Chapter 206 - Raining Arrows!

Carrying King Michael through the sky, they finally reached the Kingdom walls. Eric's arms have become quite sore from all of this carrying, he is just 5 feet tall after all with barely any arm muscle on him. He can't easily lift an 80 Kilogram man and prescribe it as a light task after. The extra fish meat has been proving quite handy for King Michael at least, I suppose. Maybe because he doesn't put in much manual labour? A bad choice too because he needs the Stamina for his powers and adding body weight just won't cut it, well at least it isn't greatly overdone.

"How is Mogranius doing?" Asked King Michael once he struggled a bit to stand on his own two feet, using the side supports of the walls as an aid to stand up and not giving any public concern about his own current drowsy condition, putting everyone else first. "Are the wounds too bad?"

"Well... he isn't in a good condition but he won't die from his wounds." Stated King Zar as he tiptoed and handed King Michael the scarf he was entrusted to keep safe for a little while. King Michael wouldn't hear the end of it if he lost or burned the scarf. "All of your contributes in battle will be awarded, if we survive this that is!" Showed King Zar gratitude, but he wasn't feeling sure that Pameres Kingdom will actually win. If a kid had to save a Grand Master, than this proves how severe this situation is.

"How are the odds now? Have any of the Platoons arrived?" Asked King Michael as he grabbed the white wool scarf and carefully placed it around his neck, its warmth was quite comforting and it helped him avoid the pitty everyone is giving them. As for Stamina, he will need hours to recharge. He has done his part in battle, the best he can do now is cross his fingers and hope for the better. "I hope you say yes."

With a half smile and a lot of nervousness, King Zar stopped his back and forth walking and answered. "Well the good news is, your Kingdom's Platoon arrived."

Sensing that the rest didn't arrive, King Michael asked to confirm. "And the bad news?" However he is happy that at least his platoon arrived, now the chances of success are 80 men higher.

"The bad news is, the Platoon from BaleTown didn't yet arrive. So we are to face this Army with 280 men!" A bit hesitant to ask the following question, King Zar continued with his throat feeling heavy. "I hope you dealt enough damage to the Army?! It must of been hard!"

"I think we managed to kill at least 200 together. And judging from the damage Mogranius and Eric did a few days ago, I think we will only need to deal with 300 Soldiers if there were really just around 600 in total!" At such an explanation, King Zar felt quite relieved and sighed with a lot of satisfaction! If a man who was able to see the Army eye to eye has hopes of Victory, then the rest should too!

"Plus we have Eric." Added King Zar, trying to relive his own anxiety furthermore, his voice went through a monotone. He kept yelling even though he didn't intend to do so. This entire attempted invasion has forced him to lose sleep for days at a time ever since he found out. "We might have a chance against this Army!" He finished it off with his deep voice forced into a high pitch.

A moment later, they saw Grandmaster Woldemir leading his entire Platoon of 80 men! Marching down right in front of the wall in a neat, elegant manner with his Sword drawing a line against the ground since it literally is 2 meters long (Handle included.). The Platoons were split in 4 parts, holding around 20 men each!

Once they reached their desired position in the battle field, a couple of meters in front of them, stood Woldemir and the three Calidum Lutum. They are considered the most powerful men of the Platoon even though one of the Calidum Lutum is just a Warrior (Level 2) in Swordsmanship! High level or not, his natural strength is bigger compared to an ill.u.s.tratian or Ignite. They will be the first to slice an enemy Soldier!

King Michael also noticed that a lot of Archers already are on the wall, there must be at least 50 of them! They can sure deal damage before the Army even properly arrives to the battle field. Even a low level Archer can shoot an arrow around 100 meters far with promised minor to big damage.

As for the Swordsmen, they were all on the battlefield already, waiting to spring into battle. They knew the odds, but are still highly motivated for battle. They have seen the Kingdom progress with their own eyes, most have family members outside of the Army who were provided a good job therefore granting individual houses better financial statuses. They want to protect what they worked so hard on building so far! If they lose this battle, they can kiss months of work goodbye just because of ego led bastards!

The Swordsmen were split into 3 portions, the first was about 10 meters forward from the second and the second was 10 meters in front of the third. All of them were equipped with Bows as a ranged weapon they can use before they pull their Swords out and engage into close Combat. There are 150 men after all, if half of them or at least ⅓ of them manage to land a hit, it can make the difference between failure and victory here. If these Swordsmen all die, the Archers on the walls are their last line of defense and of course Eric too.

Waiting for the opposing Army became a hassle, each passing second became like an hour and although some felt ready to battle, others feared failure because the enemy Army is rumoured bigger than what they can oppose!

Finally, the opposing Army arose above the cliff. They weren't casually walking down either! They were running, running in boiling rage because they've lost so many Soldiers already and were carrying splitting headaches because of the food lacks. The last Soldiers King Michael killed, left a very disgusting and smelly scene. That just fueled the Army to destroy their enemies, oddly it didn't demotivate them. Maybe that's another explanation to their Continental dominance, but of course Ignites are quite ambitious too!

The Army is nearly 400 meters away, so the two Guard Commanders of Pameres Kingdom took control of their Guards, shouting. "Bows ready!"

When the opposing Army reached in closer, around 300 meters. The Guard Commanders yelled, "Pull back your arrows!" The Two Platoons of course did so in a blink of an eye. You might wonder why the two Guard Commanders are down there instead of having one up on the walls to deal with the 50 Archers. Well, a lot of smart individuals are already up there and they need every available Guard or Guard Commander on the battlefield.

When the Army seem to have passed the 200 meter mark, one Guard Commander yelled out the first command of offense. "First patch, Fire!" With great discipline and a form of elegance, the Archers aimed towards the sky and obeyed the command.

The 50 arrows reached towards the sky for about 150 meters and than started pre narrowly making their way towards the enemy Soldiers! As if a bit too late, more than half of the arrows didn't reach the Army and hit the ground instead. But those who did, either shot Soldiers dead or penetrated their shoulders. Penetrating backs was a bit more difficult but not impossible.

Although impossible to know the exact number of kills, they did see a few men fall down which forced many others to trip. This is off to a good start even though a lot of Arrows didn't hit anyone. Furthermore, this is good information. The second Guard Commander took charge with a shout. "First patch and second patch! Arrows up, same position!" The first shot didn't manage to kill a lot of people but now since the enemy Army closed in for almost 50 meters, most of the Arrows won't go to waste.

The second round was shot, and as estimated it dealt more damage. Some of the Arrows managed to slip through and hit the ground, but most didn't. They either landed on Iron Helmets which through half of the times caused at least an inch of penetration due to the speed the Arrow gained upon travelling down.

The ones that got hit on the shoulders had their skin a lot easier  penetrated and the Cavalry Knights suffered a bit of damage too. Some got knocked off their Horses when they got hit, or thrown by their Horses once they (The Horses.) got shot by an Arrow. Of course the Guards didn't mean to shoot any Horses, you can't control where an Arrow will exactly land with moving targets around.

Seeing that the Army faced a minor setback due to all the tripping and Horses panicking, a Guard Commander signaled. "Patch 3 along with the rest, Fire!" While the other Guard Commander waved his hand for the Archers on the walls to shoot.

200 Arrows flew narrowly upwards the sky, a beautiful sight indeed (At least for the Guards standing with Pameres Kingdom.) but for the enemies, it got their stomachs into a tangle with nervousness and fear.

⅘ of the arrows managed to hit an enemy, and ⅗ of them caused light to strong skin penetrations. As far as the two Platoon Guard Commanders are concerned, it immobilized at least 50 men and slowed down many others.

"Men! Swords High!"