Ola lowered the enormous battleaxe from his shoulder and drove the tip of its blade hard into the dirt.
He surveyed the thirty knights around him.
"Can you all smell it?" he bellowed in his gravelly voice. "I sure as hell can! The scent of gold! And aged ale!"
"Who does that pretty boy on his horse think he is? Does he think raising a few oversized bugs will keep his treasury safe? Bullshit!"
The knights erupted in contemptuous laughter.
"Let me tell you what war is!"
Ola pointed his axe toward Newborn Town. "War is my axe smashing through their gates! Your horses' hooves trampling their streets! Us taking their purses and drinking every drop of their ale! Making them kneel and lick our muddy boots!"
"Everything that pretty boy owns is ours! Now follow me and claim the spoils that belong to us!"
"For gold and ale!" He raised his battleaxe overhead.
"Charge!"
At his command, he spurred his warhorse forward, shooting out like a cannonball.
Behind him, a steel torrent of thirty heavily armored knights surged into motion.
The ground began to shake violently.
It was a destructive force powerful enough to crush any battle formation.
Facing that torrent, the black phalanx of beetles did not retreat an inch.
They merely lowered the vicious horns atop their heads in unison, aiming them at the charging knights.
They resembled a silent, deadly thicket of steel thorns.
The distance shrank rapidly.
Three hundred meters.
Two hundred meters.
One hundred meters.
Ola could clearly see his own frenzied figure reflected in the monsters' compound eyes.
"Ha!"
He roared with excitement, and the mental power within him erupted.
"Stone Skin Protection!"
A visible gray aura burst outward from Ola, instantly enveloping the entire charging formation.
Every knight and every warhorse was