Chapter 23. The battle

POV: head knight

We arrived at the strider's camp to change shifts with the other squad.

"What did I do to deserve this hellish punishment?"

I started to think back to what started this. It was the second year of the academy, and that was the year we started to interact with the peasant classes.

And as per tradition, we had to show who were the rules of this country. We had to make sure that the lower classes didn't start to get any funny ideas that they are equal to us. So we did some light bullying, enough not to catch the attention of the teachers.

But one of the students caught our attention. His name was Bobby, and even though he received the same treatment as the others, he didn't give up, he actually started to work harder.

And while the peasants are lower than us, we also know that our families came from them, so he earned our respect through his determination.

We decided then to give him a chance to change his life, a chance to climb up the ladder. But he made the insulting choice to refuse us, we couldn't take a no as an answer, that would make the others think that we are soft on the hard workers.

So we had to step up our game, the bullying got worse for him, and surprisingly he still persisted through all of that, the other students started to see hope in him, and once we heard that he caught the eyes of an official from the Royal Palace, thing's got worse.

We knew that we had to stop this at all costs, or the lower class will start to think they have a chance to do better.

With all that in mind, we started to look for dirt on him, but we didn't find anything, he was clean as a sheet of paper.

"No worries, if there are no problems we make them for him."

Said one of the higher nobles. It was a risky move, but a necessary one. So we stole some research papers from the director's office and left some evidence that would lead to Bobby.

Once the headmaster found out, he quickly brought Bobby to questioning. But we we're faster, we bribed the judge to not even listen to his story and just straight up exile him.

He couldn't do something like that right away, but he did something that can be arguably worse. He was sent to take care of an Infected village, and with some luck, he'll be infected and forgotten.

With that out of the way, we continued our school years normally for the next three years.

But on the last year, we found out who actually was the one that wanted to hire Bobby, she was the princess of this kingdom, and one of the candidates to be the next ruler.

And while she left us alone through those years, she didn't forget about what happened. She was too preoccupied with the political wars to come after us right away, but she was finally free now to do as she pleased.

Unfortunately, my family was too weak to defend me like the rest of my friends, so I was the only one punished while my friends were just warned or had to pay a fine.

I was sent to guard one of the secrets of the Royal Family as a punishment.

And that sounded more like a reward than a punishment for me, it was an opportunity to climb up the social ladder, to make connections with bigger nobles. That was my specialty after all.

How wrong I was, I found out why she considered this a punishment. With the new assignment, I found out where we got our potion resources.

It was from another dimension called the Nether, it was a shocking discovery. But that means that the Royal Family won't let me go back so easily, since they still wanted to keep this a secret.

That wasn't even the worst part, once I entered that dimension I was hit by a wave of heat, it was everywhere in the air. Everything was red and with lava.

"Who would want to live in such a place!"

But hope hasn't abandoned me fully yet. Everyone that was tasked with defending the fortress was given a fully enchanted iron armor with protection 1, fire protection 1, and unbreaking 1.

This was so impressive since only my father, the head of the household was able to have fully enchanted iron armor. And I don't think it was as good as what I had now.

And that wasn't the only thing. From what I understood, the second prince took a liking to my actions against her little sister project, so he decided to reward me with the position of the head knight in one of those squads, and an enchanted sword with fire aspect.

It was an amazing item that can be done only with the help of someone that had level 5 on their enchanting skill.

But even with all of that, it was an annoying job to do. We recently got some information that you can have fire resistance buff from drinking striders milk from those brutes over the lava lake.

Of course, this information was not free, but they seemed to love gold more than emeralds so we used that to loosen their tongues.

Once the prince heard that, he quickly send us to search for those creatures to gain more influence.

Unfortunately, while we did find them it was an impossible task to catch them, let alone milk them. And the ones that we caught didn't do too well outside the lava.

We were ready to abort this mission when the prince managed to buy some information from those brutes again. It was about the location of some tribesmen that raised striders as cattle.

So we attacked that place afterward. There was no need to negotiate with those lesser beings.

Though we caught them by surprise, they still managed to kill a few of us before retreating into the red forest. But we killed more than half of their numbers, so we won't see them anytime soon. And if they did attack us, we would kill them all with our superior armor and weapons.

They bearly had two people with armor, and it was gold armor, the weakest of them all.

After the fight, we looted the battlefield, cleaned it up, and repaired the wooden fence to keep those brutes out of our new land.

The prince was happy about the news. The new milk helped lessen the costs of fire protection enchantments, and it was way cheaper than potions to make.

But with the new land, we had to spread our forces even more, since we couldn't move the striders and we didn't kill all the tribesmen, there was a chance that they will attack us in revenge and to get their land back.

So now I'm here looking bored at the abnormality huge lava lake, while the other team went back home to sleep in the Overworld.

But all of a sudden I heard the goat horn.

It was the alarm signal.

I quickly ran towards the noise to see what caused the alarm, but once I arrived at the scene I was greeted by an arrow flying at me. I quickly blocked it with my shield.

I looked at the source of the arrows and saw some of those tribesmen shooting at us with crossbows.

"We are under attack! Raise your shields and block their arrows. We can attack them once they exhausted their ammunition."

I started to yell out orders, and the knights responded like well-functioning pistons.

The deadly rain lasted for a minute before stopping. I quickly looked at my troops to see that we only had two casualties, and it was probably from the initial attack.

"They're out of arrows, attack them before they reload their crossbows!"

Once I gave the order, the knights lower their shields slightly before starting to run toward the archers.

But we didn't manage to run two blocks before, some green balls were thrown again at us, and in horror, I recognize what it was.

"Those are ender pearls! Prepare for melee combat!"

Then seven tribesmen appeared from where the pearls landed. But something was different about them, they weren't the same ones as the ones we attacked last time. They had actual iron armor and swords.

"This is not right."

I whispered to myself.

And I was right, you couldn't get iron in this dimension. So somebody was supporting them from outside. But who? Only our kingdom has access to the portal from what I know.

I have to report this to his highness as quickly as possible.

The brutes started to attack us without hesitation, so I took my enchanted sword out and started to attack the closest one to me.

We had greater numbers, and while they did have iron armor, it was not enchanted like ours. So once I saw an opportunity I slashed the skin of the brute.

"Ha! Burn to death you brute!"

But while the brute started to catch on fire as I expect, he didn't trash around in pain as I expected, actually, the fire started to diminish from him.

He just looked at the fire disappearing and started to maniacally laugh while running at us to continue attacking.

A blocked the incoming sword, but the force that came was far greater than I expected, so it knocked me back a few steps.

His sword didn't have any enchantments for sure. But his attacks were like they had knockback on them.

I looked closer at my attacker and finally saw what was so different about them. Besides the armor, there were some faint particles floating. It was hard to see, but on a closer look I saw that it was orange and red.

"How did you get strength and fire resistance potions!?"

The brute just smiled at my observation and continued to attack.

I wasn't the only one attacking him, so I let my subordinates hold him while I analyzed the battlefield.

They were only 7 of them and 18 of us, the archers won't attack us since they wouldn't want to shoot their friends.

While they did have better equipment than expected and a few potions effect. We were still out numbering them by almost three to one, we still had a chance to defeat them and then kill the rest of the archers before they run away.

I looked around the battlefield once more to be sure that I didn't miss something important. And then something else caught my attention.

At the fence around the camp, there were a few tribesmen with armor like the ones in the camp. But they didn't seem like they wanted to come and help them, they actually started to break down the fence with some iron axes.

And before I could wonder what they were trying to do, what I saw next shocked me to the core.

Once there was a big enough hole in the fence, out of the woods came out a hoard of those brutes running at unbelievable speeds.

"T-this is impossible. I have to report this to the main camp."

It was impossible to win this fight at this point. It was better to use these useless subordinates to hold down the enemies while I run back to the main base.

I felt like I could afford to tank one shot as long as it wasn't to the head.

I started to quickly run towards the main camp, I climbed the tall red hill only to hear a hissing sound coming closer to me.

I turned my head to see what was cousin that, only to see a big red arrow with smoke at its tail coming towards me.

Luckily it would've hit me, only if I was a block higher than now, so I was safe from the strange arrow. But before I could fully relax and continue my escape the strange arrow hit the wall and an explosion was made.

The damage was high, but the worst part was that it knocked me down from the hill.

The ground came quickly to me, I didn't even manage to raise my hands to protect my head before I hit the ground.

There was no pain, everything just turned black.