631 Acting As Decoy
Reinforcements were coming. It might be good news, but Abel wasn’t too happy to hear about it. After all, if the humans knew about this, there was no way that the orcs didn’t as well. The reinforcement would come in five minutes. Until then, they would surely become more aggressive in their attacks.
There was also something else that was troubling. It was easy to tell from the four intermediate orc priests back then. Abel wasn’t really sure what the orcs were planning, but they were probably preparing for something big.
It was night time now. Since it was hard to see, the quaking earth became all the even scarier. The human team couldn’t make an estimate of the enemies’ number. They could only tell once the two were close enough to each other.
As though the spirits had come to help, a gentle breeze swept away the clouds that were blocking the moon. It wasn’t bright enough yet, but at least it could make the humans see a few hundred meters more.
Abel was tired of waiting, “Head Commander Edi! Please, give me permission to strike first! I want to disrupt the enemy troop before they come to us!”
The plan was simple. Since the orcs had already known about his bow, it’d be pointless to go for a distanced attack. If he just stayed here for defense, it’d be impossible to utilize the mount wolf king’s speed.
There was also something else that was very important. If it was against a bunch of intermediate orc priests, Abel wasn’t confident that he could do a good job to protect his comrades.
Head Commander Edi agreed, “Sure! Watch out for yourself!”
“Yes, sir!”
Within an instance, the mount wolf king Abel was riding sprinted for about five hundred meters away.
There were about ten thousand of them in total. Upon a closer look, Abel could tell that there were at least twenty orc priests and twenty bearmen. All the bearmen were at the front, and they had giant s.h.i.+elds in both of their arms.
“A Mount wolf king! A mount wolf king has been spotted!”
It was a head wolfrider captain that yelled this out. He was just too excited to see a mount wolf king. After he told the other soldiers about it, two mini troops were deployed from their main formation. There were about two thousand wolfriders on each side. They were planning to flank Abel on both sides.
Actually, it was both sides and the front. The main force was not stopping. There were even a bunch of skeletons that were rus.h.i.+ng towards him. Abel actually stopped thinking for a while when he saw this. He didn’t expect his enemies to be this well prepared.
Still, this was better for him. If he wasn’t against this ma.s.sive troop by himself, he would’ve been told to stay on defense for a very, very long time. He would have to listen to only what Head Commander Edi said, and judging from how much “common sense” that man had, the only thing he would’ve said would be to defend until they could retreat.
Again, since the moon was out in the open, a blue falcon was deployed to the air above Abel’s head. He had no choice but to retreat now. Still, instead of guiding these orcs to where the team was, he decided to lure them into a slightly different direction.
All this time, he didn’t stop shooting arrows from his bow. He was riding backward on his mount wolf king, and after switching to “arrow rain” mode, he just shot the arrows out without doing too much aiming.
In front of the wolfriders that were chasing Abel, the skeletons were running at a terrifying speed. Since it was nighttime, it took them much less time to be recharged with death qi. They were in their best condition to run up to Abel.
For the first pile of his arrows, Abel decided to shoot at the skeletons that were running the fastest. He did in three seconds. By injecting lighting into sixty of his readied arrows, a bunch of arrows was unleashed at these creatures.
To Abel’s dismay, his arrows seemed to be a waste. Whatever these skeletons used to be, they must’ve been at least in the rank of a knight’s commander. And now, with the buff effect of the death qi, their defensive capability could be compared to that of a head knight’s commander. When the arrows. .h.i.t them, the zapping effect would only last for a few seconds before they got themselves to start running again.
It was a horrifying thing to see. When one of the arrows just snapped off a skeleton’s left from the rest of its body, it just kept running with its remaining three limbs. It wasn’t even getting slower.
“d.a.m.n!” Abel cursed when he saw this.
There was only one way now. He could destroy the soul fire of these skeletons, but there wasn’t really a way for him to target their heads. He could try, but he just couldn’t be as accurate as he would during the day.
Luckily enough, the mount wolf king was still pretty fast. It was already luring the wolfrider’s troop in a different direction.
An orc priest in a grey hood screamed, “You can’t run from us!”
Unlike most priests, this one was riding on top of a beast-type skeleton that was running extremely fast. Three bone s.h.i.+elds were floating around his body. Underneath the robe that he was wearing, he had clay covering all parts of his body. The only parts that weren’t were his eyes, nose, and mouth.
When Abel shot three arrows at the orc priest, they were all blocked with his bone s.h.i.+eld. The lightning effect was completely neutralized by the clay that the priest was wearing.
Abel was in trouble. He didn’t have a lot of experience with fighting powerful orc priests. He could try to use his full power to deal with this, but that would risk revealing his true ident.i.ty.
So far, the only reason they were targeting him was his mount and the kong kong spiritual beast bag that he had. He wanted to keep it that way. If they knew that he was “Abel,” the only human grandmaster blacksmith, there’s no telling what they would do to try to get him.
Abel had other choices, but he decided to retreat for now. Whenever he moved back a little, he would try to kill off as many orcs as he could. Instead of going for the strong ones, he would try to sweep off the weaker, but more numerous enemies.
It turned out to be the right strategy. Things started working to Abel’s favor after he decided to target only the regular wolfriders. For every second, he would make at least twenty wolfriders fall on the ground. They might still be alive after that, but the ones behind them would almost certainly trample over them and turn them into mush.
Still, ten thousand was a very ma.s.sive number. Even with the speed that the mount wolf king had, the wolfrider troop continued to push Abel back from three different angles. Abel had to keep changing the direction that he was moving, but he never really got the chance to cut them off.
The main reason was the blue falcon that was watching over him. It was spying his every single movement. Also, no matter which direction he went to, he would have to make sure that he wasn’t guiding the enemy to where his team was.