He is really too good at pissing people off….

"The Noble House Aurellion."

"The Wise Kings of Arthurus."

"Gods of war and the battlefield."

"But are also some of the most shameless and infuriating people to deal with."

"Who just gets insulted and thanks someone for a compliment!"

 Theodore Felond, CEO of Felonds Fashionable Goods.

….

"Salazar, come in from the left. Lead him towards Griff on the right."

Oswan, a master of his craft, called out as he deftly manoeuvred one of the raider's scouts to his end. The man was riding hard, trying to avoid pursuit to no avail.

Two arrows were already lodged in his back, leaving small crimson trails that soaked bits of his armour, revealing his injury. He gave out commands in a calm, almost nonchalant manner, his expertise in hunting scouts evident as he fired an arrow which lodged itself in the man's ankle, a spear swiftly stabbing into the man's body to finish him off.

That was the third scout their group had encountered since the lord had tasked them with eliminating as many of them as possible. They successfully made him disappear while the lord devised a plan to kill the raiders.

He had even worked closely with Archtorius at times while House Aurellion was still in Chavaria, learning from the Chavarian general and now grandmaster strategist how to scout and, more crucially, how to hunt and take out enemy scouts.

Scouts, the unsung heroes of any army, are an incredibly vital part of warfare. They report the enemy's movements and ensure that no movement goes unreported. The failure to control information in a war can lead to dire, even catastrophic, consequences for an army.

After all, it was a lack of communication and suspicion between two allies that allowed Reginald as Lucius Aurellion to win the Battle of Brunag by making his enemies turn on each other.

For Oswan, the Halfling Pelican Guard vice commander, dealing with these scouts who have little to no access to horses of any kind in such an open countryside was like stealing candy from a baby and one of the easiest assignments he has had in his life, serving House Aurellion, their latest victim however seemed to have found a horse in the village they were raiding and so Oswan had to put in more effort than the previous scouts but still managed to deal with the mounted scout with relative ease using his extensive skill and experience. 

Leaving the body for the crows, Oswan continued his hunt, ensuring no enemy could report his lord's movements or interfere with his plans before joining Railius for the main battle once his job was done.

….

In the village, Demarcus and the other raiders were busy loading their loot onto the boat before heading towards their next target, but as the minutes passed, the player felt that something was wrong.

The men he had sent out to scout had not returned when they should have, and he had not received any news on the elite raiders whom he had sent to capture the villagers, making his instincts scream at him that something had gone wrong.

That something had gone terribly wrong.

Kneeling next to a crate of salt were a bunch of tied-up old men and women, including the ageing village elder. His white beard, once neat and scholarly, had turned scraggly as he knelt calmly, knowing there was nothing he could do and no escape.

Even if he had run like the rest of the villagers, he would only slow them down, so it was better to stay and not be a burden. He had even used his knowledge of the village and its hidden wealth to occupy the raiders as much as possible, hoping not only to buy some time for rescue to be dispatched but also to stop these raiders from attacking other nearby villagers as it would take a few hours for the lord to gather his men. 

A cry came from the distance. It was a cry that the raiders were all too familiar with, as they had heard it time and time again as they killed people in their quest to gain greater wealth and power.

It was a cry of death.

One that had come from their own as the ground began to shake at the familiar thumping of horse hooves that thundered towards them.

'Cavalry!'

The raiders collectively thought in fear while Demarcus himself was stunned into confusion.

Mail-clad riders descended upon the village like lightning, their horse's whinnies being the cry of death as they cut raiders down left and right. The disorganised raiders who were still looting the village house by house were systematically slaughtered by these mysterious cavalrymen who seemed to come from all directions, killing them without rhyme or reason.

Even though all in the village knew they had both rhyme and reason. For bandits and raiders had long lost their right to live in civilised society when they chose to steal from others and sell people illegally into slavery for their own greed. 

Some had their head smashed by a large black iron Morningstar, the giant helmeted wielder whose muscles were larger than an average man's arms and capable of breaking bones and smashing the internal organs of men even in full plate armour with his spiked weapon, let alone those protected only by a heavy coat of mail.

Others were dispatched by a skilled halberd-wielding monster, its steel blade cutting and piercing through their armour like butter as more and more corpses were strewn about in the streets.

Thunder boomed overhead as if the heavens and themselves were angered by the atrocities committed in the mortal world, and rain began to pour down the slope the village was built upon towards the docks. The sea that once shimmered and glinted in the sunlight as calm as a soft sea breeze became violent, cutting off the raiders' only escape to the open sea, trapping them with their enemy, who appeared to rely on surprise more than anything else to win the day.

For only a fool would face the raging torrents of the angered sea egged on by the fierce winds conjured by Romeus, the god of winds and tide, who just happened to be in a particular excitable mood, leading to storms erupting in the mortal world just another reminder of the power of the all-mighty gods and how innocents die at the whim of the powerful.

The raiders were scattered and largely unable to respond to this surprise attack. Their dead scouts blinded them to outside events, allowing Railius to pull off this ambush as his skilled riders attacked from all directions in 4 groups, trapping the disorganised raiders in the streets and isolating them before delivering the coup de grace and sending their guilty souls to the depths of hell.

 'How could this happen?!'

'Didn't we bribe that bloody baron? Why did he send his troops to kill us? Is he trying to burn the bridge once he crossed it?'

Demarcus thought in rage, assuming that he had been betrayed by Baron Rushe, the only local lord with the power and experts to be able to respond this quickly to their attack, as they still had at least half a day until the next powerful lord enough to face them could gather his troops as only his master fighter and the barons elite war-hardened soldiers would have the skill to kill all the men they sent out and their scouts so efficiently.

"Gather together spears to the front!"

Demarcus shouted in a commanding tone. The raiders reacted to their leader and began to rally. Luckily, there were nearly 25 men at the docks currently, with 10 of them being spearmen. For a force on foot like Demarcus', it was essential to bring these long, deadly weapons along in a world where cavalry and knights ruled the battlefield, flanking their foes and scattering them to the wind.

The others who were hiding in the houses or lucky enough to survive the surprise attack quickly joined them, but once Demarcus saw what was left of his 200-man force, his heart sank.

50 men!

That was all that had survived.

Within a few hours of landing, the raiding party that was once 200 men strong and filled with both old and new raiders alike had been reduced to barely ¼ of their former number.

Worse, the men that the Jarl had sent to accompany him to both help and keep an eye on him were dead, something that would be very hard to explain as the suspicious shrewd eastern noble who would think that he had deliberately got them killed in battle so even if he managed to get out with his life Demarcus would have to deal with the Jarl's disfavour which would cut off any future path of promotion without him making outstanding contributions to redeem himself.

The other were either too scared to leave the houses they were bunkering down in or were killed in the cavalry attack. He could even see many had died from arrows, meaning that the enemy had a few skilled horse archers in their ranks, which was a very hard opponent to deal with when you lack ranged weapons, as he only had ten archers amongst his men and from the arrows were not as accurate as their opponents unaware that Aldorus and Oswan two men who could kill all these raiders with just the two of them who were primarily the ones responsible for those men dying.

The village turned silent as the last death thro echoed through the village, and each person swore they could hear the steel spearhead enter, twist, and leave the body, but the devils on horseback didn't even flinch as if everything was going as planned.

When the horseback riders came into view, the raiders had already formed a shield wall and a line of spears ready to strike the cavalry, who they were surprised to find had no banner or obvious Sigel showing their allegiance to any particular noble.

This means they could not be the baron's men whose red dragon banner would have fluttered into the fierce gale that whipped hair back but someone else.

Someone else was here and killing them for an unknown reason.

40 cavalry dismounted at their head was a young man, a line of shields quickly protecting him from any potential projectile that could end his life as he loosely held his sword out to one side.

Railius did not want to charge a line of spears with cavalry and so dismounted most of his men so that they could get their opponents into the open and hit them in the flank with cavalry collapsing their formation in an instant. It also did not help that they were defending a pier using the sea and the narrow wooden construction to make cavalry useless, successfully turning this into an infantry battle and removing House Aurellion's advantage in manoeuvrability.

'40 men!'

'We were done in by 40 men!'

'50 veterans and 100 men died to 40 fucking men!'

'What the hell is this? Are they killing machines or something!'

Demarcus thought, his fists clenching when he thought about how absurd it was. Even if they were elite cavalry, winning so decisively was rare!

'No, there must be more hiding somewhere unless the rest died in a previous battle.'

'What I would give for just one scout to have gotten back with information!'

The player in his mid-twenties thought, annoyed at their lack of information on their opponent, something their opponent seemed to have no trouble getting.

'What are those bloody sentries doing allowing the enemy to scout us so well.'

The player continued thinking, his mind a chaotic mess as he tried hard to figure out a way out of his current predicament. The disciplined, synchronised steps of his enemy sent a shiver down his spine.

"Why do you kill us?"

"What grudge do you hold against us?" 

Demarcus shouted, surprised at the discipline of his opponents, who seemed more like royal knights or guards than random passersby.

"Grudge? Who says we have a grudge?"

"Aren't you guys raiders?"

"Since when does anyone need a grudge to hunt down shitstains like you?"

"You're dead men walking anyway, so why don't you just drop your weapons and die and make things easier for us, okay?"

"Think of it as punishment for your crimes."

Railius replied in a casual tone, chuckling at having to justify himself to people who, for all intents and purposes, were criminals, dismissing the 50 remaining raiders as if they were already dead men, which, in his mind, they were.

They were men destined to die within the hour.

'Some of their mail seems better than ours. We should consider upgrading, and we even have an excuse because it's our war loot. How nice! How nice!'

Railius thought happily, never turning down a free gift when one was presented. His mind was already on the benefits he could gain after the deaths of these raiders, who would all cough up blood if they knew what the young player was thinking.

A few arrows were shot from the raiders but embedded themselves into the shield wall. It seems that the more passionate raiders did not take kindly to being insulted.

"Oh, it appears I have hit a nerve."

Railius smiled, hearing the arrows bang against the shields protecting him. Vegrif, the one in the centre of the wall of shields protecting Railius, sighed.

'He really is too good at pissing people off….'

 Vegrif thought, shaking his head slightly at his lord's antics.

The eccentric lord of Aurellion liked nothing more than mocking his opponents, and he did it so much that people wondered whether he did it to provoke his enemies into attacking him or just for his own pleasure.

Because these lines seem to cross far too much for it to be a coincidence.

"Surely there is something more! What the hell can you be protecting that is worth the risk of sacrificing your men to take us on."

Demarcus continued asking, bristling at the insults but still managed to keep his voice, even swearing to strike down this arrogant prick who knew no manners or fear himself.

"Oh well, you see, we are mercenaries tasked with protecting a caravan. It is currently laden with 30,000 gold worth of goods, which is far too much money for risks to be taken. So when we heard of 200 raiders in the area, which could be a threat, and so we rushed here to deal with the problem before the problem came to us and caused us a pain in the arse. You see, unlike others, we take our jobs very seriously, and I hate pains in the arse the most."

"So annoying."

Railius said sarcastically, revealing only part of the reason that he decided to go out of his way to deal with the raiders. It was true that they needed to deal with them before they were ambushed for their goods, but the main reason was to give his men some proper experience dealing with more professional fighters than bandits, whom even Railius could not take on 2 or 3 vs 1 without having any issues.

"For someone so righteous, you can be a real asshole at times."

Demarcus shouted back, unable to hold back his retort despite knowing that it was what his arrogant opponent desired.

"Please don't lump me in with those amateurs. I'm not an asshole. I'm a professional asshole; please get it right. If you're looking to escape this problematic situation you find yourself in with flattery, at least do it right."

Railius shouted back shamelessly while tutting.

'Come on, you little shit, get mad and come into the village square.' 

Railius thought as his men stood 10 meters from their enemy, smiling like a predator about to pounce on his prey.