“The worst thing in war is when you have to deal with an opponent you are utterly unfamiliar with. That means that many things they do would come as surprises to you, and surprises in wartime situations cost lives.” - Saying attributed to Xaliburnus the Conqueror, First Emperor of the Elmaiya Empire.

“Shit on a stick! Help!!!” yelled an Anduillean soldier as the ground she – and around twenty more of her compatriots – suddenly broke apart under their feet and they were plunged into viscous mud where they were slowly but surely drowning under the weight of their gear. None of them had even realized the presence of the trap due to the clever support structures under the layer of soil that hid it, which refused to give way until there were many of them directly on the trap.

It was amazing what a little bit of ingenuity combined with skilled engineers capable of bringing ideas into reality could do.

As it was, Lars had plenty of vicious ideas in his mind, especially after he had conferred with Egil about the sort of traps the goblin tribes on the north commonly used. Lars abused his opponent’s habit of dealing with the goblin traps and instead chose to make traps in methods never used there, and therefore unfamiliar to their opponents.

Where Reinhardt had liberally seeded the road with nooses, narrow pits – with or without spikes inside – just small enough to allow a foot in, stakes tied to branches, and the like, Lars instead opted for larger scale traps that made heavy use of the dwarven engineer team assigned to him. With their aid it was possible to create traps that were nigh-impossible to detect without the help of another skilled engineer, which was something the Anduillean forces notoriously lacked.

Instead of small harassment attacks that constantly bothered the enemy, he also arranged for larger – and deadlier – ambushes, once again doing the opposite of what his opponents were used to. As a case in point, just after the large mud pit trap was triggered, Lars commanded Alva’s first archer platoon as well as other archers from the Levainian volunteers to rain arrows towards the surprised Anduilleans.

They had not lingered for long either. Each of the archers loosed five arrows from relatively close range, going more for speed rather than precision, though Alva’s crew was capable of attaining both due to their training. The arrow barrage ended after a mere fifteen seconds as the archers quickly withdrew deeper into the jungle they had hidden themselves in.

Before the shocked Anduillean troops could even react to that, yet another unpleasant surprise awaited them as three separate groups of mercenaries suddenly emerged from the jungle that lined the eastern side of the path they were traversing. Mischka’s platoon led the assault that struck furthest away from the mud pit, while Erycea led the one closest to it, with Elfriede’s in between.

Mischka’s platoon simply made use of their sheer physicality to bully their way through the enemy column. The soldiers unfortunate enough to be caught in their path were either smashed with brute force far exceeding human capability, butchered on the spot, trampled by the platoon as they went past, or for the lucky few, merely shoved aside like petulant children in front of adults.

Those in the path of Erycea’s troop met with much of the same result, though there was less shoving around involved – since her platoon had much fewer large people to do it – and a lot more brutal killing instead. Erycea herself led from the front and made herself a menace to the soldiers in her way as she bashed and shattered any who stood in her way.

Some of the enemy soldiers were even pushed into the now exposed mud pit by her platoon’s charge.

Compared to the other two, whose tasks were primarily to keep the enemy occupied and unable to support each other properly, Elfriede’s platoon in the center only had one purpose, and that was to kill. Her platoons had the most veterans, all of whom were hardened killers, with not a few who even found pleasure in the act of killing itself.

Such unhinged types were usually frowned upon even amongst mercenaries, but Elfriede had proven that she could cow them into obedience, and their… unusual passion for slaughter could be harnessed to make them worthy members of the company that way. It was such a crowd that was unleashed upon the Anduillean soldiers caught between Erycea’s and Mischka’s platoons.

Elfriede herself led by example by wantonly slaughtering any enemy soldier before her, her pair of mithril-edged blades slicing through the thick gambeson most soldiers wore – only the better off ones had chainmail or better – as easily as it sliced through their flesh and bones. Which was to say, with extreme ease, given Mithril’s renowned propensity for keenness.

She took on the hapless soldiers in a methodical manner, one of her blades defending against their attacks, while the other reaping lives one after another, with the two blades interchangeable in their roles. Most of the Anduillean soldiers were just conscripts, farmers and the likes who were rounded up and made to practice for a few weeks before they were marched to war.

They never stood any chance whatsoever, despite their numbers.

To Elfriede’s left, Ylisera and Olyvee guarded her sides, while Karenina and Cassie were on her right, each of them also exacting their toll of blood on the enemy soldiers, while the rest of the platoon spread out widely as they made their way through the enemy soldiers. Somehow, despite they facing way more soldiers than the other platoons, they managed to rampage through the enemy column at roughly the same pace.

So all three platoons reached the jungle on the other side of the road within seconds of each other and quickly vanished almost as one. All the brief skirmish – it had not taken more than ten minutes – had left were the corpses of hundreds of dead or dying Anduillean soldiers, as well as more soldiers in the process of drowning in the mud pit.

All while the nearest Anduillean commander was probably just apprised of the news at that moment.