Pioneer Lord: Starting From Daily Intelligence-Chapter 415 - 173: The Fertile Land That Must Be Taken - Lake Essonide
Su Li and Oerstein could see the scene from afar, and naturally, Hilude could also see it clearly soon enough.
After several failed assaults, she quickly adjusted her tactics, retaining only a portion of knights to draw the opponent’s attention from the front. Then, Champion Knights Tiberus and Constantine commanded the Corona Knight Order and Griffin Knight Order, respectively, to launch a fierce charge at the monsters from the left and right flanks.
This powerful offensive was bound to chop these forest monsters into pieces on the ground.
However, the effect of the attack wasn’t good. The blood-soaked, muddy battlefield greatly reduced the knights’ charging speed. Constantine and Tiberus entirely relied on their personal valor to break into the monster’s lines.
The ferocious Tiberus swung the massive two-handed war axe. Each swing of this over-two-meter-long giant blade caused a terrifying scene akin to a ground-shaking quake, directly slicing any monster in front of him into two.
Yet, without the charging speed, the knights’ killing capability was greatly diminished. Now the battle between the two sides had turned into a contest of health and endurance. With two heavy-armored units tearing at each other, the fight turned into a battle of attrition, with no quick end in sight.
After a brief consideration, the accompanying priest Rong’en said to Hilude, "Your Excellency, our objective has been achieved, and we can retreat now. Whether these few hundred tree demons are chopped up makes little difference to the battle situation."
The knights understood that this battle had already been a resounding victory for their side, greatly deflating the enemy’s arrogance and boosting their own morale.
This was a raid, and it wasn’t about wiping out the enemy completely.
There wasn’t much point in continuing this attrition.
But Hilude resolutely raised a hand, refusing Rong’en’s suggestion, and asked, "Honorable Shepherd Leader, haven’t you noticed that the situation isn’t that simple? You must realize the tree demons’ morale couldn’t possibly be this high. Under our knights’ repeated attacks, a fight to the death is wishful thinking. The effect of inducing fear could quickly shatter their morale; they shouldn’t be holding their ground!"
Rong’en’s face turned serious as he immediately cast a sharp gaze towards those persistent tree demons in the distance.
But the current situation was downright bizarre; these hundreds of tree demons held firm on the riverbank!
He was also habitually thinking from the perspective of mortal warfare before, but he had to realize that the Hesse Territory’s army had rapidly advanced into the extraordinary phase.
Out of these over a thousand elite troops, those carrying witchcraft items and arcane equipment numbered three to four hundred, if not five hundred!
Items like Mole’s Deathwatch Mask, the Banner of Terror, and the Territory Banner etched with Fear Rune possessed powerful magic abilities, making their side appear more imposing and terrifying.
From the monsters’ perspective, this wasn’t just 1,000 elite knights but a formidable celestial army comprised almost entirely of Champion Knights two to three meters tall, shining with dazzling brilliance, so radiant it was blinding, gazing upon it being akin to looking at the majestic sun, instilling direct fear upon the mind.
It’s a primal fear of directly facing a terrifying giant, like acrophobia, etched deep in a creature’s genes. Imagine standing on the edge of a cliff, with a single sway wooden plank underfoot, that kind of fear animals would feel, and the magic fear causes equally terrifying effects.
In facing such a huge crisis, ordinary creatures just need to gaze into the abyss for a few seconds to get their legs turned to jelly, lose their courage, collapse, and flee.
The tree demons’ frontal combat ability indeed wasn’t bad, yet they weren’t particularly high-tier monsters, and generally weren’t elite monsters either, just the cannon fodder of the forest faction, with fighting power far inferior to that of the centaur beast.
Still, over a thousand centaur beasts facing wave after wave of human elite knight attacks would have their courage collapse, scattering in all directions, yet these few hundred tree demons held their ground, not taking a single step back.
This couldn’t be explained by courage!
Under the effects of magic-induced fear, normal creatures absolutely couldn’t hold their ground. Especially when the enemy was already experiencing a catastrophic defeat.
Rong’en immediately asserted, "This must be the effect of a spell like ’Die Fighting Without Retreating’.
But where on the battlefield is the mage?
The front line had been almost entirely trampled by the human cavalry, countless monsters hacked into pieces, slain bodies piled high, stretching for miles.
The one-sided slaughter resulted in a bloody sea of corpses, making it impossible for any powerful mage to have been overlooked.
Could it be the green dragon in the sky?
Rong’en looked up to the sky immediately, but under the golden rising sun, the sky was clear, and there was no trace of the green dragon.
Moreover, if the green dragon was flying too high and hiding in the clouds, its spells could never traverse such a distance or have such wide-ranging effects across a battlefield. Even the giant dragon’s Dragon Language Magic had its casting distance limits!
With Rong’en’s agreement, Hilude now determined that there must be a powerful monster caster on the battlefield.
Therefore, Hilude said, "We must eliminate this caster. If we could slay the powerful caster within the monster legion, our victory in this battle would be extremely brilliant, and it could greatly enhance our advantage in subsequent battles."
If not, a caster hiding within the monster waves, continuously using curse magic to weaken the human knights and motivation magic to strengthen the monsters, would make this battle extremely stalemated.
