The company commander, though puzzled, dismounted.

Grabbing him by the collar, Raffel threw him onto the Dragon Blood Horse beneath him and dismounted himself: "This horse is a valuable asset of the Leia Royal Family. I order you to take this horse back to protect His Highness!"

After speaking, Raffel whipped the Dragon Blood Horse on the rump, leaving only the startled shout of the company commander in the air: "Lord Raffel, what about you?"

The company commander couldn't hear Raffel's answer because the Dragon Blood Horse was simply too fast.

After saluting Raffel, the Imperial Knights chased after the departing company commander.

"Me?" Raffel rode a nameless and ordinary warhorse and pulled down his visor, "Tojismond, I'm guarding your back, just like always."

......

When Horn arrived on the scene, Raffel's warhorse had already been scorched by plasma rounds.

The old knight dismounted, yet did not fall. Instead, he assumed a stance for ground combat once again.

Steam with a rusty smell puffed out of the helmet's breathing holes, and Raffel roared like a beast, swinging a great sword in a spinning slash.

Behind him, three charging Long Spearmen split from right shoulder to left hip, intestines spilling across the ground.

He bent down to pick up a warhammer, sweeping it across, sending a member of the Holy Armor Forbidden Army flying.

The monks formed a circle, a clockwork cannon pushed out from the crowd, aimed at Raffel from afar.

Hair stood on end, and Raffel gritted his teeth, growling low.

"Roar—"

The chest of the Great Knight emitted a roar that momentarily drowned out the clamor of the battlefield, even causing the helmet to resonate.

"Bang!"

Before Raffel could finish roaring, dozens of rounds from helical guns pierced through his chest and arms.

At a distance of twenty to thirty meters, the helical gun's power was much greater than before, some even reaching the bones.

"Despicable wretch!"

Horn squinted his eyes. What flowed from the damaged armguard was not blood but a kind of black, oil-like liquid.

Even from forty or fifty meters away, one could smell the heavy, rotten, moldy odor.

"Go, tell them Raffel is dead."

Horn whispered to the advisers beside him.

Soon, the mountains echoed with calls of "Raffel is dead," and many infantrymen who were originally still resisting at the rear, upon seeing the lack of Raffel's presence on the battlefield, shouted once and fled, abandoning their arms.

Over on this side, once it was confirmed Jeanne was only seriously injured, Horn breathed a sigh of relief.

He looked at the Great Knight, stroking his chin as he began to ponder how to deal with him.

The Great Knight, in a prideful stance, held his neck stiffly and raised his chin: "Plebeians, what can you do? You can kill me, but you can't kill the knights of Leia!"

Horn whistled, and several nearby gunners with helical guns cleverly raised their arms for a shot.

Lead bullets drilled into the gap in the thigh armor, piercing through the bone plate and shattering the knee.

Supporting himself with a long-handled warhammer, Raffel still did not kneel but stood firm.

Bang—

The second shot fired, shattering the kneecaps of Raffel's legs, yet he maintained his balance with the warhammer and did not kneel.

"Good, break his limbs just like that." Horn nodded with satisfaction, "Go tell the secret party that capturing him alive for experimentation is possible.

First exhaust his Divine Art blessings, then use a numbing mist like enchantment.

Oh, and remember to send the experimental data to Ry Court Barracks as a reference for countering Great Knights in the future."

"Is this how you handle it? Treating such a noble knight this way?" Raffel's hearing, enhanced by Divine Art, was extraordinarily sharp, hearing even from such a distance.

"Why don't you ask those civilians who died cruelly because of you?"

"What makes you noble?" Raffel glared at Horn. "But you are the founding monarch, your soldiers trust you more, and morale is higher.

If it were Tumendjis here today, the victory would surely belong to Leia."

"It's not me who defeated you." With a comforting smile, Horn turned his back and pointed at the distant cheering and jumping crowd, where the battle monks were waving flags, crying, and laughing.

"...It was them."