Ch.166Chapter 166: Eastern Decisive Battle (34)

The Erdion River. The lifeline that cuts through the eastern plains.

The eastern plains were fertile precisely because of this massive river.

But now, the great river was shrouded in thick fog.

There had always been some mist hanging over it, but the current fog was not normal.

Lisa was the first to notice this.

“What’s with this fog?”

Lisa scanned the river with Lepiron’s eyes.

The fog was growing thicker in real time.

“It’s so dense I can’t see anything! Something’s definitely going on!”

Valt agreed with Lisa’s assessment.

The fog, which had been creeping in steadily, now obscured even the river itself.

“Seems like the work of shamans.”

This was too artificial to be considered a natural phenomenon.

It was clearly the orcs’ doing.

Shamanism—a system slightly different from magic.

Unlike magic, shamanic power could create large-scale natural phenomena when concentrated—another difference between the two systems.

It might seem trivial, but weather conditions on a battlefield can determine victory or defeat.

If rain falls during a fire attack, the fire attack becomes immediately useless.

The suddenly thickening fog. And the concentration of troops toward the river.

Lost in thought, Lisa felt a chill run down her spine.

“Damn it! Could it be!?”

A strategy suddenly flashed through Lisa’s mind.

But she didn’t want to believe it.

Even Lisa had the preconception of “Surely orcs couldn’t…?”

“The river side! Where our forces are facing the orc troops! Arias! Please check it out!”

Lepiron’s eyes were advantageous for securing an overall view.

Because of this, they weren’t effective in such thick fog. Arias’s telescopic magic was more suitable for assessing the situation.

“Got it!”

Arias cast her telescopic magic at maximum power to check the riverbank where the orc and allied forces were engaged.

The extremely thick fog made it difficult to see clearly, but gradually something began to appear.

“W-wait, what is that!”

What Arias confirmed was orcs.

But it didn’t make sense.

The Erdion River was an enormous river that encompassed the entire eastern plains.

As a result, it was incredibly deep. Though orcs were larger than humans, the river was too deep for them to cross.

Yet she couldn’t deny what she was seeing.

“O-orcs! How on earth!?”

As Arias shouted, Lisa became urgent.

“Damn it! I knew it! What about King Zerdin’s side?!”

Arias turned her telescopic magic toward King Zerdin.

The central area, with relatively less fog, was easier to observe.

King Zerdin was heading to the battlefield with the masters under his command.

Zerdin’s unit was powerful.

If they had been near the river, it would have been easier to respond, but King Zerdin was charging from the center of the formation.

The ones being sacrificed were the ordinary allied soldiers who knew nothing.

“KWAARUUUUUU!!!”

At that moment, the Orc King’s roar erupted.

An enormous roar loud enough to be heard across the entire battlefield.

And the battle began.

“KWUEEEEERK!!”

Black shadows flashed from the riverside. The orcs had begun landing.

The orcs were riding rafts.

They had created the fog with shamanism to conceal this.

The allies had been completely caught off guard.

“GAAAACK!! O-orcs! Kuhek!”

The allied forces began to scatter in panic at the attack from an impossible direction.

A blow from an unexpected direction always hurts more.

The orcs’ raft offensive was devastating.

The situation was already numerically disadvantageous.

If both sides were fighting head-on, the allied forces with their superior quality might have had the advantage, but fighting in this encircled formation inevitably put them at a disadvantage.

It was a tactic that even humans would find difficult to conceive.

The allied forces at the riverbank were completely helpless against the sudden ambush.

The thick fog made it difficult even to distinguish friend from foe.

“Damn it! I can’t see what’s coming!”

At that moment, a massive shadow leaped out from the river.

Splash!

“We’re surrounded! We can’t hold them back!”

In the sky, Lisa bit her nails anxiously.

To think they had prepared such a strategy.

Though she had approached the battle assuming the orcs would fight like humans, somewhere in her mind was the complacency that orcs wouldn’t go this far.

“Damn it! This won’t do!”

But there was no solution.

If only the fog would clear, they could at least counterattack.

Orcs have highly developed senses of smell.

This gave them an advantage over humans in conditions where identifying allies and enemies was difficult.

“Valt! We need to inform King Zerdin of the situation!”

“Understood. Liris!”

“Yes! Valt!”

Honestly, Lisa desperately wanted to help the soldiers at the riverbank, but it was impossible for Valt alone to stop so many landing troops.

Without clear visibility, they might even attack their own allies.

She considered using large-scale magic on the river, but that could cause flooding and sweep away allied forces.

Moreover, in the current situation, only Valt’s group, who could freely move through the sky, could properly deliver this news.

In the end, Valt gave up on intercepting the orcs and approached King Zerdin to deliver the news.

In such chaotic circumstances, it’s difficult for a commander who has just entered the battlefield to hear such news immediately.

There was magical communication, but King Zerdin was rushing toward the enemy for the decisive battle with the Orc King and had no time for communication.

Fortunately, Valt quickly and safely approached King Zerdin.

Thanks to Liris.

“Commander-in-Chief! The enemy is attacking from the river!”

King Zerdin immediately responded to Valt’s shout.

“What!? How is that possible!?”

On his galloping horse, Zerdin was dumbfounded.

The Erdion River was deep. It couldn’t be crossed without boats.

“Rafts, sir! The orcs hid rafts in the fog!”

It was hard to believe.

Orcs weren’t supposed to have that level of intelligence.

But because it was Valt delivering the news, Zerdin had to believe it.

“What’s the scale of the enemy force and our casualties?”

“Impossible to confirm due to the fog! What’s certain is that our forces are being slaughtered!”

Lisa interjected from the side.

“Commander, we must at least remove the fog! If there’s a way to block the shamanism, we need to use it now!”

Zerdin glared toward the river.

The Grand Master’s vision pierced through to the situation at the distant riverbank.

While he might not have noticed before, with this knowledge, it wasn’t difficult for his eyesight to confirm the situation.

As Valt had said, the allied forces at the riverbank were collapsing like autumn leaves.

King Zerdin made no attempt to hide his anger.

“Damn it all! And I was saving this for later!”

Zerdin’s hidden card was an artifact called “Eliwell’s Silence.”

It was an artifact that King Zerdin had obtained with great difficulty, possessing the tremendous ability to disrupt mana over a wide area.

Using this would neutralize the shamanism creating the fog.

However, while powerful, this artifact had a short duration.

Just about 15 minutes.

That would be enough time for the decisive battle with the Orc King, but if used now, it couldn’t be used in that confrontation.

Zerdin had thought that using Eliwell’s Silence would make it easier to defeat the Orc King.

The variables he was concerned about were tricks like magic and shamanism.

Although allied magic would also be temporarily sealed, it didn’t matter.

If he eliminated variables and fought with aura alone, Zerdin was confident of victory.

That’s why he had been saving the artifact for the battle with the Orc King, even when the enemy used shamanism.

Since it was such a powerful artifact that couldn’t be used again for six months after one use, Zerdin’s caution was understandable.

But now the situation was too dire.

Zerdin fell into contemplation.

“Commander Zerdin!”

As Valt and Lisa urged him, King Zerdin reluctantly took out the artifact.

“Damn it! To think I would suffer such humiliation from orcs! Prince Valt, take this!”

King Zerdin threw Eliwell’s Silence to Valt.

Eliwell’s Silence was an artifact in the form of a book.

A tightly wrapped book that looked extremely precious.

“Remember! Once opened, it cannot be undone! Use it properly! Resolve the situation! I’m counting on you!”

“Understood!”

Valt took Eliwell’s Silence and began running across the platforms created by Liris.

King Zerdin’s decision was unavoidable.

If their forces were cut in half now, this war would be lost.

Dividing their already insufficient troops?

In a war of this scale, that would result in nothing but defeat.

Though he was the disliked youngest son of Gerunthu, there was no other option now.

Removing the fog wouldn’t dramatically turn the situation in favor of the allied forces.

But they couldn’t leave the fog as it was either.

Diverting his own troops there made even less sense.

He was the only one here who could stop the Orc King.

King Zerdin bit his lip until it bled and charged toward the Orc King.

Hoping only that Gerunthu’s youngest son would somehow work a miracle.

“I will avenge this humiliation with your head, Orc King!”