“Only in times of desperation would one appreciate aid to the utmost.” - Old Al-Shanian saying.

“Do not falter! Stand fast and send these beasts back from whichever hell they crawled out from!” yelled Xiao Jiangjun Ishak Mil Sharif to his soldiers in an attempt to maintain their morale and bolster their willpower to fight back. The man actually used up most of his own willpower to keep his voice from trembling as he did so, portraying a strong front to the soldiers under his command, despite how he was screaming at himself from within.

The fighting at the Imperial army’s right wing under his command had devolved into nothing short of a debacle. From how the enemy seemed to have expected the encirclement maneuver they decided on, to how the enemy cavalry wreaked havoc and disarray at the flank and back of the right wing, nothing had gone as planned so far past the initial clash.

As if that was not bad enough, he had not expected the enemy to hide some of their inhuman elite soldiers in the midst of their formation, as those soldiers suddenly rushed out from the enemy formation and cleaved the Imperial right wing in twain between them. He himself was with the half of the wing that were still attached to the main formation, while of the other half, he had no inkling of the situation.

He had never seen enemies like the ones he faced before. Supposedly they were also present at the previous day’s battle, but his elites had disengaged from the fighting before they could reach him back then. This time, they led the charge into his formation, so he got a good look at his inhuman foes, and he wished he hadn’t.

Each of the monsters were easily half again to twice as tall as a person, resembling various wild beasts, yet clearly exhibiting intellect at the same time, as was evidenced by their skilled use of weapons and armor. They marched with military precision, relying on their overwhelming bulk to push through formations and battle lines almost as easily as an adult shoving away children in their path.

Those were the fortunate ones.

As for the less fortunate soldiers who took direct hits from the massive weapons wielded by the armored beasts, few of them even had a complete body to bury. Many were directly shorn into halves or pieces when they were struck. Limbs were torn off bodies as if they were nothing, and neither shields or armor seemed to do much to stop the vicious strikes.

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Ishak even saw how a massive armored beast with horns and a long trunk casually pushed away a ten-man unit with its massive shields, each the size of a fort’s entrance gate. It also wielded a massive, wicked mace with its truck and directly pulverized any soldier it hit. One of the victims even fell not too far from Ishak after they were bodily hurled by a mighty blow, their upper body reduced to barely recognizable mush by the force of the impact.

Sure, not all of the foes he faced were as beastly. Some of the human soldiers he saw amongst the enemy force were just as intimidating, however, many of them veritable giants amongst men – or women – wielding massive tower shields the size of doors. He had heard that there were people that large outside the Empire, but had never seen them until that day.

There were people as tall in the lands they already conquered prior to this battle, but none of the people there were tall and bulky like the enemy soldiers he was facing that day. He also spotted others, like the short, stout warriors the Imperial army already ran afoul on in the south, as well as other folk with bulky figures and great tusks sprouting out of their mouths, with skin tones unlike any people he ever saw before.

By that point Ishak had already been forced to retreat his own command group repeatedly before the enemy’s onslaught. While he was not defenseless in a fight, he was not a warrior like most of the other Imperial generals and relied mostly on his knowledge of tactics and strategy to do battle. Directly fighting on the front lines was not something he did.

Under normal conditions, it worked well enough. He had enough of a reputation that his soldiers would not feel discouraged by the fact that he commanded from the rear, and his successes spoke for themselves. The situation he currently faced was far from normal, however, with foes unlike anything he ever faced before mowing their way through his soldiers as if they were mere scarecrows.

A general who was also a warrior could rally the troops’ morale more effectively in such a situation by fighting at the front. Such a display of leading by example was a method that had proven its effectiveness in such situations many times in the past, at least as long as the general in question did not get themselves killed in the process.

Which, to be fair, was something Ishak felt might be difficult to avoid given the sort of foes he was facing.

He was feeling desperate for a moment until one of his aides drew his attention to the side, where he saw the soldiers on the center of the Imperial army making way to allow a unit around five thousand strong to pass towards his direction. He recognized the banner of the advancing unit immediately, that of Xiao Jiangjun Xingl Liat and her gatebreakers.

Ishak mil Sharif breathed an audible sigh of relief without realizing it when he saw the reinforcements headed his way. His elites, the ones who held on so well against the enemy forces that outnumbered them the day before, were breaking apart against these beastly opponents. None of his tactics or stratagems worked against the tidal wave that was the foe he faced.

Mayhaps the unit vaunted to be the most ferocious infantrymen in the Empire could do better.