Elite Mages’ Academy (Web Novel)

Chapter 240: Start of The War (1)

Tragedies never came alone. As the acting monitors were busy arguing among themselves, someone rushed into the headquarters, reporting that the fires on the sentry towers had been lit.

Everyone had already been in a bad state of mind before that, and the sentry towers being lit could only mean one thing: their enemies were approaching. They might have erected the towers as an early warning system, but no one was happy that it worked.

The entire fortress had already been in a state of frantic chaos. They had already done a lot of preparations before that, so it was not like they were not prepared mentally, but the current situation was out of their expectations thanks to the silver warships.

The fact that the elves had yet to make a move after stopping in the distance gave them some amount of comfort. Not only did they refrain from firing any long-ranged attacks, they had yet to even send someone to shore. Someone had suggested that they should have sent an envoy as an attempt for diplomacy, but the sudden appearance of the orcs caused them to abandon the plan for the moment.

It did not matter what stance or attitude that fleet of warships had toward Dawn Academy, so long as they maintained their distance until the end of the examinations.

Even though most of them felt that that approach was not realistic, they currently had no better options available to them.

The scouts they had assigned quickly returned. The defensive measures they adopted worked out quite well, assigning scouts to the sentry towers with the vision-enhancing scrolls to keep watch. The moment enemies were sighted, they would first light up the sentry towers before running back to make a report themselves.

Just like they expected, the army that was currently heading toward them was a unit of orcish wolf cavalry, but the numbers were not that high. According to the scout’s rough estimate, there were about three to four hundred cavalry troops, but following them was an army of almost 3,000 fully equipped orc foot soldiers.

“I can understand the cavalry, since it’s not that hard for them to arrive fast if they went at full speed, but I don’t understand how the foot soldiers managed to arrive at the same time.” Xiao Lin stared at the scout, hoping to verify his report.

“Hey! The scrolls were given by you. How could the report be wrong!” The scout was from another class, so his monitor naturally protested when Xiao Lin questioned him.

Xiao Lin shook his head. “I’m not trying to fault him; it’s just very strange. I prioritized scouting so much earlier in order to get a better grasp of our enemies, and we definitely did not get any reports of an orcish encampment nearby. Where did all those foot soldiers come from?”

“From the nearby forest?” Cheng Ming asked hesitantly.

“That forest is quite small. If they came from that direction, we would have noticed them sooner.”

“What if they had always been hiding there, biding their time and waiting for the cavalry to arrive before attacking together?” Xiao Lin’s words caused everyone to pale.

If his guess was true, then did the orcs always know they would stage an attack on this supply depot?

With that heavy thought in their heads, everyone awaited the enemies along the fortress walls.

It was noon when someone suddenly shouted, “They’re here!”

The impressive orc army began to march closer. This time, it was an army composed purely of orcs, without any useless merfolk accompanying them. Xiao Lin and the other monitors had already used the magical scrolls to get a better look at the army.

Boom!

They had prepared a large number of traps at the foot of the hill. The wolf cavalry charged, triggering the flame traps below. Those traps that were made with easily combustible materials quickly unleashed extremely hot flames on the orcs. Even if the orcs had thick skin, they were still unable to withstand being constantly burned by magical flames. Furthermore, wolf mounts were beasts that were naturally afraid of fire.

As the flames roared, wolf cavalry’s formation started to go into disarray as the mounts panicked. However, the orcs were very disciplined. They knew that if they slowed down at that moment, they would disrupt the incoming foot soldiers. Not only did the vanguard not slow down, they even started to speed up.

Everyone was surprised at how battle hardened the orcs were. Those mounted troops may have been armored, but they still lacked defenses against magic. The flames continued to burn them, causing the thick and heavy armor they wore to heat up rapidly in the process. Thanks to the magical scrolls, Xiao Lin could even see the steam rising out of the armor, and involuntarily shuddered as he felt vicarious pain from just looking at it.

Even with that against them, the orcs did not retreat. Their faces were filled with bloodlust as they ignored the flames and injuries as they brandished their weapons and charged toward the fortress.

However, they had more traps set up. After the flame traps were the spike traps. Those poisoned hooks dealt a fatal blow to the heavily-injured orcish cavalry.

The poison had been found in the supply depot, and none of them actually knew how strong it was. They could not see that the effects were quite good as the wolf mounts that were poisoned started to roll around on the floor, spasming as they started to froth out of the mouth before giving out their last breath.

The dismounted orcs did not do that well against the poison either. They did not manage to hold on for long before ending up with the same fate.

The army of wolf cavalry troops charging at them was a fearsome sight, and most of the students in the fortress had only seen such a thing in movies. A lot of them could not help but cower in fear at the sudden sight of that show of force.

However, it took less than twenty minutes for that army to be eliminated. Only a few of them could even stand up, leading to cheers from the students. The traps that they had spent their days laboriously setting up finally paid off.

“They really underestimated us!”

“So what if they’re orcs? They still died in the end!”

“Hahaha, we might actually be able to hold down this fortress!”

The effectiveness of the traps managed to raise morale some, but these inexperienced soldiers were still very easily swayed.

No matter what, their opening salvo had led to a lot of satisfaction, but a small minority only got more worried after.