Chapter 220: Chapter 108: A Resounding Victory! Ghostly Strategist Lynch
Having spent the better part of the last year with Lynch, her way of thinking had unknowingly changed a great deal.
Catherine was gradually discovering that Necromancers were not the inherently evil beings that the Church or her family always made them out to be.
This was especially true of Lynch. Many of the things he did were better than what many Lords or local garrison commanders had done. Under his leadership, both the original inhabitants of Lakefront Town and the refugees who had flooded in were well-protected. They could even live with dignity.
Moreover, the wisdom Lynch displayed in marching and waging war had earned her unconscious admiration.
In the battle just now, they had paid a very small price to greatly weaken the enemy forces and crush their morale!
Before they had made their move, she could never have imagined that a battle could be fought like this.
’Sigh...’
Catherine let out a soft sigh and quickly reined in her stray thoughts. She moved out with the main army, beginning the rapid advance toward the Water Bridge.
＊＊＊＊
「A little while earlier.」
「On the other side of the Water Bridge.」
Seeing the Water Bridge destroyed, and with Scarface’s unit having long since disappeared from sight in pursuit of Catherine, Angus, the commander of the Blue Scarf forces, was burning with anxiety.
Although he had already cursed Scarface out in his mind, the predicament was right in front of him, and he had no choice but to try and solve it.
"Cut down the trees! Build a pontoon bridge!" Angus ordered, his face dark.
A force of over a thousand men was nothing if not efficient when put into action.
The Soldiers worked together to fell the trees on the riverbank, lashing the trunks together with ropes, vines, and even torn strips of tent canvas.
In less than half an hour, a bridge that looked crude but was sturdy enough for men and horses to cross was laid out across the water’s surface.
Angus breathed a small sigh of relief.
"First squad, cross the bridge and scout ahead," he commanded.
Soon, a squad of about fifty infantrymen, holding their shields high, cautiously stepped onto the pontoon bridge and began to move slowly toward the opposite bank.
The bridge bobbed up and down in the water under their weight, but they made it across without incident.
After the fifty men successfully reached the other side, they quickly spread out to stand guard and sent back an all-clear signal.
"Good!" Angus felt a little more at ease and continued to give orders. "Second and third squads, follow them. Maintain order, don’t crowd the bridge!"
Soon, another two squads—nearly a hundred men—had successfully crossed the bridge.
Angus let out a heavy breath, praying inwardly that the idiot Scarface would be tough enough to hold on until he could get the main force across... ’Even if he only has half his men left, we’ll still have a fighting chance once we rendezvous.’
However, just as about half of the second wave of troops reached the middle of the pontoon bridge—
Suddenly, disaster struck!
SPLASH! SPLASH!
Countless hideous green heads burst from the water on both sides of the bridge.
They were Fishmen, and there were a great many of them.
Leading them was none other than Lynch’s subordinate, General Gou Dao, the Fishman Priest.
At this moment, it was riding on the neck of a large freshwater fish, waving its Magic Staff to fire one Water Arrow Skill after another at the pontoon bridge, as if conducting an orchestra.
SWOOSH! SWOOSH! SWOOSH!
Following its lead, more water arrows shot out from the hands of other Fishman Priests, aiming straight for the pontoon bridge’s critical connection points.
And at the Soldiers crossing it.
"Enemies in the water!"
"Protect the bridge!"
"Archers, fire! Quickly, fire!"
The Angus Department’s troops on the bank were thrown into chaos. Archers and crossbowmen scrambled to fire into the water, but the darkness and the current severely hampered their accuracy.
Seeing the situation turn dire, the gray-robed fire Mage, under the protection of his guards, immediately began chanting. Soon, Fireballs went whistling into the most densely packed areas of Fishmen, sending up huge splashes of water and the charred limbs of their victims.
But there were simply too many Fishmen in the lake, and every one of them fought with a fearless ferocity.
CRACK! SNAP!
Under the assault of the Magic Water Arrows and the frantic tearing of the Fishmen, the ropes and wooden joints of the pontoon bridge began to break apart.
"AHHH!"
"The bridge is breaking!"
"Help me!"
The Soldiers on the bridge screamed in terror.
As the pontoon bridge disintegrated, the Soldiers on it were dumped into the icy river like dumplings into a pot, one SPLASH after another.
The Soldiers who could swim thrashed about desperately, while those who couldn’t were dragged down by their heavy Armor.
Seeing this, the Fishmen underwater swarmed like sharks that had scented blood, dragging the fallen men one by one into the depths.
"NO—!"
Angus watched, his eyes bloodshot with rage, as at least twenty or thirty of his elite Soldiers disappeared into the churning river.
The Fishmen had come quickly, and they left just as fast.
After inflicting sufficient damage on the bridge, they dove back into the deep water and vanished, leaving only the spreading stain of blood on the river’s surface and the wreckage of the bridge slowly drifting downstream.
Angus’s expression was as ugly as it could possibly be.
He and the two hundred-plus Soldiers who had already made it to the other side stared at each other across the river, their eyes filled with a mixture of shock and fury.
’That damn Necromancer... he even has a way to command Fishmen to fight for him!?’
’What should I do now?’
’Should I... build another pontoon bridge?’
Angus could already foresee it. If he dared to build another bridge, that school of Fishmen would just reappear and repeat the whole scene. And with a delay like this, that bastard Scarface was probably done for...
But before Angus could come up with a countermeasure, something even more terrifying happened.
SHHH... SHHH... SHHH...
CRACK... CRACK...
A dense, eerie sound drifted from the dark mountain forest on the opposite bank.
Soon, under the moonlight, a scalp-numbing tide of pale white slowly poured out of the birch forest.
They were Skeletons.
A dense mass of Skeletons, probably numbering seven or eight hundred. They advanced in silence, the scraping of their bones merging into a concerto of death.
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