Underneath them were not ostriches or ferrets, but huge black spiders.

With eight thick furry legs and a round body, these giant spiders are exceptionally nimble and agile in the narrow and dense woods.

Philip had a layer of white sweat on his body, he was not afraid of heaven and earth, but he was a little afraid of insects, especially spiders and insects with thick armor.

Fortunately, these spiders are not the colorful kind, but black and gray, but whether it is the thick legs covered with hairy barbs or the vicious and venomous mouth, it makes people feel creepy.

"Shoot the arrows!"

With his command, the bowstrings in the hands of the 40 hunters of the third line of defense exploded, enveloping the monsters.

The effectiveness of the wooden arrow strike was not ideal, the forest was so dense that the spiders easily hid behind the trees, and at least a third of the arrows were blocked by the towering trunks.

And these monsters, facing the rain of arrows, suddenly spewed out countless white slurry from their mouthparts.

When the slurry met the cold air, it turned into filaments, stuck to the wooden arrows, and then hung on the trees, disturbing everyone's vision, and at least a third of the wooden arrows were unwilling to become a delicate ornament.

Less than 60 wooden arrows hit their targets in the three rounds of arrow rain, some piercing into the body of the giant spider, bursting red and white slime, and some hitting the knights above, causing them to fall into the thick pile of fallen leaves with a muffled grunt.

As the distance got closer, the two sides collided without any fancy.

Philip felt that the weight in his hands was not as heavy as he had imagined, or that these big spiders were really just bugs, completely different from muscular beasts like the Beast Earth Dragon.

He looked at the ugly insect face half a meter away, and cut off its head with a single sword, and cut the knight above in two with his hand.

It's so easy? There must be something wrong.

Sure enough, all the giant shield warriors easily solved the target in front of them, no matter how big the spider was, it was just a spider, and it had no resistance at all in front of the steel giant shield weighing hundreds of kilograms, and was directly slapped into pulp.

Especially the girl Afu is even more fierce, the giant shield with her huge strength, in the blink of an eye, the three spiders and their knights fly back into the woods, becoming a pile of rich fertilizer.

But they didn't wait for a second wave of impact, and they found that all the spider jockeys were using their eight long spider legs, stepping on the trees and grazing the top of their heads, flying behind them.

As they flew, they continued to spray the white spider fluid, dousing the warriors with their heads and faces.

Some people began to wipe and shake in disgust, but found that they were getting sticky, gradually tying their hands and feet, and the frequency and amplitude of wielding their weapons also decreased.

An unexpected scuffle begins.

Philip didn't expect that these Ah Xun did not show too high combat effectiveness, but these large spiders brought them huge trouble.

In addition to the annoying spider silk, the wound from the bite of the hideous mouthparts also has a jet-black color, and it begins to itch and stink.

The most troublesome thing is their mounts, although the skin is rough and thick, but the teeth of these big spiders are very sharp, which makes the injured mounts thunderous, and the formation begins to fall apart.

Moran had reminded him of the spiders last night, but he only emphasized the monster's excellent climbing ability, and did not pay much attention to them, and Philip did not pay attention to them.

Now that I think about it, this is due to the fact that the warriors of Tieyan Pass are all wearing heavy armor and standing behind the tall city walls, and the damage caused to them by either Ah Xun or the spider is not too scary.

And in this dense forest, the real use of this special mount is really opened.

He did not dare to imagine what heavy losses he and his fighters would have faced if it had not been 3,000 people, but 30,000 people, if it had not been daytime, but pitch black night.

"Avril, take cover from a distance, be careful of hurting your own people. ”

"Victor, barrel defense, put the wounded in the middle. ”

"The pro-guards, in a formation of five, each fighting for themselves, swept along the barrel formation. ”

Philip issued orders to the troops, and the spiders made the traditional defensive formations a joke, and a scuffle in the jungle was inevitable.

Almost as soon as he had finished arranging, Avril and the other two captains led the girls of the Maga Regiment to run farther in three directions.

As he ran, he turned around and shot the wooden arrows in his hand, preventing the spiders from approaching.

Fortunately, the absolute speed of these spiders is not too fast, and they can't keep up with the speed of the black-lipped reindeer's retreat, but their special body structure makes them more suitable for this kind of battle in the dense forest.

After all, Victor was not a Waldsmann officer from a professional background, and the speed of the formation change was a little slower, and dozens of big men on the flanks were pounced on by the spiders falling from the sky, and they rolled on the ground with their arms.

But soon most of them were back on their feet with a huge advantage in strength, and grabbed the spider's thighs and the knights' bodies, tearing them apart, and the red and white liquid suddenly spilled all over the woodland.

But they were also embarrassed by the spider silk slime on their hands, and as they dried out further, they gradually lost their combat effectiveness.

Only a dozen big men were dragged into the woods by spiders and lost their tracks.

The first round of the battle between the two sides was half a catty, and neither took advantage of it enough.

Comparatively speaking, Philip's side was a little more embarrassed.

As the big men shrank together and formed a dense queue, the spiders did not dare to pounce on them from the air anymore, but only harassed back and forth outside with the cover of the giant tree, constantly spewing out viscous spider fluid, wrapping layer after layer on the surrounding trees, like a huge spider web.

Fortunately, this spider fluid is not poisonous and will not corrode the skin, which makes Philip a little more relieved.

He shouted loudly, led the pro-guard team to open the awakening, and began to clear the outside of the array of Victor and others in small teams.

Each squad consists of five people, one shieldman, two melee attackers, and two archers, and almost every squad has one or two Awakened Ones as the core of the fight.

They worked together, with the giant shield blocking Ah Xun and the spider in front of them, the melee men in the back protecting the wings, and the burden of killing and wounding being handed over to the two archers.

Philip also discovered that very few of these Axun Li power awakened, only one-third, and the vast majority of them were speed type awakened people.

And their speed is really fast, so fast that many big men can't catch them at all, and can only passively shrink behind the shield.

But equally, the steppe people, who lacked rare mineral deposits, could not equip them all with rare-grade weapons, and their own weak strength was not enough to inflict too serious injuries on Victor and them.

Therefore, you can only choose a bare place such as your head, face, and neck for a sneak attack.

As time passed, Victor and the others, who were caught off guard by the strange big spider, gradually began to become familiar with the rhythm of this battle and began to organize counterattacks.

The team of 2,000 people was automatically divided into more than a dozen circular barrel formations of different sizes, protecting them in all directions.

They send the big men who are entangled in spider silk or have lost their weapons into the rear for protection and cleaning, and they are not obsessed with killing and injuring these spider jockeys, and always maintain the integrity of the formation.

The big men in the front row have replaced with spears and short spears cut from logs, even if there are not enough of them, but this is a primeval forest, and it is not too easy to make it now.

Whenever an enemy approached, they would block it with their spears with dead branches, and once they were stabbed, they would pull the spears upwards, and many spiders and Ah Xun were picked into the barrel formation, and then they were hacked to death with axes or torn to pieces.

Or throw a short spear, dealing a lot of damage.

It's not that it's not without a big man who gets entangled in spider silk and then dragged into the dense forest, but as the battle progresses, this becomes less and less.

The only disadvantage is the mounts of the big men, the majestic and powerful body is accompanied by a temper that is generally more explosive, and the enraged beast earth dragon will often disobey the orders of the warriors and rush into the distance, causing a gap in the formation.

Victor had no choice but to order all the beast dragons to be sent to the formation for protection.

However, the loss of the horned deer and the black deer was a bit greater, and the long horns on their heads were too easily entangled in cobwebs and dragged away after struggling and powerless.

At this time, the Maga regiment, which had retreated to a distance, also leaned back, and used the bows and arrows in their hands to shoot and kill this group of Ah Xun.

Although the killing efficiency is not high, it also distracts a lot of attention and reduces the pressure on Victor and Philip.

As Philip led the guards along the gaps between several barrels, the casualties of Spider Axon began to mount.

With a flick of Philip's leg, Natalie leaps a few meters away, kicking a spider over, and Philip splits a Nexon in half with a single sword.

Arthur is like a loyal dog, always by the unicorn girl's side.

Every time he killed a spider or Axon, he would make a few noises to Natalie or Philip, but the latter two didn't have the time to deal with him.

While treating the soldiers around her who had been bitten and poisoned, Miss Afu brandished a huge shield to shoot enemies away one by one.

Duke's mount is an Beastland Dragon, and although he can't keep up with Natalie's speed, he is not worried, and he always calmly fires deadly bows and arrows.

This was because he had great faith in Philip, who would never leave him more than twenty meters away no matter what he did.

This tacit understanding is not improvised, but the sense of trust and responsibility cultivated in the past ten years, and I believe that as long as Duke awakens smoothly one day, this tacit understanding will last for a lifetime, until one day the two of them will be disarmed and return to the field or die on the battlefield together.

The most brilliant is still Ale, this humanoid giant ape does not need to be awakened, so his state is terrifyingly stable.

Ah Xun's scimitar couldn't pierce his long-haired skin, the spider's sharp teeth and slime couldn't catch up with his nimble figure, and a cooked copper stick waved impenetrable, like a demonic beast, rushing into the center of Ah Xun's group, rushing left and right.

Wherever he went, he turned that corner into a killing hell.

Of all the people on the scene, even including Philip, his killing efficiency was the highest, and there was no one.

Whether it is a spider or a Xun, as long as they run into him, the only fate is to turn into a burst of slurry and fragments, and the rage is terrifying.

In this way, as the number of Ah Xun and the spiders decreased, the situation of the battle began to shift to Philip's side.

The Ah Xun people could no longer surround the barrel array of Qian De and the others, and began to shrink, and even showed signs of retreat.

At this time, the Majia regiment on the periphery played an important role, they used bows and arrows to force the Axun regiment to move closer to the center of the battlefield, and surrounded and intercepted the lone Axun who fled to the periphery.

Finally, after the battle lasted for two quarters of an hour, and the remnants of the Axun regiment were reduced to the number of 500, almost all the spiders could no longer spew silk slime, and Philip drove the last team's Axun into the counter-encirclement formed by Chand's dispersal formation.

There are constantly Ah Xun who abandon their mounts and want to leave from the top of everyone's heads with their speed and dexterity, and there are also stubborn Ah Xun who are entangled with the big men, but the outcome of the battle has long been doomed.

Philip and the members of the escort stood on the periphery, chopping the escaped fish to pieces with a sword, and when the last cheer came, he looked at the corpses all over the ground and realized that the embarrassing encounter was finally over.

Most of the corpses are Ah Xun and big spiders, densely spread from the top of the mountain to the foot of the mountain, but there are also many big men, female warriors and even personal guards.

It can be said that this battle still caused him to lose his troops and lose his vitality.

Ave and the female warriors began to treat the wounded, the big men began to mend their knives along the hillside, and Philip flew into the air on Arthur to watch the enemy retreat into the distance.

It is impossible to say that Philip does not have a trace of resentment in his heart now, although he knows that this kind of life-and-death parting on the battlefield is inevitable, and it seems that he can't resent Moran and them from the causal relationship, but he still has an emotion similar to resentment.

These days, he has actually been adjusting his mentality, and only when he really led the team on the battlefield, with the life and death of tens of thousands of soldiers in his hands, did he understand the sense of responsibility as a commander, which is completely different from a knight who fights alone.

As a knight, even if he was surrounded by many corpses and a sea of blood, he didn't feel anything, as if this was his fate, cold-blooded and numb.

But when he, as a commander, watched the soldiers who had greeted him with a smile in the morning turn into a cold corpse and fall to the ground, he became deeply aware of the passage of life and what it meant to be heartbroken.

And this is only the beginning, sooner or later he will have to get used to greater casualties, and even sacrifice a small part of them for the sake of the overall victory.

Whether it was from the thoughts of a past life or the experiences of this life, he knew that he had to be strong as soon as possible, and that there was a bigger and more brutal battle waiting for him in the future.

Flying above the sky on Arthur, he looked at the retreating enemy, although the possibility of a sneak attack by the other party at this time was not very likely, but it was better to be careful.

But to his surprise, the scene unfolding in front of him was completely different from what he had imagined.

Billowing smoke rose from the mountains and forests in the distance, no wonder I could smell a puff of smoke just now, it should be the direction of the assembly point of the western front of the steppe people.

Even in the daytime, the flames of the sky took on a scorching red, mercilessly burning everything there.

Except for the Wardsman Imperial army led by Moran, he couldn't imagine any other force that could do such an efficient arson, it couldn't be the steppe people themselves.

The retreating steppe troops were in chaos, and after the steppe camp lit a fire, Moran led the troops to ambush their route back.

Poor Gelin was blindsided when he received the news, and he could not imagine what would happen to the remnants of his army if the camp fell.

Unwilling to become a pile of dry bones in this strange mountain, he gave up his plan to block the attack, accelerated his evacuation, and did not even send more scouts to search the surroundings.

Unfortunately, the narrow gap in the ridge greatly limited the speed of his evacuation, and when the steppe people who had withdrawn were halfway through, three teams of Imperial soldiers in steel armor suddenly appeared from the dense forest on the side.

Similar to the tactics of half-crossing attacks, the 15,000 people who hurriedly withdrew had not had time to organize their ranks, and still maintained a shape similar to a long tongue, and were directly cut into three pieces by the waist.

Even if this raiding team is only 3,000 people, it is already all the troops that Moran can mobilize on the premise of ensuring the defense of Tieyan Pass.

But this is not a mountain Ward warrior in rudimentary animal skin, but an elite soldier who wears full-body armor and has served for an average of more than ten years.

Even the most elite personal soldiers under Gel Ying, who were second only to the Ah Xun regiment, could not organize a decent counterattack in front of them, and they were killed all over the ground like chopping vegetables and chopping meat.

In less than a quarter of an hour, except for a few hundred horsemen who had escaped sporadically, the fifteen-thousand-strong troops had been slaughtered, and Gering's head had been cut off by Moran's own hands, standing on the top of a long branch, waving in the wind.

Until the moment before he died, he still fantasized that the Ah Xun regiment would be able to return in time.

The commander was killed, and the command of the steppe people suddenly became confused, and those in front lost their determination to resist and wanted to retreat, and those in the back were still surging towards the gap in the ridge without knowing it.

Moran led only 1,000 heavily armored iron horsemen to drive the remnants of the steppe people, and killed them along the gap.

In the narrow battlefield created by this special terrain, the heavily armored Wardsmann cavalry was a symbol of invincibility, and the demoralized steppe people fled for their lives, not only scattering their own ranks, but also causing serious stampedes and countless casualties.

Moran fought all the way to the edge of the small lake, and in addition to the corpses all over the ground behind him, there were thousands of steppe people who were squeezed into the lake, throwing away the scimitar in their hands at the moment, desperately struggling with the help of their mounts or other people's heads in the icy water of the floating thin ice, and the screams of despair were terrifying.

Moran didn't care about these steppe people who were destined to be frozen in the lake, and led his men to rush back and forth on this narrow river beach.

When Philip rode Arthur to the sky, he was presented with such a scene.