Even though the gnome attack had been repelled, Richard had no intention of letting them off so easily. Even if gnomes were as small as mosquitoes, they still tasted like meat.

As the gnomes retreated, leaving the battlefield, a gap opened up in the allied forces’ line. Three hundred cavalrymen charged out from the gap. These armored cavalrymen, who rode bareback, lacked the power to directly challenge the cannibals’ main force, but they were more than capable of chasing down the retreating cannibals.

The thunder of hooves echoed behind the gnomes. Though gnomes ran faster than most human infantry, they could never outrun warhorses. Soon, the allied cavalry caught up with the retreating gnomes, their backs exposed.

For any army, encountering a cavalry charge in retreat was a disastrous scenario, especially a group of gnolls whose average height barely reached three feet.

Regardless of how courageous they had been before, after suffering a charge for less than a minute, the gnolls scattered in all directions, fleeing in disarray.

The cavalrymen mechanically rode their horses to trample and hack away at the enemy without meeting any resistance. They pursued the fleeing gnolls until they were within three hundred meters of their own camp before turning back.

After the cavalry’s pursuit, no more than five hundred of the two thousand-some gnomes who had belligerently charged the enemy would make it back alive. Even the hardiest and bravest of gnomes would be terrified by such a casualty rate, and they would likely not recover their fighting spirit for a long time.

“Those little dwarves are completely useless!”

Ruth was not particularly upset by the fleeing gnomes; in fact, his only frustration stemmed from the slight loss of face, not from the lives squandered. The morale of the allied forces, on the other hand, received quite a boost from the skirmish. Gnomes were not particularly formidable opponents, but a victory was a victory nonetheless.

Yet everyone understood that the real battle had yet to begin. The engagement would not begin in earnest until the two-meter-tall giants joined the fray.

“Come with me!” Ruth swung his wolf fang club, preparing to lead the cannibals into battle. In his eyes, probing the enemy with a few gnomes would yield no useful information, and it was time to bring out the big guns.

Two or three thousand human soldiers were no longer worth his cautious probing. His choice now was to go in swinging.

“Have the gnomes follow us. Once we break through their lines, let them charge in.”

This was not an act of kindness on Ruth’s part, but rather a realization that using the gnomes to charge the enemy had no effect other than to send them to their deaths. If he waited for the ogre soldiers to charge and disperse the human ranks before sending the gnomes into battle, he could cause the humans even more trouble.

Ruth wore a full suit of heavy armor, including a helmet that left only a small gap for seeing. This two-and-a-half-meter-tall giant, outfitted in full heavy armor, caused the earth to tremble with each step he took.

The slow pressure that radiated from his approach was far more terrifying than that of a few thousand gnomes, and even more so considering that dozens of similarly armored ogre soldiers followed in his wake.

If not for Richard and his men holding the rear, the mere sight of Ruth and his armored ogre army would have sent the nobles fleeing with their retinues.

Ogres appeared clumsy and walked slowly, but they moved surprisingly quickly and were upon the defenders in less than a hundred yards.

“Ballistas, prepare to fire!”

Several massive ballistas were drawn taut behind the allied lines, ready to fire. Each noble house had brought their own ballistas, which seemed unwieldy and were only deployed in open plains.

In the interest of speed, Richard hadn’t brought any bear-hunting crossbows with him, leaving those behind for the majority of the Flying Bear Army still at the castle. At present, they had yet to prove useful.

“Fire!”

Once the giants entered range, a signal flag was lowered, and the soldiers standing beside the ballista swung their battle-axes, severing the ropes stretched taut over the machines’ frames. Several giant bolts, each nearly two meters long, were loosed toward the charging giants.

Then, several nearby soldiers began to prepare a fresh round of ammunition.

Aside from the bear-hunting crossbows produced by Richard’s golden finger, the ballista’s deterrent effect far outweighed its practical use. More often than not, they should be lying flat atop a castle wall as a defensive weapon.

These cumbersome machines were difficult to reload, and they often only got one shot off before succumbing to enemy assault, rarely killing more than a handful of enemies. Their accuracy was also rather limited.

In truth, their true purpose wasn’t to directly deal damage to the enemy, but to horrify them with the gruesome wounds caused by these massive projectiles.

On the other side, several bolts had already been loosed and struck the giants’ formation. Two of them veered off course and stabbed into the ground, but one was quite lucky and headed straight for Ruth’s face.

Yet though Ruth appeared cumbersome, his reflexes were swift. With a swing of his wolf fang club, he deflected the giant arrow away from its target. Even the flesh-and-bone giants clad in heavy armor dared not block a blow from such a two-meter-long arrow and could only divert its course with their weapons.

“Ah!”

Though Ruth could divert the arrow, the same could not be said of the ordinary demon soldiers next to him. The giant arrow pierced through one, clean through both his armor and body.

However, what could have skewered multiple enemies at once lost all its momentum after slaying a single demon soldier, falling to the ground without causing further casualties.

The initial volley from the bed crossbows had no effect on the demons, who continued their advance toward the allied army. The front-line soldiers, with their better vision, could now make out the demons’ menacing facial features, and the hands of some began to tremble with fear.

It was understandable; any normal soldier faced with such an army of monstrous foes bearing heavy weaponry would feel apprehensive.

Clang!

Ruth once again deflected an arrow, this time as the demons closed in to within a hundred paces. Richard gave the command for the marksmen to commence firing at will.

However, the marksmen’s deadly effectiveness this time was not as clear as when they had annihilated the other two tribes. In their previous engagement, the enemy had been almost entirely unarmored, but this time, the front-line demons were equipped with heavy armor.

Even with Richard’s offensive enchantment, the marksmen’s attacks lacked the power to penetrate the armor of the front-line demons.

They were forced to target the unguarded lower halves of the demons’ bodies. While such blows were not fatal, they could hinder the demons’ mobility, and some of the demons were even knocked out.

After two rounds of volleys, nearly ten of the demons had fallen. The forces led by Ruth also entered within range of the allied archers.

At a distance of fifty steps, a rain of arrows descended upon them, a volley far denser than that of the marksmen, yet these hundreds of arrows did far less damage than the marksmen had inflicted upon the demon horde.

A closer look revealed that not a single demon fell, while dozens of gnome casualties littered the ground.

“Long spears! Attack!”

As the demons drew closer, the front-line spearmen raised their battle cries, bolstering their courage.