Iron Harvest: When Farming Becomes Conquest
Chapter 152 - 24: Swift Horse, Light Blade

Chapter 152: Chapter 24: Swift Horse, Light Blade

Roman’s expression was set in stone as he took the third Magic Steel Arrow handed to him by Kao.

In this barbaric and dark age, everything was false, only brute force was real!

He had been subjected to all kinds of family training since he was a child and never slacked off, pushing himself to the extreme.

Just imagine how terrifying it was for someone who had been self-disciplined from such a young age!

At the very least, among his peers, Roman could certainly be considered exceptional, one of the very best.

The Riptide Great Bow had an extremely high draw weight, and its extraordinary effects multiplied his shooting power many times over.

Piercing armor as if it were paper!

He could well be likened to a human heavy sniper rifle!

This power was merely the result of him barely being able to draw the Riptide Great Bow.

Before setting out, Roman had specially asked Ruto to forge thirty Magic Steel Arrows for him.

Their powerful penetration force could pierce through steel plate armor; unless one wore Secret Silver Armor or Fine Gold Armor, they could not escape the sniper’s range of one hundred and fifty meters.

He even disdained to deal with ordinary cavalry.

These Magic Steel Arrows were incredibly precious, only worth shooting at Transcendents of the Conquest Knight level.

"Spread out! Charge!!"

The group of Conquest Knights ultimately steadied their formation at the shouting of a fellow knight and charged again.

The Earl had issued a strict command: capture Riptide for a huge reward!

And they had to succeed!

Otherwise, they wouldn’t live up to the white bread they had consumed in the past!

There was only one Riptide!

Nothing to be afraid of!

Because of Roman, they began a full-speed charge directly, without the time to warm up.

The broad arrowheads coming from the opposite side cut through the air, dragging the airflow and whistling like the grim reaper claiming lives.

Thud!

The third Conquest Knight was lifted into the air by an arrow and then fell heavily to the ground!

Thud!

The fourth Conquest Knight collapsed to the ground, his abdomen penetrated!

In less than ten seconds!

Two more Conquest Knights had been shot down!

Their hearts bled as they listened, and they were filled with fear!

The loss was too great!

The closer it got to this moment, the more they couldn’t retreat, otherwise the dead men would have died in vain!

With their comrades’ lives providing cover, they finally closed to a sufficient distance.

Roman no longer had time to shoot.

His muscles were beginning to ache; he mounted his horse, his left hand taking the Cavalry Spear handed to him by Kao, he spurred the white horse, and charged head-on.

Green and Aaron formed a guard on either side of Roman, the three of them riding abreast.

But it was Dick who led the charge.

Wearing a steel mask and wielding a Cavalry Spear, he appeared completely at ease as he charged single-handedly towards the entire Cavalry unit.

Due to Roman’s influence, the Cavalry were not concentrated but spread out, hoping to make it harder for Roman to shoot.

Therefore, there was only one knight and four or five cavalrymen in the direction Dick charged.

His posture was relaxed, his palm firmly grasping the spear, his arm steady, able to hit his target with precision even on the jostling back of a horse.

Crack!

Boom!

The knight facing Dick’s charge was immediately knocked to the ground by his spear, the tip deftly penetrating through a gap in the throat guard, piercing the knight’s neck.

Dick too took a spear strike during the encounter but managed to stay on his horse, shaking off the force without falling.

He threw away the broken spear and met with the second cavalryman.

With a sonorous draw of his Magic Steel Long Saber, he extended his right arm, swung it effortlessly, not even using much strength.

The cavalryman passed by Dick, and as the horse ran ten meters beyond, the rider stumbled, with his head and body going separate ways, both hitting the ground simultaneously.

The so-called "fast horse, light saber" technique requires no chopping, just a swift slice utilizing the speeding momentum.

Dick’s body had suffered significant loss, but under Roman’s meticulous care, he had regained some of his former physical abilities.

Though far from his prime, this change had taken Dick by surprise.

He had thought he was on the cusp of old age, with his condition only deteriorating year by year, that in a decade or so he would be nothing more than a useless old man.

This body still had some untapped potential.

He was not unfamiliar with the battlefield; returning to a scene of cavalry charge now, he didn’t find it invigorating—only filled with nostalgia and sorrow.

At forty years old and before he had fled to the mountains, he was quite renowned, having participated in many martial contests. Before the age of thirty, he had followed the army in battle on numerous fronts, far more than these naïve country knights from Kant Territory had ever seen.

The first battle after coming down from the mountain turned out to be against this bunch of lopsided, cracked date fruits.

He had fought his way here, cleanly killing a Conquest Knight and three regular cavalrymen.

Seeing the ease with which he was cutting them down, the fourth cavalryman hurriedly avoided Dick and fled the battlefield, fearful of being treated like a vegetable to be chopped.

...

Indeed.

Dick, Roman, Aaron, Green. The four Conquest Knights had intercepted a third of the enemy cavalry’s force head-on.

They fought horseback, and from time to time someone would fall from their horse to the ground.

But this didn’t stop all the cavalry.

More than twenty horses regrouped and charged to the front of the formation.

At this moment, all the cavalrymen were somewhat falling apart.

It was too difficult.

If not for the Earl’s desperate orders, they would never have dared to launch such a charge.

Light troops had no real resistance against cavalry.

Let alone a troop formation of a hundred men; even three hundred could be pierced through, mainly because they really couldn’t stop the Conquest Knights.

When more than ten cavalrymen took advantage of the speed of their mounts to break through the encirclement, continuously waving their weapons to cut through foes, leaving corpses in their wake, they caused at least thirty to forty percent casualties among the archers.

However, to their astonishment, these heavily damaged archers did not break and crumble.

This was also why the cavalry couldn’t break through entirely.

...

What did a hundred archers mean?

When the formation spread out, it spanned over twenty meters in length and over ten meters in width, forming an array impossible to perform a volleys without such an arrangement.

This meant that the cavalry couldn’t attack all the archers.

Unless they dispersed their forces and launched an all-out charge—forming a neat row, rolling through like a rolling pin.

But this required very high-quality cavalry.

Kant Territory was very poor, and most of the soldiers rode horses of packhorse quality, unable to maintain a single row at uniform speed.

After a full-speed hundred-meter charge, while the Conquest Knights reached the end, those riding packhorses were still more than thirty meters behind.

Such a motley crew of cavalry had no formation to speak of.

And given the choice to follow the path carved out by the knights ahead, they certainly didn’t wish to charge alone.

So at this time, the enemy was required to take the initiative.

A normal conscript army facing such a charge would usually completely rout.

Long-range versus short-range, high against low, heavy pitted against light.

This was an overwhelming battle.

But these archers weren’t conscripts.

They weren’t even professional archers.

They only practiced for two hours a day, firing in phases each time, for a total of a hundred arrows.

The rest of the time, they still trained in formation and physical fitness.

Three months wasn’t enough to forge an ironclad military force, but sufficient to lay a foundation and etch discipline into their bones through the pain of flesh and blood.

Roman had also made pre-battle rallying calls.

Deserters would be put to death!

Those who died on the battlefield would receive full compensation in gold, but deserters executed would receive nothing.

Their beloved Lord didn’t have such soldiers!

Sige Town had no shelter for them either!

Roman himself had led the charge in front of them, entangling himself in combat.

Even if they were dispersed, they wouldn’t easily break and flee.

This was the bottom line of the army.

Fear, panic, the will to survive, honor, discipline, confused thoughts, cold limbs, a blank mind. All these emotions intertwined.

In the end, when the cavalry truly charged at them, and their comrades beside them were being knocked away, they could actually take action.

The weapons they carried varied, including Hooked Scythe Spears.

The archers on both sides, while suppressing their fear of facing the cavalry upfront, used the Hooked Scythe Spears to either slash the horse’s legs or hook the cavalrymen’s armor.