Chapter 167: The Tide of Battle Turns

Chaos. Total chaos. 

The simultaneous detonation of those dozens of Thunderclaps had inflicted more casualties in an instant than the previous half hour of brutal fighting combined. More importantly, this completely unheard-of method of attack had thrown the allied army into overwhelming panic and confusion.

Within moments, the waters of the Somme River had turned a sinister dark red. The northern riverbank was littered with mangled corpses and severed limbs, many of which were quickly swallowed beneath the churning current and collapsing earth.

The light infantry units that had yet to enter the river were utterly terrified.

Death on the battlefield was nothing unusual. Being cut down, burned alive, drowned, crushed, or even slaughtered by mysterious magic were all things soldiers had mentally prepared themselves for.

But explosions on this scale?

They had never witnessed anything so horrifying.

The allied rear ranks immediately dissolved into disorder as soldiers fled in every direction. Crowding and trampling broke out constantly, and the entire formation collapsed into panic.

“Hold the line! Hold the line!”

“No retreat! Anyone who runs will be executed!”

The officers themselves were badly shaken, but they still screamed themselves hoarse, desperately trying to restrain the routing troops with threats of military law. 

It accomplished almost nothing.

Faced with explosions that seemed like divine punishment from the Mother Goddess herself, fear had completely overwhelmed discipline.

As for the allied soldiers who had already crossed the river, the deafening blasts left them dizzy and disoriented. Their ears rang violently, and many were thrown flat into the mud by the shockwaves.

When they finally struggled back to their feet and realized what had happened, they discovered in horror that the dense fog covering the southern bank had been completely swept away by the explosions.

The eerie forest was gone as well.

In its place stood a newly reformed Black Armored Legion.

A fresh force of soldiers clad head to toe in heavy black armor appeared before everyone’s eyes for the very first time.

But they were not defending.

They were charging.

Though their armor looked impossibly heavy, the soldiers surged forward at full speed behind a black-armored knight galloping at the front with sword raised high, a black-and-crimson banner streaming behind him. Beside him rode a knight in gleaming white armor, lance in hand, keeping perfect pace.

There were only a few hundred of them, yet the momentum gathered by their charge resembled an unstoppable torrent of black steel.

“The time for counterattack has come! Follow the lord!” Hank’s roar thundered across the battlefield.

The five infantry formations that had been desperately holding the defensive line finally abandoned their defensive posture and began advancing for the first time. Led by the newly arrived fully armed Black Armored Legion, they pushed forward against the already collapsing allied army, forming the beginnings of a reverse encirclement.

Even Hank, Rehanna, and the other division commanders charging at the front were deeply shaken. The effect of the Thunderclaps had been devastating enough, but what truly inspired awe was the realization that their lord had predicted every move of the veteran commander Pascal with terrifying precision. The entire battle had unfolded exactly as Nolan had described during the war council the previous night, without the slightest deviation.

And now, with his own charge leading the front, their lord had reignited the glory of the ancient nobles through action rather than words.

“Charge!”

“For Coldsteel! For Elfin!”

The two armies crashed together once more.

This time, however, the allied formation had completely disintegrated. Soldiers stumbled about in panic, morale shattered.

Nolan rode at the very front, every aura he possessed activated at full strength. He carved a massive breach straight through the chaotic enemy ranks in an instant.

Behind him, four hundred heavily armored Black Armored Legion soldiers followed in tight formation. Though technically heavy infantry, they advanced in a perfect cavalry wedge.

First they smashed clean through Grand Knight Verdi’s short-axe light infantry. Then they slammed into Knight Claw’s heavy infantry regiment, which had lagged slightly behind due to its commander’s orders, scattering it into total ruin.

Nothing could halt that black steel torrent. Not even for a single step.

The five former defensive formations pressed forward immediately behind them, and the entire front line surged ahead.

Thousands of allied soldiers stranded on the southern bank fell into complete disarray.

The chain of command had utterly collapsed. Units no longer existed as organized formations. The men at the front desperately tried to retreat, while the soldiers still trapped in the river struggled frantically to climb ashore. The two streams collided against each other in chaos, nearly turning their weapons on their own comrades.

On the northern bank, Sir Pascal sat frozen atop his horse, his mind blank.

That earth-shattering series of explosions had utterly destroyed the steady offensive rhythm he had so carefully maintained. His entire battle plan had practically collapsed in an instant.

Had the mage captain not reacted quickly enough to forcibly interrupt the spell the mages had been preparing and instead erect a massive magical barrier at the last second, Pascal himself might already have been lying sprawled in the mud.

Even so, the backlash from abruptly canceling the spell, combined with the explosive shockwave, had caused the mage captain to cough blood and lose consciousness on the spot.

“My lord! My lord! What do we do now?” the guard knight beside him asked in panic.

Pascal did not answer. Looking at the battlefield on the southern bank, now rapidly turning into a one-sided slaughter, he found himself unable to answer.

He had anticipated many possible scenarios for an attack launched while crossing the river and had prepared contingencies based on Hank’s past command style. Earlier, he had privately instructed Finley’s barbarian cavalry to stay alert for ambushes, yet they themselves had been routed by a ghostlike force of light cavalry. The heavy infantry regiment meant to serve as the second wave had also been recklessly pushed to the front by that fool Claw. More than half of them had been obliterated in the river explosions. He had never imagined that what should have been a simple encirclement and extermination battle fought with overwhelming numbers would become this.

And this absolutely was not some spur-of-the-moment tactic. He was certain those explosions were not magic. Large-scale magic always produced obvious fluctuations and warning signs before activation.

But if it was not magic, then what was it?

Suddenly, Pascal realized he had fallen into a fatal misconception from the very beginning.

He knew Hank too well. On the battlefield, Hank preferred direct confrontation and quick improvisation to crush his enemies. He was not the kind of commander who laid elaborate, sinister traps like this far in advance.

Pascal had stubbornly assumed Hank was the enemy commander and had built all his tactical arrangements around that assumption.

But what if Hank had never been the true commander at all?

In that instant, every clue snapped together inside his mind.

The scouts who had spent an entire week sealing off information had not been hiding some ridiculous “tree-planting” operation. They had been concealing the mysterious explosives buried beneath the riverbed.

The enemy’s sudden withdrawal of their battle line had not been a sign of exhaustion either. They had deliberately yielded the riverbank to lure even more allied soldiers into the river, packing them tightly into the center of the blast zone.

At the same time, the contracted formation allowed them to better withstand the shockwaves from the explosions.

And he himself?

By ordering the entire army forward in an attempt to crush the enemy through sheer numbers and relentless pressure, he had delivered the perfect conditions for the enemy to trigger the riverbed explosions and maximize casualties.

A chill ran down Pascal’s spine.

Every step he had taken seemed to have been anticipated in advance. It felt as though every thought in his mind had been laid bare before the hidden commander behind the enemy lines.

This was not Hank’s style. The true commander was more cunning than Hank… and far more familiar with Pascal’s own way of thinking.

On the southern bank, the allied army had descended into complete chaos. Every soldier fought alone as the forces of Coldsteel City methodically split, encircled, and harvested them one group at a time. Yet because the allied army still vastly outnumbered them, the battle could not end quickly.

Fenrir had also been caught in the sudden explosion. 

In fact, Nolan had deliberately timed the detonation of the Thunderclaps largely with this Gold-rank powerhouse in mind. But Fenrir was, after all, a mid-Gold-tier expert. His powerful body and sharp reflexes allowed him to react the instant the explosion began. Swinging his sword at the river, he sent massive sheets of water flying upward and instantly froze them into a thick ice shield before him.

The shield blocked the flames and absorbed most of the shockwave, but the violent explosion still hurled him into the river in miserable fashion.

The shattered ice shield exploded into countless razor-sharp shards that flew in every direction like crossbow bolts, accidentally slaughtering a number of allied light infantry trying to cross nearby.

“AAAAAAAH!”

Fenrir burst out of the river like a drenched beast, wet hair plastered across his face as he roared in fury, nearly driven mad with rage.

“Move! Get out of the way! The rebels are coming—”

Several fleeing allied soldiers splashed desperately toward him through the muddy Somme River.

Two icy flashes of swordlight cut through the air.

The light infantrymen fell with stunned expressions frozen on their faces. Their blood froze into pink crystal fragments the moment it left their bodies before scattering helplessly into the river.

Fenrir stared fixedly toward the southern bank. The dark blue rebel forces were systematically surrounding the remaining allied troops.

Victory or defeat in war was the army’s concern. Right now, he wanted only one thing: release. As the strongest warrior on this battlefield, he wanted nothing more than to tear apart the bastard rebel commander who had humiliated him so thoroughly.