Chapter 59
Chapter 59: The Great Battle Begins
“Attack!!!”
Xeron held the demon scythe in his hand and shouted at the same time. The Stone Skin spell activated to protect the demon army from the rain of arrows.
Xeron knew that the elves might have grabbed the chance because he advanced prematurely, but he did not panic at all. He had his pride as a high-rank demon. He had fought many wars for Lucifer Kreegan in this world, and a simple ambush was not going to defeat him.
Demons loved to fight by nature, and their instinct for combat was almost inscribed into their bones. The demon army adjusted quickly from the chaos, and the gog unit started their retaliation. They threw a large number of fireballs toward the forest.
The camp of the demon army was originally in the forest, but Xeron knew that he could not battle the elves in the forest terrain. Therefore, he had gotten the demon army to set fire to the forest, and a large area around them had become scorched earth. The first wave of arrows by the elves landed mostly between the barren area and the forest. When the large number of explosives ignited the area again, the elves were forced to reveal themselves.
The tall dendroid guards were the first to appear. These slow-moving treants walked out with heavy steps. Some of them were still on fire and seemed to be in a bind. However, Xeron felt something was wrong when they appeared. There were too many dendroid guards. More than two hundred of them arranged themselves into a thick shield wall in front to protect the fragile elves behind them.
Thousands of wood elf archers appeared next. Sharpshooters were among them as well. These sharpshooters were superb ace archers, and every arrow they shot was a huge threat. The arrow that pinned the little demon onto the tree with the first wave of arrows was the handiwork of a sharpshooter.
The AvLee elves’ warriors—dwarfs, silver pegasus knights, centaur captains, unicorns—appeared one after another. Although these troops were not elves, they lived in the elves’ domain. Their fates were bound together, which was why they were in the elven army.
Moreover, all of them were massive in numbers without exception. They appeared together and almost completely surrounded Xeron’s demon army.
Three heroes leading the elves also appeared. Two of them were elven druids donning deer helmets, and the other was a male human. Although his face and chest had elven tattoos, he did not have long pointed ears and was a typical human.
Xeron recognized at a glance that this human elven hero was Ryland! He was the famous ranger in the kingdom of Erathia and the elven kingdom. It was said that he was the first human ever recognized by the elves, and the tattoos on his body were carved personally by an elder of the elves.
Three heroes with a huge army of about four thousand… When he saw so many troops, Xeron was inwardly shocked. Isn’t this difference too big?!
However, this was not all. High-pitched dragon roars rumbled from the sky. Huge shadows covered the ground, and a group of gigantic creatures with wings appeared. The dragons really came!
They were not many, only about a dozen of them, and there were three types of dragons—green dragons, emerald dragons, and gold dragons. The green and emerald dragons liked to live in the forest and could be said to be interdependent with the elves. The gold dragons liked to live on high mountains. However, they were also allies of the elves because of the existence of the Gold Dragon Queen.
The bodies of these dragons were simply too enormous. A mere dozen of them seemed to swallow the sun. They hovered over the battlefield, blocking the sunlight, leaving shadows where they passed. After hearing the dragons roar, these little demons were trembling with fear.
Right at the moment the dragons appeared, Xeron’s whole being did not feel good. Although he had high-level demons in his camp, he had summoned them at the cost of his magic power, and they were too few in number.
Xeron was not at all surprised that the dragons were here. After all, their plan was to deal with the Gold Dragon Queen in the first place. However, that was after he joined with Rashka and Ignatius and their troops of high-level demons. Now Rashka was pursuing that traitor Zydar, while Ignatius and his troops were far apart. This was equivalent to asking Xeron to face the attacks of these elves and dragons alone. How could he possibly be happy?
He still could not figure out even now. Fine, they ambushed me, but why did they dispatch three heroes and so many troops at the same time? This is akin to treating my troops as the main force! Why did the elves go so far?
Indeed, were it not for Roy’s letter of challenge, the elves might still attack Xeron, but not at this scale. At this time, there were two demon armies constantly attacking the elves, one was Xeron’s troop, and the other was Rashka’s. The elves were sparse in numbers and had limited troops. They would generally distribute their forces equally to defend against these two forces. However, Roy’s letter of challenge changed everything.
It was like you meeting two bad guys. One of them did bad things silently, but the other was spitting out vulgarities on top of doing bad things. Who would you hate more?
The elves planned to teach this arrogant Xeron a good lesson now. They dispatched more than half of their main force all at once to express their determination and to dispel the demon’s arrogance!
Suppose the heroes of the elves were to stand up and rebuke Xeron aloud at this time, then Xeron might still have a chance to know about the unwarranted letter of challenge. However, the demons and elves had exchanged blows many times, and they knew what kind of personality the demons had, so they did not even bother to say anything. After setting up their formation, they attacked the camp directly.
The dendroid guards at the front advanced at a slow but firm pace. The wood elves tightened their bowstrings, adjusted the angle of their bows, and readied their arrows. The silver pegasus knights were already in the air, and the dragons were in their best positions, ready to dive!
“Shoot! Stop those damned treants!” Xeron growled.
The gog troop threw the explosive fire again. The succubi summoned by Xeron were frightened by the roar of the dragons, but they still hugged their hands in front of their chest and launched huge fireballs at the approaching dendroid guards!
After hitting the dendroid guards, the fireballs immediately ignited a blazing fire on them. However, the fireballs did not disappear and bounced off to the dendroid guards beside them. It was exhausted only after hitting several dendroid guards!
Although these dendroid guards had thick skin, their weakness was fire. Many of them fell after going up in flames.
However, there were too many dendroid guards, so how could they all be ignited so quickly? The remaining dendroid guards protected the other troops as they advanced. The dwarfs and centaur captains rushed to the front and began to fight the demon army.
The dragons swooped down from the sky. The green and emerald dragons blew thick green poisonous gas and acidic liquid onto the demons below. Their range was huge. Seven or eight of them covered almost the entire demon army. The demons that were sprayed on screamed. Their skin instantly started festering, and when the acid touched them, large amounts of skin and muscles dissolved and fell off in large chunks.
Many little demons died screaming before they even had the chance to encounter the enemy. Only after suffering a hell of erosive pain did they turn into ashes and were expelled from this world. The hellhounds and long-horned demons troops were slightly better off since their skins were tougher. They barely managed to survive the first waves of breaths in great pain. However, they were not so lucky once the golden dragon swooped down as well!
Although the gold dragons had acid dragon breath, their advantage was still in physical combat. They had massive bodies and indestructible gold scales. These dragons crushed many hellhounds to death when they landed. A wave of their claws swept a large group of long-horned demons as well. The hellhounds and long-horned demons tried to fight back, but their sharp teeth and long horns could not even leave a scratch on the gold dragons’ bodies!
The most troublesome thing was that the golden dragons were immune to most magic in this world. There was not much choice other than to fight them head-on…
As soon as the battle started, Xeron’s troops suffered heavy losses. The high-level army was a crushing existence to the low-level demons. Luckily, Roy was clever and stayed near Xeron. If he had stayed in the camp of the low-level demons, he might have been attacked by the enormous dragons.
“You, attack too!” Xeron knew it could not continue like this and immediately ordered the high-level demons he summoned. “Buy me some time!”
“You too!” Xeron turned to Roy. “Kill as many as you can!”
The deep abyss winged demons nodded. They immediately rushed out with their soul-stealing blades to slash at the green dragons. The big demons roared with laughter and disappeared with a blast of flames. They reappeared beside the gold dragons with their demon scythes in hand and sliced away at the scales of the gold dragons. Cuts immediately appeared on their scales, causing the gold dragons to turn their attention to the big demons instead.
These deep abyss demons and big demons instantly became the focus of the battlefield. The opponents of the high-level demons were naturally the high-level creatures. This was honoring the strengths of both camps.
The battles of this world had relatively small numbers of troops, normally in the thousands. A scale of ten thousand was rare. The problem was that their combat power was simply too strong…
Roy was a rather unremarkable low-rank demon in this battle, bringing him an unexpected but welcomed turn. As the focus turned to the high-level demons, Roy inched to the edge of the battlefield.
He did not appear on the front of the battlefield but defended a flank. He naturally did not encounter too many enemies. He would be able to persevere for a while with his combat power, and it would be convenient for Roy to escape at the edge as well.
Roy felt that Xeron could not win this battle. The demon troops would collapse under the offensive of the elves in no time, and then he would logically turn into a defeated soldier and run off when the time came.
Roy felt that Xeron could not make it, but Xeron did not think so. In this world, military strength could be the determining factor, but so could powerful magic. When the high-level demons began to withstand the dragons, Xeron put his demon scythe by his feet, and his hands began to flash with the radiance of magic…