May 9, 1172, North Stone Fortress, Yin.

"I've never seen so many enemies in my life......"

Listening to the discussion around him, Huggins clung to the stone battlements of the fortress wall with both hands and said nothing.

Dark clouds obscured the light, and strong winds kicked up dust. On the plain, less than three kilometers away from the fortress gate, there was a dense crowd of barbarian soldiers and the Silver Ring Alliance, like a dark carpet covering the earth, and there was no end in sight.

On the city walls, Huggins and several commanders of the Knights of the Twilight West stood on top of the tower with the best view, observing every move on the battlefield.

The longbow regiment and crossbowmen squatted behind the battlement wall, removing and arranging the arrows soaked in horse manure one by one, the heavy infantry regiment finally confirmed the reliability of the equipment, hammered the rivets of the shield handles, checked the hooks at the junctions of the armor, and rubbed the grips of swords and flails with lime, while the knights rested at the city gates, putting on semi-compound blindfolds and mount armor for the "xenomorph warhorses".

The Successor Scouts team, who were in charge of scouting the enemy, returned, leaving only one of them, and the survivor had lost his left eye and was covered in blood.

"My lord, I'm back......"

The scout's tragic situation made Huggins frown in surprise: "What's the matter? You were discovered by the enemy?!"

The captain of the scout, who had lost one eye, did not fall down with the support of his companions, and said weakly: "When we were on the periphery of the enemy camp, we were not discovered. Passing through the defensive line of the front and approaching the Chinese army, he suddenly heard the howl of wolves. In the next second, the bow and arrow covered the place where we were, and the enemy saw through our "mimicry" camouflage and chased us for a full six kilometers, and I was the only one who came back alive. ”

Huggins' face was solemn, and he asked, "Tell me all the information you have discovered." ”

The scout said intermittently: "The total number of enemy troops is about 5,000 people, in addition to the northern and southern legions of the silver ring, there are also twenty-six barbarian tribes...... I heard the enemies repeatedly mention their commander, a strange name, 'The Vicious Dogs of Courland'. Other than that, we didn't find any more information......

Huggins nodded, and said to the monk behind him, "Take him down to heal." ”

The scouts were helped by the monks and left the city walls. Huggins looked at the blood stains on the ground, thought for a moment, and then refocused his gaze on the enemy camp in the distance.

A wing commander walked up to him and reminded: "The original intelligence said that the enemy army had 3,200 men, but now it has become 5,000 people. The ratio of the number of enemy soldiers has become 3:1, which is not a good thing. ”

"'Curran's Vicious Dog', have you heard of this man?"

Huggins's sudden question stunned the wing commander, who shook his head and replied: "I have been fighting the barbarians of the North for six years under Cumberland, 'Cunlan's Vicious Dogs'? ”

Huggins, who had been away from the northern battlefield for a longer time, naturally did not refute it when he heard this, and was just about to persuade the other party to be careful, when a warning shout came from the watchtower, which attracted his attention.

"The enemy is approaching!"

Huggins withdrew his gaze and looked toward the enemy line in the distance.

The front of the enemy legion, about 400 people, adopted a loose formation, raised their shields and weapons, arranged in a "long formation", and slowly marched towards the North Stone Fortress.

Huggins dipped his finger in his mouth and raised it above his head, the pressure of the wind in the air causing him to nod.

The wing commander glanced at him and said, "The north wind, coupled with this wind speed, our arrows will shoot farther and penetrate more because of the downwind! The enemy is just a group of uncivilized barbarians, and they don't even understand the simple truth of observing the wind direction on the battlefield." ”

Huggins looked at the gap between the soldiers in the front of the enemy army, and using the ability of the "hive", he ordered the wing commander behind the city wall: "The longbow regiment cancels the hanging fire and adopts flat fire, and the 'Successor Sniper Crossbowman' freely locks on to the enemy commander, abandons the outer circle attack line, and puts the enemy in the middle circle attack line." Pay attention to the hits, save ammo and wait for my orders!"

As the enemy front drew closer, Huggins felt more and more uneasy.

The actions of the enemy completely violated the basic tactics of the besieging side.

Common siege troops are generally divided into several batches, with heavy infantry covering in the front row, light infantry erecting ladders and climbing ropes, and crossbowmen shooting in the back row. However, the 400 people in the front of the enemy's army, since they left the formation, the Chinese army has no reinforcements to follow up, and this is completely a lone army.

When the enemy got closer, Huggins finally saw the enemy's true face.

What kind of army is this, just a group of villagers in rudimentary leather armor, armed with wooden shields and rusty swords!

The old man with white hair and unsteady walking, the woman who is not covered in clothes and only has despair in his eyes, and even some half-grown children who are ignorant and afraid to move forward.

"These people in front are the civilians of the Holy Acropolis, and those behind them are the barbarian warlords...... I finally understand where the extra 'soldiers' came from!" said a wing captain standing beside Huggins, dumbfounded.

Someone shouted loudly and bitterly: "Treat the common people as meat shields! These devils are inferior to beasts! Father, send down the Holy Judgment!"

At this moment, the sentry on the watchtower reminded loudly: "The enemy enters the middle circle attack line!"

Huggins froze, his eyes under his steel helmet staring at the "enemy army" getting closer and closer, but the order to attack was delayed.

"Sir, open the gates and let our knights strike!

"Look at the cavalry of the enemy army in the distance, as long as we dare to open the city gates, they can swarm up and take advantage of the chaos to attack the fortress!"

"We can just crush the enemy's Warlords and disperse these civilians, so we have enough time to close the gates!"

"No kidding! In the melee, these civilians must be thinking about entering the fortress, how to disperse it when the time comes?!"

While the Knights of the Twilight West were arguing, Huggins called the captain of the Inheritor Sniper Crossbowman and asked, "If you only snipe the barbarian Warlords and don't harm the civilians, will you be able to do it?"

The latter shook his head: "It's hard to tell, if you really want to do it, there will definitely be a mistake." ”

While Huggins was still weighing, the sentry shouted again, "The enemy enters the inner circle attack line!"

There was no time to hesitate, the enemy's wall-breaking hammer was about to approach the city gates, and Huggins ordered the Inheritor Sniper Crossbowman: "Attack!"

The sniper crossbowmen set up their long crossbows on the walls, and one by one the iron bolts pierced through the attackers in front of the enemy army, and one enemy after another fell under the walls. The civilians began to try to escape, and the Warlords jumped out and shouted loudly while swinging their axes to maintain the line, but they did not know that this action made them targets.

Soon, after the overseers in the enemy's front were dead and wounded, the remaining civilians abandoned their weapons and fled far away around the walls of the fortress.

At this time, Huggins finally breathed a sigh of relief, smelling the lingering smell of blood at the foot of the city wall in his nose, but he was thinking about a question in his mind.

Why did the enemy send these 400 men to the front when the north wind was blowing? Such troops could not pose any threat to the fortress at all, and the only thing they could do was to send them to their deaths.

Isn't that weird?

While he was still thinking hard, there was a new movement in the enemy formation.

"The enemy has retreated!"

What the?!

The first thing Huggins did when he heard the watchman's shout was to doubt his ears, and he hurried to the edge of the city wall to look out, and saw a scene that he couldn't understand.

It was not to lure the enemy, nor to escape, the enemy was indeed retreating to the rear in an orderly manner.

However, although it was a retreat, the enemy chose to leave lightly, and the camp remained in place, leaving all supplies, tents, and fortifications untouched.

Things are getting weirder.

Huggins clearly understood that there must be something wrong here, but no matter what the problem was, no matter how hard he thought about it, he was confused.

The enemy retreated quickly, and in the blink of an eye, in addition to a dozen or so soldiers left behind in the enemy's camp, the most conspicuous thing was a row of huge iron cages covered with canvas.

Huggins found the Inheritor Scout, who had Hawkeye, and asked in a loud voice, "Tell me, what's going on there?!"

The scout looked into the enemy's camp and said, "Those who stayed behind did not look much like the barbarians and the soldiers of the Silver Ring, they had no armor or weapons, and their clothes were shabby, and they looked like prisoners...... Wait, they seem to have walked to the door of those cages. ”

An anxious Huggins urged, "What's next?"

"Heavenly Father is above!"

The scout, who was greatly frightened, fell to the ground with his butt, pointed to the enemy's camp in the distance, and said incoherently: "Monster! monster eats people!"

Huggins grabbed the scout by the collar and shouted, "What the hell is going on?!"

"Those people opened the iron cage, and many terrible monsters came out of it! In an instant, they tore those people to pieces and swallowed them into their stomachs!" the pale scout slowly moved his gaze away from Huggins's face, his lips trembling, his teeth chattering, "Look...... Look at that...... The monsters are out of eating people, and they're looking at us! They're coming!"

Huggins let go of the scout and let the other man fall to the ground. Without the other party to speak, he could already see the "monsters" that were approaching quickly in the distance.

A five-meter-long bird with bat-like wings, a crocodile with two horns and a poisonous steel armor all over its body, and a giant wolf covered in bone spurs that can easily crush rocks.

The north wind attacked, sent troops to die, the smell of blood of the dead, the temporarily retreating barbarian army, the strange iron cages left behind, and finally, the release of these bloodthirsty and cannibalistic "monsters".

I see.

Huggins drew the sword from his waist, his voice anxious and fearful as he had never felt before.

"Knights of the Twilight!"