Chapter 66

Ash was sure Gurg was just waiting for their forces to take the major losses to weaken them when the time came his men would suddenly become much better fighters. Ash made his way through the camp of healers and injured elves over the part of the wall which was still intact and looked over at the battle scene. The first thing he was shocked to see was the sudden change in the terrain, where once used to be a forest right up to the city walls, the trees were gone up to almost a mile, and everywhere he looked he only saw armored soldiers, he could now see the formations, at the back were the red armored elves, Gurg's army, he must be somewhere near their front line, beyond them was where the rest of the elves were fighting the goblins at close quarters, the fight was to force back the line of the goblins away from the city, he could see dozens of large hobgoblins advancing with large armors on their bodies.

So this is what a battle between big armies looked like, it was not about a group of men, but thousands of soldiers moving together, this was about battle strategy moving a lot of pieces together at once. He needed to reach the middle of their side where the captains must be gathered. But he also needed to cross the sea of red-armored elves who all worked for Gurg, if someone among them recognized him that could be trouble and Gurg himself must be with the others too. He looked down at the base of the wall, where small camps were made just like inside the walls where healers were treating the injured soldiers. He jumped down and landed between the white tents, there was a pile of bloody and torn armor plates and helmets from which he found one of his size and wore it over his head, nobody would look at him too carefully in all the chaos. He also found a sword amongst the helmets, but he was missing his sword he had no idea how a normal elf sword would work with his power, it was also much more curved like a typical elvish sword. He would have to get used to its different balance and size.

Now he was ready to enter the battle, so he moved out of the back area and entered the front lines, his heart started racing as the adrenaline of the battle started rising in his body. His attention was grabbee by a hobgoblin which had made it's way very deep into their defense he had seen how much destruction it had caused last time, so he used lightning step to move through the crowd and closer to the hobgoblin, it's whole body was covered with arrows and burns from the attacks thrown at him, but it was moving like a big sized boulder, Ash knew now how to stop a thing like that, attack it's head, so he grabbed a spear lying on the ground and let his mana spread through it, at once he felt the difference in it and his sword, the mana remianed on the surface and the sorar wasn't able to absorb much of it like the sword did, it made the spear more unstable but he held it hard and when it was charged enough he threw it at the hobgoblin's head, it flew through the sky but much slower than the sword had, but still he was able to land a hit, it didn't sink in its thick skin that much but the unstable mana on it exoloded, when the smoke flew away the hobgoblin was left standing with a part of it's skull blown away and one eyes hanging out of it's socket completely. It had stopped moving as it tried to stop the bleeding and bellowed loudly, the other elves around him noticed what he had done and aimed at its head too because of which it didn't take long to bring the giant down.

But when its fat body fell on the ground, hundreds of goblins climbed over him and came at them, the small win they had now felt useless as the goblins came at them, Ash brought his sword up and let mana flow through all of his body to increase his speed and strength took them head-on. It took some time to adjust to the new sword but soon his body had again set a rhythm as he moved from one form to another. For one moment he felt that everything would be all right. As he kept slicing through the goblins they kept on coming forward and forward, he counted five, ten, twenty but the green color was not decreasing at all.

It was like he was stuck in a flood, and although he could swim he was bound to get tired soon, there was no end to them.

They needed to do something else, something more effective. He started making his way towards the other side of the field to find Aria and the others. But moving across a battlefield wasn't easy he kept ducking under arrows, and attacks out of nowhere, a thick tree branch came spinning out of nowhere and hit him and others beside him and threw them back feet into the air. Ash felt his armor bent inward by the impact.

Just standing in one place could result in your death. But he again stood up and ran, a fireball went past his head barely grazing his helmet. He spotted another group of elf mazes fighting a shaman, the shaman alone with his wooden staff was pushing the elves back. Ash took aim and threw his sword like an axe, he charged it with his mana in an instant, and it absorbed the mana better than a normal spear, it spun very fast in the air almost making a circle of blue lightning, it cut through the goblins that came in its path and then through the shield the shaman had out up and separated the shaman head clean from its body. The sword turned around and came back in his hands, now he understood why it was curved like that.

Now he had a way to clear a path through the green, he charged the sword and released it at the goblins again and again.

He knew he would run out of mana like this and he needed to conserve it for later but he liked all the goblins he was killing.

But then when he next threw the sword into the green crowd it didn't come back. The goblins in front of him moved aside and he saw that someone had grabbed the sword in the air by the blade itself.

It looked like a shaman except this goblin was younger and even had a sword. It had a weird kind of armor on half of its body including the hand by which it had grabbed the sword, the armor fitted its body like a second skin and looked like lizard scales. It stared at Ash with it's small beady green eyes, Ash could feel the intelligence behind them, this wasn't going to be easy, especially without a sword, but then the goblin threw the sword back at his feet and took out its own sword.