Knight Lord: Start with Daily Intelligence.

Chapter 232: The Fertile Land That Must Be Taken: Lake Essonide

The scene that Su Li and Orstein could see from a distance was naturally visible to Hilde very quickly.

After several consecutive failed attacks, she quickly adjusted her tactics. She only kept a part of the knights in the front to attract the enemy's attention, and then let the champion knights Tiberus and Constantine lead the Corona Knights and Griffin Knights respectively to launch a fierce charge towards the monster from the left and right wings.

This powerful attack is bound to chop these forest monsters into pieces.

However, the attack was not very effective. The muddy battlefield covered with blood greatly weakened the knights' charge speed. Constantine and Tiberus relied entirely on their personal bravery to break into the monster line.

The violent Tiberus swung a huge two-handed battle axe. Every time this giant blade, which was more than two meters long, smashed down, it would cause a terrible scene like an earthquake. Any monster that stood in front of him would be directly split into two pieces.

However, the knights had lost their charging speed, and their killing ability was greatly reduced. Now the battle between the two sides simply became a contest of blood volume and tankiness. The two heavily armored troops were fighting like this, and the battle entered a time-consuming stage, and there was no way to end it quickly.

After a brief consideration, the accompanying priest, Ron, said to Hildurd, "Sir General, we have achieved our goal and can withdraw. Whether or not these few hundred tree demons are chopped down will not have much impact on the outcome of the battle."

The knights all knew that they had achieved a crushing victory in this battle, which greatly frustrated the enemy's arrogance and boosted their own confidence.

This was a surprise attack, not an attempt to annihilate the enemy.

There is not much point in continuing to consume like this.

But Hilde decisively raised his hand, rejecting Ron's proposal and asking, "Respected Patriarch, don't you realize this situation isn't that simple? The Dryads' morale can't be that high. Under the repeated attacks of our knights, a last-ditch battle is wishful thinking. Inducing fear will quickly destroy their morale, and they won't be able to hold their ground!"

Ron's face turned serious, and he immediately looked at the tree monsters who were holding on in the distance with a stern gaze.

But the current situation is very strange. These hundreds of tree monsters are firmly defending the river bank!
He used to think about all this in terms of mortal warfare, but he had to know that the Hessen army had already begun to rapidly advance to the extraordinary stage.

These thousands of elite soldiers carry at least three or four hundred pieces of witchcraft props and arcane equipment!

Things like Mor's Death Watch mask, the Dread Banner, and the Fear Runes on the Territory Banner all have powerful magical abilities that can make one's side look taller and more terrifying.

From the monster's perspective, these were not just 1000 elite knights, but a powerful celestial army composed almost entirely of champion knights two or three meters tall. They shone with dazzling light, so bright that it was impossible to look directly at them. One glance was like seeing the majestic sun, which could directly induce fear in the mind.

It was a creature's instinctive fear of facing a terrifying giant, like a fear of heights, etched deep within its genes. The same fear that would arise from standing on the edge of a cliff with only a shaky wooden bridge beneath its feet would be felt, and magical fear would have the same terrifying effect.

It can be said that in the face of such a huge crisis, ordinary creatures only need to stare into the abyss for a few seconds before their legs become limp with fear, they lose their courage, and collapse and flee.

The Dryads' frontal combat capabilities are indeed good, but they are not considered high-ranking monsters, and generally speaking they are not even considered elite monsters. They are just cannon fodder troops of the forest camp, and their combat effectiveness is at least far inferior to that of the Centaurs.

However, thousands of centaurs would lose their courage and flee in all directions when faced with wave after wave of attacks from the elite human knights, but these hundreds of tree monsters actually held their positions tightly and refused to retreat.

This cannot be explained by courage!

Under the fear induced by magic, normal creatures would never be able to stand, especially when the enemy army is in a state of complete defeat.

Rong En immediately asserted, "This should be the effect of a spell like [Fight to the Death]."

But where are the mages on the battlefield around here?
The front battlefield has almost been trampled by human cavalry. Countless monsters have been chopped into pieces, and the dead are piled up for miles.

The one-sided slaughter resulted in a sea of ​​blood and corpses here, and it was impossible for any powerful wizard to be left out.

Could it be the green dragon in the sky?
Ron immediately looked up at the sky, but the sky was clear under the golden sunrise and there was no sign of the green dragon at all.

Besides, if the green dragon flies too high and hides in the clouds, its spells will not be able to travel such a long distance to affect such a vast battlefield. Even the dragon's dragon language magic is limited by the casting distance!

With Ron's consistent opinion, Hildreth could now be sure that there must be a powerful monster caster on the battlefield.

So Hildurd said, "We must get rid of this spellcaster. If we can kill the powerful spellcaster in the monster army, the outcome of our battle will be extremely brilliant, and it will greatly increase our advantage in the next battle."

Otherwise, if a spellcaster hides in the waves of monsters, constantly using curse magic to weaken the human knights and inspiring magic to strengthen the monsters, the battle will become extremely tense.

Especially in a city defense battle where both sides are evenly matched, there is a huge difference in difficulty between defeating a 400-man orc warband and defeating a 400-man orc warband that fights to the death. If the difficulty of the former is 1, which can be achieved by killing or injuring more than a hundred orcs, then the difficulty of the latter is at least 100. It is very likely that a human squadron will not be able to kill all the orcs even if all its members are killed or injured.

While Hildreth and Ron were searching for the spellcaster among the green dragon's minions, Su Li and Orstein had also noticed the changes on the battlefield.

Su Li quickly raised his monocular to gaze at the fiercely engaged battlefield and asked, "What on earth is Hildreth doing? Why hasn't she ended the fight, instead engaging in a tangle with the monsters? Didn't we send a message to her to use the Thunder Horn to end the battle quickly?"

Marshal Orstein looked at the battlefield which was becoming increasingly strange, and carefully took out the golden lens. He carefully examined the situation on the battlefield through the eagle-eye perspective, but he found nothing from the high-altitude perspective.

"Steward Hilde must have discovered something." Orlstein carefully searched the battlefield and said cautiously, "There's something strange about this battlefield. In such a crushing defeat, how could the monsters still hold on? Normally, their morale should have collapsed and they would have crumbled."

As he was speaking, Knight Orstein's expression suddenly changed. He said, "The insidious Green Dragon has ambushed his troops in the Blackwater River!"

"In the Black Water River?" Su Li immediately looked through the monocular telescope at the turbulent river water, but what kind of creature could hide in such a turbulent torrent?
But after observing for a while, Su Li really discovered that huge fish fins would appear from time to time on the surface of the river. The jagged fish bones and huge fins indicated that there must be some huge monsters hidden under the water, and the number of them was extremely large.

Orstein immediately made a statement: "These monsters must have lurked in from the Brienne River a long time ago and have been hiding in the Blackwater River, waiting for this war."

This inference surprised Su Li. Could it be that the Green Dragon had already anticipated that their side would launch a surprise attack out of the city, and attacked their army halfway across the river?
Then this battle will not be a simple surprise attack, and it is likely to be extremely fierce from the beginning.

Just as the knights of the Hessen Territory on the city wall were nervously watching the battlefield, the waves suddenly surged on the river bank of the battlefield more than ten miles ahead, a whirlpool began to form in the center of the river, and a terrible psychic storm began to form. The surging river water became more and more turbulent, and before the knights could withdraw from the battlefield in time, a large amount of river water suddenly poured out to the shore like a broken dam.

Ron, who was stationed beside Hildurd, stared at the surging river with his eyes fixed and asked, "Is it the Wrath of Mannan?" The human knights knew the effect of the Wrath of Mannan very well. The surging waves would sweep across the battlefield. If the environment on the battlefield was suitable, it might even drown more than 200 elite monsters.

Of course, the current battlefield couldn't possibly be as perfect as the one at the border outpost. Back then, a single spell could drown two hundred monsters because most of the centaurs were swept into a trench several meters deep. Perhaps only a dozen or so actually perished at the hands of Mannan's wrath.

The battlefield at the moment is a vast plain. The surging waves are diluted after reaching the shore and cannot drown the knights on their tall horses.

But this does not mean that the magic did not work. On the contrary, it flooded a large area of ​​land in the direction of the knights' retreat, making the entire battlefield extremely muddy.

If the heavy cavalry charged on a battlefield covered with silt and mud, they would probably not be able to make any progress.

And along with this surging wave came hundreds of green trolls with the same skin color!

This means that they are absolutely different from the scattered river trolls on the other side of the river. They are not a mob gathered from all directions, but a war gang of river trolls who live together and cooperate with each other tacitly!
The knights who were fighting with the tree monsters stopped their swords and retreated a distance in unison, breaking away from the fight with the tree monsters.

Although these tree spirits are powerful in frontal combat, their mobility is negligible. If the knights want to retreat, they have almost no ability to block or pursue them except to stimulate vines to entangle and harass them.

After leaving the battle, Tiberus hefted his huge battle axe onto his shoulder, and riding his half-griffon, he turned around and looked at the hundreds of river trolls emerging from the river.

Although these monsters blocked the knights' retreat, he remained unfazed as long as the other side couldn't send large-scale reinforcements. On the contrary, he was full of fighting spirit. He raised his rugged eyebrows and asked loudly, "Hey, have we disturbed the trolls' nest? Or has this socialite green dragon hired a group of troll mercenaries from the Troll Kingdom?"

His loud voice echoed throughout the battlefield, and soon an exceptionally tall river troll came out with a hunched back and a huge rune club in his hand.

The trolls are accustomed to hunching their waists. This is because their waists are extremely long, and even the strongest spine cannot support a height of three or four meters.

But even their hunched bodies are taller than the knights riding tall horses, especially the troll holding the vibranium rune club. Its waist is probably two meters thick, and its huge bulging belly shows that it has sufficient food intake. It must be an extremely fierce and powerful general.

It stepped out of the formation, pounding its fists against its broad chest and roaring, "Human bean sprouts, listen carefully! We are the Rippers of Lake Exonid. I am Uggmar, the invincible River Troll Warlord. I have slain entire legions of Chaos Knights and hunted giant herders as powerful as the Sons of Tal. Giants will flee in panic at the mere sound of our voices. Surrender now if you don't want to be pounded into meat patties!"

The halberd in Constantine's hand erupted with brilliant golden light. He looked at the hundreds of gigantic monsters, all cheering and raising their clubs. His expression was grave. "A warband of river trolls lurking in Lake Essonide! This place truly is the core support of the Green Dragon's rule!"

After hearing the voice of Ugma, the leader of the River Troll War Gang, all the knights became more determined to capture the Blood Mist Hills and build a Storm Shadow Fortress on it.

There must be a sharp dagger that directly pierces the throat of the Blood Pine Forest's sphere of influence. Regardless of whether the green dragon is killed in the future, building a fortress on the Blood Mist Hills will be the key to threatening the core hinterland of the Blood Pine Forest.

This area is so rich, it not only has a large number of resource points and mining areas, but also fertile soil and the resource-rich Lake Essonide. It can even support a river troll island hidden in the depths of this lake.

Freya stood beside Constantine on a demi-griff, her brow furrowed as she said, "This river troll is exceptionally clever. He even knows how to induce surrender."

Ugma possesses an exceptionally high intelligence, significantly different from his brethren. He speculates that this may be due to his exposure to large amounts of warpstone in his childhood. Ugma is content with his life in Lake Exonid, as the lake provides ample food.

Occasionally, Ugma sends his trolls to prey on adventurers along the river, amassing a considerable treasure. He enjoys speaking to these unfortunate prey before devouring them. He loves to see the look of shock on the adventurers' faces when he speaks to them in their own language. If the communication goes well, Ugma will try to persuade the adventurers to help him eliminate a nearby Beastman warband, claiming they have been oppressing his trolls. Of course, Ugma simply wants to clear out the surrounding greenskins.

Its cunning was similar to that of the green dragon, so the two guys unexpectedly did not clash, but instead colluded with each other. The green dragon allowed Uggma to continue living in its pearl-like Lake Essonide, and the price was that when they went out of the forest to plunder together, these river trolls had to accept the command of the green dragon.

So when the human knights saw so many trolls gathering together, they were inevitably shocked.

Commanding so many river trolls is no easy task, and astute warbosses know that these beasts rarely focus on the battlefield without help.

If trolls are left alone, they can easily become distracted and instead of attack, they will bend over and eat the injured, or simply stand there drooling.

Only when the war boss issues orders himself, or assigns a troll leader to lead the troll army, can the war boss expect these big guys to do anything. Even this method of management is not foolproof. Some trolls have learned to ignore the war boss's shouting in order to eat rocks or pull up weeds that they don't like.

This doesn't mean these monsters aren't threatening. On the contrary, river trolls have massive clawed hands capable of devastating raking blows. They enjoy breaking down tree trunks and bashing their enemies with improvised clubs fashioned from various scrap materials. Once these creatures engage in combat, they'll use their massive fists or makeshift weapons to destroy anything in sight.

River trolls also possess the unsettling ability to vomit the contents of their stomachs, spraying their victims with semi-liquid bile and undigested impurities, a corrosive liquid powerful enough to melt armor and scorch flesh and bones—a truly ugly death.

Therefore, no matter what, the appearance of hundreds of huge monsters on the battlefield is an extremely strange and dangerous thing.

Hildreth decisively raised his sword and ordered, "All troops, assemble! Keep your distance from the monsters."

Hearing this order, Rong En was shocked and asked, "Still rallying the troops? Shouldn't we disperse the troops at this time to draw the enemy away, thereby taking advantage of our mobility and dividing and encircling them?"

Hirud said sternly, "No, we need to lure this group of river trolls away from the riverbank. I have probably guessed what kind of monster the hidden spellcaster is."

Following Hildur's order, thousands of elite cavalry quickly gathered together. The red flags and crimson sky, the golden armor and the shining sun, this majestic and spectacular scene immediately made the river trolls ecstatic.

Even the foolish river trolls knew that this kind of direct confrontation was to their advantage, allowing them to take advantage of their enormous size. A single swipe of their massive claws could tear a warhorse apart. On the other hand, if the knights dispersed in groups, the river trolls would be thrown into disarray. Once a river troll was isolated, they would be quickly surrounded and killed.

If 12 river trolls were surrounded by a group of 60 elite knights, no matter how huge they were, they would be knocked away in an instant and chopped into pieces by the knights.

No matter how strong the river troll's regenerative ability is, one river troll cannot defeat five fully armed elite knights with blood boiling.

Ugma raised his club high and shouted excitedly, "Charge! Smash these foolish knights who refuse to surrender! We river trolls are invincible on the muddy battlefield!"

Su Li watched through his monoculars as hundreds of green monsters launched a fierce attack on the elite knights. He clenched his fists nervously and asked with a frown, "Hilde, what is she doing?"

(End of this chapter)