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When the retreating battalions of Taris Army returned to their temporary headquarters, all they found were bodies lying in the ground, assassinated in cold blood. Most of them were devastated by the current situation but still put on an uncaring face. (or rather, they had learnt to fend for themselves as quickly as possible.) After all, everyone could be resurrected once more but that did not mean that it did not reduce the morale of the troops that were retreating.

They were not aware whether the ambushers were able to catch up on them or the ambushers were merely waiting to see the reaction of the retreated battalion who returned to their headquarters. But the moment the Horned Bear Knights tried to dismount to search for any survivors, explosive arrows were sent flying across the trees and into the headquarters' ground.

This explosive barrage was sufficient to scare those who had yet to dismount and some decided to flee out of Demopolis territory completely since staying around had no other benefits especially when their headquarters had been decimated into nothingness. The rest were slaughtered or eventually bleed out to death when they lost their limbs or parts of their body from the explosions. With no healers around, many of the wounded resigned to their fate as they felt this was merely just a nightmare.

In addition, this terrible scare within the remnants had already activated the virus that had been ingested during their breakfast. Even as they tried to run out of the territory, their fear and adrenaline rush caused the virus to sap them of their life energy. Most of them, if not all, were killed trying to flee not knowing the reason why. All they knew was they became weak almost instantaneously and had difficulty catching their breath.

Without much knowledge of their deaths, they fell off their mounts and died as their lungs failed to move and their hearts refused to beat. As for the rest, their Horned Bears and horses could only move forward, some with their masters still on their backs, attempting to get out of the current predicament. Regardless, the System knew who was alive and who wasn't since the entire Demopolis territory was under its control.

And thus, based on the System's intel, the Night Foxes proceeded to eliminate the ones that were still breathing to make sure that there were no survivors. Besides, this is a recruitment run for the System, it was best to take everyone into its embrace.

As for Taris General Yaega and his faithful cavalries who managed to pass through the deadly ambush, they were still split up in this tunnel within the stronghold walls where they were hoping to find a way out of it. But the more grounds they covered, it felt even more endless. In his mind, he was wondering why the scouts had betrayed him and or did they give the wrong information.

All of them would faithfully follow him to the depths of hell and back before and there was no doubt of that in Yaega's mind. They never succumbed to tremendous torture from other enemy kingdoms as they all knew how their general never left anyone behind.

Not to mention, they were well paid, very well paid compared to some of the junior knights because Yaega knew how the scouting job was a dangerous one especially when death in this world was a blessing and curse. In fact, if they were to die, the Taris Army were to benefit from it since their resurrection also meant that they would have the information in hand. (Though it still hugely depends on the resurrection process since some of the side effects included information loss.)

But in this case, the Taris General did not know the powers of the lords controlling Demopolis. The Night Foxes had previously killed the scouts and the Dark Lord Almighty Kraft purposely resurrected them for this misinformation performance. After all, information war was something that the Dungeon World had little to no knowledge about and it was fun for Kraft to manipulate them into playing this kind of game.

While he contemplates, the remaining cavalry galloped further through the tunnel until layers of heavy metal doors suddenly emerged from the top and bottom of the tunnels, cutting their paths and disabling them to proceed any further. As if these doors were a calculated move the moment they appeared, they squashed at least one to two armoured cavalry units, crashing and cutting them with the door's weight.

Some of the cavalry men were horrified by the attack but not for General Yaega's whose priority was to create chaos as a source of distraction for the North East and North West deployments. They knew they were decoys but with the supposed betrayal from his scouts still in his mind, he believed that the enemies knew their intention and intended to trap them in this tunnel.

Furthermore, he was in shock that his siege breaking lance had little effect on Demopolis Walls and how the information he obtained during the planning stages of the war plan was basically trash. He remembered that the Demopolis walls should be old and tattered, fortified only with magical barriers. The guards were nearly non essential since no one dared to wage war against a big name city like Demopolis.

Yaega took the extra mile to confirm this intelligence information from the Church indicating the very same thing. The Church also provided unique magical runes for his siege engines, which could only mean that they did not know of this new development. So does this imply that these new cement walls were erected during their march to Demopolis? It would seem impossible in the General's mind and yet they were within this towering white wall, trying to find a way out.

"Argh, get yourself together Yaega!" The general thought to himself as he dismounted from his bear and decided to try breaking the walls from the inside. Perhaps if he used his magical lance from within, the damage would be greater?

"Hmmm, that magical looking lance must mean that you are someone special."

Yaega suddenly sensed a heavy looking item was being thrown his way and instead of inserting magic into his lance, he used it to block the projectile along with his lance. As it collided with the Wallbreaker Lance, Yaega had been pushed several metres back. He then noticed that there was some blood on the heavy bulk of metal and saw the bloodshed it made along the way. The metal piece slowly retracted back and Yaega saw a menacing huge figure wearing a sort of animal visor at the side of the tunnel. There was no way he could not have sensed such a big figure when they were trapped inside a section of the tunnel, so ...possibly teleport magic?

"...And that huge thing is actually a retractable mace? No. It's too huge to be a mace, it's more like a war club." Yaega thought to himself as the rest of his cavalry men dismounted and went ahead to create a defensive formation around their general.

As for the Horned Bears, they obviously knew who their enemy was instantly and three of them charged towards the towering figure, as if telling him who is truly in charge here. But even before the bears could even reach him, the hippo masked cultivator had already made his move once more with his war club.