Chapter 164: The Blood-Stained Somme River (2)

“Hmph. These rebels really know how to pick a battlefield. The Somme River is practically my stage!”

On the main battlefield along the northern bank of the Somme River, Knight Claw stood proudly at the front lines, admiring the archer formation he had built with his own hands.

Eight hundred longbowmen.

This force was his greatest pride and the foundation of his military achievements. In his eyes, the strange forest across the river was not an obstacle at all, but an advantage. With the Somme River between them, the enemy infantry could not possibly rush over, and there was no sign of organized cavalry on the southern bank. Meanwhile, his longbowmen could fire freely without fear of retaliation. This broad and open riverbank was practically a perfect shooting range made specifically for him.

“A bunch of country bumpkins without even a proper ranged force actually think they can wage war?” Knight Claw sneered, already impatient to watch the rebels across the river scream and scatter beneath a storm of arrows. “Switch to fire arrows!”

The order rang out sharply, and the signalmen immediately waved their flags to relay it down the line.

The longbowmen moved in unison, pulling specially prepared arrows from the ground beside them. The arrowheads had been wrapped in oil-soaked cloth, and soldiers in the front ranks quickly stepped forward with torches to ignite them.

In moments, hundreds of flickering flames lit up before the formation, bathing every soldier’s face in a savage, bloodthirsty glow.

“Aim for their commanders! Burn that damned position to the ground! Volley fire! Three rounds of suppressive bombardment on the enemy main formation!”

Knight Claw raised his longsword high.

“Loose!”

The vibration of bowstrings merged into a vast metallic hum as hundreds of burning arrows shot into the sky trailing long tails of flame. They arced overhead in deadly parabolas like a meteor shower of fire, crashing down toward Coldsteel City’s formation on the southern bank.

On the southern side, even with Nolan’s pre-battle speech and the prestige carried by the name Black Armored Legion, many recruits stepping onto a real battlefield for the first time instinctively felt fear tighten in their chests as the flaming arrows blotted out the sky.

For infantrymen, enduring a barrage of arrows was a trial every new soldier had to overcome. Their breathing grew ragged, sweat soaked their palms, and the brutality of war finally revealed itself in the most direct way imaginable.

Then Hank’s steady voice rang out from the very front of the formation, “What are you afraid of?! Remember what the lord taught you! Raise your shields and lower your stance! These little flames are nothing worth worrying about. Focus on stopping the arrows themselves!”

The confidence in his voice spread through the formation instantly, calming the unrest among the soldiers.

“And if anyone gets hurt by something this pathetic, your combat drill evaluation is failed! You can spend the next month scrubbing dishes in the logistics camp!”

That’s right. The lord had already anticipated everything.

The man they followed was the all-powerful lord himself.

If Knight Claw knew the terrifying barrage he was so proud of was being treated by the enemy commander as little more than a rookie training exercise, he would probably cough blood from rage on the spot.

The fire arrows reached the peak of their arc and began plunging downward with accelerating speed. At that moment, deep within the fog-covered forest behind the southern formation, a soft ring of light suddenly spread outward.

Aura of Piety activated. Defense increased by 25%. Defensive effectiveness against projectiles such as arrows and thrown spears doubled.

A visible golden ripple swept across the battlefield.

Every soldier of the Black Armored Legion felt warmth surge through their bodies as a strange sense of strength rose from within, washing away the last traces of fear and tension. Even the shields in their hands suddenly seemed steadier and heavier.

“It’s the lord!”

Following Hank’s commands, the soldiers crouched low, lowered their spears, and raised the kite shields emblazoned with the crest of Coldsteel City above their heads, forming an airtight dome of steel.

“Here they come!”

The next instant, the rain of arrows descended.

The burning arrows struck the shields in dense succession, producing a storm of sharp metallic clatter. The soldiers had braced themselves for crushing impacts, yet when the arrows actually landed, the force behind them was surprisingly weak. Instead of bone-rattling blows, they felt only faint tremors, like pebbles striking metal.

Even more astonishing was what happened to the flames.

The moment the arrows entered the fog-shrouded air above the southern formation, it was as though icy water had been poured over them. The flames weakened rapidly, shrinking before the arrows even reached the soldiers below. By the time they struck, the blazing fire had already become little more than pitiful sparks.

Deflected arrows dropped helplessly to the ground, trailing only thin wisps of acrid smoke.

“Long live the lord!!”

After a brief silence, thunderous cheers erupted across the entire formation.

The mist, the golden light—once again, they had witnessed their lord’s miraculous power.

Fear vanished completely, replaced by overwhelming fervor and confidence. Morale surged to its peak in an instant.

At the very front of the formation, Hank, Rehanna, and Little Donnie, the division commanders, could not even be bothered to assume defensive stances. They simply stood there upright while arrows struck their specially crafted officer black armor with loud metallic clangs before bouncing harmlessly away without leaving so much as a scratch.

Occasionally, a particularly tricky arrow would angle toward the soldiers behind them, only for one of the commanders to casually flick out a sword and knock it aside with effortless precision.

“Hah! This is all they’ve got?” Little Donnie batted away a spent arrow with the tip of his sword, his face full of disdain. “I thought it’d be something impressive. This accuracy and power aren’t even close to the rain volleys I faced from the Wood Elves in the Borderlands Forest.”

After traveling and training alongside Nolan, his horizons had broadened dramatically. Compared to what he had witnessed before, attacks from ordinary armies now seemed almost laughably weak.

“You went out with the lord once and learned how to brag instead of anything useful,” Hank snapped, glaring at him irritably. “Don’t get carried away. Without Miss Renee’s elemental resonance suppressing the flames, without the lord’s aura and this black armor, those oil-soaked arrows alone would’ve been enough to leave you scrambling.”

Though Hank scolded him aloud, inwardly he felt deeply relieved.

The facts proved once again that every arrangement Nolan had made had been absolutely crucial.

The dense fog created by Renee was not merely the carrier of the illusion. The abundant water elements contained within it naturally suppressed fire itself. Nolan’s large-scale aura abilities had elevated the entire army’s defensive capabilities by another level altogether.

“Heh, times are different now,” Little Donnie replied shamelessly while scratching his helmet. “We’re not that dirt-poor Rosenberg guard unit anymore, the one that couldn’t even scrape together decent equipment.” He puffed out his chest proudly and slapped the imposing black armor he wore.

While they still had the leisure to joke around, Knight Claw on the northern bank was nearly exploding with rage.

The opening volley, the deadliest barrage on the battlefield, had achieved absolutely nothing. Not only had the rebels’ formation remained perfectly intact, but they had even erupted into mocking cheers afterward. To Claw, it felt like a public slap across the face.

The forest failing to ignite was within expectations. The weather was damp, the fog heavy, and the forest itself saturated with moisture. It had never been likely to catch fire easily. But the flames on those arrows had extinguished far too quickly.

Something was wrong.

And the rebels’ defensive capability was absurdly abnormal. Even heavy infantry should not have emerged completely unharmed from such a carefully prepared barrage of fire arrows.

Yet the officers beside him, those crude warriors, understood none of this. All they did was look at him like spectators enjoying a joke.

His face burned with humiliation. The desire to seize military glory, mixed with the fury of public embarrassment, completely clouded his judgment.

“Switch to armor-piercing arrows! Heavy armor-piercing arrows!” he roared at the signalmen. “I refuse to believe they can still block those! Advance the firing line thirty paces! Punch straight through their formation!”

Then he turned toward the heavy infantry behind him, the troops originally meant to serve as the final defensive wall protecting the archers.

“Stop standing around like posts! Move forward! Cross the river! Beat Verdi’s men to it and crush their formation underfoot!”

Knight Claw had completely lost control. Abandoning the defensive suppression tactics he specialized in, he recklessly pushed both his precious heavy infantry and longbowmen straight toward the front lines.

As his orders spread, the allied army on the northern bank shifted once more. The gray heavy infantry formations, which had previously advanced at a measured pace, suddenly accelerated and followed behind Verdi’s forces into the Somme River.

The river itself became even more crowded with soldiers.

On the southern bank, Hank watched the changes across the water as the relaxed expression on his face slowly faded. More than half of the enemy’s total force had already entered the river. The timing was almost right.

He turned slightly and glanced toward Little Donnie beside him.

Little Donnie immediately understood. Lowering his voice, he asked with barely restrained excitement and tension, “Now? Are we finally using ‘that’?”