Green Monster Epic

Chapter 908 Regret

The elven legion's retreat was as disciplined and orderly as their battlefield engagements.

Despite the formidable threat posed by Allen, whose destructive power was astonishing, the elves showed no signs of panic during their withdrawal, offering no opportunities for the pursuing wilderness and dwarven legions.

Instead, the dwarven legion's shortcomings were exposed: the burden of their heavy armor and their inherent short legs caused them to lag behind the wilderness army during the pursuit.

As the three armies gradually distanced themselves, the elven center suddenly launched a counterattack, inflicting considerable losses on the vanguard wilderness cavalry and sword dancer legions.

Seeing this, Albad had no choice but to order a temporary halt to the pursuit, and by the time the dwarven legion regrouped, their distance from the elves had grown significantly.

Allen wanted to delay the elven army's advance, but he was only one man, constantly harassed and hindered by seven or eight elven powerhouses, making his goal difficult to achieve.

After chasing for another hundred miles, the soldiers on all three sides showed signs of fatigue, and as the distance between them grew, Graybeard and Albad exchanged a few words and ordered the retreat to be sounded.

The two-day-and-night battle finally came to an end with the elven side's active withdrawal to their western homeland.

Gazing at the receding tide of people and the gradually separating battlefield of powerhouses, Commander Mario, suspended in mid-air, couldn't help but sigh softly, a mixture of helplessness and relief at escaping danger.

This retreat was not a spur-of-the-moment decision but the result of discussions with his elven commanders and staff, based on their assessment of the current situation.

With hundreds of thousands of wilderness and dwarven troops closing in, the elves had few options. The seemingly safest and most reasonable choice of defending the city was undermined by the Bear Earth Elf Saint Allen's supreme power, which diminished Mario's expectations for the fortress's defenses even before the dwarven legion reached its walls.

Perhaps with the aid of the repaired city defenses, the elven legion could have held the city if they truly wanted to.

At least Mario was confident in the strength of his soldiers. Unless their fortress's food supplies were exhausted or the city defenses were completely destroyed, the dwarven and wilderness armies would not be able to retake the fortress from him.

Moreover, defending the city had other advantages. For example, it would not have been easy for the Saint Berserker Allen to enter the fortress alone and attack the soldiers within.

Also, the dwarven and wilderness armies would inevitably suffer losses in a siege, more than the elves. In terms of the final casualty ratio, the elves would still have the advantage overall.

But this was not what Mario wanted. The life of every elven warrior was far more precious to him than those of the wilderness barbarians and dwarves. He was unwilling to trade the lives of his elven soldiers for a dead city.

Therefore, Mario and his men chose to abandon the city and engage in a decisive battle with the wilderness and dwarven armies outside its walls.

Mario and his men had correctly anticipated that their opponents would not expect their plan and recognized the seemingly powerful wilderness army's false strength, hoping to suddenly burst out and crush the rabble.

If the plan succeeded, without the support of the wilderness reinforcements, the elven main force could turn around and attack the dwarven army, completely changing the battlefield situation.

Even if the plan failed, the elven army, with all its strength, could still take the opportunity to retreat westward instead of being trapped in that worthless dead city.

The advantage of this was that they could advance or retreat, effectively preserving their strength and preventing the main force from being lost in a strategically unimportant isolated city.

When news of the main force's defeat on the northern front reached Mario, he had already made a clear judgment: regardless of whether the kingdom would continue to implement the eastern expedition plan, their southern front was unlikely to receive much reinforcement.

The kingdom's foundation remained strong, and they certainly did not lack soldiers, but after suffering defeats on several battlefields, including the casualties from the initial advance, the total loss of troops had exceeded one million.

Such a large number of losses, even for a powerful nation like the Elven Kingdom, probably caused the high-ranking nobles to feel great pain, and might even shake the entire eastern expedition goal, making abandoning the war a possibility.

Even if the higher-ups remained determined to continue providing reinforcements to the three eastern front battlefields, considering the importance of the three fronts and the threat to the Dwarven Kingdom's homeland, the southern front under his command would inevitably be abandoned, and the kingdom would invest its strength in more important battlefields.

Having realized this, Mario could no longer keep the forces under his command confined to this dead city. Instead, he would abandon the strategically unimportant occupied territories while he still could and retreat to the homeland border.

Although the losses in this decisive battle were heavy, with nearly 100,000 casualties from the previous siege and the two-day-and-night battle outside the city, the number of soldiers who retreated with him was even greater, about 180,000 main force troops. Combined with the garrison at Thornsburg on the western border, he was confident that he could defend the southern front with his own forces, preventing further losses of the kingdom's territory after the retreat.

In hindsight, he had underestimated the strength of the Bear Earth Elf Saint. Even if his destructive power was astonishing, the number of troops in his hand was still considerable. Even if he did not resist and allowed him to kill at will, it would take him several days and nights to completely kill over 200,000 soldiers.

Mario had already prepared himself for the loss of a considerable number of soldiers in order to defeat the main force of the Thorns Alliance, but he did not expect that Allen, the Bear Earth Elf, would not focus on killing elven soldiers but would instead use his unparalleled strength to reshape the battlefield, delaying the progress of the elven vanguard, center, and rear guard reinforcements. This allowed the Thorns Alliance, which was already showing signs of collapse, to regain its breath and foiled Mario's plan.

Since it was impossible to defeat the main force of the Thorns Alliance, the elven army had no need to continue the decisive battle. Preserving their strength and returning to the homeland to redeploy the defense line became the most important goal in Commander Mario's mind.