing iron armor. At least hacking would not work; they could only look for opportunities in the fierce battle to send the sharp sword tips into the Uruks' bodies like spears.

And the hideous wooden clubs and pitch-black iron hammers in the Uruks' hands knocked down large swaths of human warriors in a short time. Even though the defensive power of the Green Leaf Armor was high, it could not completely block the damage caused by blunt weapons to the flesh. Injuries like broken bones and damaged internal organs were not fatal in the short term, but they were enough to make the soldiers lose their combat ability.

After all, the equipment of these spearmen was basically to deal with the poorly equipped Snagas, and those heavy infantry holding large shields and hammers were the ones to deal with the Uruks. However, the huge disparity in the number of both sides made such an arrangement unable to be implemented smoothly.

As the Uruks completely suppressed the human soldiers in one area, the Snagas, who were originally timid and still watching, let out excited howls and joined the siege battle like the wind.

The attack methods of these small-statured Snagas were very dirty. Most of the strangely shaped scimitars in their hands would hack at the human soldiers' unprotected calves, making the square formation, which was already trying its best to hold on, precarious, as if it were about to lose its formation because one point was broken.

The human warriors guarding other directions, although they also noticed the situation here, also needed to resist the enemies before them and could not immediately shrink the formation to support this side.

"Stop them!"

And at this critical moment, a roar from Arnold allowed the archers, who were originally serving as a reserve force, to join the defense of this line, blocking the Uruks' constant forward pace. Some archers with extremely superb marksmanship even pulled their longbows behind their comrades, ignoring the soreness in their arms to snipe at the enemies entangled with their comrades.

However, the Orcs had already smashed the defensive power here. Balti certainly would not give the humans a chance to shrink the formation and set up a spear formation again. Under his orders, whether it was Snagas or Uruks, they constantly charged at the area defended by Arnold. The human soldiers' crisis was not resolved and was still sliding in an unfavorable direction.

"Boom."

A large patch of fierce flames suddenly exploded beside Balti. Even in the cold rain, this adjutant of Lagash felt unbearable pain, and then he began to roll wildly on the ground, attempting to extinguish the flames on his body before he died.

And Allen's figure, clad in silver armor, also walked out of the fire. He did not pay attention to Balti, who was rolling on the ground, because there were simply too many Orcs rolling on the ground, and even more were burned to death directly. He could no longer distinguish who was an Orc soldier and who was an Orc commander.

All Allen could do now was wave the rune great sword in his hand, hacking one Orc after another blocking his way to the ground, and reunite with the soldiers he was guarding.

He needed his subordinates to hold on for a longer time to buy more time for the other card he had deployed. Moreover, on the way here, he had already located the Twilight Knights. Under the disguise of Elven cloaks, they were about to approach the hillside where the Wolf Riders were located.

And Allen also believed that Holimion would definitely not let him down. ===== CHAPTER 267 =====