Hail the King

“Alexander……”

Tears rolled down Angela’s face as she finally got onto the defensive wall and saw Fei jump off.

Fei’s bright eyes under his faceplate as he looked back and the way he turned around made a mark on her heart; she wouldn’t be able to forget that this moment in her life.

“Alexander……You have to come back……You will be a great king and Chambord will be proud of you, and you will be……a legend on Azeroth Continent……I will wait for that day!”

As if she had lost her soul, Angela leaned against a battlement on the defensive wall so she wouldn’t fall down.

She stared at the man who slid down the defensive wall, joined the strong men, reassembled the formation and led the attack on the crawling snake-like enemy. Her ocean-like eyes didn’t even blink once; she stared at Fei firmly.

“Come back alive!”

……

……

On the south bank of Zuli River.

The autumn wind blew off the yellow leaves on the trees. A furry squirrel was standing on its feet in alert and looking around. It relaxed as it saw that the surrounding was clear and started nibbling a pine cone happily. Birds flew freely to the blue sky far away.

It was a magnificent sceneof Autumn.

But, suddenly –

“Clip-clop, clip-clop!”

It was the sound of hooves rapidly tapping the ground. It was noisy and the ground was shaking. The squirrel threw the half cracked pine cone and crawled up a tree in a panic, and the birds were scared away.

High pitched horse whinnies came from far away.

After the chaos settled down, the silver masked knight and his black knights showed up on the south bank of Zuili River.

The silver masked knight looked up to the sky to roughly check the time, and took out an ‘Eagle Eye’ to observe the status of the soldiers on the defensive wall of Chambord. The ‘Eagle Eye’ was a delicate magical item; it was like a smaller telescope, but the two crystal lenses in it had been blessed with the eagle eye spell, which allowed the user to see far away. Even the antenna of an ant could be seen clearly from miles away.

Through the ‘Eagle Eye’, he saw the deformed faces of the soldiers due to their fatigue and dread. They lacked proper defenses, and the soldiers were taking off their armor lazily, which messed up the defensive positioning……Everything was going as he had expected. A sneer came on his face.

“Pass down my command, everyone get ready to……”

He suddenly stopped; he didn’t have a chance to say the word ‘siege’. While viewing the defensive wall through his ‘Eagle Eye’, he saw twenty or so buff guys with heavy armour sliding down the defensive wall with ropes.

“This is……” The silver masked knight was surprised for a moment.

But after he saw the fully armour enemies assembling into a standard wedge charging formation, he understood their intents completely. After a brief moment of startle, a disdain and banter expression came on his face. He was even a little bit dumbfounded: “Haha, King of Chambord, it looks like I overestimated you. What a dumbass! Good thinking, but do you think you could break my formations with only twenty-ish men?”

“If it’s like that, let’s have an appetizer before the main siege.” The silver masked knight laughed. He pointed his horsewhip at the ‘dumb’ enemies and said, “[Two], [Three], Adjust the Tower Shield formation into a defense position. Let those statue-like heavy asses come closer. Chop their heads off within ten seconds!”

“Moo -!”

A loud trumpet filled the sky, and the breathtaking silence that enveloped the people of Chambord had finally been broken.

The trumpet was the military command. The formations were like precise machines and started transforming right away.

“Tap, tap, tap, tap!”

The formation transformed in the daunting uniformed stepping noise. The Tower Shield formation that was closest to Chambord didn’t move too much. The sides moved forward a bit and the middle moved back a bit into a concave defense position.

“Tink, tink, tink -!”

The sound of heavy metal grinding on each other came from the formation. On top of the 3 yard high Tower Shields, 5 yard long iron dragon lances extended out. Under the bright sun, the shiny, dense lances looked like the teeth of the sneering Grim Reaper. The lances all pointed forward and the enemies in the formation were silent; the whole formation was like a huge mad steel hedgehog. If an elephant charged at the formation, it would be plunged into kebabs.

On the other side, the twenty-ish fully armoured soldiers charged as if they weren’t afraid of death.

It was a disproportional battle.

Glancing from the sky, it looked like a couple ants were boldly provoking an elephant. The ants would easily be squished into meat paste if the elephant stomped its foot.

The taste of death from the lances had darkened the bright sun.

No one questioned the effectiveness of the lances in terms of penetrating any type of armour. Even iron plates that were 2 inch (5cm) thick would be easily torn open by these pointed lances that had 4 inch (10 cm) handles supporting them.

However, the ‘V’ shaped wedge formation ‘ant’ charge didn’t slow down at all. They sped up as if they wanted to break the lethal lances with their bodies.

No one made a noise. The air also froze. Everyone could hear their own heartbeat.

On the defensive wall, everyone couldn’t help but lean their bodies forward against the battlements to try to see everything clearly. Angela’s eyes were filled with tears and worry; her hands grabbed onto the edges of her dress tightly and almost tore through it. Emma followed Angela onto the defensive wall as well, and she held her arms in front of her chest and held her breath.

On the other side of the Zuli River, the silver masked knight had already put away the ‘Eagle Eye’. He was still sneering as he stared at the presumptuous ‘ants’.

“How dare a dog challenge the honour of a dragon?”

Cruel expressions appeared on the dozen black knights’ faces who were standing behind the silvered masked knight. Like hungry wolves that had spotted a delicious treat in the dark night, they licked their mouths while sneering.

Near the bridge.

The distance between the ‘ants’ and the ‘iron hedgehog’ was decreasing fast.

20 yards (m)……

16 yards (m)……

13 yards (m)……

10 yards (m)……

The silver masked knight sat up a little higher on the horse. The arc of his smile grew larger and larger, as if he was envisioning the spurting blood and devastating screams of the opponents.

The ending was that simple in his eyes – the concave Tower Shield formation only needed to close and surround the enemies in the middle, just like stuffing a dumpling. These dumb heavy metal armoured opponents would be ‘kebabed’ by the lances after a couple easy thrusts and pulls.

He wasn’t worried at all about the ‘ants’ messing up the tower shield formation.

There were three layers of tower shields which were each 3 yards (m) tall. Each shield weighed more than 100 pounds (50 kg), and they were supported by elite soldiers and numerous additional iron rods. With this kind of defensive formation, it would hold the front charges of heavy cavalry for more than 10 minutes.

The silver masked knight didn’t hide his mocking smile at all.

However, he froze the next second, as if he was struck by invisible lightning. His body stiffened and his eyeballs almost fell out of his eye sockets.

Gasps came from the black knights behind him.

The military horses they were riding that normally marched uniformly, even under severe injuries began whinnying and backing off uncontrollably……

Because two to three seconds ago, a thunder like roar came from the other side of the stone bridge –

“God bless!”

The ‘head ant’ who was leading the ‘V’ charge threw his huge black axe forward forcefully after his roar.

“Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh -!”

The axe turned into a grey shadow and spun insanely, tearing up the air and even the space around it.

“Boom!”

Many screamed could be heard and blood spurted to the sky and fell back down like a ‘blood rain’. The huge black axe smashed into the refined iron tower shields.

Like a sharp knife that was cutting through a piece of well-done steak, and like a God’s fist that came down from the sky and crushed a tree, the tower shields that could block heavy cavalry deformed a little in the metal collision. However, after a brief moment of pause, the power that the axe was carrying exploded and more than ten huge shields were blown away, like dried leaves in a blizzard.

Unstoppable!

Absolutely unstoppable!

The huge axe didn’t feel like an axe, but rather a punishment from the enraged God of War. With the unstoppable momentum and devastating power, it would crush even the most majestic mountain Tangolian if it was here.

The axe had blown a 2 yard wide bloody gap on the Tower Shield formation that was as tight as a wall. Broken limbs and blood fell from the sky and ‘decorated’ the other shields. The formation went into chaos.

The elite soldiers behind the shields didn’t expect that anyone in the world could break their defense like that, not even in their wildest dreams. The cruel reality took them by surprise; it was so astonishing that they forgot about the proper actions of a soldier and their harsh discipline. This let their opponents break into their formation through the gap filled with blood.

They were previously mocking the twenty-ish dumb pigs who were charging at them in their minds, but after the blink of an eye, the dumb pigs had ripped off their weak disguises and stepped into the formation like overbearing demons. Their weapons were like the sickles, while they were the representatives of the Grim Reaper himself. Everywhere they went, blood spurted and deathly screams were heard. The front layer of soldiers lost their shields’ protection and fell like crops under the ‘sickles’; no one could last for more than a second.

The battle between the ants and the elephant turned into a one-sided slaughter of the elephants.

The roles of the two sides were inconceivably reversed in that second.