The Golem Mage

The Barbarian soldiers Valeria, the Amazon Archer Queen, had sent out were not merely piercing the heads of Daniel’s warriors who had been killed by the arrows; they were also looting their corpses.

They searched for spatial rings, armour, weapons, and practically anything else that appeared valuable, gathering everything they found in a nearby clearing, they carried out the task so professionally that it almost seemed as though looting battlefields was their secondary profession.

However, at that moment, they suddenly felt the ground trembling beneath their feet, as though a large cavalry unit was rapidly approaching.

“Return immediately!” Valeria shouted immediately when she noticed something was wrong.

She instantly suspected that these new arrivals had deliberately waited for the previous battle to end before attacking, hoping to prey upon them after they had lowered their guard following their victory.

However, the Barbarian soldiers were still a considerable distance from the city gates, there was no way they would be able to reach the entrance before the approaching force caught up with them without any delay tactics in play.

Finally, the new enemy units came fully into view, they were High Orcs, there was not a single ordinary green Orc among them.

At the centre of the formation were five hundred High Orcs mounted upon massive boars, while another two hundred and fifty ordinary orc riders advanced on both the right and left flanks. However, the units on the sides were mounted on wolves rather than boars.

The moment Valeria saw their formation, she came to a decision, leaving the gates open until the Barbarian soldiers returned would compromise the entire city.

Therefore, she had to make the most rational choice available.

“Close the gates,” she ordered, as a few Amazon Archers immediately sloped down the walls and got to work in closing the gates.

However, Saint could not understand her decision. To him, it appeared as though she was sacrificing the two hundred and fifty Barbarian soldiers who had accompanied her to the city.

“Pheeeewww!”

One of the High Orcs at the front raised a large war horn and blew heavily into it.

“Archers, take your positions! Aim!”

By the time the Amazon Archer Queen finished issuing her command, the city gates had already returned to their previous state, sealed tightly.

“Fire!”

There were about one hundred Amazon Archers still standing on the city wall when Valeria gave the order, and they did not hold back in the slightest.

Instead of firing their arrows into the air, they aimed directly at the approaching enemy and released straight shots, it was almost as though they could not see the Barbarian soldiers still desperately dashing toward the gate.

Saint, who stood nearby, could not help shivering with every command Valeria issued.

Although he considered himself wicked, he only acted ruthlessly toward his enemies, never when his allies were also included in the equation.

However, even the Barbarian soldiers he was so worried about did not seem concerned about being fired upon. Instead, they merely increased their speed and continued sprinting toward the city gate.

When the arrows finally reached them, Saint witnessed something incredible, all one hundred arrows flew past the Barbarians without even a single one grazing their skin.

The arrows passed between them and continued toward the Boar Rider Orcs behind them as though each arrow possessed eyes of its own.

“Shields!” the same red Orc who had blown the war horn earlier commanded.

The Boar Rider Orcs then tapped their mounts, signalling for the massive boars to slow down, at the same time, they raised their shields side by side in two overlapping layers, creating what they called a double shield wall.

The first hundred arrows slammed directly into the formation.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” The Orcs chanted their war cries as the Qi arrows struck their shields.

Most of the arrows were blocked, with only a few managing to pierce through where some of the Orcs had failed to hold their shields firmly enough, only about fifteen Orcs died from the salvo, and all of them were Tier 4.

After seeing how tightly packed they were and how they had endured the attack without their formation budging, Valeria was finally able to determine their general strength.

‘Every single one of them was at least a Mid-rank warrior.’

It was something she dreaded, and if Valeria had to guess, the Orcs who had just been killed were probably the weakest members of the entire army.

As if that were not enough, they began hearing the sound of marching footsteps much more clearly, far behind the main mounted party of Orcs that had already appeared, several more groups soon came into view.

At the front were around a mixture of High Orcs and green skin orcs numbering a thousand dressed in half-body spirit armor, with axes strapped to their waists and massive tower shields raised before them like a disciplined infantry formation.

But that was not all.

Behind them marched a group of five hundred heavily armored High Orcs, from their braided hair and the tribal tattoos covering the sides of their faces, necks, and other exposed parts of their bodies, Valeria was able to determine that they were an Orc Berserker unit.

They were the force unleashed to create pure carnage whenever conventional strategies stopped working.

Valeria had conducted some investigations because she knew a day might come when they would have to face the Orcs, especially after learning that her lord had ordered the destruction of an Orc city.

However, she had never expected that all the knowledge she had gathered from the locals would be put to use so soon, her expression remained completely blank, making it difficult for Saint, who stood beside her, to read what was going through her mind, literal she has taken the general command from him considering she had more unit under her command, which she understands better and would only listen to her.

She continued staring ahead, carefully analyzing every troop formation the Orcs had brought with them.

In front of the five hundred Berserkers was another Orc seated atop a massive wolf mount, several older-looking Orcs rode similar lanky wolf mounts around him, each holding a staff while their faces remained hidden beneath the hoods of their robes.

Valeria immediately identified them as Orc Shamans, and behind them was another enormous force of Orcs, which she estimated to number at least two thousand five hundred.

The Orcs had been divided into several groups, some were responsible for carrying massive siege rams covered in beast hides and reinforced with metal plating, while another group protected the flanks of two gigantic alligator demonic beasts that appeared to have been enslaved by the Orc army.

Mounted on the backs of those beasts were enormous siege platforms.

“Whoever the Orc Kingdom sent to occupy the lord’s city is clearly a very troublesome lord, we won’t be able to handle this force alone. Go to the City Heart and tell the Mother Mind (Alec’s AI) to check if any of the other cities can reroute reinforcements to us. In the meantime, I’ll try to hold these bastards off for as long as I can,” Valeria, the Amazon Archer Queen, said to Saint.

Saint immediately realized that he would not be able to handle the invading army with only Valeria’s assistance.

After all, the opposing army was ten times larger than their own.