Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
A barrage of spell projectiles arced in, kicking up clouds of dull yellow dust. The cavalry, charging at full speed, saw they had caught up to the Roman force and instinctively tightened their formation, surging straight into the mouth of the valley.
But through the hazy, sand-filled air, what greeted them were fist-sized, vicious horse traps hidden beneath the dust, Magecraft mines, and relentless waves of arrows pouring down from the slopes on both sides.
In an instant, hundreds of Persian cavalry at the front were thrown into chaos, men and horses tumbling.
Those who crashed to the ground suffered shattered bones and torn flesh, while the charging troops behind them lowered their heads, raised their shields, and pressed forward without slowing.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Under the pounding of countless iron hooves, the unlucky ones on the ground were trampled into pulp without mercy.
Pompey and Samael both felt a jolt of unease. There was something different about this force, something ferocious.
At the same time, the Roman legions, waiting in formation, deployed by centuriae in intersecting ranks. The front line crouched, using their javelins as spears, while those behind thrust forward or hurled them in coordinated volleys. Several interlocking formations supported one another, forming the classic heavy infantry anti-cavalry formation.
Facing a forest of spears over two meters long, with grooved iron shafts and sharp triangular tips, the Persian cavalry that crashed into them were immediately skewered. Even armored warhorses were punched through like sieves under the sheer force of impact.
The charge of nearly twenty thousand cavalry ground to a halt.
The Roman legions began tearing into the Persian ranks layer by layer. The clash of metal, the tearing of flesh, the detonation of spell projectiles, and the shrill screams blended into a relentless cacophony.
But as the Roman formations pushed a third of the way into the enemy cavalry, the front ranks that had held firm were suddenly blasted apart. Soldiers and shields alike were sent flying, bones snapping midair, bodies twisting into grotesque shapes as if crushed by overwhelming force. The tightly packed formation was violently torn open.
In an instant, Roman casualties surged.
The Persian cavalry who broke through dismounted as soon as their horses fell, tearing out the arrows embedded in their bodies, ripping free the javelins lodged in their flesh, drawing curved blades, and charging again as if nothing had happened.
From their vantage point, Samael and Pompey locked eyes, their expressions dark.
The Undead Army.
A large number of Undead had been mixed into the cavalry ranks. At a glance, there were at least four to five thousand of them.
To commit nearly half of the Undead Army just to break through and intercept… they were truly going all out.
In the narrow valley, the Roman heavy infantry's anti-cavalry formation was steadily forced back by the Undead, who charged forward without regard for casualties. The Roman lines, split apart and disrupted, began to fall into chaos.
Samael watched the battlefield, where flesh and blood flew and the fight ground into a deadlock, his brow tightly furrowed.
Three to five thousand Undead alone could not defeat forty to fifty thousand Roman soldiers. That much was obvious.
But when someone stakes everything, it is always for a bigger prize.
Darius III's army, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, was likely already on the move, closing in from all directions, preparing to swallow this Roman force whole.
Tch. They had been played.
Realizing the situation, the Ancient Serpent felt a headache coming on, frustration rising in his chest.
But in truth, this was not simply a miscalculation. The gap in strength between the two sides, along with Rome's strained resources, meant he had very few options to begin with.
This kind of reckless, no-cost-spared clash was exactly the kind of fight the Roman legions could not afford.
It seemed the Persian army had its share of seasoned tacticians.
This was bad…
Samael and Pompey regrouped and quickly exchanged a few words, settling on two possible strategies.
One was the prudent choice: cut off a limb to save the body. Leave ten thousand men behind to block the Persian cavalry while the main force withdrew immediately toward the Ninth Legion's camp.
They had chosen this valley, wide at the entrance and narrow at the exit, precisely for situations like this, to facilitate a retreat.
But doing so would mean abandoning those ten thousand men entirely, a heavy blow to both morale and strength.
The other option was to gamble. Bet that they could destroy this three-to-five-thousand-strong Undead force acting as bait before Darius III completed the encirclement, and still have enough strength left to break out.
High risk, high reward.
If they won, they could break the backbone of the Persian Empire's army of two to three hundred thousand, securing the eastern front's ability to stand and fight head-on.
If they misplayed this, it would mean the total collapse of the Roman Empire's entire eastern front.
And yet, neither option was truly a good one.
This battle concerned the rise and fall of the whole Roman Empire. Even Pompey, for all his decisiveness, found himself wavering. Several times he looked toward the god beside him, wanting to speak, only to stop.
Samael ran his palm over the carved patterns of the bow, his fingertips lightly tapping the string. The flicker in his eyes slowly hardened into ruthless resolve.
Win, and it's paradise. Lose, and it's still paradise.
Same ending either way. Damn it, let's gamble!
Having made up his mind, Samael lifted his head and looked down over the deadlocked battlefield, baring his teeth in a savage grin.
"Since they delivered themselves to our door, then we eat them as fast as possible!"
With the divine decree in hand, Pompey immediately steadied himself, casting aside all hesitation. In his calm, razor-sharp eyes, there was now only the battlefield before him. One order after another to shift formations and tighten the encirclement was delivered with absolute precision across the army.
The entire Roman legion moved like a finely wound mechanism, each gear meshing flawlessly with the next, launching a ruthless divide-and-kill assault against the Persian vanguard in the valley.
The priests and Magi attached to the army sensed the ominous air as well and poured every ounce of effort into supporting the battle with Magecraft and divine arts, blasting the enemy into chaos and turning the ground into a river of blood.
And yet, at that moment, the Ancient Serpent's gaze passed over the battlefield and reached farther into the distance.
Slash!
Pressed in by several large shields, one Undead soldier had his right arm hacked off and his abdomen split open. But he immediately seized a bent javelin with his left hand and, dragging his spilling intestines, slammed sideways into the Roman squad, throwing their formation into disorder.
Stab! Stab!
In the next instant, spears shot through the gaps between shields and skewered two Roman soldiers clean through.
Only when the Roman soldiers regained their senses and swarmed him, tearing off his limbs and butchering the Undead soldier piece by piece, did that small clash finally come to an end.
But before the squad could celebrate for even a moment, dozens of cavalrymen burst from the inner ring of encirclement and came slashing in from the side. They swept past with whistling speed, blades flashing down, and heads dropped to the ground one after another as headless corpses sprayed blood from their necks and collapsed twitching.
As for the squad led by three Undead soldiers, they did not even make it through the third ring before dozens of spell projectiles smashed into them. Amid violent explosions, men and horses were blown apart together.
Within the narrow valley, slaughter played out without pause. Severed arms and broken limbs were scattered everywhere, corpses piled over one another, and even the yellow-brown soil and rocks were stained in patches of red.
But as time passed, fewer and fewer Undead were able to rise again and counterattack, while the Roman legions, beating them down through coordinated combined-arms tactics, still maintained their organization intact.
Seeing the number of Undead reduced to barely a thousand, even Pompey, normally so stern and steady, could not help feeling a surge of joy.
But before the Roman legions could finish wiping out this remnant force, thunderous tremors rolled in from all around the valley, and massive clouds of dust shot into the sky.
The scouts sent out earlier quickly relayed the battlefield intelligence through Magecraft resonance.
To the east, fifty thousand Persian troops, with several thousand spellcasters attached!
To the southeast, sixty thousand Persian troops, including a full elephant corps!
At those words, Pompey felt his heart tighten, and his face froze.
The Persians had come after all...