Real Mount and Blade Game

Inside the command post of the Wood Elf Forest stronghold, the oppressive air was almost stagnant. The eerie silence of the undead legion outside the forest edge felt like an invisible giant claw gripping everyone's throat.

“…Reporting, sir,” Ralph, the captain of the Rhodok ballista, said hoarsely, his bloodshot eyes fixed on Shen Mu, “‘Unyielding’ is fully loaded, with three specially made rune-inscribed crossbow bolts, ready to tear through the enemy lines at any moment!”

The Vaegir archer captain, Arya, straightened her back: "My lord, the arrows have been imbued with the secret technique of 'Breath of Ice Wind.' From the tower's observation post, everything within the reach of the cold light is a death zone!"

Alatan Khan's heavy leather boots pounded the ground: "Kurjit's eyes are fixed on those skeletal altars and the 'wound' of Long City! They're accumulating, the energy fluctuations growing stronger every day, like a festering sore!" He paused, his weathered face unusually grave. "My lord, that rotten aura of the 'Desecrator Devourer'... has returned. Right in the center of the altar!"

Shen Mu's face was as pale as paper, and cold sweat soaked through his inner shirt. Every subtle fluctuation of his mental energy felt like a sharp blade scraping across a sea of ​​cracks in his mind, causing excruciating pain that made his temples throb.

Fragments of Tallinn mourned deep within consciousness.

He closed his eyes, enduring the excruciating pain, and his mind raced through the events. The remaining natural power of the Heart of the Forest, the radiant light of his comrades' crystallized will... that was the only "spearhead" that could possibly pierce the enemy's iron wall in this desperate situation!
"Give the order!" Shen Mu suddenly opened his eyes, which were bloodshot but burned with an undeniable storm of determination. "The Holy Tree Knights, assemble!"

The cold, gray dawn struggled to penetrate the deathly silent forest.

The wooden door of the outpost was suddenly flung open!

The heavy, rhythmic sound of horses' hooves shattered the last silence before dawn!

Fifty Holy Tree Knights surged forward! Their emerald and silver armor was scarred by battle, shimmering with newly imprinted holy runes. Their spears and warhammers glowed with a resilient yet unwavering aura of purification. They were moving beacons, dispelling the chilling aura of death along their path, their leader aloft a tattered yet still sacred Holy Tree banner.

Following closely behind was a torrent of steel!

Two hundred Swadian heavy knights surged forward like a rolling iron wall! Riding purebred highland warhorses, clad in heavy chainmail and horse armor, the knights wore full plate armor that gleamed with a cold, icy light. Beneath their helmets, their eyes burned with bloodlust and a resolute determination to die! Spears stood like a forest, greatswords pointed diagonally! Their wedge-shaped charge was like a torrent of molten iron bursting from its dam, ready to crush anything in their path!
Rumble!
The earth trembles!

The Khergit eagle's whistle pierced the sky! A hundred of the most elite Khergit veteran horse archers scattered like ghosts, spurring their nimble and powerful desert horses forward in a wing-like formation! They carried long composite bows, their quivers bulging, and their scimitars gleaming coldly at their waists. Their movements were as swift as the wind, their eyes as sharp as eagles; they were not only the eyes and ears of the charging force, but also a blade hanging over the enemy's heads!

Shen Mu! He charged straight to the forefront of this steel torrent! He wore no heavy armor, only a dark cloak revealing blood-stained bandages underneath, but his eyes were like red-hot irons! The warhorse beneath him was exceptionally swift and powerful, carrying an indomitable spirit.

"Target! Deep within Longcheng! The Ancestral Mausoleum! Kill—!"

The deafening roar drowned out the howl of the wind!

The soldiers inside the stronghold lay prone behind their makeshift fortifications, watching the retreating figures of the remaining troops disappear into the darkness as the night was about to be torn apart by the rising sun. Their fists clenched. Countless roars, filled with worry, awe, and fervor, echoed in their throats.

The team tore through the darkness before dawn, like an arrow released from a bow, shooting towards the ruins of Longcheng shrouded in a thick aura of death!
The instant you plunged into the thick fog of darkness!

The feeling of being watched! The feeling of being watched everywhere!

Cold and venomous!

In the deep shadows of the broken walls and ruins on both sides of the road, behind the empty windows of dilapidated houses, and even in the cracks of the street beneath our feet… countless eerie green lights suddenly lit up! Those were the indifferent gazes of skeletal vultures circling in the sky! Those were the silent stares of skeletal warriors hidden in the corners of the ruins! Those were the greedy locks of countless wandering, ravenous spirits in the darkness!
Like dark undercurrents, they surged and tore at the edge of the raging winds and waves stirred up by the charging iron cavalry! Greedy, yet wary of the converging torrent of steel and the radiance of the sacred tree!
The Khergit horse archers operated like precise machines in an instant.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"

The sound of arrows whistling through the air was as dense as rain! The Khergits were born hunters on horseback! The arrows seemed to have eyes, precisely piercing into the shadows where those trying to approach the group and extend their claws!

The arrow pierced bone with a teeth-grinding cracking sound! The eerie green soul fire was instantly frozen and shattered by the attached arcane runes! A mournful, silent wail swept across the spiritual realm.

"Left flank! Thirty paces! Three behind the broken wall!" Altan Khan galloped through the ranks, his voice like the clash of metal. A Khergit elite archer drew his bow like a full moon, unleashing three arrows in quick succession! Thud thud thud! The skeletal warriors in the shadows had barely peeked out half their skeletons when their soul fire was precisely extinguished! The decaying bones clattered and scattered.

"Right flank! Rooftop! Skeleton archer!" Another hawk whistle sounded as a warning. Two mounted archers swiftly sidestepped and drew their bows, two streaks of light flashing upwards, piercing through a skeleton archer who had just nocked his bone bow, skull and all, into dust!

"Maintain speed! Clear out the watchers on the periphery! They are acting as eyes for the altar deep within!" Altan Khan's command was concise and ruthless. The Khergit's arrows became a thunderous storm, dispelling the shadowy gazes and clearing away invisible obstacles for the main charging force.

The Holy Tree Knights maintained a steady pace. Their light was stable and unwavering, and an invisible purifying aura formed a faint energy barrier around the entire formation. Wraiths and low-level undead creatures melted away like ice cubes thrown into hot oil, completely shut out.

"In the name of the roots, purify the filth!" The leading Holy Tree Knight's voice boomed, his spear slamming heavily into the ground! A wave of emerald green light, even stronger than before, rippled outwards, instantly drying and purifying a pool of filthy black mud rising like a swamp, threatening to devour the hooves of warhorses! The stench that rose was quickly neutralized by the purifying aura.

The Swadian steel torrent was as silent as a mountain! Only the thunderous sound of iron hooves striking stone slabs and the clanging of armor rubbing against each other could be heard! Their eyes were fixed on the endless darkness ahead, and only on the direction their commander pointed! Anything that dared to stand in their way would be utterly crushed by this pure, unstoppable force!
A towering skeletal warrior, hidden beneath the massive wreckage of an overturned wagon in the middle of the road, burst forth, smashing through the decaying planks! Its bones were thick and gleamed with a metallic sheen; wielding a massive bone club, it charged into the advancing ranks with a gust of wind! No orders were needed!
Three Swadian heavy cavalrymen at the forefront! In the instant their eyes met, their movements were synchronized! Their warhorses accelerated simultaneously, instantly breaking away from the main formation to form a perfect mini-assault triangle!

Three cold lances stood level, forming a straight line!
"break!"

Three roars combined into one syllable!
puff!puff!puff!

Three sharp lances forged from fine steel pierced through the skeletal warrior's sternum, spine, and neck as easily as piercing rotten wood! The immense impact sent it flying backward!

Boom! The skeletal warrior crashed back into the overturned carriage, shattering bones everywhere! The three knights retrieved their lances in perfect unison, as if they had done something trivial, and without slowing down, they instantly returned to the main formation.

Order! Discipline! Power! This is the will of the Swadian Knights!
Shen Mu stood at the core of the entire steel-clad protection force. His gaze, sharp as a knife, pierced through the dispelled darkness and crumbling bone fragments along the way, locking onto the sky deep within the city—the direction of the ancestral tomb of the gnolls! There, the deathly aura was so thick it seemed impenetrable, like a tangible black curtain hanging low!

He could sense that as they went deeper, the feeling of being spied on along the way began to diminish.

It's not fear.

A deeper darkness is awakening! It is "watching"! It is waiting for their arrival! It is a being a thousand times more terrifying than these wandering cannon fodder!

"Speed ​​up!" Shen Mu's voice was deep, yet clearly reached every soldier's ears. "Their 'sacrifices' are almost full!"

A series of tearing warnings echoed from his shattered sea of ​​consciousness! The aura of the "Desecrator Devourer" was reviving! The altar built of human bones was about to complete its evil ritual!
Iron hooves thundered! Knights roared! Arrows ripped through the air!

This battered yet fiercely competitive team, like a burning meteor, fearlessly tore through the thick fog of death towards the ancestral tomb! Towards the core of the abyssal vortex about to erupt! They launched a desperate, all-or-nothing charge!

Darkness closed in behind them, and the shadows ahead were as heavy as solidified despair!

But the will of steel has already pierced the throat of the abyss!

The deafening battle cries seemed to be swallowed up by the thick, sticky swamp of deathly energy after they rushed into the depths of the ruins of Longcheng.

Shen Mu's battered yet formidable assault force, like a red-hot blade, painstakingly carved a path through the darkness that had solidified into despair.

The Khergit archers' arrows remained accurate, like fireflies darting through a dark forest, each flash accompanied by the wail of a shadowy creature before vanishing; the purifying aura surrounding the Holy Tree Knights stubbornly resisted the shrieks of the vengeful spirits and the corrosive aura of the low-ranking undead, like a sacred flame struggling to survive in a storm; the Swadian heavy knights remained silent as rocks, calmly smashing and hacking the towering skeletal warriors who attacked them into scattered fragments with their heavily armored shields riddled with holes and their broken but still sharp swords.

As the team ventured deeper into the heart of Longcheng, towards the ancestral tomb, the invisible sense of being spied upon from the core of the abyss not only failed to diminish but instead transformed into an even heavier pressure, like a tangible lead weight pressing down on everyone's hearts. Shen Mu, positioned at the very front of the charging formation, felt the intense pain from the [Talin] network core churning his brain like millions of red-hot steel needles, each fluctuation of his mental energy bringing excruciating agony.

But he forcibly suppressed this pain, raising all his senses to the extreme, greedily capturing every detail on the battlefield and the flow of every strand of energy.

"Commander Shen! Ahead!" Alatan Khan's hoarse voice pierced through the chaotic sounds of collisions and gasps. His scouts remained pinned to the most dangerous flanks and front of the column. "It's the ancestral tomb! Right ahead! But... everything has changed!"

Shen Mu saw it even without Altan Khan's reminder.

The ancestral tombs are now a complete and utter ruin.

The towering, broken stone monument had been snapped in half by some immense force, its surface riddled with jagged, spiderweb-like cracks; the heads of the guardian gargoyles had rolled away, their empty eye sockets burning with eerie green flames; the once solemn and level plaza was now shattered into countless massive blocks of rock, like a giant's broken terracotta plate, many cracks even emitting nauseating black smoke, thick with the stench of sulfur and decay. The air was thick with the aura of death and the end times, almost solidified, each breath carrying a chilling, burning sensation in the lungs.

At the heart of all this devastation is the "wound" from which Shen Mu once struggled to escape but was forced to return.

It was no longer the relatively stable rift it had emerged from. The scene before them was horrifying: space resembled a piece of glass smashed to pieces and haphazardly pieced together, riddled with warped, ever-changing, and mutually devouring subspace rifts. Blinding, dark purple lightning, representing the "Law of the End," darted erratically within it, each flash accompanied by violent spatial tremors and a teeth-grinding cracking sound. Huge, viscous black pus cascaded down like a waterfall from a higher spatial dimension, pouring onto the area below the rift—there, a colossal altar, forcibly kneaded and glued together from countless twisted skeletons, fragments of broken sarcophagi, living tree roots (carried by withered black mist), and viscous abyssal flesh, was emanating an indescribable evil aura, growing ever stronger!
The aura of the blasphemous devourer emanated from the heart of this altar—a massive, pulsating, tumor-like core of filth. It greedily absorbed the primordial black tide pouring from the spatial rift, transforming this power into a more tangible energy of death and blasphemy, which it channeled through invisible links into the undead legions confronting the forest's outskirts. Around the altar, several skeletal wizards, draped in tattered cloaks and reduced to mere skeletons, swung their bone staffs in a frenzied, twisted motion. Each swing accelerated the altar's operation, further widening the shattered warp rift, attempting to draw in an even more terrifying force of destruction.

"Damn blasphemers! The goal is to completely open that rift and let the black tide of the end engulf everything!" Arya's voice was filled with fear and anger. Her longbow was already fully drawn, and the arrows imbued with "Breath of Ice Wind" gleamed coldly.

“The Blasphemous Devourer…it is gathering power…preparing for the final sacrifice!” Altan Khan gritted his teeth. The Khergits harbored a deep-seated hatred for such acts of blasphemy against the sacred land.

"Ballista! Target: Skeleton Wizard! Prepare to fire!" Captain Ralph roared, directing his equally battered "Unyielding" heavy ballista, which carried the last hope of the Allied forces. (End of Chapter)