On Edlan's way back to his territory, in the area around Icewind Hills, the midsummer sun shines through the dense clouds, sprinkling light down, forming "pillars of light" intertwined with light and shadow in the sky. A refreshing breeze passes through the woods, blocking out the summer heat and the billowing heat, and the rolling mountains in the distance are covered with a layer of verdant pale green.

In the distance, insects and birds could even be heard chirping, but in the distance, an indescribable eerie silence filled the entire deep woodland.

"Click, click, click......"

It's the chattering sound of teeth opening and closing.

After seeing these monsters in front of him, the officers leading the team began to freeze their hands and feet, and an unprecedented sense of fear rushed out of his heart! But not only him, but also the soldiers behind him. Although the private soldiers of the nobles were much better than the people's armies formed spontaneously in the western wilderness for self-defense, they received more rigorous military training before becoming the private soldiers of the nobles.

And, although they had also been told by the so-called paladins from Lordaeron about their experience in fighting against the undead before they went into battle, but now when they faced the undead for the first time, any sane life would involuntarily resist, repel and fear from their hearts, and then they all forgot about the experience of the hell at this moment.

Because in the eyes of the living, those skeletons full of death and controlled by unknown evil magic are silently approaching them, and the living people deeply feel the cold chill and the fear of death both visually and physically, as if seeing a humanoid skeleton is like seeing his own future...... You can't even rest even when you die!

Now, in the face of the continuous approach of those "smelling" undead, not to mention those soldiers, even the officers began to tremble involuntarily, many people have begun to panic and want to retreat, while other officers are shouting hard at the throat of the chicken, trying to wake up these "cowards", but they don't know that their own legs are also trembling.

In a team like the military, fear is just as contagious as courage, and it spreads very quickly.

This time, the reinforcements of the Storm Kingdom are very mixed, but the private soldiers of the nobles account for the majority, and right now, the vanguard of this noble vanguard army of 500 people who don't know how many transactions have been made in the background in order to snatch the first merit, when they pass through the small town of Stannbride, which has been slaughtered by the orcs, what appears in front of them is a group of wandering zombies and skeletons composed of undead troops.

Although the undead who appeared in front of this force were only a few dozen, far fewer than the number of the 500 people, because of the preconceived fear, this team commander and soldiers, as well as the soldiers, always felt that there were more of these undead monsters hidden in front of them and in the dark, life-filled woods around them, which undoubtedly made their hairs stand on end.

The dozens of undead approached at almost the same pace, not slowed down by the retreat of the army of the living, nor slowed by the army of the living as they tried to attack with bows and arrows.

After one, two, three, and three salvos, although there were only 100 arrows in each round, only a few undead fell after 300 iron arrows were fired, while the other undead were still approaching at the same speed as before!

The armies of the living began to falter again, and even though they were retreating, they could not give these noble private soldiers, who usually felt superior to others, a sense of security. This was also the most frightening part of the first time he faced the undead, and even though Tirio and the paladins had emphasized it many times, the nobles who attended the meeting would not have taken these things to heart. When the nobles relayed the information to the officers who led the team, it was only a matter of passing the words......

For those officers, the task they were given was to "make as much merit as possible and at the same time preserve their own strength", these two points alone were said by those aristocratic lords who played official all day long, and the more than an hour of combat meeting was stunned to turn over and over again around these two points, and there was no one who was the same, as for how to arrange the troops, how to detect the enemy's situation, what kind of queue to advance, and how to arrange the supply routes......

I'm sorry, "Sir, I'll have another party to celebrate the victory of the war in advance and another party where you can raise your eyebrows in front of the Yankees, and those are also your soldiers' business, so let's do it yourself." ”

And then the officers set off with their troops like that.

And then...... Now they are suffering from the horrors of the undead army. This is one of the most frightening ways for the undead, and there is nothing more unbearable for the soldiers at the grassroots level than facing a group of murderous killing machines that have lost their feelings, have no fear, and have no need to rest.

"Shoot the arrows!" cried out the first officer to wake up from the fear, but his performance was still a sign of impotent rage.

The arrows swung out again and again, still not having much effect, and the zombies that the arrows hit were only slightly blocking its forward movement for a second, if it didn't hit the vital point, it didn't take these weak attacks seriously at all, and the arrows that hit those skeletons were even more useless, and few directly penetrated the skeleton outside the skeleton and directly hit the vital soul fire in the head.

As they were the vanguard of the vanguard, they were both pathfinders and victories in the first battle in order to add a few complacent and ostentatious talking points to their master's interactions with other nobles, so they were relatively well-equipped and relatively well-trained. However, this is also compared to other noble private soldiers, and the small number of people is their hard wound.

This stiff wound was especially manifested in the shooting of archers.

Humans are different from elves, they can't play bows and arrows, and even if they shoot a collective salvo, almost every elf doesn't have to communicate, and they choose different targets to shoot, thus causing great damage. Unlike humans, their salvo is nothing more than using a large area of covering fire to inflict damage on the enemy, reducing the number of close encounters with the enemy, and laying the foundation for their own victory.

Not only that, the arm strength and endurance of human archers are much worse than those of the elven rangers who deal with bows and arrows all year round, usually three rounds of salvos before the formation, and the average soldier is already starting to numb his hands, and then continuing to force the shooting is not very useful, plus this vanguard has fewer soldiers and fewer archers, not to mention that there are enough personnel to shoot in a segmented rotation.

So when the arrows fired by the archers became unable to maintain their normal trajectory in the air, the officers and soldiers of that army couldn't help but swallow a mouthful of saliva, because the dozens of undead in that area were already close!

In the face of the undead monsters in front of them with a strange glow in their eyes, with necrotic muscles or white bones all over their bodies, most of the soldiers on the front line could not even hold their long swords firmly because of fear! They usually act as a prestige in their territory, and it is no problem to catch thieves and maintain law and order, and the oldest officer among them has not even participated in the conquest of orcs back then!

"All, all, all of them! Shields come forward, ready to ......"

Lacking actual combat and facing the fear of the undead for the first time, just as these soldiers trembled and tried to obey the command of the officers with knotted tongues, they set up their long swords and prepared to resist, as if they suddenly erupted, and several large strides rushed in front of them, followed by a flash of white cold light!

The flying human head and the splash of blood completely kicked off the slaughter with the fall of this knife......

......

"Oh hell, what are those humans doing?" Air Force Commander Sridore had a look on his face as he had eaten several tons of iron ore, but fortunately his "car" happened to be flapping its wings continuously, making it difficult for others to see his ugly expression.

"What should we do, sir, are we going to help them? They look too ...... Amateur, this is a total slaughter!" asked the Gaardin Hammer, who was riding on another griffin, at the top of his voice.

“...... Forget it, no need, it's useless for us to go. And that's what the two old boys of Vandal and Muradin's should be thinking about, and my task is to escort you back to the camp. He hesitated, but Sridor did not wade into this troubled water out of his compassion, and his task was to bring the master smith and his luggage from Ironforge to Eagle's Nest Mountain, and he did not want to make any further troubles while guarding the dignitaries. And as he himself said, even if the two dwarves went, they wouldn't be able to stop this massacre, it was the humans who brought it on themselves......

“...... All right. Gaardin Hammer looked at the miserable situation of blood splattering on the ground, and closed his eyes helplessly, he also knew that his task was very heavy, and he could not be delayed on the road, and the front line could wait for him, the master forge, to support, otherwise the weapons and armor of those young men would be consumed too quickly. "Damn the undead!

Indeed, the strength of the undead is very great, and the usual armor cannot withstand a single claw blow or slash, which has caused great damage to the alliance formed by the Copperbeard Dwarves and the Brute Hammer Dwarves due to the Covenant.

"Well, yes, let's check along the road to see if there is the nearest reinforcement camp, and let them know. ”

"Well, good!"

......

The two griffons circled the sky a few times and left, and the vanguard of the private soldiers of one of the noble armies of the Stormwind Kingdom on the ground, which was in panic and chaos, did not notice the presence of two dwarves above them who could save some of the soldiers.

Riding on a noble horse, an officer in extravagant armor looked through an engineering telescope for miles away, a member of a branch of a certain family, who had taken on the "dangerous" task of commanding the vanguard for the sake of his family and himself, and it was not until he found that the army he had sent out to fight the vanguard seemed to have completely collapsed, and the family member of the noble family really realized that this was really a dangerous task, and he was almost so angry that he broke his front teeth.

Because he clearly saw that the soldiers on the front line had no intention of fighting the undead head-on, after firing a few rounds of arrows symbolically, the team of 500 people completely collapsed at the moment when the two sides engaged!

Such a stupid act, those merciless undead did not hesitate to rush into the crowd without the slightest hesitation, speeding up the progress of the slaughter!

"Which bastard ordered the escape?" The commander who had commanded 3,000 private soldiers to take the lead in "purging" the undead was now in a very bad mood, and there was not a single person around

Individuals dare to touch his moldy head.

The commander did have a reason to be furious, because the rapid rout of the vanguard not only made his face gloomy, but also failed to measure the strength of the undead army, which was a very bad omen for his main force. And what infuriated the commander the most was that those undead, even if there were hundreds of them running out of the woods, could be regarded as chaotic in terms of their fighting methods, and they even had unknown actions of pushing and blocking each other!

But just like that, the undead army, after rushing into the rout, chopped melons and vegetables, and killed all those poor guys, while the soldiers behind didn't care about the robes in front of them, they ran faster and more thoroughly......

Even if the commander commanded the vanguard army of 500 men with the commander's superficial military command level, it would only need to form a formation on the spot and wait for the main force to come up to counter the encirclement, which would be the best outcome, and it would even be able to make a lot of military achievements! But what did the vanguard army do? It was defeated so completely!

Those undead don't even have a formation, they just directly split the orthodox defensive army formation with a face, what is this? The undead are so terrible? These guys don't seem to have wisdom at all, they are like instinctive attacks, in the face of such an opponent, they can use the advantage of their own troops to divide and surround them and digest them little by little, so that the first merit of this battle can be won by themselves!

But those damn bastards! They didn't even officially engage the undead, and they just collapsed!

The commander was furious by what he saw through the engineering telescope, and he whipped his horsewhip a few times, and then shouted angrily: "Order!

"Great, my lord, the rout of the vanguard army will disrupt our formation. ”

"Smack!" the whip was rightly whipped on the shoulder of the adjutant who was trying to admonish the chief officer, with the strength of the adjutant, he was naturally able to dodge, but in the face of the anger of the superior, sometimes he could only choose to bear it like this.

"Shut up! Give me orders! Now! Now!" the angry commander did not answer the adjutant's question directly, but gave the order with a rough whip and stubbornness.

Just as the main force of 2,500 troops began to march at the normal speed and stumbled into two cone-shaped formations and began to accelerate forward, the officers of the forward army also tried to use horsewhips and verbal stimulation in the process of rout, trying to reprimand and appease those routs, and find a way to regain control of them.

Because the officer kept looking back during the flight and found that the undead were not actually fatal, but the fear of facing them for the first time dominated his mind, which led to a serious miscalculation of him and the soldiers, and the rout caused by this miscalculation was very fatal, and he knew that his troops were not as well trained as the regular army, and at this time, it was just a matter of doing his best to make a last-ditch effort as if he had discovered his conscience.

It's okay for the nobles' private soldiers to fight bandits or something in the territory, but this state of being invincible in the territory makes everyone feel that they are invincible in the world, so such a careless mentality is also one of the reasons for their failure. It was only useless to think about it now, and after a few attempts to shout and not be able to wake up the rout, who had been completely dominated by fear, the officer also rejoined the rout......

Man is a very realistic creature, politicians and some people in power, they can choose to look at things in the long term, but more civilians, they are more concerned about what is happening around them, they want a safe, peaceful and stable and prosperous environment.

And the soldiers at the grassroots level, what they want is simpler, that is, to eat imperial food!

In peacetime, the biggest thing they could do was to fight a dozen bandits, deal with the security of the station, exterminate the fish-men and jackals, and so on, and they didn't even have the word "war" in their impressions. And now, they are sent to participate in the battlefield that does not belong to them in the first place, which makes the hearts of many soldiers full of ups and downs, they are not soldiers to fight, but to eat imperial food.

What bullshit freedom, tradition, glory and the restoration of others, what does it have to do with them, they go to become aristocratic private soldiers just to get a better environment to eat the imperial food, not to fight those hellish undead, and they don't think that they will be sent to fight in some damn war!

This is where the noble private soldiers and the regular army are fundamentally different, and this is also the relatively comfortable environment of the Stormwind Kingdom and the environment in which Lordaeron has almost always been "dealing" with all kinds of riotous orcs, and the quality of the soldiers cultivated is different from the quality of the people.

At present, the kingdom of Stormwind has not been secretly stirred up by Onexia, and the places are still relatively stable, only some "small" signs of instability, which have not attracted the attention of the local rulers, because the exiled government of Lordaeron has come to Stormwind, which has caused almost everyone's eyes to turn to the north, that once great country, almost more than half of the land is now in ruins.

Therefore, under the attraction of such a major event, those "small" signs are even less noticed, and they are "growing" at an unexpected speed, waiting for the right time to burst out in one breath......

But that was all for later, and now, when the angry commander rushed up with his troops to teach the routs how to fight, everyone felt a very rhythmic "earthquake" coming, and then they were greeted by a group of tall and fat abominations who approached from a distance with "leisurely" steps......