Knight Lord: Start with Daily Intelligence.

Chapter 57 The Halfling Family Enters the Territory
After Su Li personally led three teams of knights out of the castle, they galloped all the way west along the downstream where the Brienne River and the Blackwater River meet.

The Phoenix Wing Talisman finally demonstrated its unparalleled strategic value at this moment. This place was originally an endless flat grassland. The cavalry galloped on their horses and could run more than sixty empire miles per hour. With the blessing of the Phoenix Wing Talisman, the cavalry was even more powerful and ran at a maximum speed of nearly 80 kilometers per hour!
If war horses were not so expensive and had less endurance than humans, cavalrymen could gallop over 200 kilometers in three hours.

After galloping for more than two hours, the cavalry stopped on the grass by the river to rest for a while.

Su Li looked at the surrounding environment. In fact, if you look west from the castle, you can see the endless green plain.

Geographically, this place is still located in the central plains of the Hessen Territory. The soil is soft and the grasslands are vast. It is an absolutely fertile land. It's a pity that the territory has no energy to develop it, so it has been deserted.

If a farm could be built here, cultivating farmland and grazing livestock at the same time, it could serve as a stronghold for surveillance and also be used to replace horses for the knights. Then its strategic position would be very considerable.

While he was thinking about this, Frederick came rushing back from afar on a demi-griffin.

As a powerful magical beast, the half-griffin has much better endurance than a warhorse. While other warhorses are unsaddled to rest and graze here, the half-griffin has already run a long way and explored the situation ahead.

Under the watchful gazes of the knights, Frederick ran straight to Su Li, then jumped off his horse and said to Su Li, "My Lord, I found a group of halflings ahead, but they are not easy to deal with. Among them is an ogre guard."

"Ogre guards?" Su Li frowned. He should have thought of this earlier! These short halflings carried large sums of money and loved to travel everywhere. They must have a guard with them!
Halflings are a very famous wealthy race in this world. They like to live together as a family and even sleep together on a big bed. Everyone in the family works and shares the wealth together. Therefore, there is almost no private space in their daily life, and the possibility of family bankruptcy is very small.

It's worth mentioning the inherently good, if somewhat complicated, relationship between Halflings and Ogres. The Ogres of the Empire (as opposed to their barbaric cousins ​​in the World's Edge Mountains) hold Halflings in high esteem, perhaps due to their differing but equally passionate views of the concept of "eating." Their wanderlust also perfectly aligns with the Ogres' wanderlust.

This often allowed the two to get along perfectly, with the former acting as cook and agent for the latter, while the latter worked as mercenaries, earning commissions to fill their stomachs and provide security.

"How many ogre guards do they have?"

Frederick thought for a moment and said, "I didn't take a detailed inventory, but the size of their team is very large. I feel it should be no smaller than the two teams of ogres."

That's 24 ogres!

A qualified ogre mercenary is at least as powerful as a formal knight. They can easily defeat seven or eight human armored soldiers. Even a human apprentice knight who has awakened extraordinary abilities may not be able to take down a mad ogre mercenary even if two or three people join forces.

Therefore, the knights around Su Li might not be able to easily win if they attacked the ogre team head-on. The biggest advantage of the Hessen Knights was that they had as many as 6 elite knights in the team. They led the charge, creating a powerful force that even ordinary ogres could not withstand.

But if there are more powerful bull warriors or man-eaters among the ogres, the elite knights will inevitably suffer losses.

The knights surrounding Su Li also felt the difficulty of the problem. Someone said, "Knight Frederick's intelligence is crucial. As he said, this team is not easy to deal with. The ogres alone are a formidable target, and the halflings cannot be ignored. Although they are short in stature, they are not incompetent. Since the founding of the empire, after recognizing the legal status of halflings in the empire, halfling archers have been fighting side by side with human soldiers to defend the empire's borders. Many outstanding scouts, archers, and hunters come from halfling troops."

"That's right. And because they are usually wealthy, they are very well-equipped. If two groups of ogres are fighting in close combat in the front, and a family of dozens of halfling archers are harassing them from the rear, we will easily suffer losses if we recklessly charge."

This was what Su Li was most satisfied with. Among the knights of this world, the teachings of the Fiery Sun Goddess were very prevalent. Although the knights had hot tempers, they were not reckless or lax in their military conduct. They rarely exhibited the kind of military discipline and reckless charging that the French knights exhibited.

The knights have always advocated taking advantage of the mobility of cavalry to continuously compress the enemy's front line from the flanks until they have gained the advantage. Only then will they launch an all-out attack, charge the entire army, and decide the outcome in one battle.

After discussing tactics with the knights, Su Li ordered the entire army to mount their horses and announced to all the knights, "We have the advantage of mobility. The decision of whether to fight or not is up to me. Everyone, follow me forward and test the strength of our opponents!"

"Woohoo~" The knights raised their weapons and cheered to the sky.

Regardless of the knights' strength, this world revered knights, and their unparalleled desire for battle was practically unmatched, akin to a souped-up version of the Guanlong military group. Hearing the battle was imminent, everyone was eager to slay an ogre on the battlefield, hoping to earn themselves a military honor.

As the cavalry advanced rapidly, near noon, Su Li finally saw a group of halflings marching in the distance.

As the knights had guessed, this team was very well-equipped. Every male halfling wore a helmet, a green uniform, a sleeveless leather coat inside, a mail shirt outside, and held a longbow made of yew wood.

Seeing the three teams of knights deployed in formation, banners waving, charging like griffins with spread wings, the halflings in the team immediately shouted vigilantly: "Guard along the river, hide behind the carts, and the ogre mercenaries push forward. Don't let the human knights rush over and drive us into the river!"

The ogres were extremely powerful, nearly three meters tall, and they quickly helped the halflings to arrange the vehicles into a simple defensive fortification. Then these simple-minded and strong monsters ran and stood in front of the caravan, waving clubs, axes and machetes, roaring at the human knights.

Obviously, these monsters did not have very high IQs and did not even think about avoiding the knights' attack. They just wanted to stand in front of the convoy and use their burly bodies to block the wave of cavalry charges.

(End of this chapter)