Because the ge has a crosspiece, it can hook and trap an ordinary enemy’s weapon.

Against heavy cavalry, this weapon is even more effective.

All it takes is a few fearless soldiers willing to fight to the death. In the chaos of battle, they can use their ge to hook the enemy off their horses.

Once a heavily armored cavalryman is on the ground, even if he isn’t dead, he can’t get back up. He might as well be.

That’s why using ge and ji against heavy cavalry is the best approach.

The ge is the key to victory.

The crossbow is the best weapon for reducing casualties.

The spearmen are the core of the battle plan: they keep the formation intact, slow the enemy, and create openings for the ge troops, linking the whole strategy together.

If the enemy thinks dodging his powerful crossbow volley is enough to secure victory, they couldn’t be more wrong!

So the failed volley hadn’t caused him any decisive trouble.

Amid the deafening clashes of battle, he shouted with all his strength, ordering the spearmen to steady themselves and level their spears.

Yes. After the clash of crossbow bolts against shields came the sound of shields colliding with spears.

The enemy’s move had once again caught him off guard.

He’d spent some time studying the Dark King’s army, and believed he understood their iron cavalry’s charging tactics fairly well.

There was no doubt it was an aggressive style of warfare.

They used the enormous killing power of their lances and the strength of their armor to smash straight ahead, crushing the enemy’s vanguard as quickly as possible, sowing confusion, then striking while they had the chance.

If that was their tactic, his own spear formation probably wouldn’t hold either. Especially with so few powerful crossbows, the line would be breached in no time.

But that was exactly what he wanted!

If the enemy broke through that way, the breach would be scattered, with the more skilled riders and horsemen emerging from the formation first.

Then those vanguard riders would be surrounded by the long-hafted ge troops. Strong fighters like Dracula might hold their own, but ordinary cavalrymen would have no choice but to fall from their horses.

Besides, the long-ge troops could hook horses’ legs. They had all sorts of ways to deal with cavalry.

If everything went according to Third’s plan, the spear formation would act like a sieve. It didn’t need to stop the cavalry’s charge completely; it only had to break up their formation.

The vanguard would inflict heavy casualties on the spearmen, but it wouldn’t be able to keep charging or turn around to support the rest. In the end, it would become a war of attrition—trading the lives of spearmen for fallen cavalrymen!

Third believed they had a chance to win.

But his opponent wasn’t playing by his rules at all.

In the moments before the two armies met, cavalry usually pushed their horses to top speed. The Dark King’s army, however, did the exact opposite of what anyone would expect and slowed down.

Slowing down just before impact?

And instead of the expected sweep of lances and a vanguard charge, the first two rows of cavalry came forward with shields raised and collided with the spear formation.

It wasn’t a clever tactic. Cavalry had tremendous momentum, but they weren’t much stronger than infantry.

Charging into a spear formation with shields might reduce casualties among the front ranks, but once they’d lost their momentum, how were they supposed to break through?

Third was baffled. For once, he even lost focus for a moment.

The clash of spears against iron shields went on and on, until it ended in a deafening crash. The shield-bearing cavalrymen tumbled from their horses.

The massive shields that had given the archers so much trouble now became the riders’ fatal weakness. Each one was so large that it had to withstand the thrusts of at least a dozen spearmen.

That turned the clash into a simple test of strength. How could the riders possibly stay on their horses?

The Third Clan Army’s spearmen were fired up. If they hadn’t been so strictly trained, they might already have charged forward in a counterattack.

‘Only an idiot would charge a forest of spears with a shield!’

The moment they saw the cavalrymen tumbling from their horses, Third’s men felt a cool, refreshing breath enter their bodies through their nostrils.

It felt wonderful.

‘Take them down! Avenge our fallen comrades!’

From Third on down, officers of every rank in the reserve mounted their horses and asked to join the fight.

The moment their commander gave the order, they’d charge out to help their comrades still fighting.

‘Wait…’

Third turned down the officers’ requests to join the battle.

The head of this distinguished vampire family stared fixedly at the place where the two armies were fighting. The smile of delight still lingered on his lips, but his eyes were full of shock.

The officers turned to look at him in confusion. It didn’t take long for their expressions to match their commander’s.

Because while they’d been celebrating, completely caught up in the moment, the battle had changed again.

First, after their riders fell, the horses in the first two rows didn’t stop where they were. They charged straight into the spear formation without slowing down.

It was a truly bizarre sight.

When a mounted warrior wrestled with an infantryman, the force should have been transferred to the horse.

When a cavalryman fell, the horse’s center of gravity should have shifted. It might have fallen to one side, reared up, or spun in place. In any case, it shouldn’t have kept charging forward.

Even if the occasional exception occurred, it was impossible for every horse to remain unaffected.

But this time, every single cavalryman in the Dark King’s army was an exception.

The iron cavalry’s horses were armored from head to hoof. Their fronts, faces, necks, and even legs were all covered in metal.

Their eyes were covered and their ears plugged. And when the riders fell, they seemed to have given the horses some kind of stimulus as well.

So once their riders were gone, the horses sped up instead of slowing down, charging straight into the spear formation.

Nearly a hundred soldiers had fallen. More than a hundred ironclad horses crashed into the formation with almost as much force as they would have with riders on their backs, and the orderly spear line immediately fell into disarray.

Dracula had sacrificed the fighting strength of nearly a hundred cavalrymen to create this situation. He certainly hadn’t done it just to frighten his opponent.

The cavalry behind them accelerated, carefully following a set route around their fallen comrades. Then they revealed their true trump card to the enemy!

Shouts and screams, the crash of horses and men tumbling, bodies hitting the ground, and hoarse commands stirred the dust-filled air, creating a scene unique to a brutal battlefield.

‘Hold steady! Hold steady! Raise your spears! Don’t break formation!’

‘If we can’t stop them, we’re all dead!’

‘They’re trying to break through while we’re in disarray! Hold them! Hold!’

Formation is the lifeline of infantry.

There are exceptions, like the Flame Strike Knights, who can fight valiantly without relying on formation.

But for the most part, this holds true in almost every situation—especially when infantry face cavalry.

Their opponents were extremely unusual, but Third was still leading an elite army he’d trained himself.

At the moment of life and death, those soldiers showed just how tough they were.

Amid the chaos of men and horses tumbling, the forest of spears was knocked crooked in every direction, but miraculously, it didn’t collapse.

The soldiers held on stubbornly, using every ounce of strength they had to point their icy spearheads at the enemy cavalry.

Third breathed a sigh of relief. As long as the formation hadn’t completely collapsed, they still had a chance.

But just as the figures charging through the dust began to come into focus, sharp spearheads darted out first, stabbing forward like lightning!

‘Hah!’

The spearmen directly in the enemy’s path were terrified, but they kept their heads. They knew what their only chance of survival was.

They didn’t dodge. Shouting loudly, they thrust out their spears with all their strength.

Several infantry spears barely reached the edge of the dust cloud, still a long way from the enemy riders. But a cavalry lance, like a swift serpent, precisely targeted one spearman’s chest.

The lance rose and fell. Blood sprayed!

The victim lowered his head and stared in disbelief at the enormous wound in his chest.

He let go of his spear and tried to cover the wound with both hands, to stop the blood from flowing and save the life rapidly draining from him…

His efforts were futile.

From his comrades’ perspective, he only let out a scream, swiped once at empty air, and fell to the ground.

‘How is that possible?’

At that moment, the spearmen were utterly stunned.

The Dark King’s heavy cavalry used twelve-chi horse lances.

With a three-chi spearhead, a six-chi shaft, and a buttspike over two chi long, the horse lance was also known as a ‘two-headed spear.’

The standard for a proper lance was that, when suspended by a hemp rope tied two chi from its butt, the entire eighteen-chi lance would balance in midair like a scale beam, with neither end rising or falling.

Held in one hand during a charge, it was very easy to use. As long as you held it at the right point, you didn’t need to worry about balancing it at all.

Of course, Third hadn’t overlooked the power of a horse lance combined with heavy armor.

That was why, before the battle, he’d specially reequipped the spearmen with eighteen-chi-long spears, specifically to counter the enemy’s horse lances.

A little extra length means a little extra reach.

An eighteen-chi spear couldn’t completely stop a cavalry charge, but it let the spearmen strike the cavalry from outside the enemy’s range, dealing as much damage as possible.

With enough details like that, the balance of victory would slowly tip in their favor.

But once again, the enemy had surprised him. They had the exact same idea!

Those spearpoints, jutting forward like fangs, were already killing spearmen from beyond the reach of the spear formation.

And it wasn’t just one isolated case. As soon as the second exchange began after the armies met head-on, a large number of the spearmen under Third’s command were struck down without any chance to fight back.

A little extra length means a little extra reach!

Cavalry lances longer than eighteen-chi spears? That defied all reason.

Eighteen chi was four meters. A weapon that long packed plenty of power, but four meters of momentum was incredibly difficult to control.

Unless someone was born with superhuman strength, even a well-trained soldier couldn’t wield one in a fight without leaving openings everywhere.

Infantry spearmen didn’t have to worry about that. Infantry combat relied more on teamwork, and a longer weapon let them strike down enemies from a safer distance, creating openings for their comrades. So an eighteen-chi spear wasn’t a problem for them.

Cavalry were different. They needed teamwork too, of course, but an individual rider’s fighting ability was what mattered most.

The Dark King’s army was striking infantry from beyond the spear formation’s range. That meant their weapons were probably even longer than eighteen chi.