The Lord of the Rings: Lords of Middle-earth.

Chapter 349 A Bloodbath Caused by a Bowl of Soup

"My God! Those trolls really hurt!" A swan knight said with lingering fear as he pulled a spearhead that was half-embedded in his shoulder armor.

"Oh! It's amazing you survived!" exclaimed a knight nearby.

"Damn it! It's an obsidian spearhead!" The knight broke out in a cold sweat. Luckily, the damn thing hit his thick shoulder armor. If it had hit his head... He stared in horror at the spearhead that had been shattered into pieces.

"Advance in silence! If you're not dead, stop howling!" The leading swan knight turned around, clearly annoyed. After all, being disturbed from his sleep and then "beaten up" was definitely not a good mood.

"Oh!" the knights responded listlessly.

……

"Tell the soldiers in the north! A dozen or so human knights are coming from the south!" A tall orc riding a dire wolf peered through the dense forest at the departing knights.

"Yes! Roar!" The orc werewolf rider growled and immediately dragged his dire wolf into the forest...

The orcs were confident they could intercept the human knights. They knew that wolves were just as fast in the jungle as warhorses on the riverbanks. While gravel and heavy loads slowed human warhorses, the bushes of the jungle only sped up the wolves.

The Swan Knights were completely unaware of all this, but even if they had, there was nothing they could do. Their speed was simply outmatched, and besides, they didn't need speed. A fully armored Swan Knight wouldn't even bother ramming an equal number of ordinary Lagrange Knights. If the Lagrange Knight's heavy plate armor offered one level of defense, then the Swan Knight's mithril swan armor offered at least two and a half levels! Enemies? Just ram them!
It was this unbridled Swan Knights that laid the foundation for the stable situation in southern Gondor, even though the Umbal pirates and Harads were beaten so badly by this knightly order that they didn't recognize their own mothers.

They are proud and invincible! Whether it's the Swan Knights in history who pierced through the orc army with their fists, or the knights in the game who blocked Mordor at the Black Gate and wreaked havoc, they are among the few special forces in Middle-earth!
……

"Captain! Something's not right. It's been too quiet all this way!" The knight behind him was feeling suffocated by the eerie atmosphere.

“Watch your surroundings! Heaven knows where those damned orcs are lurking in the north... Even the trolls are out now, so I’m not surprised at all by what I see…” the knight captain said in a muffled voice.

"..." Everyone twitched their lips.

"I'm very curious, Your Highness, how did you manage to successfully travel south?" the knight captain asked.

“In fact, it was the Kingdom of Lagrange that sent a square-banner heavy cavalryman and half a square-banner ranger to escort me out…” Jesse Ava said.

(In Middle-earth, square banners represent units of one hundred men, because knights or cavalry were organized into units of one hundred men, and each unit had a square banner!)

"Did they also fight their way through bloodshed like this?" the others couldn't help but ask curiously.

“Actually, the old forest road we took was relatively safe…” Jessie Ava shrugged.

"Damn it!"

"Made!"

"Shit!"

The group cursed their bad luck. They hadn't actually fought any of those damned dark creatures along the way; their chosen route was certainly something else—they actually dared to try and roam freely in the orc-controlled Romanian region… Keep in mind, this was only the end of the Third Age. Only after the Fourth Age would humans be able to freely set foot on this land. As for now… just look at this group of unlucky fellows…

"Fight! Fight! Kill them! These damned orc werewolf riders! Slaughter them!" Finally, after a short while, the captain of the unit broke down...

Just as these knights picked up a bowl of hot soup to warm themselves, those ignorant orcs leaped out of the forest and unleashed a barrage of attacks on the group. The effectiveness of the attacks was unclear, but judging from the clanging sound of the arrows being deflected, it was obviously useless... However, if we're just talking about the effect of the provocation, even the Dragon God would praise them for doing it to the extreme. Look! A certain captain, whose bowl had just been shattered by an arrow, trembled as he put down his armor, drew his longsword, and charged forward with his shield up!
then……

And that was it... The remaining twenty people watched as something was sent flying by a dire wolf, then crashed into the shallow water on the shore in a graceful arc.

"..." Swan Knight.

“…” Jessie Ava.

"..." Orc wolf riders.

"Whoosh!" Dazzling ice flowers suddenly bloomed on the water's surface...

"Bang!" The scattering ice blades flew towards the orcs as if they had eyes. The dire wolves sensed the threat and tried to dodge, but how could they possibly escape the high-speed ice blades... In an instant, several orc werewolf riders and their dire wolves were cut to pieces by the ice blades, and before the pieces of their bodies could scatter, they were frozen solid...

"Bastards! How dare you resist! You filthy black-skinned bastards! Damn scum!" The Swan Knight captain, leaning on his longsword, stepped onto the broken ice, his surging battle aura turning the still somewhat hot autumn into a harsh winter.

It was only then that Jessie realized that the person who had been escorting her along the way was actually a fourth-tier ice-type knight commander! The Kingdom of Gondor is amazing! What a generous gesture!

"Seal!" The knight commander raised his longsword and spoke softly. Instantly, a pale blue ripple of battle aura quietly bloomed from him.

"Crack! Crack!" Even the most oblivious wolf riders sensed something was wrong, because... all of their dire wolves' paws were frozen solid!
A layer of frost had formed on the ground sometime during the night, especially around the dire wolves' paws, where the frost was a foot thick! The already solid frost became even more unbreakable with the enhancement of battle aura skills! No matter how the dire wolves twitched their limbs, they didn't react in the slightest!
……

"Trash! You're no match for me!" The knight lord spat, gracefully sheathed his sword and turned away, leaving behind only a mess of severed limbs and black blood seeping into the ice.

"What are you looking at? Pack your things and let's go!" The air around the knight commander seemed to freeze. He glared at his men with annoyance, picked up the broken bowl, and then, as if remembering something, tossed it down...

"He's got a temper, seems pretty angry..." someone whispered to their comrade.

"I'm not blind!" another knight rolled his eyes and said speechlessly.

"Tsk tsk tsk! A pretty good bowl of soup... What a pity!" Someone looked at the broken ceramic bowl that the knight commander had discarded and said regretfully. After all, it was the only hot thing they had eaten in days, and the orcs had destroyed it completely. You have to know that in order to save time and avoid the enemy, they had been eating dry rations for more than ten days.

"The pot is broken!" a knight lamented, holding the shattered pot. The earthenware pot had failed to withstand the orc's arrows and had gloriously sacrificed itself along with the knight's bowl.

"..." Jessie looked at the orcs lying dead everywhere with pity and couldn't help but shake her head. This bowl of soup had caused such a bloodbath!

(End of this chapter)