At three in the morning, the intelligence arrived.
The messenger ranger was drenched from head to toe, his boots caked in the thick mud unique to the southeastern border.
An all-out sprint of under two hours was written plainly in his ragged gasps.
Hawksbill scanned the report, then looked up at Alleria.
Alleria took it, glanced it over, and turned abruptly.
“Everyone, assemble in the hall.
Ten minutes.” Inside the hall, the tactical map was laid out.
Alleria circled three coordinates with her finger: “Southeast direction.
Amani trolls, numbering roughly a hundred.
Their heading is the old path along the southeast side of the barrier, sealed twenty years ago.” She withdrew her finger, her gaze turning cold and sharp.
“The barrier sealing the road can be violently breached, but at the cost of witch doctors expending a massive number of totems.
This means they are serious this time.
This is no mere probing attack.” Standing beside the table, Hawksbill spoke in a heavy voice: “Shadowwing deploys four squads.
I’ll take two, Alleria takes two.
The objective is to break their formation and delay their advance.
Their force is too large; do not get bogged down in prolonged combat.” His finger tapped firmly on the left flank on the map, his gaze pinning directly onto Li Fan.
“You’re with Ailong.
Support the left flank.” Before departure, the camp fell into a distinct quiet.
It was not fear, but the deadly calm of bodies and minds tuning themselves to a combat state.
Focus sharpened; all superfluous words vanished completely.
Firas lightly plucked his bowstring with his right middle finger.
There was no gauze on it today; his release point was flawless.
Ailong pressed the clasps of his pack down one by one.
*Click.
Click.* A fixed sequence, applied with cold force.
Not a prayer, but a purely mechanical verification.
Li Fan weighed his black bow in hand and flipped open his quiver to take inventory: thirty heavy arrows, twenty standard short arrows.
Alleria walked past him and paused abruptly.
“Have you memorized the terrain on the left flank?” “Yes.” She nodded and walked off briskly.
There seemed to be more words in that momentary pause, but she had swallowed them down.
The left flank was a thirty-meter-wide forest corridor.
Dense roots of ancient trees flanked both sides, and the ground was uneven.
The Amani raiding force would surge in from the northern end, attempting to punch through the corridor to create a pressure point.
Li Fan and Ailong’s mission: make those trolls believe the corridor was held by an insurmountable defensive force.
Two men facing fifty.
Under no circumstances could the enemy be allowed to discover the truth.
Li Fan and Ailong dispersed swiftly, each seeking cover.
They selected their positions without a word, moving in offset directions with absolute synchronization.
Li Fan’s first shot did not target the vanguard.
The heavy black-feathered arrow slammed silently into a blind spot on the middle-right of the enemy formation.
The sudden casualty caused the charging formation to instinctively contract inward, crowding against one another.
Their speed dropped instantly, and they could not determine where the arrow had come from.
Almost in the exact same second, Ailong’s first arrow rained down from the opposite side, cleanly shredding the throat of a troll on the middle-left.
Two lethal crossing arrows clamped down on the enemy formation, pinning it in place.
The next twenty minutes saw the two men hold fifty trolls trapped in that corridor.
Li Fan shifted positions seven times; Ailong shifted five times.
Every relocation was timed precisely to the release of the enemy’s arrows, using the twang of hostile bowstrings to mask their footsteps.
At his fourth position, Li Fan pressed against an ancient tree, planting his spine against the trunk and melting his silhouette into the shadows of the roots.
He drew the string, waited for the wind to settle, and released— Blood sprayed from the left shoulder of a troll chieftain attempting to organize a counterattack, and he collapsed with a heavy crash.
The trolls behind him took half a step back, the formation shrinking once more.
While shifting to his fifth position, a throwing spear flew out from a blind spot on the right flank.
Li Fan forced a wide sidestep to the left, but the spear tip still grazed the leather armor at his waist.
The violent impact sent him flying to the left.
Upon landing, his right knee slammed hard into a tree root, but he used the momentum to push up into a half-kneel.
The instant he rose, a heavy arrow was already nocked on his string.
Without a half-second’s pause, he continued stalking toward his sixth position.
Ailong’s covering fire arrived right on cue.
The troll who had hurled the spear took an arrow through the right shoulder and crashed into the mud.
From the main front came the dense roar of battle; the primary force was advancing steadily according to plan.
Meanwhile, the trolls inside the left corridor took a full eleven minutes just to barely reorganize a defensive line.
Their advance had slowed to a third of its original pace.
When the raiding party outside the barrier realized this had turned into a battle of attrition, the horn to retreat sounded.
The trolls fell back in an orderly fashion, dragging their wounded.
A third of their dead were left behind in the corridor, while the rest vanished deep into the forests to the southeast.
Battlefield cleanup.
Carrying her longbow, Alleria stepped into the left corridor.
Amid the severed limbs strewn across the ground, she keenly took note of the details on the forest floor: Footprints from seven position shifts, arrow fragments, two shallow impressions from knee impacts.
And at the fifth position, a pool of blood—not belonging to a troll.
She dropped to one knee to examine it, then rose and walked over to Li Fan, her gaze fixing onto the tear in the leather armor at his waist.
“Did it break the skin?” “No, just tore the outer layer.” “Go have a priest look at it.” “No need.” Alleria stared at the scratch for three seconds.
When she spoke again, her voice dropped half an octave, carrying an undeniable edge of authority: “Go have someone look at it.
That’s an order.” Li Fan looked at her taut jawline, fell silent for a moment, and ultimately chose not to argue.
He nodded and turned toward the medical station.
Alleria remained where she was, her eyes following his departing back for a distance before turning to Ailong.
“No gaps in the left flank’s defense?” “His doing,” Ailong said.
She did not reply.
As she turned to leave, her boots shifted at a minute angle, stepping around the patch of Li Fan’s blood on the ground before straightening her stride once more.
On the road back to camp, Firas quickened his pace to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with Li Fan.
They walked together for a stretch.
The canopy fragmented the starlight, and in the distance, arcane lanterns flickered between the shadows of the trees.
Firas was the first to break the silence.
“I saw that crossfire suppression today from the right flank.” He paused, a hint of awkward disbelief in his voice.
“Just the two of you slowed dozens of them down to a third of their speed.
Did you come up with that strategy?” “We thought of it together,” Li Fan brushed it off casually.
Firas fell silent for a moment.
“I’ve known Ailong for three years.
He never proposes strategy on the battlefield.
He only executes.” “Then it was mine.” Firas said nothing more.
Stepping over a protruding tree root, he did not watch his footing, his gaze drifting aimlessly into the deep forest shadows.
“Not bad.” The voice was barely a whisper, as though speaking to the empty air, or perhaps struggling to convince his own stubborn pride.