Chapter Fifty-Seven: The Fierce Battle (Conclusion)
It was already approaching dusk. Today's decisive battle could hardly be called a battle; rather, it was a brutal game of trading pieces. Indeed, under Sun Li's deliberate guidance, Marshal Agles, desperate for a swift victory, had continuously poured the Dwarf Empire's reserves into the battlefield just as triumphantly claiming the day seemed within his grasp. Yet, one by one, those desperate reserves found their advance miraculously halted by the soldiers of the Song State.
Marshal Agles had to admit at this juncture that his greatest miscalculation was failing to realize that these Song soldiers were truly a band of suicidal madmen—even crazier than his own dwarfic troops!
By this stage of the fight, anyone with discernment could see that the Song State could no longer achieve victory. To continue fighting was merely to drag the otherwise victorious dwarf army together with them into the abyss of failure!
Well, Agles felt that Sun Li's objective was precisely this: if I cannot win, we shall perish together!
There was no compromise, no thought of preserving strength, just raw, unyielding confrontation—a test of who could endure the casualties longer, who the hell would chicken out first!
Marshal Agles did not flinch, and neither did Sun Li. And so, the armies of both sides traded blows until they were mutually ground down...
At this point, after hours of slaughter, the remaining Song soldiers numbered perhaps less than ten thousand. Meanwhile, under the ceaseless pounding of grenades, artillery, and Minié rifles, the dwarf army still retained over twenty thousand men. One could only imagine the immense disadvantage the Song soldiers faced in close combat. Had it not been for the ultimate, unbelievable trump card of human-bomb tactics—viewed as sheer insanity by other nations—the Song soldiers would have been wiped out without managing to take many dwarf lives at all!
Yet, the outcome of war often births unexpected twists amidst unforeseen circumstances.
The rumbling of hooves sounded once more. Leading the final few thousand Song cavalry, Sun Li charged directly toward the position of Marshal Agles!
"Victory to the Song!"
Even in the face of such a tragic and desolate battlefield, these Song cavalrymen still charged with high morale, shouting the slogan of ultimate victory aloud, even though every single one of them knew that triumph was no longer possible!
Squelch!
Like a knife slicing through cake, propelled by Sun Li's battle aura as a Grand Knight, the Song cavalry—exhausted as they were—broke straight through the ranks of the dwarf infantry, whose physical strength was likewise utterly spent.
Having plunged into the dense formations of the dwarf infantry, these Song cavalrymen, exhausted by the endless cycle of combat, pursuit, and assault, could no longer sustain a coordinated and devastating annihilation maneuver. Many of their warhorses simply collapsed from sheer exhaustion.
On the battlefield, intricate parries and strikes vanished; as long as one still had the strength to raise a blade and hack downward, one could essentially cut down a completely exhausted enemy. Among them, the one with the greatest stamina was undoubtedly Sun Li, accompanied by his hundred-odd personal guards.
Thus, out of the thousands of cavalry who had charged into the enemy infantry, only a little over a hundred managed to keep pace with Sun Li. The rest of the cavalry, precisely as Sun Li had anticipated, became hopelessly bogged down in this colossal meat grinder—which was precisely why Sun Li had initially used the cavalry to relentlessly pursue the fleeing dwarf forces!
He knew he would only ever have one chance to charge!
Yet, for Sun Li, a mighty Grand Knight, that was more than enough. After his warhorse was impaled by the spears of loyal dwarf elites, he fought his way on foot through layer after layer of the dwarf soldiers' desperate protection, arriving directly before Marshal Agles!
In the thick of a melee, the sheer martial might of a Grand Knight was an insolvable existence!
Sun Li rested the edge of his longsword against Marshal Agles's neck, hoping to make the old dwarf see reason and order the remaining twenty thousand dwarf soldiers under his command to surrender. Regrettably, he saw only tranquility and madness reflected in the old man's eyes!
Contradictory yet harmonious, two entirely different emotions intertwined, perfectly mirroring Marshal Agles's state of mind at that moment.
"Our Dwarf Empire still has armies in our homeland. With nearly one hundred thousand casualties in this single battle, do you still have the capital to rise again? Hahaha, I shall wait for you down below, Sun Li!" With those words, the old dwarf seemed unwilling to suffer any further torment and hurled himself forward against Sun Li's blade. A splash of blood bloomed in the air as this veteran commander, who had led an army of nearly two hundred thousand dwarfs, met his end beneath the sword.
"So eager to die. It seems you yourself knew that even if this battle were won, it was still a defeat. Truly a stubborn old fool, heh." Sun Li could easily have saved Marshal Agles with his superior reflexes, but he no longer had any interest in doing so.
"Next comes the moment to harvest points. The lives of these one hundred thousand dwarf elites should be enough to arm a force of tens of thousands of Minié riflemen." At this moment, Sun Li seemed transformed into a bloodthirsty fanatic, which was precisely the ultimate goal pursued by the Empire System!
The points provided by these elite dwarfs were vastly higher than those from ordinary military personnel. After this battle, Sun Li had zero concerns about troop replenishment!
Centering on the spot where Marshal Agles had fallen, a storm of slaughter swept across the entire battlefield. Clutching the severed head of Marshal Agles, Sun Li shouted to shatter the morale of the remaining dwarf soldiers while carrying out an efficient massacre.
Under the terrifying coercion of his Grand Knight status, compounded by the death of Marshal Agles, wherever Sun Li passed, the enemy lines collapsed like tumbling mountains!
The remaining twenty thousand dwarf soldiers, who had fought and killed for a full day, finally broke!
Naturally, Sun Li had no intention of allowing these elites to return to their homeland and continue causing trouble for him. Under his strict orders, the remaining Song cavalry and infantry—numbering less than ten thousand—pursued the fleeing enemies relentlessly.
However, the dwarf soldiers who had dominated the battle just moments prior refused to simply let their former conquerors hunt them down. Small-scale counterattacks erupted sporadically across the battlefield until Sun Li personally led reinforcements to crush them.
These minor counter-assaults could not alter the reality of the dwarf army's collapse; they were merely the final, desperate frenzy of dwarfs unwilling to accept defeat. Yet, they still managed to shave away a few thousand more lives from the Song State's already meager surviving ranks.
Beneath the lingering glow of the setting sun, upon a battlefield littered with corpses, all the surviving living souls of the Song State numbered less than eight thousand combined! Even clearing the battlefield became an immensely arduous task.
With no other choice, Sun Li ordered the pristine, intact units of Minié riflemen to stand on guard while they slowly cleared the massive charnel grounds.
Amidst this pitch-black, brutal slaughter, the surrounding human populations had long since fled to the last man, leaving Sun Li with no locals left to press into forced labor...
In the aftermath of this battle, out of the Song State's one hundred thousand troops—including the artillery corps—only 7,890 remained. The exact losses of the Dwarf Empire were impossible to tally precisely, but Sun Li conservatively estimated that fewer than 5,000 dwarfs managed to escape back alive.
This was a battle without victors. Only two nations of fanatical soldiers could possibly produce such astronomical casualty rates. Sun Li could not help but sigh inwardly: "The Dwarf Empire truly is the greatest formidable enemy on the European continent!"
Post-battle, Sun Li led his battered remnant troops in a silent retreat back to the first captured port city, which had already been transformed into their main stronghold on the European continent. Protected here by the heavy naval guns of ironclad warships, the Song State possessed more than enough strength to ensure its own survival, even if its entire land army were to vanish.