Chapter 116: Victory, Defeat

Fanaticism was a contradictory thing. In most cases, the ignorance, stubbornness, and backwardness it represented were disgusting, but it had to be admitted that on the battlefield, sometimes warriors who were fanatical because of their faith had the ability to change the entire situation.

Even the most basic command manuals would clearly tell you that when you faced an opponent stronger than yourself, choosing a frontal clash was the most foolish thing.

According to that logic, what we were doing seemed to be a foolish thing.

The allied force formed by twelve indigenous tribes already numbered fewer than ten thousand. Even counting our own army, the total was only half of the Cretans’ number. Although we were not afraid of death, we were not foolish. I did not think that in a frontal assault we had any chance to steal victory while outnumbered two to one.

At that moment, our only hope was the faith of the indigenous people.

On the periphery of the Cretan positions, the indigenous tribal warriors who completely obeyed the High Priest suffered heavy casualties.

Of the roughly seventy thousand warriors, more than twenty thousand were either dead or wounded, completely losing their ability to fight.

For these indigenous people, with their sparse population and their custom that every able-bodied person was a soldier, this cruel number might already mean the complete annihilation of the strong young adults of more than a dozen medium-sized tribes.

If this had been in the so-called “civilized world” beyond the highlands, no army could have withstood such huge losses. Even if there had been only a little chance, the general commanding that army would have seized the opportunity to withdraw from the battlefield and escape this hopeless battle.

But our indigenous friends did not do so. I even doubted whether they had ever had such a thought at all.

Although the effect was not obvious, their obsessive will to fight had already surpassed that of any warlike soldier. If you looked at the way they fought, you would understand that even if only one person remained, these people would charge at the enemy without hesitation. Only death could extinguish their desire to fight.

Our allies suffered heavy casualties. Eckdin had already lost several of his bravest friends, but the deaths of his comrades did not make him lose his will to fight; instead, they stirred even greater anger in him.

I saw with my own eyes the chieftain named Eagle fall beside him with an arrow in his face. He cried out his friend’s name in agony, grabbed Eagle’s spear, and hurled it with all his strength at the archer who had shot his friend from behind a huge shield.

The thick shield did not save that man’s life. He looked at the blood gushing from his lower abdomen and died in terror.

That finely crafted Delanmaya standard-issue spear did not fall with him—it was firmly embedded in the shield, and red liquid dripped from the sharp spear tip onto the ground.

“Did you see, Eagle? Did you see? That was your spear. It was your spear that killed him. You avenged yourself! You are a good man! You always have been!” After accomplishing this astonishing feat, Eckdin shouted loudly as he charged back into the enemy crowd.

He looked very sad, but he was truly laughing.

The tribal chieftains around him who were still fighting vied with one another to praise their fallen friend.

Their traditional customs made our enemies shrink back. Faced with these warriors who wailed uncontrollably yet laughed with delight, the Cretan soldiers seemed to have slowed down a great deal.

Only the power of religious faith could cause such an effect.

Those brave warriors with crude weapons almost all had smiles on their faces when they died. According to their faith, they died to protect their deities and the sacred land, and that seemed to be a happy thing.

This was very foolish, yes, but you had to admit that sometimes such a fanatical force could change many things.

For example, this battle we were fighting.

Seeing their allies break through the originally unbreakable enemy line, the indigenous warriors who had been struggling desperately cheered.

Many of them were wounded all over and exhausted, but they did not put down their weapons; they were still fighting.

The turning point of the battle began with Red Flame.

After several magnificent piercing attacks, the Cretan cavalry units were scattered into a complete mess, like a piece of firewood meeting a sharp axe.

Compared to the opponents this legendary cavalry of ours had once encountered, the performance of these enemies before us could only be described as clumsy.

They could not even organize a decent counterattack; they could only passively wait for the fierce enemy like the human-shaped dummies waiting to be pierced during cavalry training.

Their metal helmets covered their faces, but they could not cover their despair. Although they had a certain advantage in numbers, that could not change their miserable end.

Their opponents were the Winston Heavy Cavalry, who had once defeated the strongest charging force on the continent and held the title “Formation-Breaking Iron Cavalry”—Magic Knights who, beneath Chamela City, had with only three thousand men held off more than twenty thousand Cretan reinforcements. They were truly the elite of the elite; “powerful” alone was no longer enough to describe their strength.

They had a name they could be proud of forever. From the day it was born, that name was destined to accompany blood and death, and to become the deepest nightmare in the memories of the opponents who barely escaped with their lives.

No one would ever forget them—the “Star Knight,” those fearless warriors shining with the light of the starry sky.

Red Flame and the others were not fighting alone; those fierce Lumburi warriors also played a great role.

Without Red Flame’s help, they had no way to fight these brave enemies riding tall warhorses.

But after they were tied down and slowed down, those fighters who did not know what fear was quickly approached these enemies who seemed extremely powerful to them, pulled them off their horses by various means, and then vented their anger at having just been chased and cut down.

Objectively speaking, their disorderly attacks greatly reduced the speed of Red Flame’s charge, but their intimidation of the Cretan riders was also obvious.

If dying at the hands of Red Flame and his men could still be called dying bravely in battle, then once you fell into the hands of these indigenous people, who understood warrior honor in a completely different way, only endless fear and pain would accompany you on the road to eternal rest.

After the last Cretan knight was swallowed up by the fanatical crowd, the situation began to develop in our favor.

Having eliminated the opponent that was the greatest threat to them, the excited warriors rekindled the flame of battle.

They once again raised a surging torrent and slammed it hard against the steel wall set up by the Cretans.

Attacked from both inside and outside, the Cretans were wavering.

Watching this scene, I felt some sympathy for the commander of our enemies.

Perhaps this was the first time he had encountered such a troublesome opponent. Their attacks were completely blind and frantic, with no pattern at all, making it impossible to predict their movements.

But they were also so strong and fierce that, after one reckless charge after another, the Cretan position became riddled with holes.

For the first time, our indigenous friends gained a slight advantage over the Cretans, who were barely maintaining their defensive formation.

This had a lot to do with the impact Eckdin and his men were making inside the Cretan formation, and also with physical strength: the Cretan Heavy Infantry, carrying heavy shields and armor, endured the enemy’s assaults without pause, while their opponents carried only the weight of a spear or a longbow.

When the situation reversed, fear magnified the effect of exhaustion a hundredfold, causing our enemies to weaken rapidly.

“These fellows still don’t know what war is!” Red Flame led our strongest warriors on horseback to our side. In front of an enemy that could almost be called “weak,” they had not suffered obvious losses.

“Don’t they know that our warhorses can trample people to death too?” Red Flame complained. He was talking about the battle just now, which had been easy but not very pleasant.

The Lumburi Tribe’s way of fighting made him feel restricted. For a brave Elf, that was definitely not a pleasant experience.

But somehow, although he was annoyed, I did not hear any anger in Red Flame’s tone, only a faint, hard-to-notice helplessness and regret.

After a brief rest, Fred had Red Flame hold back the Heavy Infantry phalanx that was gradually recovering.

As long as they had clear command, they still had fighting power, and Red Flame’s task was to keep them in confusion.

Red Flame accepted the task without a word. He seemed to prefer facing the enemy to facing our indigenous friends.

For the Magic Knights, who had unparalleled mobility, this task was not a difficult one.

At this moment, ahead of us on the left, the last group of brave Lumburi warriors, nearly seven thousand of them, finally appeared on the hillside.

Their camp was the farthest from the battlefield, so they simply could not arrive before the battle began.

Fortunately, they came late!

Given the loose fighting style of the Lumburi warriors, if they faced the orderly, well-formed Cretan army, these seven thousand people could not play much of a role at all.

No matter how many indigenous comrades we had, only that many could come into direct contact with the Cretans head-on.

The advantages of equipment and formation greatly made up for the Cretans’ huge numerical disadvantage. As long as they could not break the Cretan formation, no matter how many Lumburi warriors there were, they would not achieve much effect.

But now things were different. The Cretans’ footing had already loosened. Inside their formation, nearly ten thousand brave Lumburi warriors still capable of fighting continued to tear at their ranks, like a porcupine swallowed by a giant snake erecting its sharp quills inside the snake’s belly, causing the huge beast unbearable pain.

The fresh troops who had just entered the battlefield did not hesitate at all and immediately threw themselves into the cruel battle.

Their unexpected appearance broke the balance of the battlefield and forcefully pulled the lovely waist of the goddess of victory to our side.

After a brief clash, they began to advance. The Cretans in front of them, while retreating without pause, still fought desperately to protect their formation.

The Cretan line caved inward like an animal’s tendon being pulled with great force. It caved so quickly that it seemed to proclaim its own fate of collapse.

Finally, the line’s flexible elasticity reached its limit, and it snapped in the middle.

A vulnerable gap opened up before our allied forces.

Although they could be called the warriors most lacking in battlefield experience, they did not lack courage and the fervor for battle.

They seized the opportunity, plunged into the broken line, and began to satisfy their destructive desires in their own way.

I knew that before everything came to an end and returned to calm, one should not draw conclusions easily.

But I really could not think of any ability our enemies still had to reverse the decline before them.

If he was excellent enough, then he could still retreat quickly now, withdraw from the pursuit range of the indigenous warriors, and preserve his effective strength as much as possible; if he was just a stupid, arrogant fellow clinging to regulations, then even total annihilation was not impossible.

The Cretan position had already been torn into three pieces of varying sizes. The commander-in-chief’s orders had basically lost their meaning; only the commands of the lowest-level officers still worked.

The soldiers were almost fighting on the good habits formed by long-term training. Such resistance was doomed not to last.

Just as we thought victory was in our hands and calmly watched as spectators in the arena, our opponents surprised us.

Under the command of the enemy commander, the portion of soldiers who still maintained the strongest fighting power began to charge.

I was not wrong. Facing enemies who greatly outnumbered them, they gave up the remaining advantages of formation and coordination between arms and began to charge.

This was simply madness.

Only at this moment did the true cruelty of this battle reveal itself. Tens of thousands of living people crashed into one another, and every impact sent out blinding flashes of blood.

Once you got used to such a scene, you would feel that the death of a life was nothing more than such a simple thing: two people collided, one fell, and the other continued forward until a new collision occurred… Watching this, at first your heart would spasm with fear, or your stomach would churn with a feeling of disgust, but gradually it made you used to fear, familiar with killing, taking bloodshed and death as ordinary things, and you felt nothing at all.

Like those truly cruel things, this scene numbed people.

After these truly cruel things happened again and again, the Cretans broke through the encirclement of the indigenous warriors.

This result was not hard to predict: even while charging, the Cretans could still maintain the most basic dense formation, gathering all their strength at the very front of the formation, tearing through the enemy’s blockade, and inflicting heavy damage on the enemy.

In contrast, their opponents only knew how to find an opponent and fight him alone.

They might be able to inflict enormous casualties on the enemy, but they could not stop their own enemy.

“Not good!” When the main Cretan force that had broken out of the encirclement continued to run in a dense charge formation around a bend, I finally realized what they wanted to do: the enemy commander was not a coward. Their goal was not to break out and escape, but to aim directly at the northern slope where the High Priest was.

From the very beginning, the warriors there had not moved at all. Even when the battle situation was at its worst, those strong men had not thrown themselves into battle to rescue their comrades. That was enough to explain the problem.

And the brightly colored banners standing there, representing each tribe, further exposed the location of the High Priest and the tribal priests.

Even the most inexperienced commander would not expose his headquarters so obviously in front of the enemy. As for why the Cretans had not attacked it from the beginning, I guessed that their commander might have thought it was a trap to lure them in, and he preferred to win in a safer way.

But now, the tide had turned against the Cretans.

The gambling instinct of human nature drove that excellent battlefield commander to take this risky counterattack.

Perhaps even he himself could not fully accept the fact that his choice was correct.

“Fred, let’s go stop them!” Seeing the backs of the Cretans eagerly charging toward the hillside, Dakla shouted anxiously.

Fred strangely did not say anything. He looked at the direction of the Cretans’ attack with a complicated expression, not knowing what he was thinking.

“Red Flame! Red Flame!” Rodrick made the most correct response: he loudly called for our cavalry commander.

We were at the southernmost end of the position, the unit farthest on the entire battlefield from the place where the High Priest was.

Given the speed of the Cretan charge, by the time we got there, I was afraid there would only be the job of collecting the dead.

Only our cavalry could catch up with the enemy and save the leaders of our indigenous comrades.

Unfortunately, Red Flame and his troops were tied up in a tangle with the Cretan Heavy Infantry and had no time to pay attention to the situation on the whole battlefield.

We shouted desperately, but our voices were instantly drowned out by the uproar of the battlefield, making it impossible to attract Red Flame’s attention.

Finally, Fred called over a messenger and ordered him to bring our cavalry unit over as quickly as possible to support the High Priest in danger with all their strength.

Then, in a dry voice, he gave us the order:

“All troops, charge! Rescue our allies!”

His expression was a little strange, seemingly carrying shame and regret, and he looked dejected and listless.

I could not be sure of that. A moment later, I became one of the nearly one hundred thousand warriors on the battlefield who swarmed toward the southern slope.

The enemy did not slow down or flee in panic because of our pursuit. They steadfastly pointed their weapons at the target on the hillside.

This enemy force, which still did not give up seeking a final chance of victory in despair, probably had fewer than thirty thousand men left, and that number was still decreasing.

They came into contact with the brave warriors of the Running Wolf Tribe who were protecting the High Priest. Those brave indigenous warriors knew very well how to kill their enemies, but did not know how to stop them.

They stood in a loose formation and had not formed a decent defensive line at all. They only knew how to rely on their own martial strength to keep the enemies in front of them from passing.

Except for the soldiers who were unlucky enough to be intercepted by them, the speed of the Cretan charge was hardly affected at all.

Suddenly, from afar I saw the battle flag that symbolized the identity and honor of the Cretan commander, and that also issued commands to the battlefield, fall down. The Cretan formation looked somewhat chaotic, which made my heart leap with joy.

Then, a voice made my mood sink again.

“I am General A·Stein! I am still alive! Follow me! Follow me! Victory is ours, always ours!”

A man with a well-proportioned build, a ruddy complexion, and an elegant goatee, about forty years old, riding a dark brown warhorse, shouted loudly. His voice was firm and powerful, carrying the fervor of battle.

General A·Stein—a name that sounded somewhat familiar.

He was undoubtedly an excellent general. He did not act rashly when he had the advantage, nor did he give up when at a disadvantage. Most importantly, at the most critical moment he stabilized the morale of his army and enabled this final strike to be carried out successfully.

There was no longer any obstacle. The priests’ tents were right in front of these brave Cretans.

Even though the enemy had already killed their way to the front, not one of those old men with firm faith fled.

The High Priest, that stubborn and obstinate old man, actually stumbled toward the enemies rushing at him and shouted loudly:

“You have blasphemed the holy God Lumburi. The god is already angry. The god will punish you, surely…”

Before the god’s anger arrived, the High Priest personally tasted the suffering of the mortal world.

General A·Stein personally swept his war blade across the old man’s throat, spilling his blood all over the ground.

The battlefield froze instantly. All the Lumburi warriors rushing toward the hillside stopped in their tracks after seeing this.

That resourceful and brave general might not yet have realized what a greatly influential thing he had done. The Cretans did not put down their butcher’s knives, but turned them toward more old men with firm faith.

They probably took these men to be the commanders of this battle.

They did not know that the ones they were killing were the spiritual leaders of the enemy.

What happened next made me unable to believe my own eyes no matter what:

Our comrades fell into rout.

Those indigenous warriors, who had paid a high price in flesh and blood to gain complete battlefield superiority and had almost pushed the enemy to the brink of destruction, fell into rout.

More than fifty thousand indigenous people left the battlefield crying and wailing, scattering into the depths of the dense forest.

Behind them, the remaining Cretan army, now fewer than fifty thousand, also stared dumbfounded as the enemies who had just been fighting them with their lives left. Like us, they did not know what was happening.

Facing such a large number of enemies, they were already exhausted and did not even have the strength to pursue. They just watched helplessly as groups of indigenous people slipped into the jungle and disappeared from view.

“What the hell are these bastards doing!” Dakla cursed loudly from one side. He could not understand what the scene before him meant.

It was not only him. All the Delanmaya officers and soldiers, including Fred, could not understand this nightmare-like great rout that happened on the edge of victory.

“Eckdin!” In the chaos, I spotted a strong familiar figure, grabbed him, and shouted angrily:

“What is going on? What are you doing!”

“We lost,” Eckdin answered bitterly. “They killed our High Priest. That proves their god is stronger than ours. The High Priest is dead, and everything is over. Until a new High Priest is chosen, there will be no war, no revenge, no will of the god!”

“How can this be? We have the advantage. If we just push a little harder, we can destroy them. We have so many people. Look, so many…” His answer made me so furious that I lost my head. I pointed at the chaotic scene before us, not knowing what to say.

“I know we could kill them…” Eckdin lowered his head. “But the High Priest is dead. Without the god’s will, we don’t know whether this victory is what the god wants.”

“Damn it!” I yelled. “Isn’t this the land watched over by God Lumburi? Aren’t they the enemies of God Lumburi? How can you not know?”

“Because… the High Priest is dead…” Eckdin answered with difficulty.

This man, almost the same age as my uncle, looked at me with shame. “I know you cannot understand. In fact, I also feel that this is not right. But… this is our tradition. When we fought the Chaqink for Red Mountain, it was by killing their High Priest that we won.”

Falling short at the edge of victory made me want to cry but no tears came.

Seeing that there was no longer any chance of victory, Fred gave the order to retreat.

All the soldiers showed shocked and aggrieved expressions. Dakla shouted loudly, calling the indigenous people who had left the battlefield at the last moment cowards.

Even Roll shook his head in disbelief, saying he could not understand the strange traditional customs of our indigenous friends.

If this were beyond the highlands, the killing of a country’s general might cause unrest among the soldiers, but it would never lead to the entire army completely losing its will to fight, especially when they had an absolute advantage.

Only Red Flame calmly accepted this fact, walking silently alone.

In my anger, I reluctantly turned my head to look at the battlefield, but met Fred’s face.

His expression was pained and conflicted, which startled me.