Real Mount and Blade Game

The arrows whistled and pierced the air, not aiming for precision, but rather forming a deadly rain of arrows that swept backward! The target was clear—the joints of the skeletal monsters that were charging wildly!
The first few black-mist skeleton cavalrymen charging at the front were almost simultaneously struck in the leg joints by several cone-shaped arrows, the barbs on the arrowheads getting deeply caught in the bone gaps due to the enormous impact!

"Crack! Bang!"

The sound of bones shattering mingled with the deafening crash of warhorses and monsters crashing to the ground!
Several powerful skeletal mounts instantly lost their balance, along with the terrifying knights on their backs shrouded in black mist and the aura of death, and crashed into the sand like out-of-control tattered sacks, sending bone fragments flying and dust billowing everywhere!
The furious charge was abruptly interrupted!
"Good!" Batu shouted excitedly, and without stopping, another cone-shaped arrow was shot backward.

This sudden barrage of cone-shaped arrows caused brief chaos among the pursuers, buying the bandits a crucial few moments!

Seizing this fleeting opportunity, Batel spurred his horse and let out a long neigh that pierced the night, heading west towards his home:

"Return to the city and report! There's a castle of skeleton cavalry deep in the eastern suburbs!!"

This piercing cry, accompanied by the increasingly rapid hoofbeats, was like a bloodstained warning, tearing through the silence of the twilight desert and desperately shooting towards the distant walls of New Rivadin.

Behind them, the fallen undead knight pushed aside the shattered remains of his mount and stood up again, the black mist surrounding him churning even more violently.

More Black Mist cavalry, uninterrupted, moved at an even faster pace, carrying a suffocating killing intent, trampling over the bone fragments of their comrades, like vengeful messengers from the depths of hell, relentlessly pursuing the fifteen fleeing grassland bandits!

Even the sunlight shining down from the sun only made some contact with the black mist that enveloped them.

But the specific damage.

But there wasn't one at all!
Just like these skeleton cavalrymen, they weren't afraid of the black mist at all!
……

Fifteen riders galloped for their lives, the Kujit warhorses breathing heavily like broken bellows, sweat and dust clinging to the riders' still-terrified faces.

Those dozen or so skeletal cavalrymen shrouded in ominous black mist were like death warrants biting at our backs. With each turn of our heads, we felt the churning blackness getting closer, and the chilling killing intent almost pierced our spines.

However, just as they galloped past a huge weathered rock platform and used the terrain to make a slight detour, the oppressive feeling behind them suddenly eased.

"Boss!" Batu's voice trembled with disbelief as he abruptly pulled on the reins and turned back. "Stop...stop?!"

The galloping cavalry gradually slowed down and finally came to a complete stop on a relatively open, gentle slope of sand dunes.

The warhorse snorted restlessly and pawed at the sand beneath its feet.

The riders' chests heaved violently, their knuckles white from gripping their scimitars and short bows with excessive force. All of them looked back in the direction they had come from, their expressions still showing signs of shock.

The dim, yellowish sunset, like a giant ball of molten gold, pressed heavily on the western horizon, dyeing the sky a desolate orange-red.

Bathed in this magnificent yet deathly glow, the terrifying castle, piled with endless sand and pale skeletons, stands silently in the distance.

Its spiky outline is clearly visible, and the thick, inky black cloud that seems to devour light is still slowly churning over it, exuding a chilling coldness and majesty.

The skeleton cavalry, who had just been relentlessly pursuing them and nearly tearing them apart, had mysteriously vanished without a trace.

Only their own messy hoofprints stretched into the distance on the dunes, and... the last few wisps of black dust, almost invisible, gradually dissipated in the afterglow of the setting sun towards the castle.

Meanwhile, those deadly pursuers, unnoticed at some point, silently abandoned their pursuit and returned to the bone fortress that reeked of sulfur and acrid heat.

The tension in everyone's hearts suddenly eased, but what followed was a deeper sense of shock and lingering fear.

Silence enveloped the weary squad, with only heavy breathing and the occasional snort of warhorses echoing in the twilight desert.

They stared blankly at the skeletal castle that shone with an eerie dark gold in the blood-red sunset, each breath filled with the trembling of someone who had survived a catastrophe and an indescribable shock.

Hidden there was a death force far beyond their imagination.

“My God…” Arslan murmured, his weathered face filled with solemnity, “Those monsters… they’re just toying with us! They can chase us whenever they want, and stop whenever they want!”

He felt an unprecedented sense of insignificance; their pride in their speed and archery seemed so trivial in the face of the power of the castle and the dark clouds.

Batel took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the pounding in his heart. As the captain, he had to keep the team in check.

“That wasn’t playing games.” His voice was hoarse but unusually heavy. “That was a declaration of territory, and we… just barely escaped the edge of warning.”

"Boss, the sun is almost gone!" A young bandit in the group said, his voice trembling as he pointed to the horizon.

The orange-red sunset was sinking at a visible speed, and the dark blue of the horizon was rapidly swallowing up the afterglow. The temperature of the desert was like a leaky sack, quickly dissipating, and the biting cold seeped into the thin leather armor with every wisp of evening breeze.

The young bandit said urgently, "When it gets dark, those skeletons will appear! We must find a place to camp and make a fire! Without the light, heat, and smoke of a campfire, we'll be sitting ducks at night!"

“He’s right!” Batu immediately chimed in. Although he was quick-tempered, he knew the terror of the desert at night: “This place is too open, there isn’t even a wall to shelter us from the wind! If they sneak up on us at night, our numbers won’t even be enough to fill a tooth gap!”

Batel looked around. Under the dim light of the sky, the endless sand dunes resembled solidified giant waves, unobstructed and unrestricted.

He hesitated for a moment, then turned his gaze to the north where they had come from, as if searching for something in his memory.

"I remember now!" a veteran bandit who had participated in the outer patrols suddenly said, his voice tinged with urgency: "On the way here, slightly north! About twenty minutes... uh, ten minutes away! I remember there's a small village ruin there! It's deeper than the one where we encountered people before, but it's quite badly collapsed, there should be a lot of broken walls and ruins, we should be able to find a place to hide!"

"Are you sure?" Batel stared at him.

"I'm sure!" The veteran nodded vigorously. "I saw it when I passed by. I even took a look from a distance. It was quite large; there should be enough space to hide!"

Batel no longer hesitated.

The threat of darkness hangs like a sword over our heads.

"Alright! Let's go to that village ruin! Everyone, pay attention, don't get separated! Keep formation, stay alert! Let's go!" He whipped his horse and galloped off in the direction the veteran had indicated. The fourteen riders behind him immediately followed upon hearing the command, and the fifteen figures merged into a torrent, rushing northward in the last rays of the setting sun.

Horse hooves pounded across the barren sand, raising clouds of dust.

The dusky sky faded quickly, and the setting sun in the distance resembled a gold coin sunk into an inkwell, reduced to a thin golden line.

When the exhausted team finally climbed over the last earthen slope covered with broken bricks and stones, and the outline of the village ruins came into view, the world was almost entirely bathed in dim light.

As the veteran said, it was a fairly large village.

Most of the once-neat houses are now dilapidated, revealing broken concrete beams and twisted steel bars. Half-collapsed earthen walls, half-collapsed brick houses, and some strangely shaped, massive objects from the spirit world, partially buried by sand, form countless corners and ravines that obscure the view, like scattered bones.

Deep within the ruins, only the twisted branches of the tall, withered trees remain, stretching out their grotesque silhouettes against the increasingly dark sky.

However, the team did not relax after reaching the "safe zone".

"Wait! Stop!" Batel suddenly raised his hand, his voice low and tense.

His sharp eyes, like those of a hawk, keenly detected anything unusual in the ruins.

The riders reined in their restless warhorses, their fingers instinctively gripping the handguards of their scimitars and the handles of their shortbows.

"What's wrong, boss?" Batu asked in a low voice, also sensing the heavy atmosphere.

Batel did not answer, his gaze fixed on a fallen concrete pillar at the entrance to the ruins.

There, a small pile of ashes lay cold, but the surrounding sand had been deliberately cleared away, and several blurry footprints, which were definitely not naturally formed, could still be vaguely seen.

A piece of rusted sheet metal was used to block the wind, and behind it, there seemed to be a few roots that had been gnawed clean and had tiny tooth marks.

“Someone’s here.” Arslan’s voice came from the side. He pointed to a broken water pipe not far away: “Look at the wetness on the pipe opening… it was recently pried open, and the water was taken out not long ago.”

"Not bone fragments!" Batu growled, his eyes scanning the ruins warily. "What use is water to the undead! It's a living person! Or something else?!"

Everyone's hearts were in their throats again.

In this desolate wasteland, the "living things" you encounter may not be friendly, but rather pose a deeper danger.

"Dismount! Conduct a fan-shaped search, back to back! Arrows nocked, swords drawn!"

Batel made a decisive decision and gave the order in a deep voice.

The riders nimbly dismounted, wrapped the reins around their wrists, and quickly spread out into a semi-circular defensive circle centered on Batel. Their sharp eyes, like searchlights, scanned every dark corner and every crack in the collapsed wall.

The last rays of the setting sun sparingly painted the eaves of a mud-brick house with only half a room remaining and cracked walls.

In the darkest corner, a pile of rubbish consisting of rotten planks, old tires, and a half-collapsed adobe wall suddenly shook very slightly, making a very faint "click" sound, like a brick or tile slipping.

"Who's there? Come out!" Batel shouted sharply, instantly drawing his short bow to its full draw. The cold steel arrowhead gleamed with a chilling light, pointing straight at the trembling shadow.

Time seemed to freeze for a few seconds. In the deathly silent ruins, only the whistling of the wind through the broken walls and the heavy breathing of the prairie bandits could be heard.

Finally, the shadow behind the pile of clutter seemed to come alive. After a violent tremor, a hunched, emaciated figure emerged shakily.

He was a man from Earth who looked to be in his fifties, and he appeared more haggard than any of the survivors that Batel and his companions had ever seen.

He wore a tattered gray jacket that barely covered his body, revealing dark, cracked skin covered in dust.

He staggered forward two steps, instinctively raising his arms to shield his face, his body trembling violently.

His cloudy eyes, bulging almost from their deep sockets with extreme fear, stared intently at the group of menacing, unfamiliar warriors before him.

"No...don't shoot arrows! Please!" His voice was hoarse and shrill, filled with heavy sobs and despair: "We...we have no food left...really...not a single grain!"

He pleaded incoherently, as if he mistook the bandits for another group of raiders.

Suddenly, his gaze swept over the group's well-worn yet exquisitely crafted leather armor, their scimitars clearly not of this world, and their wary yet scrutinizing rather than purely predatory eyes. A faint, unbelievable hope arose within him, causing his voice to tremble:

"You...you're not humans from Earth...are you the legendary...spirit race?!"

The title "Human Race of the Spirit Realm" was like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, causing a slight disturbance in the tense nerves of the grassland bandits.

However, before Batel and the others could respond to this abrupt yet expectant address, another unexpected event occurred!
Right behind the man from Blue Star, deep within the shadow of what appeared to be a "crack in the wall" made of collapsed beams and clods of earth, a duller, grinding sound, as if heavy objects were being moved, rang out!
Immediately afterwards, several shorter and stockier figures stepped out one after another with unusually heavy steps.

They are generally only about waist-high to an average person, but they are exceptionally strong, with arms like tree trunks and short but powerful legs.

His thick, tangled beard was covered in sand and dust, obscuring most of his face, but it couldn't hide the wary yet resolute light shining from the small eyes above his beard.

What's truly remarkable is what they're holding tightly in their hands!
Those were short-handled warhammers that were far heavier than their size—the hammerheads were angular, and some of the edges were even covered with suspicious dark red rust, clearly a real weapon of war!
In his other hand, he tightly gripped a round oak shield that looked exceptionally thick and studded with iron rivets!
Seven short but unusually robust dwarf warriors, seemingly sculpted from rock and muscle!

Like seven sturdy anvils that suddenly emerged from the ground, they silently and powerfully clustered behind the trembling man from Earth, their thick knuckles gripping the hammer handles tightly, their gazes as sharp as nails fixed on Batel and every single one of his bow-wielding bandits!

The rivets on the dwarf warrior's shield reflected a dim yet absolutely dangerous light in the last glimmer of daylight amidst the ruins.

The air was like solidified grease, carrying a faint smell of gunpowder. (End of Chapter)