Free Web NovelAlthough the 17th Legion, having burst out of the mud, was in a sorry state, their armor caked in mud, the three thousand Black Steel Knights still maintained a terrifying charging momentum.
The earth trembled, warhorses snorted white mist, as if they were about to uproot this icy plain.
Only less than a thousand meters separated them from Frost Halberd City.
Taiwan novel artifact is super reliable
Ackerman grinned ferociously, his face contorted by the cold wind.
He saw the seemingly thin front line of Red Tide Knights ahead, and the arrogance in his heart completely erupted.
These people would soon be crushed to dust by his Black Steel tide!
Just an instant before the 17th Legion was about to collide... the Red Tide Knights suddenly retreated rapidly to both sides like a tide, their movements so uniform it was almost eerie.
Ackerman's pupils constricted: "Hmph, trying to lure us in? Naive!"
But before he could finish his sentence, the open ground behind him, shrouded in mist, suddenly lit up.
The moment the white mist dispersed, Ackerman finally saw the second wall hidden in front of the city gate.
It wasn't a shield formation, but an entire line of steam tanks, their oppressive presence like abyssal beasts.
They were arranged horizontally, forming a steel bulwark, each one twice the height of a warhorse, with a wedge-shaped body. Rivets covered their shells like plump Cold Iron scars, and their front-mounted alloy ramming horns resembled predators' fangs.
The tracks slowly ground forward, heavy metal chains biting firmly into the frozen earth. Copper steam pipes constantly bulged and vibrated; high-pressure steam from the boilers spewed black smoke. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
"Boom... boom... boom..."
The low-frequency roar, a blend of piston rhythm and power core vibration, was so heavy it sounded like giants hammering from deep underground.
It was a tremor, a feeling of fear spreading outwards from the very bones.
The wind was distorted by the vibration, layers of frost peeled from the ground, and the snow near the city gate slid down with the shaking of the vehicles, as if the entire world was submitting to these steel monsters.
Ackerman froze for half a second, then burst into laughter, his voice filled with scorn and arrogance.
"Hahahaha! Is this your trump card, Louis? Dozens of... iron coffins?!"
He threw his head back, laughing so hard his nostrils flared: "You think these broken toys can stop me? What a joke!"
He suddenly raised his longsword high, battle qi exploding into a dazzling white glow on the blade.
His roar echoed across the battlefield: "17th Legion—crush them!!! Enter the city and slaughter for three days!!!"
The black torrent let out its final roar. Warhorses neighed, iron armor vibrated, and the remaining formation was re-strung by collective killing intent.
Three thousand heavy cavalry, like a giant black spear ignited by fury, fiercely stabbed towards that wall of steel tanks.
The earth trembled under their hooves, the air heated by the sound of steam, and the snowflakes in the sky were scattered, falling in disarray.
The two torrents of war were about to collide head-on in the next second... On the North City Wall, Count Albert, seeing the hundred steam tanks neatly arrayed below the city, finally couldn't hold back. His gray beard trembled incessantly.
"Absurd... utterly absurd!" he roared in a low voice, "No chevaux de frise, no infantry phalanx, no dense forest of long spears... just relying on these iron lumps to block cavalry? Louis, you're gambling with the fate of the entire Northland!"
As soon as he finished speaking, the other nobles also turned pale.
Count Albert wanted to say more, but Louis had already raised his hand, and gently waved it down... "BOOM—!!!"
One hundred main cannons roared simultaneously.
The tremor was so strong that even the stone bricks on the city wall lightly shook, and the water in the cups on the table splashed subtly.
The air seemed to be torn apart, and sheets of white snow were shaken into the air, turning into a pervasive white mist.
The next instant, dense, seamless shotgun pellets spewed from the tank muzzles.
That was not an arrow rain, nor a magic beam.
It was a steel meat grinder net, capable of slicing through knight formations, tearing heavy armor, and shaking warhorse bones.
The vanguard of the 17th Legion didn't even have time to let out a roar before being completely shorn off by the torrent of pellets.
Not falling, but completely vanishing.
Black Steel plate armor was deformed and shattered, and warhorse necks snapped like broken branches under the kinetic impact.
Knights were torn into a bloody mist in the pellet storm.
In just a single breath, hundreds of heavily armored knights were erased from the battlefield.
Silence swallowed the entire city wall.
Ackerman's face was distorted in shock, but he still forced out a roar: "Keep going! Crossing them means victory! Retreat means death!"
The 17th Legion, as expected of the Empire's elite ace, gritted their teeth and pushed through their inner fear, continuing to charge forward.
But just then, behind the tank formation, a group of Red Tide Grenadier Knights simultaneously pulled their fuses.
Over a hundred Take Frost to Devour Soul Bombs, inscribed with blue magic patterns, were tossed high into the air.
As they fell, they emitted a faint but eerie "humming," like some ancient, withered god breathing softly in the depths.
The bombs rolled into the knight ranks, producing no fire, only circles of spreading ethereal blue ripples, like cold tides crashing upon the soul.
The instant the blue light swept over, the fear that had been suppressed by reason in the hearts of the 17th Legion Knights was mercilessly magnified a hundredfold by the Soul-Shaking Bombs.
That bone-chilling coldness that only appears in the last moments of life for the dying was forcibly shoved back into their brains.
Their vision began to distort, colors drained away, leaving only darkness and displacement.
In their eyes, the steam tanks were no longer cold machines, but giant beasts with steel spines on their backs and gaping bellies.
Every puff of steam was like a demon licking a victim's ear.
The figures of their comrades were stretched and twisted, the reflections on their armor shimmering like fangs; they were no longer ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) allies, but monstrous shadows lunging at them with bloodied mouths.
Chaos erupted instantly.
Some tore off their helmets, letting out hoarse screams in a brief moment of mental tearing.
Some swung their swords at the giant beasts lunging in their illusions, only to realize the next second that they almost struck a comrade.
Some collapsed onto their saddles, gasping, hands trembling, as if something cold had climbed from the back of their necks all the way to their scalps.
More stumbled and fell from their warhorses, rolling a few times in the mud and snow before forcefully steadying themselves, their faces pale, pupils violently constricted.
Ackerman, an Extraordinary Knight, forcefully activated his battle qi to resist, and soon, with bloodshot eyes, roared to regain his composure.
His voice was hoarse like a wild beast's roar: "Hold steady!! Maintain formation!! Everyone look at me!! Look at me!!!"
The roar slammed into the chaotic battle line like an iron hammer, but what answered him were throat-shredding screams from all directions.
"Don't come near me!! That thing... that thing is behind me!!"
"It's going to bite off my leg! Get away! Get away!"
"That's not a person!! Not a person!! Stay away from me!!"
"My horse... my horse is dead! I can't move! Help... help..."
Several knights crashed into each other, their armor sparking, wildly swinging their swords at the air. Some fell directly from their saddles, frantically clawing at the mud and snow, as if entangled by invisible specters.
Of course, this chaos didn't last long. It only lasted a few short seconds.
But even as battle qi reignited within them and their wills began to stabilize, those few short breaths of chaos had already left an irreparable rift.
Ackerman, of course, realized this, but he was powerless... Though only disturbed for a few breaths, it was enough to ensure his line could never fully recover its original integrity.
Before these knights could fully recover, the hundred steam tanks had already engaged first gear.
Steel tracks bit deep into the frozen earth, emitting a piercing shriek that seemed to scrape at one's nerves.
The entire tank formation slowly advanced, that immense force impacting at high speed, a crushing by weight itself, like a mountain sliding forward.
The first row of knights, suddenly forced backward and tripping, didn't even have time to raise their shields before the V-shaped ramming horns mercilessly slammed into them!
"CRACK—SMASH!!"
The sound was like thick wood breaking, but accompanied by the dull thud of collapsing metal.
Full plate armor was crushed into deformed curves under the ramming horns, knights' chests were forced inward, bones and helmets shattered together, and blood sprayed from the cracks like burst wineskins.
The tracks then rolled over them.
"Squeak—gasp—snap!"
Metal broke, bones shattered, and the warhorses' limbs snapped one by one like wet branches.
Knights and warhorses were entangled, pulverized by the tracks, their flesh and blood ground into viscous red mud between the chains, mixed with shattered hooves, broken lances, and still-twitching severed limbs.
"Ah—my leg!! My leg is gone!!"
"Save me... save me!! Don't leave me!!"
"Mother... Mother..."
These sounds were continually stretched and torn apart in the roar of iron and fire, like wet rags thrown into the gaps of iron gears and continuously crushed.
Someone tried to crawl up, their fingertips scratching bloody trails in the mud and snow, but just as they raised their head, their entire face was crushed into a blurry pulp under the tracks the next second.
Helmets sank into the crushed snow like flattened iron cans, facial bones collapsed with the steel, emitting an eerie "crunch".
More screams were suddenly cut off, turning into desperate whimpers before throats were choked with blood.
"Ugh! Cough... cough... no... I don't want to die..."
The sound abruptly broke, like a violin string violently snapped.
The front ranks had become a hill of flesh and shattered armor piled almost as high as a horse's belly, yet the tank formation showed no pause, continuing to advance.
As the tracks rolled over, they pressed the gruesome pile even deeper, emitting wet, horrifying "squelch—splat—gasp—" sounds.
Even with mountains of bodies ahead, they still advanced like judges summoned by the night, in a mechanical and indifferent manner, without any emotion, without any mercy.
A heavily armored demonic warhorse struggled with all its might to rise from the mud and snow, and just as a soul-shattering neigh burst from its mouth, the tracks rolled over its spine.
With a "bang," its massive body collapsed as if emptied, the crisp sound of its spine breaking turning the faces of nearby soldiers ashen.
Blood sprayed from the armor gaps in a hot, dark red mist, splashing the faces of knights several meters away with warm, coppery blood.
"No! Don't push me! I beg you—I don't want to die!"
A Black Steel Knight, squeezed in front of the tracks, shrieked, but his voice was completely swallowed by the sound of metal breaking the next second.
Ackerman's Black Steel Knights were cut, flattened, torn, and buried by the advancing steam tanks... flesh and steel were kneaded into iron-red paste under the tracks.
In the center of this inferno, Ackerman roared, channeling his battle qi, and shot out like a black lightning bolt through a gap in the chaotic remnants of his troops.
His warhorse had just reached the tank's flank when it was shaken to its knees, but he, with brute force, leaped up, wielding his heavy sword with surging battle qi, and fiercely slashed at the front of one of the steam tanks.
"STOP—!!!"
With a crash!
The blade struck the Cold Iron shell, sparks exploding like scattered white fiery rain.
The blow was so strong it even created a huge dent in the tank's shell; the metal plate was bent, emitting a pained steel groan.
But the tank did not stop.
It merely trembled slightly, like a giant beast whose shoulder had been patted.
The next instant, the tracks suddenly accelerated, grinding forward fiercely as if in response to the provocation.
Ackerman's face changed drastically; he had no time to dodge.
The tank's heavy ramming horn slammed into his chest, sending him flying directly backward.
"THUD—!!"
He tumbled several meters through the air like a broken puppet, crashing through two layers of residual armor and corpses in the knight formation, finally smashing a half-man-deep pit in the snow. Blood sprayed from the cracks in his armor, staining the surrounding snow red.
But the tank didn't spare him a glance, didn't stop, and didn't slow down.
As if it didn't consider him, an Extraordinary Knight Legion Commander, to be of any consequence.
Ackerman lay on the snow, gasping violently, the sound of his broken sternum clearly audible. He looked up at the ever-approaching steel torrent of death, and for the first time, his pupils showed true fear.
And his Black Steel Knights... were already under the tracks, ground into unrecognizable bloody mud and shattered metal fragments, completely annihilated in the ruthless fury of the industrial age.
When the 17th Legion was scattered and their formation completely collapsed by the tank assault.
The Red Tide's harvesting force burst out from the gaps between the tanks!
Lambert personally led the Red Tide Royal Guard Knights, their red cloaks unfurling a dazzling crimson tide in the wind and snow.
All members of this unit were elite knights or above, moving with the swiftness of a gale, cooperating with terrifying precision.
They were like highly mobile predators, flexibly weaving through the cover provided by the steam tanks.
Any enemy troops attempting to regroup, once targeted by them, had only one outcome... "Explode."
Magic Bombs, like lit sparks falling into a haystack, first blasted the dense enemy formations into disarray.
The Red Tide Knights followed closely, charging into the smoke with drawn swords, harvesting every still-living wounded soldier with skilled, ruthless movements.
The knights of the 17th Legion were completely bewildered.
Their proud blocking techniques, their proud shield walls, their heavy and thick Black Steel plate armor were meaningless in the face of the Magic Bomb's absolute kill zone of ten meters and the Red Tide's high-mobility infiltration tactics.
The brief chaos caused by the Take Frost to Devour Soul Bombs had not completely dissipated, and the battlefield was immediately filled with small-scale explosions.
Each explosion meant the complete collapse of a small squad's combat effectiveness.
The crushing of the tanks, the harvesting by the Red Tide Knights, and the booming of the Magic Bombs all occurred simultaneously on the same battlefield.
This was not a battle; this was the execution of old-era knights by new-era knights.
