"Motherfucker! It’s that bastard Now and Forever!"

High Fighting Spirits’ eyes turned bloodshot instantly. "That guy’s the very first animal to betray Lu Chen under Tang Long’s orders, and Dark Mercenaries accepted someone like him? This guild truly is a public toilet! Every fly in the fucking world is trying to squeeze into the shithole!"

"Kill them…"

I summoned my apparition on top of a group of tacticians and priests and made it use Burning Blade Slash and War Crush. My apparition's total Attack was 75% of mine. It wasn’t strong enough to one-shot a metal-armor player, but it was a different story with cloth-armor players.

"Roar roar…"

A red furball rushed toward the enemy, swiped every player who was in its way and unleashed a Purgatory Storm. While doing so, it swiped at the surrounding enemies and triggered Claws of the Storm three times in a row. Each hit dealt at latest 200k damage since the little wolf was now Level 230. Its only weakness was its poor Defense, and that was speaking comparatively.

……

On the mountain ridge, Now and Forever dropped Ghastly Plague on top of my Phantom Wolf King after he zigzagged away from my Dragon Slaying Slash. Then, he dropped Yin Yang Mirror on a friendly blond-haired priest who was being targeted by the Phantom Wolf King.

Dang!

Not only was the Phantom Wolf King’s attack reflected, the damage it received was categorized as true damage!

762882!

The Phantom Wolf King let out a painful howl as it deleted more than half of its own HP. The next moment, it was engulfed by a bunch of God Devil Breaks and sent back to my pet space. As it turned out, these motherfuckers were as good as Candle Dragon itself! The Northern Alliance sure didn’t spare any effort in transforming them into a deadly threat against the Center!

Heaven’s Rain, Diamond Dust and everyone else fought some distance behind me. The mountain ridge was crawling with rows and rows of archers and mages, and their combined barrage was too much even for the Dragonlight Cavalry to bear. Of all the skills we were catching, God Devil Break was easily the worst due to how powerful it was. Even the weakest mage among the enemy was dealing 150k damage at least.

"Throw them back with sheer ranged firepower! Frontliners, don’t even bother counterattacking! Just hold the line as best you can! We have the strongest ranged firepower in the entire world, and it is an advantage Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls will never have!" a cackling Amber Pupil shouted from a rock on the mountain ridge.

After the bastard had returned to full health, he had thrown himself into coordinating the assault against Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls. His boasts weren’t baseless. Dark Mercenaries’ mages and archers were made up of Northern Alliance elites and mercenaries who danced atop a knife’s edge everyday to survive life in the outer lands. They were either incredibly skilled, fearless, or both, and they had proven strong enough to threaten even our guild.

Of course, part of the reason we were on the back foot was because we had only brought 70k cavalrymen with us. It was fine though. Besides destroying Candle Dragon, I had come here with the goal of honing my players’ skills even further. Even if every Dragonlight Cavalryman was to perish in battle, their ability to deal with enemies with superior numbers would vastly improve.

Back to the present. Dark Mercenaries had set up three rows of magic knights along the entire mountain ridge. They dropped their shields in front of themselves, covered their bodies with them and abandoned all attempts to attack. In a sense, they were guarding but without using the Guard skill. It was why we couldn’t just rip our way through their defense line with Crushing Blow.

……

Chiang chiang chiang...

Diamond Dust swung her sword three or four times and successfully killed several Dark Mercenaries cavalrymen. However, not only did she fail to breach through the enemy line, she took a volley of magic spells and arrows and dropped to just 25% HP or so.

I hurriedly ordered, "Retreat now, Diamond Dust! Don’t come back until you’re back to full health! In fact, all party leaders, do NOT risk your lives like you’re expendable. Your Famous General Skills are what’s keeping all of us alive…"

My arm suddenly turned cold while I was saying this, and I didn’t hesitate to shatter a couple magic knights’ defenses with a basic attack that dealt septuple damage before following up with Burning Blade Slash, wiping out all the mages and priests behind them from existence. Before I could push deeper though, a great number of blood-red tigers shook the earth with their roars and plugged the hole I had created. It was the enemy’s tamer legion taking action against me. Every single tamer had at least 2 or 3 tigers, and although it was an Earth Rank pet they made up for the lack of quality with quantity. Dark Mercenaries must’ve found them in a secret map and caught them all.

It was a meaty, sweaty battle. The Dragonlight Cavalry fought fearlessly on the frontline and killed countless with Barrier Break. Ultimate Strength Break in particular always managed to inflict a painful blow to the enemy. However, the players of Dark Mercenaries were just as fearless, and what they lacked in strength they made up with sheer numbers. The death ratio was about 5 to 1, but they were slowly but surely grinding down the Dragonlight Cavalry’s effective strength. They also had ranged support from their mages, archers, tamers, tacticians and priests, while we only had the Dragonlight Archers.

Speaking of the Dragonlight Archers, I was infinitely glad that I had decided to bring them along. The prolonged battle had reduced their numbers to just 9000 or so, but they were easily the biggest reason why we were still in the battle. On the ground, Hymn of the Apocalypse kept barking orders and organizing volleys of Spiraling Arrow Blades and Skypiercers that made life a living hell for the enemy. It was a shame Beiming Xue was currently unavailable, or the scales of battle might’ve been tipped in our favor.

Time passed, and my allies died one by one around me. Even my Chill of the Nine Provinces was starting to suffer visible weapon damage.

Boom!

After Chaos Moon struck down a group of players with Rock Crush, she looked around her and clicked her tongue in displeasure. "Come on! It hasn’t been an hour since the start of the battle, and it’s looking like we’re going to be wiped out already!"

She was right. The slopes were covered in bodies of way too many friendlies. Gui Guzi and Li Chengfeng were doing their best from the sky, but there were just too many Dark Mercenaries, and not enough of us. Dark Mercenaries had shown up with at least 350k players, and each of them was an elite of some sort. On the other hand, we were only 70k players strong, and we had fought against Pop Culture, Candle Dragon, Hall of Immortality, Throne Seeker, Rose of the Holy Domain and more before this. The Dragonlight Cavalry were elite, but they were hardly invincible.

"How many players do we have left?" I asked.

Heaven’s Rain replied while gripping a sword that was coated in fresh blood. "Not much at all. We only have 7000+ Dragonlight Cavalry and less than 2000 Dragonlight Archers left…"

I shook my head. Earlier, Now and Forever’s squad had successfully ambushed the Dragonlight Archers and dealt a massive blow to them. The Dragonlight Cavalry hadn’t had time to pull back and recuperate either. Over 85% of our players were dead at this point. It wasn’t all bad news though. In fact, I could declare with confidence that we were definitely not the losers of this battle. We had killed at least 250k Dark Mercenaries players in total and claimed over 80% of the loot on the battlefield. Every dead Dragonlight Cavalryman had picked up at least 3 to 5 high-level pieces of equipment before they died. Their gains were well worth the level loss.

……

As Dark Mercenaries’ casualties grew, so did Amber Pupil’s impatience. He was still carrying out his duty and encouraging his troops, however. While killing a Dragonlight Cavalryman with a fireball, he shouted, "Hold! We still have 100000 elites, while they have dwindled to just a couple thousand! Kill the Dragonlight Cavalry and shatter Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls’ legend of invincibility! Slap the Chinese’s faces as hard as you can!"

Gui Guzi raged from the sky, "Amber Pupil, you shameless fuck! You’re a goddamned Chinese yourself! Is this how you treat your own birth country?"

Amber Pupil sneered. "Birth country? I have fought for the China server since Spirit of Grief for three years, but what did I get? Not only was I labeled a traitor, I would’ve been arrested if I hadn’t moved to Washington! Pooh! Why the fuck should I care about a country who would tolerate such injustice?"

Gui Guzi was so angry he swooped down on Amber Pupil and scored a massive combo, but the archers surrounding the traitor responded by dropping his mount tenacity to just 31% with a volley of Mountain Stagger Arrows. Left with no choice, Gui Guzi could only withdraw to safety and wait for another opportunity. Amber Pupil was surprisingly good at setting up a defense-in-depth, and even I couldn’t penetrate it deep enough to one-shot him, much less Gui Guzi.

……

"We’re going to lose everyone if we keep this up…" Li Chengfeng said.

I nodded in agreement. "Dragon knights, stay behind to protect the rear. Everyone else, withdraw to the forest for now and restore yourselves to full health. We’ll deal with them later…"

The Dragonlight Cavalry was faster, so the enemy couldn’t stop us from retreating. That didn’t stop Amber Pupil from swinging his sword and declaring, "Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls is defeated! Chase them down and wipe them all out!"

The mountain ridge was what separated the outer lands and Chinese lands, and right now Dark Mercenaries players were crossing over to our soil. It wasn’t a Nation War, but it definitely counted as an invasion.

On the sky, Gui Guzi swore in frustration, "Dammit! If Boss He Yi, Lian Xin and Beiming were here, these idiots would be screaming for their mothers already! Boss Broken Halberd, let’s contact the main guild and tell them to send us some reinforcements already!"

I nodded. "I agree!"

I sent a message to He Yi. "Eve, we’ve run into a bit of trouble. Can you tell Lian Xin and sis to send over the elite mages and priests? I also want the 200k elites of Bloody Mercenaries. Thanks!"

He Yi replied with a smiley face emoji. "Dark Mercenaries, right? I’ll get it done right away. Silver City is basically ours anyway."

……

Meanwhile, our remaining troops had withdrawn to the forest and were healing themselves using skills or potions. A couple hundred meters away, Dark Mercenaries were chasing after us.

"Look, Warsky Alliance has finally shown up…"

Less than a hundred meters away from Gold City, I saw Warsky riding out with the Immortal Blade in one hand and the City Lord Token in the other. He shot us a glance and said, "I guess that trash of a human being called Amber Pupil isn’t completely useless after all. C’mon, men! It’s time we repay Lu Chen’s favor and give those motherfuckers a taste of our blades!"

However, Farewell Song suddenly appeared beside him and whispered something. The smile on his face was gone just like that.

"Guild leader?" a magic knight asked.

Warsky’s mouth twitched before he ordered, "Form a shield formation and seal off the northern gate of Gold City in case Purple Lily and Peach Garden decide to take us by surprise. There’s only 20 hours or so left before Gold City is ours, and we can’t afford to screw up now!"

The magic knight shuddered. "You want us to cut off Ancient Sword’s retreat?"

"That’s right!"

Warsky replied without hesitation, "Warsky Alliance and Ancient Sword are both top-tier guilds in China. It has always been a matter of time before we came to blows with each other!"