Mystery 1

Whoosh!

The white-feathered arrow shot out in an instant. A muffled groan immediately sounded in the distance. Through the Chip, Anglie clearly heard a cavalryman fall from his horse, along with the other man's furious, startled curses. His expression did not change as he drew another arrow from his quiver and nocked it onto the longbow.

The two sides were now two or three hundred meters apart. With the Chip's assisted aiming, his arrows remained unfailingly accurate. That was his advantage.

Drawing the bowstring, Anglie focused completely, continuously making minute adjustments to his posture and direction according to the Chip's corrections.

Suddenly, Anglie felt a sharp pain in his left arm. The longbow immediately tilted aside, and the white-feathered arrow fell to the ground. A black crossbow bolt was lodged firmly in the upper part of his left arm, having pierced straight through.

"Crossbows!!" Anglie's heart jolted. Before he could think, he rolled across the ground.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh! Amid three faint sounds, three crossbow bolts sank deeply into the grass where he had been standing, leaving only half their shafts exposed.

"At this range... crossbows really are formidable in this world!" Anglie swiftly clutched his left arm and ran behind a tree trunk to hide. "For them to hit me from so far away, they definitely aren't ordinary people. One of them might even be Knight Level." Enduring the pain, Anglie pulled out the chain claw from his lower back and used its sharp claw to chop off both ends of the bolt in his arm, leaving only the segment embedded in the wound. He silently called out, "Zero, is there any other plan?" This was to keep the overly long bolt from interfering with his movements and worsening the injury by tugging at it.

"Good thing it isn't poisoned, or this would truly be troublesome." Anglie felt somewhat fortunate. Since arriving in this world, not a single enemy he had encountered had used poison. The Chip's analysis of his wound swiftly entered his mind.

"The diamond-shaped arrowhead will cause continuous bleeding. The host will continue losing blood at a rate of 1% per minute. Please end the battle within ten minutes." Zero gave the most appropriate advice.

"Damn it!! A diamond-shaped arrowhead!" Cursing inwardly, Anglie brought up the earlier records. He saw the Chip's notification of the enemy firing the crossbow. But that line of information had flashed by too quickly for him to react; it had practically vanished in an instant, immediately followed by the injury report.

"As expected, attacks this fast are my greatest problem." Helplessness flashed through Anglie's mind. He drew another white-feathered arrow with his backhand and painfully pulled open the bowstring again. Violent waves of pain came from his left arm wound, and sweat faintly seeped across his face. The agony nearly forced him to expend a great deal of concentration just to stay focused.

The hoofbeats behind him were getting closer and closer.

He suddenly bent low and sprang to the left. While still in midair, he loosed an arrow.

It achieved nothing. The white-feathered arrow struck directly into a tree to the left of one cavalryman. With the injury in his hand, coupled with this sort of large-motion archery that he had never practiced, such abysmal accuracy was only natural. Still, the arrow startled the enemy's horses. Two fine steeds reared high on their front hooves and gave long neighs, trying to turn back, but their riders yanked hard on the reins and forced them onward.

"He can't run!" a man shouted. "Anker, let's go!"

"Alright!" The other two horses sped up and charged toward Anglie. With two ringing clangs, the two knights drew their broad-bladed swords together and rushed at him.

Anglie threw aside his bow and arrows, then pulled out the chain claw. He carefully listened to the hoofbeats behind him. The sounds drew nearer and nearer. Narrowing his eyes, he used all his strength to nail one end of the chain claw to the tree trunk behind which he had been hiding.

The sounds swiftly reached a point very close behind Anglie. He suddenly flung his arm. With a rattling clatter, the black chain claw flew directly toward a large tree at the side, wrapping three times around a thick branch with the force of its momentum. It formed a standard tripwire for horses.

The two fine steeds could not slow down in time and charged straight into it, their hooves caught by the chain. With a snap, the branch on the opposite tree broke apart, and the chain was dragged forward by the horses' legs.

The two horses charged forward and collapsed to their knees, both front legs broken, letting out miserable shrieks. "Aah!!!" One knight rolled forward, smashing his head into a rock and crying out in agony.

Delight flashed across Anglie's face. Throwing aside the chain claw, he drew his longsword. The knight had rolled to a spot directly in front of him. Anglie strode forward several paces and brought his sword down.

Clang!

The knight blocked the longsword with a backhand strike, then viciously kicked at him. Anglie retreated, just about to continue his attack, when a chill suddenly came from behind him. He hurriedly twisted aside, narrowly avoiding a longsword from behind.

"You damned little bastard!!" the knight behind him cursed in Saladin, his accent strange, but Anglie understood him. Saladin and Rudin Kingdom spoke similar languages, differing only in certain regional accents, so it was not difficult to understand.

The fallen knight had also caught his breath. Rising to his feet, he swung his sword at Anglie. Their timing was incomparably perfect. Anglie had no way to continue pursuing and could only retreat.

The two knights, each wielding a sword, attacked in an unbroken rolling rhythm, their tempo growing faster and faster. The two broad-bladed swords continuously struck at Anglie from every direction. Clangs rang out without pause as Anglie was repeatedly forced back by tremendous strength. These two are both experts close to Peak Knight Level. Working together at this level, even Dis would probably be forced to retreat. His expression remained calm, but anxiety had begun to rise in his heart.

Bang! Unable to dodge in time, Anglie was kicked in his blocking hands and sent flying backward, rolling heavily across the ground. He immediately rolled again. The agility he had strengthened over these recent days allowed him to dodge the four crossbow bolts that came flying after him.

But the wound in his left arm tore open further from that violent movement. A trail of blood scattered across the ground.

He darted into a cluster of bushes, then immediately crouched behind a tree trunk. Only then did Anglie relax slightly, gulping down rapid breaths as sweat continuously dripped from his chin.

What do I do, what do I do... in a situation like this!! His thoughts had become somewhat chaotic. Before him was almost certain death.

Two enemies near Peak Knight Level possessed overwhelming strength when working together, while four crossbows in the distance watched him at every moment. If he relied on agility to flee, the crossbows would pin him down. If he fought head-on, he could not defeat those two knights. Anglie's mind was a tangled mess, and his heart grew more desperate by the second. This was not like the time with Dis. Dis's flying knives had been far slower than crossbow bolts; he simply had no time to use the Chip's warnings to dodge. Just like before, one moment of delayed reaction meant a bolt was already flying at him.

"Zero, give me the optimal plan."

"Physical strength is being heavily depleted. Recommendation: eliminate the ranged weapons first, then immediately flee."

"If I could deal with the crossbows, why the hell would I be asking you?!" Anglie flared up.

"Your left side of the head will be attacked in one second." The Chip gave a timely warning.

Anglie lowered his head and took the chance to thrust upward with a backhanded stab.

With a ding, the enemy's broad-bladed sword immediately changed direction and slapped downward, easily knocking away his attack. The two knights stood one to his left and one to his right, their swordsmanship coordination incomparably perfect as they directly hemmed Anglie in.

The Basic Swordsmanship Anglie had taken pride in held no advantage whatsoever before them. Their swordsmanship also seemed to have been tempered through a thousand hammerings and a hundred refinements. Their unnecessary movements were pitifully few, and even when there were any, the difference was negligible. Working together, the two gave Anglie no chance to counterattack at all. The instant a flaw appeared, the other immediately moved to cover it.

The two men surrounded Anglie and fought him all the way in a tangled melee. The three moved at tremendous speed, steadily shifting toward the edge of the woods. More precisely, Anglie was being continually forced out of the forest by the two of them.

"Once I leave the woods, those four crossbows can easily finish me from any angle. They won't even need to come up and restrain me." Anglie understood this clearly. But their offensive was extremely smooth and perfect. He could only keep retreating amid momentum and collisions. Neither of them seemed weaker than him in strength.

If not for the Chip-integrated Basic Swordsmanship being incredibly precise, with extremely few wasted movements, allowing him to continuously block the two swords' assaults, Anglie would likely have already died beneath their attacks. Even so, the wound in his left arm was being torn wider and wider. The kick he had blocked earlier had also left a faint ache in his right arm. With massive physical exertion, continuous blood loss, and increasingly feeble blocks, Anglie's vision began to blur slightly. Sweat ran from the corners of his eyes into them.

"To run into such a strong brat, are you the child of a great Rudin noble?" One knight gave a sinister chuckle. "Only the children of those great nobles could possess Grand Knight Level swordsmanship like this. At such a young age, you already have such formidable physical qualities. Worthy indeed of a great noble."

"If Lord Xilan and the others weren't absent, we'd have taken this brat down long ago," the other said coldly, without slowing his assault in the slightest. The longswords in their hands were like two silver ribbons, continuously striking in from the left and right. With every attack, the two of them happened to exchange positions once, perfectly shedding their momentum.

Anglie was being pressed tighter and tighter. Several times he wanted to draw his throwing knives, but he never found an opening. Their attacks left no gaps at all.

Whoosh! In a moment of inattention, a wound more than ten centimeters long appeared across Anglie's chest.

"It's over!" one knight growled, slashing at him with all his strength.

Anglie desperately blocked with his longsword. With a bang, he was completely knocked flying and fell to the ground, unable to rise again for the moment.

He had miscalculated completely. He had underestimated the power of crossbows in this world, as well as the strength of the knights the enemy had sent to pursue him. Lying on the ground, Anglie's chest burned fiercely. Blood flowed down his body into the grass, and the black soil beneath him was swiftly dyed red.

"In the end, I was too arrogant." Anglie's heart was completely calm. He had already died once. Facing such a similar situation again, he was unexpectedly calm. His entire body was now weak, his injuries severe, his blood loss massive, and his physical strength excessively depleted. He had no way at all to contend with the two Grand Knights and the four powerful crossbows.

Watching the two knights approach slowly through blurred vision, shaking the blood from their broad-bladed swords, Anglie silently called out, "Zero, is there any other plan?"