Exactly 499 years after the Second Race War ended in the orcs’ victory, war once again
began in Truvenia. Thus began what would be called the Third Race War.
Thanks to the efforts of the dark mage Damon and the members of the Kasim Mercenary Corps, the Dark Portal was reactivated, and at last a spatial transfer gate
connecting the two continents came into being. Through it, an uncountable number of troops
poured into Truvenia. A massive allied army, with the Crousen Empire at its core and numerous kingdoms joining forces, had opened the prelude to
the conquest of Truvenia.
The forces mobilized were astronomical in scale. Five corps, each composed of one hundred thousand men—a total force of five hundred thousand—
were deployed all at once. They were corps made up of elites renowned even within their respective nations. To adorn the opening battle
with victory, the very best troops were absolutely necessary, and so they were the first to be sent in.
The remaining one million troops departed their own countries in sequence and headed for the Crousen Empire. As soon as they arrived,
they were deployed to Truvenia through the spatial transfer gate.
The Arcadian expeditionary army began its advance with unstoppable momentum. Countless orc tribes scattered here and there
were crushed helplessly beneath their marching boots. Because they had sent all their main forces to the western coast, the orcs
were utterly unprepared to stop the expeditionary army.
Duke Pershtein, who had taken command as supreme commander of the expeditionary army, was indeed a born strategist. He gathered together
the knights dispatched from each kingdom and formed invincible heavy knight corps, each numbering ten thousand. With them as the core,
he planned a lightning breakthrough operation. His strategy proved effective, and the expeditionary army was able to sweep through the scattered orc tribes
as though through an uninhabited land.
Having the heavy knight corps, clad in thick armor and carrying shields, break the enemy formation, then having the infantry following behind clean up the battlefield,
was an extremely traditional strategy, but the issue was the speed of advance. The defining feature of the blitzkrieg Duke Pershtein
had envisioned was that the heavy knight corps would not stop to fight the orc infantry after sweeping through the enemy formation,
but simply trample through and pass on.
After they passed, archers and heavy infantry followed behind, dealing with the surviving remnants of the orcs.
And light infantry with mobility waited at the rear, pursuing the defeated orcs as they retreated, while the light cavalry in charge of reconnaissance systematically hunted down enemy messengers
and prevented news from being relayed to other tribes. It was an extremely efficient and standardized strategy. Every operation was carried out smoothly, and
the expeditionary army’s occupied territory continued to expand.
Ironically, the route along which the expeditionary army advanced was identical to the invasion route the orcs had taken during the Race War,
without the slightest deviation. Guided by the elves across the forest, the soldiers of the expeditionary army began their lightning advance along the road
by which the orc warriors had swarmed in five hundred years before. The territory of the old Karnatic Kingdom was recovered, and the flags of the allied army fluttered over Milton and
Harmel Castle, where only their skeletons remained.
Due to the scorched-earth operations of the infantry corps that followed the forced breakthrough of the heavy knight corps, dozens, even hundreds of orc
tribes vanished from the map in a single day. Because troops and supplies poured in through the portal every day, the expeditionary army’s
morale rose higher with each passing day.
Dudududu.
Across the vast plain, countless cavalrymen were charging. Clad in gleaming armor and shielding their fronts with shields,
the knights leveled their lances forward and galloped fiercely on and on. Their numbers were beyond counting,
yet the cavalrymen’s ranks and files did not falter in the slightest. Following the dense thunder of hooves, the shouts of the cavalrymen
rang out as if to pierce the heavens.
“Waaaaaa!”
At the place toward which the cavalrymen were charging, roughly twenty thousand orc warriors stood in formation,
tense to the breaking point. They seemed to outnumber their foes by about two to one, but compared to the momentum of the cavalrymen,
who galloped as one with their horses while clad in heavy armor, they looked utterly shabby.
Moreover, the orc warriors did not even have proper anti-cavalry defenses. At most,
they had lined up shields and set long spears at an angle. That was only natural, for they were not a proper
combat unit. Under Gedenhyde’s orders, they had been devoting themselves to supply operations and had hastily gathered warriors from nearby tribes,
so there had been no way for them to equip themselves properly against cavalry. The faces of the orc warriors, watching the cavalry rapidly
close the distance, had hardened stiffly. Having no experience fighting human cavalrymen,
they had no idea how they were supposed to fight.
The battle experience of their ancestors, who had once swept across Truvenia, had not been passed down at all
after five hundred years. Meanwhile, the first wave of cavalrymen plunged into the massed orc formation.
Kwa-kwa-kwang!
The moment they collided with the cavalrymen, the orc army’s front line collapsed outright. To stop a powerful charge that combined the weight of horses and men
with the weight of armor using such a crude defensive formation was, in a word, absurd.
Along with shattered shields, the corpses of orc warriors whose breath had been cut off flew in every direction. The first wave of cavalrymen
that leapt into the orc formation advanced while mercilessly trampling down whatever got in their way.
“Kereuk.”
The head of an orc warrior trampled under horse hooves burst open with a thud. An orc warrior who had just been about to thrust out his glaive
was pierced through the body by a lance and writhed in agony. The battlefield had literally transformed
into a hell of pandemonium.
The first wave of the heavy knight corps that struck the orc formation did not engage in close combat, but maintained their speed and passed straight through.
Before the orc warriors could regain their senses, the second wave charged in. With their ranks completely disrupted by the first charge,
the orc warriors could only fall into utter disarray.
All over the place, orc warriors impaled on lances screamed their death cries. Because they were made up solely of light infantry,
they were helpless before the charge of the heavy knight corps. The orc warriors who had barely managed to survive struggled
to resist somehow. But with the poor weapons they possessed, they could not injure the heavy knights equipped with thick armor and shields.
When the second wave passed through and the third wave rushed in again, the orc warriors realized
that the tide of battle had already turned against them.
Since countless human infantrymen were advancing behind the heavy knights, this battle could already be considered over.
The battle situation was unfolding in a manner completely different from the Second Race War. First of all, five hundred years ago,
the human cavalrymen had been stopped by corps of medium-sized monsters composed of ogres and trolls.
There had also been no small number of heavy knight corps annihilated whole by the dragons’ magical attacks. But the orcs could hardly
expect the dragons’ help yet. Until they entered the war, the orcs had to stop the expeditionary army’s advance
somehow with their own strength alone. Because they had no writing and transmitted knowledge only by oral tradition,
the orcs’ inheritance of knowledge was extremely limited.
That was the orcs’ greatest weakness. Not a single scrap of the countless knowledge that the previous generation of orc warriors had accumulated
fighting human cavalrymen five hundred years before had been passed down. In contrast, the humans’ combat techniques,
unlike the orcs’, had advanced by leaps and bounds.
Even though the tide of battle had turned decisively against them, not a single orc retreated. As if proving that they were born warriors,
the orcs did not turn their backs even once and fought bravely. But their numbers were rapidly dwindling.
The heavy knights, one thousand at a time, trampled the orc formation no fewer than ten times,
then galloped off without so much as looking back. In that place, broken weapons and armor, as well as the corpses of orc warriors
whose breath had ceased, lay scattered in disorder.
Orc warriors who had barely managed to survive rose here and there. As if life truly was tenacious,
more than expected seemed to have survived. The squad leaders who had escaped with their lives shouted at the top of their lungs and focused on reorganizing.
“Chwik. All who can move, stand up. The humans’ attack will come again.”
The surviving orc warriors staggered as they began to form ranks. They had been no match
for the heavy knights, but they had no reason to shrink back from the approaching human infantry, and so they were vowing revenge
against them.
The orc warriors revealed their characteristic ferocity as they began to prepare for battle. But the human infantry who had drawn near
halted their advance at close range. They were all part of a heavily armed heavy infantry corps; equipped with thick armor and shields,
they had excellent defensive power, but inevitably suffered in terms of mobility.
The orc warriors waited tensely for the moment battle would break out. But what flew toward them
was not an all-out charge, but a rain of arrows that densely covered the sky. Right behind the heavy infantry corps,
archers holding crossbows had been waiting.
Kwararararak.
The rain of arrows that flew in with a chilling sound of slicing air swept clean through the densely packed orc formation.
The power of the crossbows was so great that a single quarrel could pierce through two or three orc warriors at once.
Shields were useless as well.
Their shields, made of wood with a thin layer of iron on the outside, might as well not have existed against crossbows.
With a single volley, the orc warriors suffered damage approaching annihilation. Looking at his subordinates sprawled here and there
with arrows lodged in them, the orc commander’s rage surged to the top of his head.
“These sly human bastards……”
But as if in answer, another volley came flying in.
The seasoned crossbowmen had fired their bolts almost simultaneously.
Puh-puh-puh-puk.
Only after completely breaking any possibility of enemy resistance did the heavy infantry begin to advance.
When the orc warriors who had barely survived saw the heavy infantry approaching with their armor clanking,
despair was engraved upon their faces.
“Make certain they are finished off. Not a single one with breath left in him is to remain.”
On the battlefield where corpses lay scattered in disorder, soldiers moved here and there, cutting off the breath of orcs
who were still alive. Without hesitation, the soldiers thrust spears and swords into the necks and hearts of the fallen orcs.
There was not the slightest mercy to be found in them.
The soldiers of the expeditionary army already knew very well what this war meant. And they were well aware
that the orcs used humans as slaves, and even ate them. Duke Pershtein’s so-called ideological training
had taken proper effect.
The orc unit, estimated to number around twenty thousand, was completely annihilated in this battle.
A retreat order did fall at the very end, but only a few defeated soldiers managed to leave the battlefield. The pursuit by the light infantry
began immediately, and the orcs’ escape route had already been sealed off without a gap by the light cavalry.
Because it was necessary to conceal the expeditionary army’s appearance as much as possible in order to achieve the greatest results in the shortest time,
the squad leaders moved here and there, urging the soldiers on.
“Hurry. We have to catch up to the heavy knight corps.”
The soldiers, their faces soaked with exhaustion, continued carrying out their duties without rest. Such one-sided battles
were taking place repeatedly across southeastern Truvenia.
A lightning invasion by humans after five hundred years. Though the expeditionary army’s light cavalry searched with bloodshot eyes,
the news ultimately reached Gedenhyde’s ears.
Upon receiving the urgent report, Gedenhyde could only be dumbfounded.
“How could something so absurd……”
He had never dreamed that Arcadia’s long-awaited expeditionary army would pour in from the east,
where there were no defenses whatsoever. When he heard that the supply units he had deployed had been completely annihilated because of it,
Gedenhyde was left speechless. For him, it was simply beyond belief. But
the situation as it unfolded gave him no time to think.
“The humans are fighting effectively around their heavy knight corps.
Without medium-sized monsters, it will be difficult to stop their knight corps.”
First, he had all the forces that had set out to blockade the coast march inland.
Then he widely notified every orc tribe of this fact.
Unless they banded together, the orcs could never be a match for the humans.
Therefore, Gedenhyde ordered the orc chieftains to gather their warriors together
around the strongest tribes. To stop Arcadia’s expeditionary army, which was pressing forward with unstoppable momentum, they had to gather the warriors of the tribes scattered across the continent
at key points. But that alone was not enough.
“It cannot be helped.”
He dispatched a large number of liches under his command to the dragons’ lairs. To repel the humans,
the dragons’ assistance was absolutely necessary. The dragons’ sleeping period had not completely ended,
but there was no other choice. If they heard the news, the dragons would almost certainly awaken and enter the war.
Teeth grow cold without gums. In order for the tremendous destructive power possessed by the dragons to exert its strength, orc
warriors were absolutely necessary.
“This is truly unbelievable. To think we would be struck first before the dragons awakened……”
But Gedenhyde did not view the situation so pessimistically.
“If the dragons enter the war, the humans will never be a match for us.”
He believed that fact as firmly as stone. Looking at the great army of orcs on the march, Gedenhyde emitted a chilling gleam from his eyes.
“Just as we did five hundred years ago, this time as well, we will surely be able to wipe out the human seed.”