Even Melibra had to admit that the army before him was exactly the kind of force he had always dreamed of.
At the very front of the formation were terrifying chariots.
Unlike Melibra's own chariots, the Pharaoh's chariots had horses fully clad in armor, and the chariots themselves appeared taller and sturdier.
More importantly, there were over a hundred of them, several times his own number.
Behind the chariots stood a group of monsters clad entirely in metal armor.
Calling them monsters was only because such a troop type had never before appeared in Egypt, heavy infantry.
These heavy infantrymen were covered from head to toe in gilded metal armor, leaving no gaps. Ordinary weapons and arrows could not harm them at all.
Each of them was tall and powerfully built, wielding heavy axes, unstoppable warriors at a glance.
Melibra could already imagine the devastation they would cause once they broke into his formation.
On the flanks and behind the heavy infantry were the regular soldiers.
These soldiers wore luxurious full-body leather armor and held weapons that looked exceedingly sharp.
They stood in neat formations at the front, the entire army silent as a graveyard.
No one made unnecessary movements, just standing there, they exuded a chilling aura of discipline and killing intent.
On both wings were cavalry units. Compared to the infantry, their formation was looser, but their numbers still reached several hundred.
Moreover, cavalry naturally appeared larger in scale, and from a distance, their presence was terrifying.
At the very rear of the formation were tall wooden machines.
Melibra did not recognize what these machines were, but anything appearing on a battlefield was certainly not something to be taken lightly.
Looking at this well-equipped, highly trained, and strictly disciplined army, then comparing it to his own forces, which were inferior in number, training, and equipment, Melibra let out a long sigh.
Aside from his officers, none of his men could even wear metal armor.
Who knew how that Pharaoh had managed to acquire so much armor?
From this perspective, this battle would be difficult.
Melibra looked toward the enemy once more. At this moment, that radiant, golden figure within the enemy ranks seemed terrifying beyond measure in his eyes.
"We've been deceived…" Melibra muttered softly to himself.
"My lord, what are you saying?" a general beside him asked.
"All of us have been deceived," Melibra shook his head and said to himself, "Everyone underestimated that female Pharaoh.
Without a sound, she built such an army. That woman… is far too frightening."
The generals around him also turned pale. To be honest, facing such an army, they too felt despair.
Melibra even briefly considered withdrawing his troops altogether.
But that thought was immediately discarded.
Yesterday, he had confidently mobilized his army, and that very night he had declared a decisive battle in front of the envoy who came to persuade him to surrender.
If today he fled at first sight of the enemy, his personal disgrace would be the least of his problems, the real issue would be the collapse of morale, leaving the army with no will to resist at all.
Rather than fleeing now and allowing the enemy to seize the city, it would be better to grit his teeth and fight.
Who knew, perhaps the enemy might make a mistake in command and be defeated? On the battlefield, anything could happen in an instant.
With that in mind, he ordered the entire army to prepare and then took the initiative to advance.
The enemy's formation was so intimidating that even ordinary soldiers could see the disparity between the two sides.
In such a situation, only by taking the initiative could they recover their momentum.
Otherwise, if they allowed the enemy to launch the charge, the army might collapse under the pressure before even engaging.
With a command from Melibra, the army of Heracleopolis began to move forward slowly, the soldiers marching step by step in unison.
Generally speaking, the sequence of formal warfare in this era was for both sides to approach each other, exchange arrows between archers, then have chariots charge head-on, cavalry harass the flanks, and finally infantry engage in close combat.
Of course, there were occasional preludes where warriors would step forward to challenge each other to duels, but Melibra was not foolish enough to attempt that, everyone knew that in terms of sheer presence, none could surpass the royal lineage said to descend from the gods.
As the army of Heracleopolis advanced, Nitocris also issued the order for her forces to move forward.
Thus, the formations of both sides advanced step by step with rumbling footsteps, gradually drawing closer.
Three hundred paces.
Two hundred and fifty paces.
Two hundred paces.
One hundred and fifty paces.
When the distance between the two sides reached roughly one hundred and fifty paces, Nitocris ordered her army to halt.
What was this?
Under normal circumstances, Egyptian armies would only stop at a distance of twenty to thirty paces before beginning arrow exchanges and chariot charges, as their bows were too primitive and had limited range.
So why had the Pharaoh's army stopped so far away?
Melibra was puzzled, but he did not order his own troops to halt. At this point, it was too late to casually change tactics.
Then, he saw the large wooden machines within the enemy formation begin to move.
Slaves near the machines placed a massive spherical object into them, then began pulling ropes on the other end…
With a loud "whoosh," the huge sphere was launched instantly, flying toward their army.
"How is that possible? That's a catapult!?" Melibra was shocked. "Aren't catapults used for sieges? How can they move?"
Melibra could not comprehend the mechanism at all. In his understanding, catapults were nothing like this, they should have been large, complex machines that required hours to assemble on-site before a siege, and they had no mobility whatsoever.
In reality, the catapults used by the Pharaoh's army were newly designed small mobile catapults created by Alaric.
They could also be called traction trebuchets.
While they lacked the immense range and power of true siege engines, they could be pulled and moved easily, making them extremely convenient for use in field battles.
The projectile, like a flying stone, arced through the air and crashed into the rear of the Heracleopolis army. The ground was instantly smashed into a large crater, and two unfortunate soldiers were crushed into pulp.
"Thank goodness… thank goodness it hit the back."
Although Melibra was puzzled as to why only one catapult had fired, he secretly felt relieved that it had not struck the center of his formation.
What worried him most was not the casualties, but the possibility that such attacks would disrupt the formation.
In cold weapon warfare, no matter how elaborate formations might seem, their core principle was simple: concentrate more troops against fewer at a specific point.
Therefore, maintaining a tight formation was extremely important.
However, what Melibra did not know was that this single shot was merely for calibration, much like a ranging shot used by modern artillery.
The catapults designed by Alaric naturally had relatively reliable measurement systems.
After determining the firing data from this shot, the real attack was only just about to begin.