The Amber Sword

Freya bit her lip as she saw the wolf pack gather and then spread out suddenly, revealing something in the center- a few wolf corpses piled up together. Traces of a fierce battle could be seen everywhere in the snowy plain, which had been arranged beforehand to ensure that Yoakam and his team would enter the best shooting range.

After Yoakam found the corpses, he walked over slowly, followed by four gigantic wolves that were the size of war horses and surrounded him. They were the ghosts of the winter lands that often appeared in folk tales- the descendants of Warg Hati, the Pale Sons, far more terrifying than the Winter Wolves in the forest.

“Are you confident?” Brund, relieved to see that Yoakam had indeed squatted down beside those wolf corpses and started examining them, asked as he glanced sideways.

“I can give it a try.” Lolo replied.

After the simple conversation, the Folded Sword Squad made a final adjustment, took a deep breath, held it, kept the hand holding the bow steady, and then slowly pushed the bow to the right string. The bow made a creaking sound; most of the bows that were suitable for the power level of the Gold-rank were magical bows, and only the compound bows that had been treated with Laws such as ‘strong’ and ‘toughened’ could withstand a hundred times the power of ordinary people. But even so, every time the bow was used it meant that the life span of the bow would decrease and this degeneration was irreversible. In Aouine, magical bows on the market could be bought for 17,000 Taels a set, and even if they were made by the masters in the royal workshops, the lifespan of most of these bows would not exceed 100 shots. Every time it was fired, it was as if squandering gold coins equal to the weight of the bow.

The wind had not yet picked up in the canyon, and Yoakam was still unaware of it, but it was as if he had a natural sensitivity to danger that made him look up.

Freya exhaled softly as if to tell herself to calm down a bit.

“Fire!” Maynild gave the order to attack in a cold voice at almost the same time.

The power attached to the arrow was so great that it left the bow with a deafening buzzing sound, and where it passed, the air currents stirred, and from afar it looked like space was shaking.

The first arrow passed by the flank of the Winter Wolves, stirring up a whirlwind that blew the wolves off their feet. Under such an attack, Yoakam had no time to react; an arrow had already swooped down in front of him just as he turned his head. Across a distance of hundreds of yards, everyone could clearly see his frightened expression on his face.

The giant wolf beside him saved his life. The huge Pale Son leaped up and blocked the arrow’s path, then it was hit by an arrow on one side of its back, and the huge impact drove it directly into the snow, splashing snow everywhere.

The arrow fell upon them like rain.

The four Pale Sons around Yoakam instantly became like hedgehogs as the arrows shot them, but at least they bought some time for the Marquis to finally react to what had happened.

He never dreamed that those disoriented Kirrlutzian knights would dare to take the initiative to attack him. And when he realized this, everything had become irrevocable.

Yoakam got down on the ground and lunged into the pack of Winter Wolves; he tried to use them as cover to retreat to the other side of the canyon to find a place to take cover. But unfortunately, the ambush point chosen for him by Little Pero and Maynild was a flat area, and the small group of Winter Wolves that surrounded him earlier soon fell one by one, while other Winter Wolves were still far away on both flanks or had already run into the canyon.

Yoakam began to regret that he probably should not have ventured so far, but now it was too late to say anything. As the wolves gradually spread out, an arrow struck him, and he cried out in agony and fell down in the snow, with the arrow penetrating his left calf and pinning him directly to the ground.

If he was still alive, he would be sweating in pain at this moment, but one of the benefits of the Undead is the loss of pain sensation. Yoakam hurriedly gritted his teeth and turned back, pulling out his sword from his belt and tried to cut the long feathered arrow that was pinning him to the ground.

At the same time, the wolves in the canyon finally found the attacker. The lead wolves in the pack let out long howls, and the wolves closer to the pack had already started to turn around and pounce towards the Kirrlutzian Folded Sword Knights on the cliff.

The Winter Wolves that were slightly closer, on the other hand, ran towards Yoakam, in an attempt to protect their master.

“Brund, Alea, go block them!” Freya stared at the Winter Wolves that were everywhere, lunging towards the direction they were in as if an avalanche in reverse, a scene so similar to the one she had seen in Ampere Seale that it seemed like it had just happened yesterday. The Valkyrie clutched her sword in her hand, impossible not to be nervous; after all, she was just a knight captain at that time, but at this moment, every command she gave determined whether everyone present would be buried dead or make it out alive.

She gripped the sword so hard that her knuckles were turning white from the loss of blood, but she was oblivious to it. Thousands of Winter Wolves were only a hundred feet away from them, and it would only take a duration of two breaths for the Winter Wolves to get to them. The wolves like waves of the ocean, each of which bared its clearly visible sword-like teeth.

“Lolo, prepare for the second round of fire.” Freya took a deep breath and ordered and she tried to keep her voice as steady as possible.

Lolo licked his lips. Even for the Kirrlutzians, such a dramatic scene was not often seen, not to mention that they were just some ‘newbies’. The battle last night was nothing in front of the battle that is currently happening before their eyes, even the scene of the wolves charging in the open terrain outside the forest was truly an eye-opening one.

Tiny sweat droplets seeped out from everyone’s hands, including Lolo’s.

But their training had come in handy at this point. The young Kirrlutzian knights raised their bows while the knights in the back row raised their shields and longswords to form a thin blocking formation that was 20 steps away from the line, with Brund and Alea in the lead.

The wolves were only fifty feet away.

The knights lowered their long shields, thrust the pointed end of their shields into the snow, and lowered themselves, readily preparing for the impact.

Lolo narrowed his eyes and raised the longbow in his hand a little higher, aiming his arrow higher and higher, gradually aiming over the wave of rushing wolves. Then the flickering arrow was aimed at the lowest part of the canyon.

“Release!”

Maynild waited until all the bowmen were adjusted and immediately gave the order.

At the same time, Yoakam finally managed to roll over and cut the arrow stuck in his left leg with his sword. Although Undeads could not feel pain, it did not mean he would not be bothered by the injury. The decrease of his soul’s power left him breaking in a cold sweat. After he did this, he did not rush to escape, but dropped the longsword with some dismay, strained to turn over, and then looked at the sky.

Yoakam’s pale eyes shone with a kind of grayish light, and the look within was both madness and despair.

In his vision, arrows were raining down from the sky.

He opened his mouth, revealing his white teeth as if he was letting out a final cry, but not a single sound came out of him. Almost in an instant, more than twenty arrows nailed him to the ground as well as the Winter Wolves that had just arrived.

Yoakam lifted his head and held on for one last moment before he slumped down.

......

Dull thuds were heard as the Winter Wolves collided into the shields’ the impact of these beasts was so great that if the knights were ordinary human knights, they would have been sent flying into the air. When Count Longblade dealt with the large scale of Tundra Wolves on the plateau, he often needed to line up his knights in a large square formation of seven columns, far beyond the extent of combating heavy cavalry.

But the Winter Wolves were also facing an extraordinary opponent. The dozens of Kirrlutzians knights in the front row were all of Gold-rank, and in front of them, the Winter Wolves were not much different from ordinary wolves.

The knights either used their shields to flip off the wolves that crashed into them, or nailed them to the ground in the snow with their swords, then stepped back slightly and waited for the second attack. Unlike Alea, who was slashing and killing, Brund was carefully calculating the distance they had to retreat. According to his calculations, they had to last at least five rounds of attacks and had to buy enough time before then, the more the better.

But after the third attack, the Kirrlutzian knights suddenly felt a void in their immediate field of vision- the repulsed Winter Wolves surprisingly did not come up once again.

“What’s going on?” Everyone subconsciously looked down into the canyon below. Amidst the foggy haze, countless white beasts were scattering and fleeing in all directions in the distance.

Only at this moment, cheers were heard from the shooters behind.

Little Pero, Maynild, and Freya all looked nervously at the place where Yoakam had fallen, for no one could guarantee whether the Winter Wolves would actually leave after Yoakam’s death. The only thing they could count on was that at least after losing their commander, the Winter Wolves would only have the instinct of beasts, or at least would not move in an orderly manner like an army.

The chances to break through a large army was an astronomical figure, but if the opponent was just a group of beasts that act by instinct, it might be another case.

But the situation was far better than what they had imagined; the moment Yoakam had fallen, although there were still a few Winter Wolves that were attacking them, in the distance, the wolves that were moving on a large scale had begun to show signs of hesitation and scattering.

The Kirrlutzian knights who were holding their longbows were the first to notice this sign and could not help but cheer in unison.

Then Little Pero let out a sigh of relief as he turned back to Freya and congratulated her, “Looks like we made the right bet, Commander.”

Freya nodded slightly. Yoakam was already dead, as everyone had seen with their own eyes. The wolves were also scattering, although there were still a few still pestering them, their numbers were now no longer a threat to them at all.

But even so, she was still a bit uneasy.

There was only one problem. If the silver monster is not with Yoakam, where is it? Nobody had the answer to this question.

Maynild keenly felt her junior’s apprehension, she looked back at the latter and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Just a little worried.” Freya replied, “Sister Maynild, I think we’d better leave here as soon as possible.”

“You’re worried about that monster?” Little Pero also remembered that problem, “But if it’s here, it can’t possibly let Yoakam be ambushed by us, right?”

“I don’t know,” Freya shook her head gently, “But I have a hunch that something is not right here.”

“You’re just being too nervous, Commander.” Little Pero shook his head. As someone who had received professional militarization training, hunches were the most untrustworthy kind of thing for a knight.

But Maynild thought differently from him, the female knight frowned and asked, “A hunch? Did you miss something?”

Freya was slightly stunned, she looked at her senior with some surprise as she did not expect the other party to know so well what was on her mind. It was indeed such a feeling, that she felt that she had missed something.

Maynild stared at her without saying anything. But if Brando was here, he would have been twice as much alert.

The Valkyrie’s ‘hunch’, in his world, was something well-known.

......