"Get out of my way!" Warwick swung, unleashing a slash of battle aura that cleaved a Demon Beast in front of him in two! But that powerful strike was all he could manage. The battle aura that could easily tear through the bodies of hundreds of Zerglings weakened after cutting down just one Iron Ball Beast...
"Damn it!" Warwick clenched his teeth at the Iron Ball Beast's terrifying defenses and tightened his grip on the reins. His warhorse leaped over the beast's head, which had been split in two but still blocked the road. Yet as he soared through the air, he realized that the Iron Ball Beasts weren't arranged in just one row. There were three rows of them!
Just then, the beasts in the second row raised their heads and spat out more than a dozen streams of green saliva. The stuff flew like arrows, incredibly fast! Warwick held his greatsword across his chest. The saliva slammed into it with such force that he nearly flew off his horse! He squeezed his legs against the horse, and when it landed, it collapsed to the ground with a thud.
Warwick was horrified. He changed the way he was bracing with his legs and leaped off the horse. Only after landing did he realize that two arrow-like streams of saliva had struck the horse's belly. Its abdomen was already a bloody mess. The saliva pierced more powerfully than arrows and was clearly strongly acidic, corroding the flesh and organs in its belly into a mass of blood...
Warwick's skill had let him evade the Iron Ball Beast's attack, but the cavalry behind him weren't nearly so lucky! They couldn't ride their horses over the Iron Ball Beast, which stood taller than a man, nor could they cut through its defenses with a single blow. All they could do was slam into it at full speed!
"Thud! Thud! Thud!" The impacts boomed with tremendous force. The iron armor on the horses, the Battle Armor on the knights, and the Iron Ball Beasts' hard shells rang out like clashing metal, joined by the sounds of horses' and soldiers' bones breaking.
Eli was a company commander in the cavalry brigade of the Keren Kingdom's Third Legion. He commanded five cavalry squads, 250 men in all. A cavalry company commander held more authority than an infantry or archer company commander, and the fact that Warwick had taken a liking to him was what Eli had always been proudest of. Today, he would follow his legion commander and write another glorious page in the Third Legion's history.
The battle might not have begun as well as they'd hoped. He'd heard that the Demon Beasts had carved one sharp gash after another into Morton's sturdy city walls, using them as footholds to climb up. With those swift beasts, all fangs and claws, the battle had quickly become a fight for control of the walls. But when the legion commander led the charge out through the gates, everything had fallen back under their control. Against the speed of their warhorses, the hard-skinned beasts were as fragile as tofu on a chopping board.
But everything changed when those Iron Ball Beasts appeared!
"Careful! All soldiers, watch out for the beasts ahead!" The first thing Warwick did after leaping over the beasts was stand up and warn the soldiers behind him.
Eli, who had been watching Warwick closely, immediately passed on his order. "Second Battalion, Fifth Company, watch out for these beasts! Jump over them!" With a roar, Eli yanked on the reins. His horse responded by raising its forelegs high and launching its whole body into the air!
"Swish! Swish!" The motionless Iron Ball Beast suddenly extended the two jointed blades on its back. Moving at incredible speed, they flashed toward Eli like streaks of light!
"What? Gyro Defense Shield!" Eli's battle aura swirled around him, shielding his body. But to his horror, he realized he was wrong: the beast wasn't attacking him at all. It was targeting his horse!
"Splurt!" "Splurt!" The two blades pierced the horse through both sides of its forequarters, emerging from its back. The tremendous force of the blows sent the horse, which had almost cleared the beast, tumbling out of the sky!
It felt like a basketball player leaping high for a dunk, only to have someone grab his right foot from below and yank him brutally back down!
"Thud!" As the world spun around him, Eli's head slammed into the beast's black, iron-hard armor. Battle aura could protect him from blades, but it couldn't soften the impact to his head!
Dazed and reeling, Eli felt every sound around him vanish in an instant. All he could see was darkness. This was a battlefield. If he didn't wake up soon, it wouldn't matter whether the beasts attacked him—his own cavalry might trample him to death.
Eli struggled to his feet. A thunderous roar erupted in his ears, and through the ringing he began to make out distant sounds. His vision, too, finally started to return.
"Splurt!" "Splurt!" The first thing Eli saw through his haze was his squad leader, Korov, being run through the heart by the two blades on the Iron Ball Beast's back! Korov! Korov!!! The boy was only nineteen, with so much hope and longing for the future. Eli had promised him that once he was promoted to battalion commander, he would make Korov a company commander. Then Korov could return home in glory and proudly marry the woman he loved, right under the nose of his gold-digging father-in-law... But...
Grief surged through Eli's chest, and somehow it seemed to bring his body back to its senses more quickly!
At last, the world stopped spinning, and his hearing returned!
"Thud! Thud! Thud!" But the next moment, Eli thought he would rather have died from the fall. What he saw before him was unbearable! The heavily armored warhorses couldn't slow down. They could only crash headlong into the Iron Ball Beasts. It was no different from crashing into a city wall. Eli saw one horse smash its head to pieces in an instant. Its rider tumbled from the saddle, and before he could get up, the blades on the Iron Ball Beast stabbed him again and again, leaving more than ten bloody holes in him in the blink of an eye!
The cavalry at the front crashed into the Iron Ball Beasts, while those behind them were tripped by the fallen soldiers and horses. The entire charging formation collapsed in an instant, like a building struck by a magnitude-ten earthquake.
They had lost, and lost disastrously. The Iron Ball Beasts, which had appeared out of nowhere along their route back, had crushed their strongest force—and their last scraps of fighting spirit.
The neighing of horses and the screams of soldiers filled the air. Bodies and blood were everywhere, like something out of a living hell.
Eli blankly turned his gaze toward the idol in his heart, the legion commander Warwick, only to see him hurled away by an even larger Iron Ball Beast!
"Splurt!" A blade suddenly pierced through Eli's chest, emerging where his heart was. Pain shot through him. He lowered his head and stared at the blade, sharp as a slender sword, that had run through his body. "W-why..."
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