The Lord of the Rings: Lords of Middle-earth.

Chapter 258 Found His Highness

"Hey! Where's King Roland? What happened?" Balin shouted at Caslo amidst the noise.

"Hey! Your Excellency Balin, we'll have to wait. His Highness is missing, and we're afraid we can't join your attack now..." Caslo said quickly and then hurriedly left.

"Huh? Did I hear that right? They lost their king?" Balin's mouth dropped open, his snow-white beard trembling slightly. He looked around at the dwarves who were following him, speechless.

“Bahrain, if we haven’t misheard, that’s what he meant.” The dwarf warrior carrying the axe shook his head.

"Oh! By Turin! I swear on my beard! If anything happens to Roland, humanity will retreat!" Balin was terrified. Even a fool could tell that if a king of a country were to die in battle, the army would certainly withdraw from the battlefield, but it was not impossible that the army would seek revenge.

"It can't be that unlucky, can it?" a dwarf said, frowning.

"I hope so!" Bahrain shook his head helplessly, his unease growing stronger.

……

"Where is he? Have you found him?" Omske asked anxiously, grabbing a soldier's arm.

"No, sir!" The soldier shook his head.

"Damn it! Find it! Find it for me! Even if you have to dig three feet into the ground!" Omske roared angrily.

"Something's wrong! Omsk!" Caslo anxiously found Omsk.

"What's wrong now? Your Highness, could it be..." Omsk covered his head in disbelief.

"No! It wasn't Your Highness! It was Your Highness's elven dragon, Smurf, who also disappeared!" Caslo said, his face flushed.

"What? The elven dragon is missing too? Are you kidding me? Tell me! What else besides the Balrog could possibly harm a dragon? Even if the elven dragon isn't good at melee combat, what's the point of lying there letting the orcs and goblins hack at its scales?" Omske's voice instantly rose. Losing the king was embarrassing enough, but now an entire dragon was gone? This was utterly humiliating!
"I don't know either! What do I want to kill right now?" Caslo said through gritted teeth.

……

"Ugh~" Roland vigorously vomited his bile, feeling nauseous and snot streaming down his face. The stench around him was making him feel nauseous; he felt like he had lost the ability to breathe. In the wilderness, the stench would dissipate quickly, but in the underground cave, these smells seemed to linger for days. Even more terrifying was the putrid stench left by the orcs who had lived there before, and the sour smell of rotting objects... You can imagine it yourself! Anyway, Roland suddenly felt guilty about his previous disdain for his family's cook's terrible cooking.

"Hey! Haven't you had enough?" A crisp voice came from the air beside them.

"Ugh?" Roland forced himself to lift his head, suppressing his nausea, and managed a weak smile when he saw it was his own elven dragon. But then another surge of energy rose up, and the next second…

"vomit!"

"My God! How did you become the current King Lagrange? Has the bloodline of the Empire degenerated to this extent? Even this bloodshed can make the descendants of the Empire so despicable?" The Smurf covered his nose with his claws and flapped his wings, speaking in a muffled voice.

“You! Flying... talking... ugh! Words... not going down my spine... ugh! It hurts!” Roland vomited while wiping away tears with the back of his hand.

"Are you all ready? Your army has already gone far away! What if an orc suddenly jumps out... Ooh!" The Smurf pretended to scare Roland.

"Damn it! How dare you underestimate the fighting power of a paladin? This is an insult to me! Would I, a third-tier grand knight, fear a mere orc?" Roland struggled to his feet and pointed at the blue elf.

"Splat!" Unexpectedly, due to the excessive amount of blood, Roland collapsed directly into the pile...

"Are you...are you alright?" Seeing Roland hadn't gotten up for a long time, the Smurf asked fearfully. She quickly flew over to check on Roland's condition. "Ugh!" The next second, Roland sprang up, bent over, lowered his head, lay down, and vomited! All in one smooth motion, his movements so practiced it was heartbreaking...

“You…” The Smurf stopped mid-sentence. She looked at the filth left by the dent Roland had made in the pile of corpses, then at the unidentified objects stuck to Roland’s chest and legs, and even saw what looked like excrement on Roland’s face where he wasn’t wearing a helmet… She shuddered and said nothing more.

……

"Damn it! There are too many pillars here!" Caslo shook his head, frowning as he searched through the pile of corpses.

"Hurry up and find him! His Highness is waiting for us to rescue him!" Omske sighed as he looked at the pillars that were blocking the view. Thousands of goblins and at least hundreds of orcs were entrenched here, their corpses piled up like mountains. With these pillars obscuring the view, who knew where Roland was?

"How's it going at the front?" Omske asked when he had a moment to pause.

“The dwarves have taken over our position; those goblins are no match for them! I left the Lordaeron Rangers behind! They will provide fire support to the dwarves and ensure that no giant trolls charge forward,” Caslow said.

"Alright, it doesn't matter if we have more or less of them!" Omske didn't dwell on it; 50 people weren't that significant.

"Search carefully! Perhaps His Highness is trapped underneath!" Omske commanded the soldiers.

"Understood!" the Royal Guards roared. They were filled with anger and shame. As guards, they had actually lost sight of the King—a serious dereliction of duty! If anything happened to Roland, even their deaths wouldn't be enough to atone for their sins.

……

"Oh! By the Dragon God! Your Highness!" a city guard shouted!

The lucky yet unlucky Lagrange guard picked up Roland, only to have Roland vomit all over his face.

"Your Highness, what's wrong? Have you been poisoned?" Ignoring the stains on Roland's body, he was filled with grief as he looked at the bile Roland vomited.

"Let me go... Ugh!" Roland's battle aura flashed, and he immediately broke free from the soldier's embrace, collapsing to the ground and vomiting again. Just now, when this guy threw him up, Roland clearly felt something slide down his face and into his mouth...

……

"What's going on?" Caslo and Omske asked the soldier with serious expressions.

"I don't know? When I saw His Highness, he was lying on the ground vomiting... Could it be poisoning?" the city guard asked anxiously. There were no priests or alchemists in their ranks!

"Smurfs? Do you know what happened?" Caslo asked hurriedly in Dragon Language.

"Tsk tsk tsk... Well... it's nothing serious, it's just the psychological aspect that's hard to get over. After all, that soldier just now seemed to have thrown goblin excrement into Roland's mouth... He's been vomiting for a while now, look at the poor little guy! He's almost vomited up all his bile..." The Smurf shook his head. The king had really lost face this time, he was truly humiliated in a roundabout way, the whole army knew about their king's miserable state.

“This…” Caslo frowned and looked around. He saw Roland’s helmet lying to the side and the obvious human footprints in the pile of corpses. He silently walked over, picked up the helmet, and pulled the somewhat dazed Omske away.

"Everyone, be on alert at least 100 meters away!" Caslow said calmly.

"It's alright, His Highness is just a bit overwhelmed. This is probably the first time he's seen such a scene..." Caslo shook his head as he looked at the surrounding corpses. This was far more gruesome than the Battle of Lonely Mountain. The sight of corpses piled up in three layers was no exaggeration; it was truly horrifying.

(End of this chapter)