Elderwood Plains Battle (3)

Elves were not stupid.

They knew that in every battle, the odds of defeat were never zero.

However, they had laughed, scorned at the Landragon Army. After all, the Landragon Knight Household was not very powerful. Although it had been created by a Grand Knight, his descendants were nowhere close to the founder's realm of strength. Although it was gaining influence thanks to political alliances and territory management, elves were completely oblivious to those changes, and only focused on pure individual strength when assessing their enemies.

Worse still, elves did not have a network of spies. Everything they knew was given to them by Hildir, who often travelled to the human cities in order to uncover information and...To Freya's despair, enjoy flesh pleasure with prostitutes in cities.

It was the harsh reality of the current elves. There was no grace in their behaviour.

However, neither elven swordsmen nor the Elder Freya could have expected the scene unfolding before them. Even in their wildest nightmare, the sight of brutality and overwhelming danger could not be imagined. Most elven swordsmen had long since dropped their weapons, but due to them speaking a different language, the human soldiers weren't understanding a word of what they were saying.

'No...Even if they were to understand our words, they would not let us off...', Elder Freya cried internally as she ripped a knight to death from a bear paw's strike.

Looking around her, she tried to find one of her own. Not an archer, or a swordsman, but a druid. Only a druid could turn the tides of battle around.

However, to her greatest despair...All 3 Elder Druids following her had been swiftly dealt with. Worse still, all 14 beginner-rank druids were lying on the ground, lifeless. Either powerful iron-crafted arrows or terrifying ice elemental spells had claimed their lives.

The enemy army was only composed of heavy-armoured cavalry. They weren't using a bow.

Elder Freya locked the one responsible for the misfortunes befalling her tribe. The man was grinning with a devilish smile. It seemed like he was enjoying the sight of brutality which he created, crafted from beginning to the end.

Arthur Landragon.

A kid, barely a tenth of her age, had reached a realm of strength that she could not fathom. Even when facing intermediate rank druids, a couple spells were all it took for him to take them down. Not a scratch could be seen on his face, yet he had single-handedly decimated her druids.

'Spotting druids in an army should be roughly impossible to do, even if he possess a detection spell...But to spot and kill them all in a couple minutes...', Elder Freya thought, 'I should have not yielded to the other elders...I should have never sent Hildir to warn Arthur not to join this war...And more importantly, I should have never joined this war to begin with, promise or not'

Still, Elder Freya knew that if she were to fall in this battle without defeating the young demon, her village would be raided, her forest burned and her subjects killed or fated to a destiny worse than death itself. She had heard many rumours of how defeated elven villages ended. Some nobles would pay a fortune to possess some 'fresh slaves' from the wilderness. They would tame them through endless circles of torture and rewards, to condition them to pleasure the noble lords.

The sheer thought of her own kind being fated to such a destiny made her angry beyond relief.

Her eyes turning red, she activated a forbidden spell.

[Bear Spirit Possession]

All druids possessed a totem animal. Similar to a spirit they befriended, their totem animal would grant them shapeshifting abilities. The higher the realm of the druid, the more complete the shapeshifting spell would become.

Powerful druids could maintain their reasoning during the shapeshifting spell, but most only had a shred of their consciousness. The longer they maintained their animal form, the higher the risks, since their spirit would slowly be corrupted by the totem spirit. There were many druids who had forgotten their elven selves, and finished living their lives as shapeshifted beasts.

[Bear Spirit Possession] was a forbidden spell that was created by the Jagorn Forest Elven Tribe's founder. It was a spell that allowed the beast totem animal to take over the shapeshifted druid, allowing to display full potential of the shapeshifting spell. Lifespan and extremely high risks of not returning to the elven selves were the lighter consequences of using this spell. However, the spell was extremely powerful still.

Immediately after transforming, Elder Freya had turned into a 3-meters-tall [Desolate Wild Bear], a magical beast with terrifying strength. It wasn't just a bear, but a magical beast.

[Bear Scream]

Immediately, a dozen horses from the human army turned around and fainted. Humans who were affected by the scream permanently lost their will to fight. Some pissed themselves, others lost consciousness. As for those who were too weak to handle this primordial fear, they had a heart attack.

However, once Elder Freya had lost herself to her forbidden spell, elves and humans could not be differentiated. A dozen elves were affected too.

But just as she locked on her next target, a young knight leading the charge, she found herself trapped in a layer of ice. Despite her incredible strength, she could not break through it. Cracks started to appear as her [Desolate Bear] Form increased her strength to the level of the magical beast. However, she could not break it entirely, as the young Arthur Landragon was constantly supplying it with mana, causing the cracks to be fortified.

She then witnessed a sight that erased what little reason remained in her mind.

The third unit of cavalry from the Landragon Army had entered the battlefield.

A similarly young Landragon heir was leading the charge. The battlefield being chaotic, the charge was not even met with a semblance of defence. It was a pure massacre.

In the matter of seconds, fifty elves had lost their lives. And every second, dozens more died. None were spared.

*CRACK*

BOOOM

It was too much.

Just as she managed to break through the [Ice Seal], she charged towards the one that had orchestrated this madness. On her way, two knights tried to defend their lord. They shot their spears forward, but Freya did not change trajectory. She wasn't planning on surviving this battle. She merely wanted to kill Arthur Landragon.

[Heavy Bear Paw Strike]

Her paw reached her target...

but instead of his body being ripped to death, she found out that her paw was stuck in a layer of ice.

[Ice Shield]

The powerful defensive ice-elemental spell had successfully blocked her most powerful attack.

Before she realized, the Landragon heir who she had thought to be weak in close quarters shot forward with speed she could not have expected from an acolyte. After all, acolytes were known to be weak physically.

Arthur Landragon was not. In fact, he was actually stronger than most [Intermediate-rank] knights physically. If you only took into account his strength, then even [Advanced-rank] knights would hardly manage to match him in pure strength.

His hands started to shine in blue light.

Freya, or more accurately, the beast spirit that had merged with her, tried to move backwards so as to avoid dying on the spot.

However, as she tried to move, she realized that her body would not listen to her.

Arthur had pierced a hole through her heart.

It was a straightforward jab, yet it contained so much force that her tough skin that could stop blades was pierced all the way through.

Death.

She never would have thought that she would meet her hands in a battle...