IDWTBTHQ Chapter 114 - The Battle of Treval part 4

As dark clouds started covering the sky over Treval, two armies were facing each other in the fields in front of the city.

On one side, coming from the south, were the Brettholz forces. Ten thousand goblins had taken the center and were organized in three lines: a vanguard of light infantry armed with bows, crossbows and even some rifles, a central tight phalanx-like formation of heavy infantry armed with long pikes and a rearguard of rare subspecies, such as Goblin Champions and Gargoyles, ande even a few human Aura Users ready to intervene if needed. The Vex made up both wings, each about twenty thousand drones strong, and while they had no discernible formation they still advanced with such uncanny coordination that they looked like a flowing liquid.

On the other side, right in front of the city, were the orcs, around eighteen thousand of them and divided into three groups of six thousand to match their opponents. Even at first glance, it was clear that they lacked the discipline of their foes since they kept a rudimentary and quite loose formation, but the sheer size of the humanoids made them extremely threatening nonetheless.

The two forces kept slowly but steadily advancing against each other. The battle was imminent.

Sitting in a yoga position far away from the frontlines on top of one of his Dreadnaughts, Marcus had entered an almost trance-like state in order to guide his forces as efficiently as possible. Such was his focus that he felt all of his drones like a physical extension of himself more than ever before. He breathed through thousands of mouths, walked through thousands of legs and watched the world through thousands of eyes. It was an exhilarating experience, one that made him feel all sorts of emotions... but chief among them was a weird feeling of hunger.

He couldn't really explain why, but the idea of fighting against the orcs filled him with ravenous anticipation. It wasn't really physical but more mental and emotional, like when you have already eaten your fill for the day, but you know that next day you're going to your favorite restaurant for an all-you-can-eat buffet. Only that instead of buffalo wings and bbq ribs he was daydreaming of the orcs' strong bodies, and the images that flashed in his mind were enough to make his mouth water. However he couldn't afford to get distracted by these thoughts, so he shook his head to get rid of them and focused back on his drones.

As he did so, he noticed through the eyes of one of his Flyers something moving in the river north east of Treval.

At first the Vex Queen felt tempted to dismiss that movement as a fish or something like that, but after a moment he decided that taking a closer look wouldn't hurt. And as it turned out that was a really good call, because when he sent his Flyer closer he realized that there was an entire group of ogres swimming in the river.

“Well well well.” Marcus thought. “What do we have here?”

He watched as the humanoids got out of the waters and started walking south. There were thirteen of them, led by a rather thin-looking ogres, and they were clearly trying to be as stealthy as possible as they moved south-west... right towards the place the Vex Queen was hiding.

“Hm. Guess Trakk was right after all. They are going to try and kill me.” He thought with a bit of reluctant admiration for the goblin's foresight. “Well, too bad for them. Now that I know they're coming, I can prepare a nice welcoming party!”

He made the necessary preparations, quickly informing his bodyguards and Trakk of the situation, before returning his attention to the fields in front of Treval, where the battle was just about to begin.

It was time to get to work.

A powerful voice echoed through the left wing of the orc army.

“Stay in line, maggots!” Blueskin screamed. “Stay in line and wait for my signal to charge!”

Hearing the threatening voice of their leader, the orcs who had started outpacing the rest of the army returned in line and kept pace with their companions.

The oni nodded, though he was a tad irritated. The orcs' recklessness and short attention span made commanding them feel like trying to herd cats. Luckily they instinctively bowed down to authority, especially if the ones giving order were bigger than they were... and right now, Blueskin was probably the biggest he had ever been.

Since his old combat form hadn't performed so well lately, the oni had decided to make a new and improved one, growing to three and a half meters tall and increasing his muscles to unprecedented levels in order to grant himself even more power. The downside to this increased bulk was that he was now too big to use any of his equipment, but he made up for that by growing an armor of extremely thick scales all over his body and bone blades protruding from his arms. Finally, almost as an afterthought, he had decided to grow and additional set of arms in order to increase the number of attacks he could make.

This was definitely the most monstrous shape he had ever taken and the awe and fear in the eyes of the orcs that gazed upon him served as a confirmation of just how terrifying he looked, something which made him feel quite satisfied all things considered.

However he still didn't feel confident enough take on Yasen Harp. His latest fight with the man had taught him that while he had knowledge of Aura Arts he still lacked mastery over them, so much so that he was pretty much incapable of using them in a serious battle. But luckily, he had hatched a plan to fix that by practicing against an opponent that couldn't actually hurt him. Which was why he was leading the left wing of his army against the Vex: while the bug-creatures were many, he knew from his past experiences that they weren't actually that strong individually, which made them the perfect dummies for his training. Even the goblins, in his opinion, could be potentially more annoying, since some of their subspecies were actually strong enough to pose a semblance of a threat, though those specimens were usually very rare.

Because of this, the oni led his troops against the Vex with high spirits, absolutely certain of his victory. He felt so confident that he barely even looked at the enemy, focusing his attention on his own troops instead. Because of this, he failed to notice the bigger shapes in the midst of the advancing Vex horde, or the eerie coordination that the creatures displayed. He just made his troops advance in as good an order as they could display, and when they were about five hundreds meter away from the enemy, he raised his hand and roared:

“Charge!”

And with that signal, six thousand orcs started running against the Vex, howling with bloodthirsty savagery.

Marcus watched the orcs charge his forces with a grin on his face.

It was finally time to trigger the trap he had spent so much time preparing.

He gave a mental order and as one all of the Vex Flyers which until then had stayed on the back of the other drones suddenly rose up to the sky like a dark cloud. The swarm then moved towards the orc army and started doing a strafing run, showering their front lines with a rain of acidic venom.

The bloodthirsty roars turned into screams of pain as the orcs started desperately trying to clean themselves of the corrosive spit of the Flyers, often dropping to the ground and rolling when everything else failed. The humanoid's charge stopped abruptly and confusion spread through their ranks despite the ogres officers trying their best to bring back a semblance of discipline. However, thanks to their thick skin there hadn't been many orcs who had been killed or even seriously injured and even as the Flyers kept showering them with acid they slowly started to reorganize, raising their arms and weapons to protect their face.

Still, this was all well within Marcus' —or rather Trakk's— predictions. It had been the goblin who had suggested the Vex Queen to reveal his Flyiers at the last possible moment in order to maximize the confusion they'd cause, since by themselves they couldn't deal enough damage to the enemy army. And luckily, Marcus had decided too heed the General's suggestion, not only about the usage of the Flyers but also about what was to follow.

As the orcs still tried to regain some semblance of order, dozens of huge reptilian figures emerged from the Vex ranks. It was the Artillery drones, which immediately started firing upon the enemy army.

The drones' throats inflated as they built up pressure and after a few seconds they spat out huge blobs of acid, which flew towards the orcs like mortar fire. These blobs exploded on impact with the ground, showering a ten meters wide area in acidic venom, and the orcs caught in the blast immediately started howling in pain as their flesh melted away from their bones.

While this new attack didn't actually kill too many orcs it greatly increased the panic and disorder among their ranks, to the point that they lost all the discipline they had regained so far.

However, despite all of this a few groups of the humanoids guided by their ogre officers still kept charging, roaring in defiant frustration and rushing towards the enemies on the ground. This display of bravery and fierceness was rather impressive, and it almost made Marcus feel a bit bad about having to kill them all. Not enough to actually stop him, though.

As he orcs came near his forces, the Vex Queen ordered his drones to counter charge them. And as if a dam had been opened, the Vex immediately launched themselves forward like a flood, meeting the screaming rage of the humanoids with an eerie silence broken only by the chittering sound of their chitin armor.

What followed was an absolute massacre.

The drones hit the enemy like a tidal wave, sweeping through the orcs with no apparent resistance. Though the humanoids were bigger and bulkier than the Warrior that made up most of the Vex forces, the previous bombardment of acid had deprived them of any semblance of cohesion and coordination, while the Vex had both things in spade. Moreover, the presence of hundreds of hulking Heavy drones added even more punch to the Vex assault and as the cherry on top the Flyers, at Marcus’ command, had done yet another strafing run just before the two armies made contact with each other, distracting a lot of orcs at a very crucial moment and preventing them from defending themselves.

As a result of this perfectly orchestrated and coordinated assault, both the orc wings were completely engulfed by the Vex in a matter of minutes. It happened so fast that the humanoids didn't have time to even process what was going on, let alone react to it. All that was left were a few pockets of resistance, usually centered around the ogres, but even those were quickly overwhelmed, like sand castles during a high tide.

Meanwhile, the enemy central forces were doing marginally better, which meant that they hadn't been completely obliterated already, but still they weren't having much success either. The goblins were holding admirably well, using their Gargoyles to attack the orcs from above while their tight phalanx formation kept them at bay. In some places the ogres had actually managed to break through, but even they were quickly repelled by the coordinated action of the human Aura User and the goblin stronger specimen. 

Seeing this, Marcus was about to bring an end to this battle and order his drones to move against the orc central forces, when he suddenly noticed a disturbance on the left wing that just couldn't be dealt with. A single warrior who kept fighting, holding his own despite being alone against an army of enemies.

It was the Blue Terror. 

The oni, which was now bigger than before and sported a new set of arms, was killing the Vex by the dozen, tearing apart any drone that approached him. This wasn’t really a deterrent for Marcus’ minions though, since they lacked any sort of self-preservation instinct, and so for any Warrior or Heavy that fell three more took its place, but even though he was quite literally drowning in sea of chitin the leader of the orcs just wouldn't go down.

Upon a quick exam through the eyes of his drones, Marcus determined that the main reasons for this apparent invincibility were the toughness of the ogre’s scales, which was enough to repel most of the drones’ attacks, coupled with his regenerative powers which allowed him to heal almost instantly from the piddling damage he received. This meant that trying to overwhelm him with just raw number was probably futile, since killing him required something strong enough to penetrate through his scale and finish him in one strike.

The Vex Queen smirked thinking that under normal circumstances finding a fighter that fit that bill would have probably been very difficult in this world, but right now he had at least three options to pick from!

One was Yasen Harp, but the Captain of the Royal knight was currently busy defending the citadel from the orcs, so maybe it was better to leave him be.

The second choice, Alya Vilka, was similarly occupied doing the impersonation of a bloody blender against the orc central forces. She seemed just as unstoppable as the oni, leaving a trail of dismembered bodies in her wake, and thanks to her contribution the goblins were holding their own very easily. The orcs there hadn’t been completely defeated though, so even in that case it would be prudent to let her stay where she was until they had been completely dealt with.

That left the final option, which incidentally was the one Marcus was most eager to use: the Destroyer drones. And they were the most logical choice too, since not only they were currently just waiting on standby, but they had been made specifically to kill the Blue Terror.

Having made up his mind, Marcus ordered the right wing of his forces to move and attack the orc central forces from behind, while leaving the left wing where it was in order to keep the oni pinned. At the same time, he also made the Destroyers start running towards the oni’s position, preparing them for the fight.

“I really hope they’ll be able to take the oni down.” He thought. “I’d hate having destroyed my vagina giving birth to them for nothing!”