In the first few minutes, the charge of the noble alliance looked… rather promising.

  The cavalry surged onto the battlefield in a relatively tight formation. Armor clashed against armor with dry metallic sounds. Warhorses accelerated, their hooves pounding heavily against the ground. From a distance, the charging force resembled a wedge of steel trying to drive straight into the rebel formation.

  And in the first moment, it truly worked.

  Several groups of rebels near the gates of Re-Robel were thrown aside. Some fled, others fumbled desperately for their weapons. Their formation fell into visible disorder.

  But if one looked a little closer… that feeling of optimism did not last long.

  There were simply too many rebels.

  Group after group kept pressing forward from the rear. The gaps the cavalry had created were quickly filled. Disorder appeared in one place, only for the line to close again somewhere else.

  To put it bluntly, the charge of the alliance looked like throwing a stone into a river: the water splashes for a moment, and then the surface closes again as if nothing happened.

  From his position, Philip could see this quite clearly.

  At first, the nobles’ cavalry managed to maintain their formation. But after a short while, they began to split into smaller clusters. Some knights were dragged from their saddles. The others were forced to turn their backs to one another, fighting off attacks from multiple directions.

  At the center of the encirclement, Roland’s banner was still visible.

  Roland and several other nobles were fighting there.

  But if one watched a little longer, it became clear that the rebel ring around them was slowly tightening.

  Philip stood on the left flank of the battlefield.

  An uncomfortable thought began to form in his mind.

  Should he lead his men into a charge to break the encirclement?

  From the traditional perspective of the nobility, the answer would likely be obvious. Allies were surrounded, and a proper noble was not supposed to stand by and watch that happen.

  But a battlefield was not a place where every decision was made based on honor.

  Philip glanced back at his troops.

  The original twenty soldiers of Montserrat had now grown into a much larger group—mostly the stray soldiers he had taken in during the march.

  Their equipment… was quite inconsistent.

  Some wore old leather armor. Others had nothing more than wooden shields and spears. A few even carried weapons that looked more like farming tools than proper military arms.

  To be honest, this was not the sort of army one used to break a large encirclement.

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  Philip even tried to imagine them charging into the center of the battlefield.

  The result was not difficult to predict.

  They would likely be swallowed whole, just like the rest of the noble cavalry.

  Thinking that through made Philip’s decision much clearer.

  He did not give the order to charge.

  Instead, he kept his troops on the left flank, continuing to deal with smaller groups of rebels wandering along the edge of the battlefield.

  Some people might call that cowardice.

  But Philip preferred to think about things a little more pragmatically.

  A weak army rushing into a battle it could not win would only increase the number of corpses.

  At the center of the battlefield, Roland’s situation was gradually worsening.

  The rebels were tightening the encirclement more and more.

  Several knights had already been unhorsed. Those who remained were forced to gather into a small cluster, standing back to back as they fought.

  Roland seemed to realize this as well.

  If they stayed here any longer, they would eventually be worn down completely.

  He quickly scanned his surroundings.

  A small gap appeared to the west—not large, but enough to try.

  Roland shouted an order.

  The remaining knights quickly gathered behind him. There was no longer any elegant formation—just a group of men determined to gamble their lives in a desperate breakout.

  Then they accelerated.

  Warhorses charged straight toward that gap.

  Several rebels were thrown aside. Others tried to block the way.

  The fighting in that area immediately turned chaotic.

  On the walls of Re-Robel, a man was watching the entire scene.

  Armand Valcere stood still for quite some time.

  At first, he had seemed pleased when the noble alliance appeared.

  But as the battle dragged on, the situation began to become clearer.

  The noble alliance was losing.

  If this continued, those nobles might be wiped out right in front of the city gates.

  Armand frowned slightly.

  An unpleasant possibility began to emerge.

  Perhaps this time he had… gambled too boldly.

  If the allied forces were completely defeated, not only would his own troops be isolated inside the city.

  More importantly, his prestige among the surrounding lords would suffer serious damage.

  And that was something Armand could not accept.

  He turned to the officer standing beside him.

  “Open the gates.”

  The order was immediately passed down.

  The great gates of Re-Robel slowly opened.

  From within, a cavalry formation began to emerge.

  Even from a distance, the difference was obvious.

  These were not the temporary armies gathered by scattered nobles.

  This was the Knight Order of Re-Robel.

  Their equipment was almost uniform. Steel armor gleamed—not ostentatiously, but clearly well maintained. Their warhorses were tall and steady, walking forward calmly despite the battlefield ahead, littered with bodies and discarded weapons.

  In the Kingdom of Re-Estize, elite knight orders were actually quite rare.

  And the knights of Re-Robel were often mentioned as one of the ten strongest knight orders in the kingdom.

  By comparison, they were disciplined professional troops—unlike the militia forces of smaller lords.

  When the gates fully opened, a horn sounded.

  Short and decisive.

  The knights immediately accelerated.

  What followed almost changed the entire battlefield.

  The rebels had been focused on surrounding the nobles. They had no time to react when a formation of elite cavalry slammed directly into the flank of their lines.

  The first rank was pierced almost instantly.

  Warhorses drove straight through the infantry formation. Swords and lances swung repeatedly. The men at the front were thrown aside like pieces of wood.

  The rebel formation began to collapse into disorder.

  Some groups tried to resist, but the difference in training and equipment was obvious.

  The knight order did not stop.

  They continued advancing, maintaining a relatively tight formation as they cut through cluster after cluster of rebel troops.

  In the distance, Philip watched the entire scene.

  To be honest, the difference was quite… clear.

  The noble armies earlier had looked like a crowd carrying weapons.

  But this knight order was different.

  They moved like a single body.

  And their objective was equally clear.

  At the center of the battlefield, a large rebel banner was flying in the wind.

  The command banner.

  The knights of Re-Robel did not scatter to chase fleeing enemies.

  Instead, they accelerated.

  The entire spearhead of their attack pointed directly toward that banner.

  If the command banner fell…

  This battle might end far sooner than many people expected.