Real Mount and Blade Game

Outside the city of New Rivadin, the gray-yellow desert steamed with scorching heat under the midday sun.

Five grassland bandits under Bestur's command are currently on their daily patrol and hunt.

Their warhorses trod across the soft sand, deftly skirting a low wall made of half-collapsed concrete and brick.

Ahead, a dozen or so ordinary skeleton warriors, their movements stiff and their eye sockets burning with faint, eerie green soul flames, were wandering aimlessly in a warehouse in the ruins of a village in the suburbs. Their rusted swords dragged on the sand, making a monotonous scraping sound.

"Hey, same old rules, wanna have a contest?" The leader of the bandit squad, a scarred man named Batel, grinned, revealing a set of white teeth, and reached into his saddlebag to take his gleaming Kujit composite shortbow.

The other four smiled knowingly and took out their bows and arrows.

For these grassland warriors, skilled in archery and swift as the wind, these lone, low-ranking undead were a perfect pastime during their tedious patrols.

"Whoosh!" "Whoosh!" "Whoosh!" The sound of arrows tearing through the air rang out one after another, their accuracy astonishing.

An arrow pierced the knee joint of a skeleton from the side, sending fragments of bone flying. The skeleton immediately lost its balance and fell to the ground. Another arrow struck the hand joint of another skeleton holding a sword, breaking the bone claw and sending the rusty sword crashing to the ground. An even more powerful arrow pierced the empty eye socket of a skeleton, and with a "plop," the eerie green soul fire was extinguished like a burst bubble.

"Haha, Batel, your eyes are still as sharp as ever!" one of his companions laughed.

The skeletons sluggishly turned towards the source of the attack, letting out silent roars as they charged forward with unsteady steps, but to the bandits, their movements were as slow as snails.

They skillfully propelled their warhorses, maintaining just the right distance, and their short bows unleashed a rapid, precise volley, like a whirlwind.

Arrows flew like nimble fingers, dismantling the joints of these skeletal monsters one by one—elbows, shoulders, spines, ankles… The crisp sound of bones cracking filled the air.

Before long, the skeletons were scattered all over the ground like puppets taken apart by a naughty child, writhing and struggling in vain, no longer posing a threat.

"No fun, clean it up!" Batel put away his bow, a relaxed smile on his face, but his tone carried the innate bloodlust of a Khergit.

Several bandits drew their scimitars or short spears, rode forward, and like farmers using hoes to smash clods of earth, with a few "thuds" and "thuds," easily pierced the skulls of each broken skeleton with their sharp metal, completely extinguishing the faint embers of their souls.

They deftly drew their weapons, wiping off the bits of bone and slime that clung to them in the sand, as if they had just finished a pleasant morning exercise.

“Let’s go, this area is too clean, shall we take a stroll to the east?” suggested a young bandit.

Batel wiped the sweat from his brow, glanced at the scorching sun overhead outside the warehouse, then surveyed the monotonous sand dunes and ruins around him, and nodded: "Alright, it won't hurt to take a look."

Their patrol area was already quite open, and Lord Bestur had tacitly approved of them going deeper into the area.

The team slightly adjusted its direction and continued eastward along a dry ditch that no longer bore any trace of its former road.

The hoofprints of the warhorses left shallow marks on the sand, which were quickly smoothed out by the breeze.

Time passed slowly, and before they knew it, they had traveled quite a distance.

As Batel took out his water pouch to moisten his chapped lips again, he inadvertently looked up and his gaze suddenly fixed on the horizon.

His movements stopped.

“Hey…look over there!” Batel’s voice lowered, tinged with surprise, as he pointed to the horizon in the eastern sky.

The other four followed his gaze. In the distance, the originally gray-blue dome was shrouded in a deep, thick, and impenetrable black cloud.

The dark clouds, like giant ink stains splashed across the sky, carried an eerie sense of heaviness and oppression, and seemed to be spreading towards them very slowly.
Unlike natural wind and rain clouds, the blackness was too pure, with subtle changes barely perceptible to the naked eye rolling around its edges, exuding an indescribable ominous aura.

"What the hell is that?" one of the bandits muttered, instinctively tightening his grip on the reins. The warhorse he was riding seemed to sense the unease and irritably pawed at the sand beneath its hooves.

“Dark clouds? Is a torrential downpour about to happen? Doesn’t seem like it…” another guessed, but his tone was full of uncertainty. The weather in the desert is unpredictable, but they had never seen such pure, almost light-consuming blackness before.

"It feels... very bad." The young bandit's voice was a little strained. As scouts, they had an instinctive intuition for danger.

Batel frowned and squinted, trying to see more clearly.

The distance was too great to discern the details, but the area beneath that dark cloud was precisely the edge zone marked as extremely dangerous on their daily patrol map—the deeper "unknown zone."

His adventurous spirit as a Khergit cavalryman and his sense of duty began to clash fiercely.

To go or not to go?

That dark cloud was definitely not normal; it was very likely related to the undead or demons. They were sentinels, and their highest mission was to explore the unknown and warn of danger.

But it was far too risky for just the five of them to venture into that obviously eerie area.

“We can’t just let this go.” Batel made a decision and said in a deep voice, “That thing looks strange, we have to find out what’s going on. But it’s probably not enough for just the few of us to go.”

Without further hesitation, he immediately took off the short quiver made of the leg bone of some large bird that was hanging from his waist.

This bone whistle is used to transmit emergency signals and can produce a specific, sharp, and long tone in the wind.

Batel took a deep breath and forcefully brought the bone whistle to his lips.

"Waaaaah—waaaah—"

The piercing, penetrating sound of a bone whistle suddenly shattered the silence of the desert, repeating itself in a specific rhythm.

This signifies a "highest alert, emergency mobilization" signal!

The whistle echoed across the empty sand dunes, carrying far. Everyone held their breath, listening intently to the sounds around them, weapons in hand, their eyes scanning the surroundings warily, like wild beasts about to go on a hunt.

Time seemed to stand still. After about half a cup of tea's time, the sound of rapid hoofbeats came from the right flank. Soon, a small team of four bandits broke through the ridge of the sand dune and came into view.

The leader was a burly man, Batu, who had previously accompanied Gegen to Xinriwadin to report intelligence.

"Captain Batel! What is it?" Batul reined in his horse, his sharp eyes sweeping over the crowd before finally settling on Batel's solemn expression as he pointed eastward.

Almost immediately afterward, from a further direction on the left, another six-man bandit squad sped towards them, following the sound of the whistle.

The leader was another experienced veteran bandit, Arsleng.

"Old Batel, why are you blowing so hard? Something big coming?" Arsleng's voice was rough, but his eyes were equally calm and cautious. Three squads, fifteen elite grassland bandits, had assembled in an instant!

They were all the falcons Bestur had released into the desert, the most astute eyes and ears. At this moment, their gazes were all focused on Batel, and the air was thick with the tension of battle.

“Look for yourselves!” Batel pointed again to the eerie black cloud on the eastern horizon, which was getting closer and clearer, and he quickly explained their encounter and his worries: “We cleared away a few bone fragments here and found that thing! It’s definitely not a dark cloud! It looks like it’s emerging from the depths of that ‘black soil’ that’s completely corrupted by the spirit world, further east of Longcheng! I suspect it’s related to those ghostly things, or maybe some monster has emerged again! We can’t just go back and report the name of the black cloud without doing anything, can we?”

Batu stared at the dark cloud, his brows furrowed tightly, and nodded vigorously: "Damn it, something's wrong! It's giving me the creeps, even more eerie than the black light on those bone-armored cavalry! We should go check it out!"

Arslen squinted, carefully discerning the color and shape of the clouds, and slowly spoke: "I also feel something is strange. And at this distance... there does seem to be something moving. If we don't figure it out, and it comes over and harms the fortress, it would be our dereliction of duty. Chief Bestur didn't send us out to be blind!"

The three squad leaders instantly reached a consensus—to investigate!
Having made the decision, the bandits of the grasslands acted with extreme decisiveness.

The fifteen riders seemed to understand each other perfectly, exchanging no words but confirming each other's intentions with a glance.

"go!"

With a low shout, Batel spurred his horse, and his nimble Kujit warhorse shot off like an arrow, heading straight for the ominous dark cloud in the east.

"drive!"

"Follow!"

The remaining fourteen riders moved simultaneously, closely following Batel, like an ochre-yellow whirlwind, stirring up a cloud of dust, and galloped headlong towards the dark, gloomy cloud that loomed at the edge of the desolate desert, seemingly capable of devouring everything.

The thunderous sound of hooves was like a dense drumbeat striking the open ground; they were moving very fast.

……

A reconnaissance team of fifteen bandits from the grasslands, led by Batel, Batu, and Arsleng, sped like arrows toward the thick, inky black clouds that churned with an ominous aura on the eastern horizon.

The Kujit horses trod on the soft, grayish-yellow sand, swift as the wind, yet making little sound.

However, the dark clouds in the distance, like a ferocious beast frozen in a mirage, remained unreachable no matter how hard they spurred their horses on, howling and urging them to gallop.

The horizon seemed to stretch out unchangingly into that unsettling blackness.

"Damn it! It's like looking at a mountain and running yourself ragged!" Batu gasped for breath, his cheeks stinging from the strong wind, the sweat on his forehead quickly drying, leaving only the sticky feel of sand.

He squinted, gazing at the seemingly unchanging distance, a sense of unease burning within him like a bonfire.

"Slow down, keep the pace even!" Batel, experienced as he was, spoke in a hoarse voice that cut through the wind: "If you keep pushing like that, the horse will break down before it even reaches its destination! That thing looks sinister, it might be up to something!" He pulled on the reins, slightly reducing the horse's speed.

The rest of the team also slowed down a bit, maintaining their usual alert formation.

As you race across the vast, desolate plains, the passage of time becomes blurred.

The sun had already begun to set westward from its zenith, casting long shadows.

They passed by more than one former human settlement site.

Most of the houses in these villages have collapsed, with the exposed reinforced concrete or brick structures resembling the stark white bones revealed after the earth has rotted.

Even more bizarrely, some originally flat ground arched into strange mounds and rifts, while some solid house foundations appeared to have been twisted violently by an invisible giant hand, exhibiting impossible angles and cracks—this was the distorted scene caused by the huge "falling objects" that accompanied the erosion of the spirit world and were powerful enough to change the terrain.

The air was thick with the musty smell of decay, a mixture of dust and rust, characteristic of desolation and ruins.

"stop!"

Arslan suddenly gave a low shout and abruptly pulled on the reins.

His gaze was sharp as an eagle's, fixed on the corner of a half-collapsed courtyard wall in front of him.

The others stopped almost simultaneously, their hands already on the scimitars or short bows at their waists, warily following his gaze.

In the shadow cast by the crooked wall and the pile of broken cement slabs, several pairs of terrified eyes peered at them through the gaps, like frightened little animals.

Those are human eyes!
“It’s a person! A living person!” Batu whispered, with a hint of disbelief.

In the heart of this desolate region, ravaged by the dead and demons, where the spirit world devours everything, are there still humans from Earth clinging to life?!

“Go ahead, be careful!” Batel said decisively, his voice even lower.

The fifteen riders spread out in a cautious, semi-encircling formation and slowly rode towards the courtyard.

The bow and arrow were nocked, not aimed at the survivors, but vigilance remained high.

"Come out! Speak!" Batel shouted at the shadows, using a Blue Star language with a heavy Khergit accent to make sure the other party could understand: "We are not undead! We are humans, scouts of Lord Shen Mu from Deherim, the city of Long!"

Suppressed sobs and whispers came from the shadows behind the wall.

After a long while, a figure crawled out, trembling, followed by two, three... a total of five people.

Three men and two women, disheveled and filthy, dressed in tattered clothes that barely covered their bodies, sallow and emaciated, with sunken eyes, their bodies bearing the grime and fear that had been hidden for a long time.

They leaned against the broken wall, their bodies trembling like fallen leaves in the autumn wind, their eyes filled with distrust of strangers and extreme fear.

“Longcheng City…New Rivadin?” The leader’s gaunt voice was hoarse like a broken gong, as if he hadn’t spoken loudly in a long time.

But his voice also carried doubt and shock.

He knew Longcheng City.

Or rather, this area was originally part of the suburbs of Longcheng City.

But what is that new Rivadin?

They didn't know. (End of Chapter)