“He left the ship and its armory to you, didn’t he? It’s your decision,” Sam said and saw the boy hesitate a bit, so he added, “If you want my advice, give them a few for now.. Then you can decide if you want to give more or not when the advanced defense line is broken and outside the city wall becomes a battlefield.”
Elias nodded. Sam smiled and patted the guy’s shoulder, and said, “Don’t worry. We will have enough time to get some pigmen and all of us out of here if things get worse..”
All doubts cleared, Elias looked up with a brave face and said, “I will master piloting the Dreamlight. Call us if you need any help.”
Sam just smiled and nodded. Elias turned and left his and Grace’s room. That was quite a transformation from the quiet and scared boy Damian had picked up in the beginning. The guy had crimson red hair, but his face always reminded Sam of Damian and himself when they were alone and living each day in the fear of Faerunian pursuers in Pyron City.
Sometimes he wondered where they would be right now if he had not asked Damian to join the Eldoris army that day.
Sam checked his supplies, said farewell to Grace, who was staying behind, and along with others, joined the relieving force of 5000 pigmen who were heading towards the snowy mountains. Sam could not sense anything yet.. But they were there — thousands of people fighting. When these five units reached the battlefield, only then could the injured and exhausted frontline pigmen soldiers would come back for healing and rest.
Along with the 5000 soldiers marching were a few hundreds who were going to meet the group responsible for setting up traps and modifying the battlefield. They had quite the runic items with them, stored in a few runic spatial storages that over the years they had traded from Damian through highswords using the rare ores, dungeon materials, and relics.
Some of them were riding atop the Frostmanes — horse-like creatures with thick silvery fur, broad hooves, and manes that shimmered like frost. Resistant to cold and able to run across snow without sinking. Most of the 5000 pigmen were just walking behind. Only the strongest, experienced captains and high-ranking officials were using the Frostmanes. Sam, Maelor, Lucian, Alex, Evrin, and Einar were each given one of these. They were just different types of horses, not that hard to manage.
Before the early morning turned to the dark of night, they reached the very back of the long lines of army tents placed outside the long valley between two mountains. They let the army handle their jobs and trotted up to the backline of the battlefield. It was night, but the chaos of thousands of pigmen warriors fighting monstrous black, animal-like pigmen made it anything but peaceful.
From the camp, the lined steel pillars were shooting down any monster that could fly above the battlefield and come this side. The pillar shot short bursts of laser Damian often used. Sam remembered Damiam had given the chief some of those runic tools when they departed. The pigmen should also have some good runesmiths in the 100 years of civilization.
Those who could fly were all Emperor rank. The King rank and below pigmen were on the ground, charging with madness in their eyes, fighting like they had no fear of death at all.
The evolution of the pigmen had transformed them into all types of monsters — some were giant, axe- and sword-swinging monstrosities, while some were smaller, yet fast, with fire or ice abilities. Some were throwing strange light red and pinkish energy around, messing with pigmen warrior’s brains, doing internal damage.
Sam and others were informed on the way about these psychic attacks. They were given some runic bracelets which, when activated, helped protect oneself against these psychic energy attacks. But when a powerful Emperor rank monster did this attack, the bracelet was not as effective as it probably should be.
Still, most pigmen were less than King rank. The King rank and around could be managed by large numbers of Second Rankers and First Rankers in their second or third jobs. The Emperor rank ones were being handled by teams of Second Ranker pigmen warriors, who seemed to have figured out the weaknesses and strengths of these fixed evolutions of black pigmen over the past couple of years.
The Pigmen captain in charge of leading them here, Riodin, told Sam that the Bloodedge and Shadecastor were not joining the attack, nor was this an attempt to finish them all. They were also stalling while pushing them out of the valley for some reason, continuously sending these extra black pigmen they had, to exhaust the last pigmen warriors and not let them gather more strength.
At the end of this mountainous valley, an enormous camp had been set up by Bloodedge, who was making the black pigmen fight each other in large numbers to make them stronger. Once they had a sufficient number of these King and Emperor rank black pigmen monsters, only then would the true power of that 10 million pigmen force be revealed.
Even if from 10 million, only 5–7 million remained alive at the end of this forced evolution, that much would be enough for one deciding battle, instead of years of continuous fighting in trap-filled land with weird runic weapons pointed against them.
Sam and his friends stood at a distance, seeing the brutal battle going on under torchlights, runic light tools, and fire spell lights, with slight moonlight helping them all. Then, as they were informed, a loud horn went off and the black pigmen attackers backed away while fighting slowly, little by little. From the description, Sam expected the black pigmen to be so animalistic that they would follow no order, but it seemed like that was not the case. It was an army that was brutal and cruel in battle, and still feared their leaders and obeyed commands like a well-trained army.
The black ones were not going back to give the defenders a rest, but that’s how the black pigmen attacked. A completely fresh troop of over 20,000 black pigmen would replace this one in 2–3 hours, and the battle will continue.
There was no rest. While the black pigmen fought in rotation under the cramped area, slowly pushing the pigmen warriors back — the warriors of Pigmen City had no choice but to keep fighting for hours and hours, each with barely a few hours of rest.