As soon as the sky dawned, the gate of the originally heavily guarded Stone City suddenly opened, and countless militiamen and civilians poured out.
The one at the forefront was Wang Chao, the logistics commander of the Qingfeng Legion. He rushed towards the battlefield with thousands of logistics troops and the entire peasant population of Hard Rock City.
The order is so chaotic. If the wolf cavalry suddenly appears here and attacks, the entire Stone City will be seriously injured.
But the wolf cavalry, at this moment, no longer dare to approach the Stone City.
They did not retreat to the camp. Instead, they detoured to the east of Stone City and broke into the back of the grassland from the east, which is the current human territory.
Xu Lai only learned of this news in the afternoon. At this moment, he only had one thing to do, which was to clean the battlefield.
All the corpses of my family members have been collected. Those who should be resurrected will be resurrected, and those who cannot be resurrected will be buried properly.
This is the advantage of having the Angel Legion. As long as the battle can be won, the losses can be minimized.
After gathering the entire battlefield, only a dozen people were killed and hundreds of people were seriously injured. This is a brilliant achievement.
Last night Xu Lai used more than 10,000 cavalry to face more than 100,000 orc infantry, tens of thousands of orc wolf cavalry, and tens of thousands of orc flying soldiers and Cyclops.
As for the losses of the orcs, the battle report has not yet been released, so it is not possible to calculate them yet, but it is believed that the losses are definitely not small.
More than 30 orc heroes above level 20 died, including several stronghold heroes above level 30, including the axe-monroka.
When Wang Chao and others came to clean the battlefield, they found more than a hundred heroes below level 20, including advent heroes.
Needless to say, Xu Lai's good relationship with the stronghold directly turned into mortal enemies. Unless Xu Lai can destroy this camp, it is unlikely to change.
But fortunately, he was killing foreigners, so his reputation did not need to be lost. On the contrary, because it was an invasion of orcs, killing so many orcs gave him a huge boost in reputation.
When I conquered the grassland before, I accidentally killed too many of my own people, and my reputation was severely damaged. Now I have almost made up for it.
Wang Chao led his men to collect all the corpses of thunderbirds and golden eagles.
These are all food reserves, which can be stored directly in the warehouse of Hard Rock City, which can reduce a lot of food supply pressure on the rear.
After all, half of the people from the grassland have poured into the rear. Even if Xu Lai started collecting grain early, it would still be quite stressful to supply so many people at once.
Moreover, the temple also brought a large number of believers. Luo Mingru sent news to Xu Lai that he had received the pathfinding knights sent by the temple.
These knights are all old acquaintances of Xu Lai, no, they should be said to be old subordinates.
Xu Lai naturally sent a message to Luo Mingru, asking him to entertain him well and try his best to help the transferred believers. However, according to Luo Mingru, this group of believers numbered hundreds of thousands.
Xu Lai was naturally surprised, but he had already expected that the number of people would not be small, otherwise the temple would not have dispatched so many people to guard it, nor would it have taken such a long time.
Fortunately, this is a magic world. Although there is not much cultivated land in the grassland area, Xu Lai has already opened up business channels with southern merchants.
Furthermore, those southern merchants are mainly engaged in shipping. Even if they reach the grassland areas, they will be protected by Naga teams and will not be attacked by the orcs.
It’s just that the price of food in the south is too cheap, and you can’t make much money even with a full boat.
But Xu Lai traded with these merchants using furs, a specialty of the grassland.
This thing is not valuable in the grassland, but it is valuable when transported to the south. Not only does it have good defense, it can also keep out the cold. It is a must-have item in winter.
Therefore, these southern businessmen can make a lot of money, and everyone is very active.
In addition to the corpses of thunderbirds and golden eagles, the Cyclops also has many treasures, the most important of which is the one-eyed eye that can be connected to the earth, which is an earth treasure.
This thing can be traded with the mages in the tower camp. It is a very popular commodity and can be used to mass-produce earth elements.
Even if the deal with the tower does not go well, Xu Lai will stay and use it to self-research advanced city walls, automatic catapults and the like, which is still very good.
It’s just that this thing has a human shape. When there is no shortage of food, no one wants to eat this thing.
In addition to these corpses, the biggest gain from last night's battle was undoubtedly the supplies delivered by the orcs from the stronghold.
As the active siege party, Sachs would rather abandon some food and deliberately brought some siege equipment, as well as assembly and repair materials, ammunition, etc.
Since there are forests planted by elves on both sides of Stone City, wood is not the most scarce for Stone City.
But the stone bullets provided by the stronghold can be used directly without modification.
On the other hand, those catapults were probably unable to be taken away, so the orc officer ordered a fire to be set on fire. Xu Lai and the others did not put them out in time.
In the end, only a dozen catapults were rescued, which could be used with a little repair, as well as a large number of mechanisms, springs and other accessories that could be disassembled and used again.
And the most important thing is that after Xu Lai captured these facilities and returned them to Hard Rock City, the orcs would have no use for them.
You know, the orcs are not particularly good at machinery manufacturing. The catapults and crossbows they make have two very significant characteristics.
Firstly, the damage is much lower than that of the Imperial Catapult, and secondly, the size is much larger than that of the Imperial Catapult.
I won’t talk about the damage. Anyway, as long as the throw is farther than the shooter, the amount of ammunition can be used to make up for it.
But the huge scale means that it cannot be transported through ordinary space rings, and even if you just cram some in, it will not be able to achieve scale.
At the same time, it also means how difficult it is to transport the orcs all the way from the stronghold to the grassland, and how much manpower and material resources are wasted.
However, the orc catapult also has advantages, such as its rough structure, simple assembly, extremely high durability, and not easy to break.
This point can be fully illustrated by the fact that more than a dozen units were rescued after a fire.
Nearly a hundred catapults were sent to the battlefield, but they were destroyed without firing a single shot. Some of them even became the opponent's help. When the Beast King found out, he was probably so angry that he vomited blood.
The current beast king was so angry that he vomited blood. Although he decisively ordered all the orcs to escape separately.
But with the intelligence of the orcs, it is estimated that not even half of them would be able to return to the team on their own under the circumstances last night.
This is still the most optimistic situation. Most orcs can't find their way on the grassland even if they look at the map.
This is why, under the circumstances last night, Sachs also emphasized that the orcs should at least evacuate on a small team basis.
In the stronghold camp, ordinary soldiers can't even understand the map. The team leader at least has some common sense and has a certain chance of being able to understand the map.
However, Sachs still overlooked one point. Although about a quarter of the team leaders in the stronghold can understand maps, they did not issue so many maps.
Sachs’s map came from Aini. There are not enough mages or cartographers in the stronghold. Even if there is an accurate map provided by Aini, there are not many copies.
Not to mention the squad leader, even the orcs at the command level were unable to do their share.
And even if everyone has one, it will have no effect, because this is not a stronghold, but an endless grassland.
There are very few landmark buildings on the grassland, and the scenery is the same all around. The orcs have no mounts, so they have to walk for a long time before they encounter one or two buildings.
Even if they encounter it, they may not know what kind of building it is, and even if they know it, they may not be able to determine the location of the building on the map.
After all, there are likely to be a lot of the same buildings on the map.
They did not dare to approach the human city, and no one even asked.
Even if a herdsman who has lived on the grassland for a long time suddenly comes to a strange place, it may take him a long time to get his bearings.
The orcs are even worse. The only thing they can do is to identify the direction and move closer to the west.
As for whether we will encounter a human patrol team in the process of getting closer, we can just leave it to fate.
After most of the night passed, I waited until noon the next day.
Xu Lai's side was already in full swing carrying supplies from the stronghold to the city, but Beast King Sax's side had only returned one-tenth of his troops.
At noon, the battle report finally arrived, and Xu Lai and Sachs both knew each other's losses.
According to the battle report, Xu Lai's side lost less than a thousand people. Except for the team of gale knights, the rest of the resurrected warriors were also judged to be losses.
Because it is a fact that an orc killed a knight or a griffon. Even if Xu Lai resurrected the person, he still had to give others the experience.
But even if Xu Lai's losses were counted as a thousand men, the number of dead troops on the orc side alone was more than 30,000, and there were more than 10,000 prisoners or those seriously injured who could not leave.
These 50,000 troops are a naked and irreparable loss. The problem is that he should have nearly 100,000 troops.
However, in the current camp, not counting those who had just come over from the Pingfeng Mountains, there were only about 10,000 old troops at full strength.
Almost all of the Thunderbirds in the flying force were lost, but the Golden Eagle suffered little loss. Elvi was focused on killing the most valuable target.
Then there is the Wolf Cavalry unit, which still has a relatively complete troop structure. It has lost some these days and lost some again last night. There are probably more than 30,000 left.
Sacks has already made contact with Kenlo Hager, and the other party can return to the team at any time, but Kenlo Hager is planning to get into the enemy's rear to cause some damage.
Our side needs to build up strength again. At this time, we cannot let Xu Lai continue to attack his camp with his cavalry.
Otherwise, the troops with almost no morale would be easily dispersed again and collapsed thousands of miles away.
Sachs needs time to retrain his troops, at least to boost morale first.
That’s why he didn’t recruit Kenro Hagar back, but in addition to this wolf cavalry, there should be about 50,000 orc infantry, more than 10,000 hard workers and 5,000 cyclops. ah.
York had reported the situation of the Cyclops last night, and Xu Lai had personally targeted them, and they had all been destroyed.
But there are still more than 50,000 infantry regiments left, and there are almost 20,000 to 30,000 orcs recruited among them.
The morale of these orc warriors has been reduced to zero. If they are not recovered soon, they will become wild monsters and have nothing to do with them.
Sachs was so anxious that he had no choice. He was so angry that he vomited blood and could only wait for one bad news after another.
First, it was reported that the catapults, ballistas and the like stored in the camp were burned to the ground.
But this was an order given by Sachs himself after all, so he was relatively calm when he received the report.
But then, the only remaining shaman, Mok, told him that he communicated with other shamans, high priests, etc. through natural magic, but found that there were very few responses.
The stronghold's spellcasting power is already small. This time, Sachs can be said to have brought out most of the country's spellcasting power, with a total of more than 6,000 people.
Except for the few priests who remained on the other side of Pingfeng Mountain and were on their way over, there should have been at least 3,000 priests in the position last night.
But Mok told him that his two junior brothers, the other two disciples of the Great Prophet, had been killed in battle.
In addition, most of the disciples and grandsons of the three of them were also killed. At least a thousand spellcasters above the priests were killed directly in the battle.
Of the two thousand left, many of them don’t know where they are and are trying to figure out how to return to the team.
Of course, in the vast grassland, the caster cannot compare with the orc warriors in terms of physique or speed, and he didn’t know which direction he ran last night.
Therefore, Mock is very pessimistic about the number of spellcasters who can come back. The most optimistic estimate is that only half of them can return smoothly.
This is undoubtedly extremely sad news, because even the returning troops still have lingering poisons and still need detoxification and treatment to maintain their lives.
But there was nothing Sachs could do, so he had to send a letter to the Great Prophet for help, and asked Mock to lead people to quickly crack the poison.
Soon after, another soldier came to report that the food crisis reappeared.
However, due to a large reduction in the number of troops, although the food and grass brought out by the army were destroyed, they could barely survive for a while.
The food and supplies were gone, the soldiers and spell casters were gone, and even the flying soldiers who relied heavily on them suffered heavy losses.
Just when Sachs thought he had nothing more to lose.
Kenro Hag sent someone back to report that Xu Lai had hung the heads of nearly a hundred orc heroes, including Ax King Meng Kuoka, on the top of the Stone City.
Not only that, after the battle was settled, all the recruited orcs turned into white light, and Xu Lai chopped off the heads of all the remaining orcs collected on the battlefield.
The heads of these orcs were stacked one by one into a hill, and they were piled in their camp last night.
After hearing the news, especially the names that were once extremely familiar, and being reported one by one by Kenlo Hager, Sachs vomited blood on the spot.
After a long pause, Sachs issued the latest order before dark.
Kenlo Hager was ordered to harass the rear at all costs, trying to attract all Xu Lai and his damn cavalry.
At the same time, he ordered the rear to complete the assembly within three days at all costs, even if half of the orcs were killed. (End of this chapter)