The trench corridor was nothing more than a clay crevice one point eight meters wide. Its walls were wet, smelled of moss, and radiated the metallic stench of settled monster blood. Darkness enveloped the elite Upper Class troops who barged in hastily. Their heavy iron boots sank into the sucking mud at the bottom of the trench. The balance that served as the foundation of their beautiful swordsmanship was instantly shattered.
They marched far too closely together. Their longswords continuously collided with one another, creating a noisy clanking of iron that utterly destroyed their own element of surprise.
Right at a narrow angled zigzag bend that served as a blind spot, I waited. I lowered my center of gravity into a half crouch, blending perfectly with the muddy shadows.
The frontline cadet turned the corner with his sword raised to shoulder height. He was ready to slash anything from chest level upward.
I attacked from below his visual range. I held the Blood-Iron sword with a shortened grip. My right hand was positioned right beneath the crossguard to transform this giant sword into a close quarters thrusting knife.
With a single, highly explosive short lunge powered by my leg muscles, I thrust the tip of the Blood-Iron precisely into the armor gap behind that cadet's knee.
Riiip!
The horrifying sound of tearing tendons could be heard.
"ARGHH! Gods, my leg! My leg is severed!" shrieked the first cadet hysterically. His leg structure collapsed, forcing him to fall hard onto his knees into the mud.
As his body fell to my chest level, I did not withdraw my sword at all. My left hand, which had been gripping the Trench Dagger from the very beginning, darted out in a reverse grip. The tip of the dagger hooked the bottom of the opponent's helmet, jerked his head backward roughly, and immediately slashed the exposed gap in his neck.
"W-What?!"
The second cadet, situated right behind him, was shocked to see the splatter of hot blood. Responding in a panic, he raised his longsword high and attempted to execute a vertical slash aiming for my head.
This was a fatal mistake in a confined space. I stepped forward, closing the distance to absolute zero.
Instead of parrying with my sword, I used my forearm to smash into the elbow of the cadet's raised arm.
That hard collision shifted the trajectory of his swing. The second cadet's longsword missed my body completely, swung wildly to the side, and its blade tip embedded itself ten centimeters deep into the thick clay wall.
His weapon was now dead.
"Damn it! My weapon is stuck in the wall!" shouted the second cadet in a panic while struggling to pull his sword hilt. "I cannot pull my hand back!"
I responded to that panic by smashing the pommel of my Blood-Iron directly into his face guard.
Crack!
A loud cracking sound echoed. The opponent's nasal bone was crushed behind his steel helmet. His body staggered backward and crashed into his own formation.
Now, the body of the dead first cadet and the unconscious second cadet became a natural barricade in that narrow corridor. The cadets behind them stumbled over the bodies of their own comrades.
"What is happening up front?!" yelled a cadet from the middle of the line with a trembling voice.
"Someone is dead! Fall back! Give me some room!" shrieked another cadet while pushing his friend's back roughly.
"Keep moving forward! Why are you all just standing there?!" shouted Darius Greyvein angrily from the back of the line, unable to see what was unfolding at the front. "Surround him right now, you idiots!"
The troops from the rear continued to push forward. They crushed the front line, which was actually trying to retreat to avoid my attacks. They were squeezed tightly between the earthen walls, the bodies of their friends, and the tip of my dagger.
"The corridor is too narrow, Sir!" shouted a third cadet while retreating in fear, squished against his comrade's back. "We cannot pass through it together! There are corpses up ahead!"
I took one slow step backward, letting the tip of my dagger drip blood onto the mud. I stared at the chaos with the cold eyes of a predator. My breath was not even ragged.
I let panic and claustrophobia do half of my work tonight.
"Pull back the front line!" The firm voice of Henry Percy sliced through the panic, analyzing the sound of clashing armor from the rear. "You cannot surround him in this narrow hole! Long weapons are useless in there!"
Hearing that intelligent command, I deliberately took a step back. I turned around and jogged deeper into the trench corridor.
Seeing my retreating silhouette, Darius's blood, filled with ego and vengeance, boiled over.
"He is running! That street dog is out of energy!" yelled Darius, his eyes bulging savagely. "Chase him! Do not let him turn that corner!"
"Darius, stop! Use your eyes!" snapped Henry, thrusting the shaft of his spear in front of Darius's chest. "That is a kill zone formation! Pull your troops back right now!"
"To hell with the kill zone! Kill him!" Darius swatted Henry's spear away roughly and led his troops to barge forward.
Darius's troops blindly barged through the turn. Right as their boots stepped into the mud puddle at that corner, Virelith, who was hiding in a tunnel alcove, cast her spell.
"Earth Grinder, maximum activation," whispered Virelith coldly from behind the earthen wall.
The muddy ground the cadets stepped on exploded upward with terrifying force. The wet clay instantly mutated into rows of spears and stone spikes as sharp as steel.
"Noooo! My stomach!" shrieked an elite cadet as a stone spike pierced his intestines. He vomited fresh blood into the air.
"Help! Get this rock out of my calf! Help me!" roared another cadet whose leg was deeply impaled, thrashing hysterically in the mud.
The trench path was completely blocked by a forest of stone spikes in a matter of seconds.
"Climb these trench walls! Evacuate upward quickly!" ordered Henry while pulling a cadet up.
Amidst the light drizzle and slippery mud, this evacuation process became incredibly chaotic and humiliating for those elite nobles.
"Grab my hand, you idiot!" shouted a cadet from the top of the trench lip, extending his hand.
"Do not push my ass!" replied the cadet below him who was climbing.
However, the slippery iron boots slipped from their clay footing. The cadet slid and fell back into the trench in an awkward position.
"Watch out!"
A ridiculous sound of tearing flesh could be heard. The cadet fell into a seated position right on top of one of the remaining sharp stone spikes from Virelith's magic.
"AAAAARGH! My buttocks! This damn rock pierced my ass!" wailed the cadet, rolling around in a highly humiliating manner over puddles of mud and blood, thoroughly destroying the image of Upper Class knights they had always been so proud of.
"Disgusting mud! My clothes are ruined!" cursed Darius, wiping his silk cloak which was now wet and stained brown. He kicked a clump of dirt emotionally.
"You useless pigs!" snapped Darius, kicking the helmet of one of the cadets groaning in pain. "Stand up, idiots! How many gold coins did my father pay to watch you play in the mud like starving pigs?! I am going to slit Kael's throat very slowly for making me this dirty!"
Henry ignored Darius's ranting entirely. The knight stood tall on the forest ground. He looked down, dissecting my trench design from above. His military brain worked rapidly. This trench was dug in a zigzag pattern, not straight. It was deliberately designed so that area-of-effect magic shots could not travel far, and every turn broke the line of sight.
Kael Draven had truly applied military fortress tactics into a dirty dirt hole, Henry thought to himself.
"Stop preparing your fireballs!" commanded Henry, turning to the mage squad behind him. "We need clear vision, not blind explosions. Shoot a light flare right above us!"
The night sky of the Forbidden Forest was instantly illuminated by a blinding white light. Henry then took out a tracking crystal the size of a fist surrounded by floating metal rings. He released the intelligence artifact into the air. The crystal flew, scanning for life signatures and body heat inside the dark trench corridors below.
In an underground protective alcove, Selena was emitting a cold healing magic onto my waist, which was once again seeping blood due to the impact of jumping earlier. Suddenly, a red light shone down from above, piercing through the gaps in our camouflage leaves.
"Optical tracking magic," I said, looking up sharply. "Our position has been compromised. Everyone keep moving, stay crouched below the ground line!"
From above the ground, Darius saw the reflection of my silhouette in the mirror of his tracking artifact. The noble's anger exploded uncontrollably.
"That is them! Archers! Mages!" shouted Darius while pointing toward the ground. "Fire all your projectiles and flames at those coordinates! Destroy the trench until it is flat!"
A rain of arrows and a barrage of magic shot down from above. However, the physics of trench warfare proved its absolute superiority. Because we were crouching at a depth of two meters and protected by the mounds of dirt at the trench lip, ninety percent of the enemy arrows merely embedded themselves in the hard clay. The explosions of fire magic were naturally muffled by the dense and wet earth structure.
The enemy was wasting their precious Mana entirely in vain.
Henry stepped forward with peaking anger. He swatted away Darius's hand, which was giving commands, so forcefully that Darius staggered backward.
"Cease your fire, you fools!" snapped Henry. "You are only burning the grass! That wet earth is absorbing all the explosive power!"
"How dare you order me and touch me, Percy?!" roared Darius, feeling incredibly insulted. He grabbed Henry's collar fiercely. "You just happen to be Orvelis's favorite knight! I am your senior, so I hold the command of the Nightbane faction in this exam!"
Henry's eyes narrowed sharply. Flashes of lightning crackled dangerously at the tip of his spear. His voice changed into a deadly baritone.
"You hold command of the faction, Viscount. But I hold command over all our lives on this battlefield," hissed Henry, staring directly into Darius's eyes. "Keep shouting like a spoiled child, and I myself will gladly let Kael cut out your tongue."
Darius was completely silenced by Henry's incredibly dense killing aura. He released Henry's collar with trembling hands and backed away slowly.
Henry turned his body and walked slowly to the edge of the trench lip. He looked down with a chillingly calculative smile. He had finally found the absolute weakness of the tactics I was employing.
"He is hiding underground because he knows we will attack from above. An incredibly genius thought," said Henry softly, openly admiring his enemy's tactics. "But, every underground architecture has one absolute natural enemy."
Henry turned to the row of water and mud element mages behind him. The tip of his spear pointed sharply toward my defensive ground.
"We will not shoot arrows at them. We will drown this trench," commanded Henry absolutely. "Change the soil structure around them into a sinking swamp."
Henry smirked cruelly as he looked down. "Let us see how long these filthy rats can hold their breath inside the mud."
In the dark underground, I suddenly halted my steps. My eyes widened slightly as I felt the solid dirt floor I stepped on begin to vibrate softly. In a matter of seconds, the ground beneath our boots transformed into a thick mud liquid that began sucking our legs downward with terrifying force.
The quicksand trap had been activated.