How to describe a war is too difficult for a storyteller. I mean, in a conflict that could be called a war, there are always so many things to be told about, and it's maddening to decide between them. Because neither the war as a whole can be told in general, nor from the perspective of an individual involved, the war cannot tell the whole picture. There will always be something left out, and those omissions are no less minor in themselves than what is written.

Perhaps only the simplest narrative can avoid this from happening, and condense the cold blood of those tragic battles into a simple record. It's like the short sentences written in those history books, without the slightest emotion. Then I guess I should describe this battle in such a statement.

By the time the Greylion coalition broke out of the woods and onto the plains by Dragon's Blood Creek, they were only two-thirds as strong as they had set out. In a short distance, people fell at almost every step, and the demon continued to surprise the soldiers as if it had grown out of the shadows, screaming far more often than any other sound. The blunt weapon used against the nezumi was useless against the demon's tough skin, and the skin forged from the abyss was enough to break an ordinary iron sword!

Thankfully, not all soldiers were helpless against these monsters, as the one-handed swords of the Knights of the Kingdom, and the tomahawks and spears of the Kroger Corps were all used to keep the demons at bay. These well-coordinated warriors skillfully form groups and use the complementarity of their weapons to besiege and kill a single demon. But these two legions made up only about one-fifth of the total coalition army, and most of the members who made up the coalition were the private armies of the various nobles, the temporary soldiers they hired, and the civilians who took up arms. The remaining four-fifths of the soldiers were more like decoys in this battle to stall for time, and they used their flesh and lives to block the demon's onslaught, buying more time for the fifth of the warriors who were combat-ready.

So when the first battle in the woods was finally over, and the soldiers saw the city in the distance, many of them knelt directly on the ground. The feeling of the aftermath of the catastrophe made them unable to pull themselves together, not to mention ordinary soldiers, the nobles as generals had lost a lot of losses in this battle, no one knew how many families had lost their lords now, and Valley City had not yet been replanted with the flag of the kingdom, and it was not yet time to count the losses.

"Ten. "Marcus couldn't feel anything when he walked out of the woods, he didn't deliberately avoid the battlefield, but as the commander-in-chief of the coalition forces, he was also doomed to not be able to draw his sword and fight the enemy in person like the royal capital guarded during the war. Naturally, the Hand of the King would not give up the opportunity to observe his enemies, and he forced himself not to close his eyes, staring at each demon's wanton slaughter among the warriors in order to find their weaknesses. He succeeded, but at the same time he discovered something more desperate than how to defeat them, and that was that their opponents in the woods were only ten demons.

So how many demons are there in that damn city? Looking at the almost incapacitated people around him, Marcus couldn't help but ask himself, how many more demons could they defeat?

"Report to your lordship, the Knights of the Kingdom have completed their formation and are ready to launch an attack on Valley City at any time. "The knight who came to report had a distinct dent in the armor on his chest, apparently from the fine plate armor of the Molten Iron City that had saved his life. But the price of the life was not cheap, and the Hand of the King knew the knight, and he remembered that the man who had once had long silver hair was a good companion in the eyes of many ladies and ladies. But now, only a third of the knight's entire face remained intact, and most of his face, along with his scalp, had been turned into a disgusting paste from the corrosive effects of demonic blood. The reason he was still standing here so calmly was probably because the corrosion had also destroyed his ability to feel pain.

"What about our losses, how many are left?" asked Marcus in a deep voice, knowing that as the only two troops with the ability to kill demons, the Knights of the Kingdom would suffer terrible losses.

The disfigured knight bowed his head and was silent for a few seconds before he spoke, "My lord, I beg your pardon for not being able to report to you. The Grand Knight Commander ordered that the Knights of the Kingdom not count casualties until the battle was completely over. We do not consider losses until the enemy is completely destroyed. ”

"It's not about measuring losses. Attacking Vale City is not a mutual charge on the plains, and I need to know our forces in order to deploy tactics accordingly. As you can see, most of the kingdom's soldiers can't fight the demons, so I need to know how many warriors the Knights still have to fight. "The Hand of Kings has long known how to deal with hardened knights. They have always eaten soft rather than hard, and blindly using their official positions to order them will only get the opposite effect, and as long as the safety of more people is used as an excuse, these warriors who worship glory often will not refuse.

The knight's face twitched slightly, probably as a result of his attempts to make normal facial expressions but failed. "I see. You are right, my lord, there can be no more needless sacrifices. This time, except for the second regiment led by Lord Leon and the fifth formation guarding the royal capital, the knights of the kingdom participated in the previous battle. The fourth team was attacked by two demons at the same time, and the whole team was killed, and their sacrifice also destroyed the two evil monsters. ”

The corners of Marcus's mouth twitched, the knights of a whole formation of the Kingdom Knights, and they were also the elite of the first regiment, which was a loss that would take at least ten years or more to make up. "yes, so we have three teams left. In that case..."

"I beg your pardon for overstepping, my lord. The knight interrupted the king's hand, "I just said that the fourth team was all killed, but the other three were not unscathed. Although the degree of damage to the ranks varies, I am afraid that there may only be two teams left in the current Knights' remaining forces, no, maybe less... And the main thing is..."

"What is it?" Marcus frowned, the damage to the Order made him really not optimistic, and listening to the knight's tone, it seemed that there was something worse than attrition to plague the warriors who could continue to fight.

"Horses. We had been vaguely aware of this before, but now we were finally certain that even though we were blindfolded, our warhorses refused to move in the direction where the demons gathered. While siege warfare doesn't give us much chance of using horses, it will slow us down to get closer to the walls. ”

It's no secret that normal domestic animals or wild animals instinctively seek advantage and avoid harm. And even a warhorse that has been trained to trust the knight completely cannot go against its instincts, which are the instinctive fear and desire of all creatures to flee when they see demons. This may not be a big problem for the commander, after all, as the knight said, sooner or later the siege cavalry will also become infantry. But there was another thing on Marcus's mind.

"You say the horses refuse to approach Vale?" the King's Hand was keenly aware of the words, and he understood the message. There are demons in Vale, and there are enough of them for horses far away from the city to refuse. "Where the hell did those damn demons come from? Marcus didn't know how to feel when he thought that just ten demons had already inflicted such huge losses on the coalition, and that there were probably far more enemies in distant cities.