Author's note: I'll be a very nice author and give you Saturday's chapter two days early. :)

enjoy and let me know what you think of this chapter's battle!

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"Everybody! Listen up!" Zaran roared as they closed in on the monster's territory. "We are nearly at the nayeran's territory. They are a hyena like creature that is in the stage between beast and beastmen and we have been requested to kill them because of their pure savagery! Three villages have already been utterly slaughtered by them. Women, men, elderly, children, none were spared. Not even a single living being remained alive in either of the villages. The nayeran have basic intelligence and wield weapons such as bows, spears and axes but they are unable to use magic and they are prone to move in groups of a few hundred. They number more than ten thousand so from here on out it will be an all out war between us and them. I don't want any of you to show them mercy for they have shown none!"

War cries rang out from the troops as Zaran finished his speech. He had just started streaming and even though this speech was not quite necessary, it still served to make him look better to his audience.

A few minutes later the full guild exited the forest they were travelling through and arrived at wide open plains, which was completely covered with colourful flowers. Red, Purple, Yellow, Blue... Every colour was proudly on display, mixed all together to create an incredibly enchanting scenery. At a first glance the plains did not seem a good battlefield as the plains were covered by small hills that were a meter or two high, which hid a large part of the plains from view. If the nayeran did not use a strategy it would work out but if they did then they had far too much terrain to use as cover.

Moreover they would be easily seen if they moved any further. Even though everyone with him was an elite player, with their measly two hundred and ten people all together, they could not possibly hold out against ten thousand enemies. Especially because every enemy would be at least 10 levels higher than the guild's average of level 50.

Past the plains lied, Ergan, a four kilometer high mountain surrounded by a few kilometers of plains on all sides that served as the center of the nayeran's home, culture and territory. Zaran mumbled as he stared at the mountain and plains. "Fuck... what a disaster of a battlefield. Not even one hill is large enough to hold all of us and because of how close the hills are we can't place people in between two hills as the enemy would be able to jump right in the middle or on top of us."

"We can't sneak up on them as it is not a feasible strategy plus if we move any further we'll most likely be spotted. With their basic intelligence they should be able to figure out what such a large number of warriors is here for. So what rests us is baiting a group of them over bit by bit. But there's about a three kilometer distance between us and the mountains."

Zaran started to command his troops. "Everyone, get into formation! I will draw out a group of them to this location. I want eighty warriors in the front, twenty on each side and ten at our back. Shields take up the first line! Spears and lances the second. Dig your feet into the ground and brace yourselves from impact the moment I come back with a group."

"YES SIR!" The warriors roared as they started moving along to Zaran's instructions, quickly entering a rough formation. Each and everyone present listened to every of Zaran's words. He was both the guild leader and the strongest person present so whatever he said was the law!

Zaran continued to roar commands one by one.

"Assassins, you hide nearby and wait for an opportune time to assassinate some of our enemies."

"Archers! Conserve your ammo by making every shot count."

"Mages, focus your fire on the most crowded locations but make sure to not block anything from vision unless Florance or I tell you to do so."

"Priests and paladins, overlay your buffs so that no one has to fight without one."

"And this is to all of you and the most important command. Do not die!"

"Kirin, you join the assassin's, Cindarrah, you join the mages and Kru you're with me!"

"YES SIR!" Everyone shouted a final time. Zaran nodded and quickly darted forward.

Ten minutes later Zaran returned in front of the group with a wave of four hundred nayeran after him, all wielding axes, clubs, spears, wooden shields and bows. Even though they had basic weaponry, one could not underestimate them. In a short skirmish that Zaran had with a lone nayeran, he did not have the easiest time to deal with the sole nayeran as its battle sense was rather well developed and from their stats could be summed up in one word. Strong!

nayeran

Level 60

Hp: 50000

defense: 1200

attack: 2500

A species in between being a beast and a beastman. They posses great battle sense and never leave their home in small groups. Even though their intelligence is not that great, it should not be underestimated as they are capable of basic tactical strategies! However they are unable to utilize ki or magic.

The first rows of shield-bearing warriors and spear or lance wielding warriors made way for Zaran and Kru and then quickly closed up to stop the onslaught of nayeran behind the two.

Upon noticing the sturdiness of the formation, the leader of the nayeran stopped the advance of his own men and gave a command to one of the nayeran closest to him, who immediately darted on all fours towards the mountain upon receiving it.

"Darn... Kirin! Chase and kill the runner!" Zaran roared. He had not expected that "basic tactical strategies" meant calling for help. Even though they had greater numbers they still sent for backup!

From nearby shrubbery a dark mass shot forward with incredible speed and quickly started to catch up to the runner. Even though the runner was running on all fours, his speed was still not that quick as proven by Zaran who could somewhat keep his distance. Especially uphill the nayeran struggled to run on all fours and every hill that the runner had to run over, the distance between him and Kirin visibly shortened!

A hundred meters between the two became eighty, then sixty... forty... ten... None! Kirin leaped at the runner's throat and black flames sprouted from her maw. Even though the opponent's level was higher than hers, she was the one who did the hunting in this case. And what's more, her attack was right on the nayeran's weak spot, their neck! Because of that the initial attack greatly weakened the nayeran, allowing Kirin to pin him down on his belly and continuously burn her prey with dark flames.

The nayeran leader snarled and growled at nearby pawns of his, forty who each started running towards the mountain. One of his orders was to ignore the hound. It did not matter if a large amount of died, just one of them had to reach the mountain. As they had no idea as to how many more of these hounds there were, they could not possibly stop to deal with it.

The two sides stared at each other for a few more seconds before Zaran walked over to the mages and asked, "Do any of you have area of effect skills that can be placed behind enemy lines?"

Only six out of twenty mages said they had one and after discussing the skills for a few seconds, Zaran told each of the mages with long range area of effect spells exactly where they should place their spells, so that they were able to cover the largest area possible. All of the long range area of effect skills the mages could use, were skills that they could learn after they completed a small but difficult quest once the users passed level 50. There was 'Frost pikes', a skill that created a five meter radius circular area out of which frost pikes shot up from the ground which dealt massive damage for its level and slowed the enemy, 'Fire wall', which created a ten meter long four meter high wall of fire which dealt damage and applied burn to an enemy and finally 'Tremors', a skill which shook the earth and dealt a fair amount of damage per second. Apart from all the normal skills there was still Florance who had the only custom long range area of effect skill, 'Lightning field'. Each of these skills required the user to pour in their full concentration in the skill if they wanted the skill to last.

The six mages, each fired their skills of, the back line of the nayerans lighting up with the four spells. Mournful cries were heard as nayeran were torched, pierced or shocked by lightning.

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At this moment Kirin finally offed her enemy and through utilizing the distraction the area of effect spells had created, she was able to make her way back to the assassins without being noticed.

With there being no way back for the nayeran the only way they could go was forward, because if they went to the sides, they would easily be flanked. The leader of the nayeran snarled a barely discernible "FORWARD!" and all the nayeran pressed forward simultaneously.

Zaran grinned and raised his left hand. "ARCHERS! DRAAAAWWW!!!HOLD!!!" Zaran roared, the forty archers immediately nocking two arrows and fully drawing back their bow. All of the archers were going to use double shot, which allowed them to fire two arrows instead of one. It was a basic archery skill which greatly lowered accuracy but was very deadly in a battlefield as arrows easily found a target. "HOOOOOLD!!!" He reminded them, waiting until a fair amount of nayeran entered the archers range before roaring. "FIIIIIRE!!!!!"

swish swish swish! Eighty arrows left the archer's bows and whistled through the air, each and every arrow splendidly hitting a target.

"Shields! Dig your feet deep into the ground and hold your position as if it were your lover!"

The male warriors roared out in laughter at Zaran's command, doing as they were told in the progress. The majority of the female users rolled their eyes or wryly smiled and likewise dug their feet in the ground, preparing to hold their position.

Mere seconds later the wave of nayeran clashed into the shield warriors and stone on steel and steel on steel sounds reverberated throughout the air. With their heels dug into the earth all of them could somewhat withstand the nayeran's onslaught and this was with the defense buffs by the various priests and paladins included.

Zaran roared. "Archers! Fire at will but as I said before, make every shot count! We do not have unlimited arrows and there are ten thousand more were these came from! Mages fire at will at their back line, disturb their archers! Priests, heal and buff our front line continuously!"

A torrent of arrows started to continuously find their mark and the mages threw various spell at the back line of the nayeran, greatly disturbing their archers. Even though the damage of one spell or arrow was not that great, but over time the damage started to add up rather quickly. On top of that, there were quite a few archers who had armour shredding spells and a lot of the mages used spells which added a damage over time debuff on the target. Nayeran arrows still whistled through the air every now and then, but because of the harassment their own back line received, the accuracy was horrible and most arrows failed to reach the guild's troops and instead the nayeran's back line hit their own men.

Soon the nayeran started to fall one by one. Even though they should have basic tactical knowledge, fear had settled in their commander's heart because of the spells cast behind them and thus their commander had recklessly commanded them to rush forward.

Because they were all in the same guild, experience was shared between those who did damage to the monsters and the more damage one dealt to a monster the larger a percentage of the experience one would get based on their class. Priests who had low fighting strength, got additional exp percentage based on their healing done to the damage dealers of the monsters and the amount of damage the ones who had his buffs did, got added as a percentage for the priest and not the attacker. This allowed the priests to level at a very fast speed, sometimes even faster than pure combat classes.

With every nayeran that fell, large amounts of experience were gained across the guild. Because most of them had slept in the wagon on the way there, the experience of a lot of the troops soared upwards. Level sixty monsters gave incomparable amounts of experience compared to level fifty monsters. Still, even though the amount of experience was great, the rate at which the exp bar filled was not that fast but none of the troops had the time to check their exp bars. 

They were outnumbered two to one and even though that did not sound all too serious, most of the troops were still on standby and only the first two lines of warriors, the archers and the mages were dealing damage and of the shield-bearing warriors who were holding back the troops, not a single one had dealt a single point of damage. All they had been doing thus far was hold back the enemy and taunt them. So the total of players dealing damage was merely 100 out of the 200 that could deal damage! The fifteen that were over consisted of 5 priests, 3 merchants and 2 blacksmiths.

Seeing that the first line was holding out perfectly, Zaran smiled and yelled another string of commands. "Cindarrah, use Hellweavers land in front of our first line of defense! Third line, fourth line, two wings, back line troops and Kru. Prepare to mingle yourselves in to the battle after the first line uses shield bash followed by shield charge. First line... SHIELD BASH AND SHIELD CHARGE NOW! Then split in the center!"

The complete first line of defense used shield bash almost simultaneously, pushing the nayeran back and stunning their front line for two seconds. All of them then used shield charge, which sent the stunned nayeran warriors into the lines behind them. The center of their own front line then split apart, upon which the whole third and fourth line pushed through. After the last of the warriors pushed through, the lines closed themselves again.

"Now... PUSH forward and make them run into our mages spells! Assassins! Catch any runners! Mages and archers, from now on watch where you aim. There is no such thing as not hurting your own with spells or arrows in this game."

The nayeran were now completely in disarray and were unable to draw out their full strength due to the simple tactics that Zaran had been using and the arrows and various spells had further whittled down at their strength. Now with Hellweaver's land slowing down their troops, their fighting strength compared to the guild was not even worth mentioning. 

While two hundred normal users would never have been able to offer the three hundred sixty remaining nayeran a challenge, the users that Zaran had with him were far from normal users. Each one of them was an elite. 

After throwing out the final command... Zaran too joined the fray! He immediately rushed to the front lines and started utilizing the first, second and third stance of 'Dance of the butterfly' and used 'Intent' occasionally during one of the stances.

The nayeran's commander quickly took notice of Zaran and even though the commander had recklessly made his troops rush forward because of the fear in his heart, the fear was still not enough to not know that he should stop Zaran as soon as possible. While his troops was the among the weakest of the nayeran's armies, the commander still boasted a formidable level 70! 

Seeing their commander move towards Zaran, the normal soldiers quickly started to move create a dueling circle for him and Zaran. The commander was two heads larger than the average nayeran and wielded a large steel greatsword.

Zaran inspected the commander's stats and smirked. After gaining intent he had been waiting for a good fight and now it delivered itself on its own!

Nayeran commander

Level 70

Hp: 55210/100000

defense: 3000

attack: 4000

A nayeran commander whose strength is formidable enough to rank among the top ten commanders but his commanding ability is extremely poor which caused him to end up as a commander with the weakest troops. Like normal nayeran, he is still unable to use any ki. However through years of combat he has acquired two combat skills.

Skills: 

* Whirlwind, passive: The warrior wields his weapon with such a great strength that the wind displacement deals 1% of his attack damage in a small area around his strikes, cannot be avoided.

* Frenzy: Allows the warrior to gain great strength at the cost of their life essence. Costs 10% of max health to be used. Increases attack by 50%.

The commander's health had been whittled down tremendously since the start of the battle. Still,  Zaran did not dare to underestimate the two battle skills. Even if a strike missed, it would steal deal a minimum of 40 damage before Zaran's defenses were in calculated and if he used 'Frenzy' that would increase to 60!

A few seconds later, the commanders of both sides ran forward and clashed with each other!