"Help—"
"Don't eat me!"
The routed soldiers of the Honor Legion had already fled back to the center army, pursued by surging waves of goblins and kobolds.
"Please, save me!"
The elite soldiers of the Eagle's Claw stood motionless, coldly watching these routed troops being slaughtered en masse. Gripping long spears and guarding their fronts tightly behind sturdy shields, they formed a dense, orderly formation.
"Attack!"
Robert issued the command.
Horns blew, and the spearmen-shieldbearers advanced in synchronized steps, moving as a single, coordinated whole—advancing steadily like a slow-moving city wall.
The surging tide of goblins and kobolds crashed against this wall.
The shields halted the monsters' charge, while spears thrust out through the gaps between them, a single thrust skewering several goblins and kobolds at once.
Behind the spearmen, archers drew their bows and nocked arrows. The arrows traced graceful arcs through the air and rained down, pinning many monsters dead against the ground.
Truly worthy of elite troops. In just a matter of minutes, heavy casualties were inflicted upon this seemingly endless torrent of monsters, leaving the ground strewn with the corpses of goblins and kobolds.
The spearmen continued forward with crisp, synchronized steps, trampling over the corpses without hesitation.
Faced with such a one-sided slaughter, even the fearless dragonblood goblins and kobolds could no longer sustain their suicidal charges and broke, scattering in all directions.
"Good! Just like that—crush them!"
"Keep advancing!"
Watching the one-sided battle from afar, a glimmer of joy finally surfaced on Robert's face.
It seemed the vassals of the Cinder Nest were utterly vulnerable before a regular army. Now, the only thing left to worry about was that brutal, cunning red dragon.
"Forward! Bring up the Dragonslayer Ballistas!"
Dozens of burly soldiers pushed the massive ballista carriages, their wheels creaking heavily.
Following the pace of the Eagle's Claw phalanxes, over twenty thousand regular troops advanced unimpeded all the way into Trier Valley in just a single day.
Aside from clearing out a few scattered squads of kobolds and goblins, they encountered little fighting along the way.
However, the coalition soon realized they were mistaken.
Those feeble kobolds and goblins were merely cannon fodder meant to stall for time. The true forces of the Cinder Nest were already waiting in battle array within Trier Valley.
"So..."
"This is their real army."
Robert gazed into the distance, his expression growing grim.
His entire field of vision was filled by a vast army of monsters.
"Roar—"
Several land drakes, massive as small hills, stomped forward, causing the ground to rumble. Huge iron plates covered their bodies like moving steel fortresses.
Hundreds of wyverns circled, glided, and hissed in the sky, casting countless chaotic, shifting shadows across the ground.
Towering, powerful ogres lowered their heads and roared in frenzy, their flab quivering as they bellowed words like "enemy" and "food."
Among them, the most conspicuous was an ogre over six meters tall, covered in scarlet scales and wearing a patched-together robe, appearing exceptionally bizarre.
Dragonblood hobgoblins stood in tight formation, those in the very front holding standardized metal rods, reeking of gunpowder.
Lizardfolk wielded bone spears and hide shields, their slit pupils gleaming with a faint, eerie light that spoke of absolute coldness toward the enemy.
The tieflings, known as the "children of devils," stood arrayed under the lead of the Oathbreaker, many of them harboring deep hatred toward these Eagle's Claw soldiers.
And before them, goblins and kobolds still covered the hills and plains. However, these troops had virtually all awakened dragon bloodlines; their combat capability was hardly inferior to ordinary human soldiers, and among them were even quite a few kobold sorcerers.
A thousand players were mingled within this terrifying monster legion. What should have been perfectly ordinary people actually stood out, mostly because they simply did not look frightening enough.
Suddenly, rousing music sounded all around—the satyr military band was playing panpipes.
"Roar—"
From afar came a distant dragon's roar.
A massive, ferocious head appeared above the horizon, followed by broad wings that blotted out the sun, and an immense draconic body.
Compared to it, even the land drakes looked like mice scuttling by its feet.
Looking up at this magnificent spectacle, Robert stood agape, murmuring to himself:
"Gods above..."
"How... is this possible?"
He even forgot to order his men to loose the Dragonslayer Ballistas.
The coalition was thrown into an uproar, panic sweeping through the entire army. How could humans ever stand against such a monster?
Looking down upon the coalition from on high, the red dragon's golden slit pupils held undisguised disdain.
"Humans, I admire your courage.
"Yet sadly, your courage has been misplaced. You thought yourselves heroes ridding the people of an evil, but you are nothing more than tools exploited by a vampire duke.
"Never mind...
"Since you have sought war of your own accord, then through fire, I shall grant you... absolute death."
Only then did Robert snap back to his senses, hurriedly shouting orders: "The Dragonslayer Ballistas! The Dragonslayer Ballistas! Kill him!"
Even though terror gripped their hearts, the soldiers still obeyed and ran to the rear to load the giant ballistas.
"Wait!"
Schroeder, standing nearby, cautioned, "My Lord Marquis, a dragon of such size cannot appear in the Material Plane. That is an illusion—a pre-cast projection cast into the air. A very clever trick.
"Yet that proves nothing other than that the Cinder Nest possesses a skilled spellcaster, and that this dragon dares not confront us head-on. He must have guessed that we possess heavy dragonslaying siege weapons."
"So that's how it is."
Robert finally let out a sigh of relief, casting aside the terror in his heart.
Looking closely, he noticed that the edges of the giant dragon were indeed somewhat illusory and translucent, rippling as if with fire.
"Damn it."
"Cunning beast."
He instantly flushed with shame and fury over his earlier loss of composure, the hatred in his heart burning hotter than ever.
In the sky, the giant dragon dissolved into a burst of flame and vanished, leaving only his final words echoing in everyone's ears:
"I shall burn all to cinder."
The news that the dragon was merely an illusion quickly spread throughout the army, slightly soothing the men's panic. After all, they were facing an unknown true dragon.
The North had not seen a dragon calamity for over a century, the last being Glacial Wing.
Yet on the hillside, Duoluo raised his longsword and bellowed at the top of his lungs, "Did you hear the master's words? Utterly crush them! For the Cinder Nest!"
"For the Cinder Nest!"
A wild surge erupted from the monsters as cheers, roars, hisses, and shrieks rang out ceaselessly. In the eyes they turned upon the coalition, greed and fanaticism burned all the brighter.
The royal coalition and the vassals of Cinder Nest faced each other down.
The stalemate was finally broken.
War was on the brink of erupting.
Chapter 109