The Lamia Snakefolk's surprise attack on the Holy Crusade Army's main camp was like a wave crashing against an iron wall. It shattered in an instant, ending in utter failure.
The night raid, intended to tear through the human defensive lines, had not shaken the camp in the slightest. Instead, it sent unexpected ripples through the Holy Crusade Army, with far-reaching consequences deeply unfavorable to the Snake-Men themselves.
When the last wave of Snake-Men fled in panic into the darkness of the swamp, leaving corpses in every conceivable posture strewn across the landscape, an atmosphere entirely unlike the tense gravity before battle rapidly spread through the Holy Crusade Army's camp.
For the players, who made up more than half the army, the greatest gain from this battle was neither experience points nor loot, but a powerful sense that the enemy's mystique had been stripped away.
Before the battle, tales of the Snake-Men's ferocity, cunning, and immense strength, combined with the oppressive sight of them surging forward like a black tide, had genuinely made many players feel they were facing a formidable enemy. Those new to the game or inexperienced in large-scale combat had been especially nervous, some excessively so.
Yet when the fighting actually began, the players discovered that numbers did not equal danger.
On the main battlefield, the Snake-Men's vast numbers became the biggest joke of all before the Holy Crusade Army's carefully constructed, multilayered fields of fire and deadly traps.
Like moths rushing into a flame, they fell in swathes before dense volleys of lead bullets, storms of grapeshot, solid cannonballs, and insidious barbed wire. Their supposed tidal assault looked more like Snake-Men willingly pouring into a meat grinder.
The close-combat prowess the Snake-Men prided themselves on was utterly useless when they could not breach the chevaux de