Chương 307: 307：Mortal Flesh, Cleaving the Titan

The thirty monsters landed with heavy, muffled thuds upon the hard-packed dirt of the courtyard. Yet, the very instant their feet touched the ground... The violent howling of the blizzard was abruptly cut off, as if severed by some invisible force. The entire courtyard plunged into an eerie, suffocating silence. Lurking in the shadows just outside the walls, Zagar's heart violently seized. The razor-sharp intuition of a high-tier spellcaster instantly screamed of impending, lethal danger!

"Something is wrong! It's too quiet! It's a trap! Retreat! Get out immediately!" Zagar shrieked frantically through the mental link. But it was already too late.

"Ignite them." A cold, merciless whisper drifted down from the second-floor balcony. Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh! In a fraction of a second, beneath the eaves surrounding the courtyard, dozens of torches soaked in highly volatile firedragon oil were ignited simultaneously. The entire courtyard was instantly bathed in blinding, daylight-level illumination! Zagar stared in absolute horror. Along the rooftops of the command post, from the deep shadows of the corridors, and behind every single window...

towering, ferociously muscled figures abruptly stood up! These were the one hundred frontline elites who had ingested the [Troll Serum]! Every single one of them was fully clad in [Dark Silver Plate Armor], the cold steel gleaming ominously in the firelight. And what they held in their hands were no ordinary bows—they were holding [Repeating Heavy Crossbows]!

One hundred heavy crossbows aimed down from elevated positions, flawlessly locking the thirty [Abomination Corpse-Fiends] into an inescapable kill zone in the center of the courtyard.

"Fire!" Renn the Monk let out an earth-shattering roar. THWUMP! The piercing snap of heavy mechanisms releasing merged into a deafening, thunderous roar. Hundreds of quenched, armor-piercing heavy bolts formed an airtight storm of steel, pouring mercilessly into the courtyard with unstoppable kinetic force! Thwack! Thwack! SQUELCH! The sickening sounds of flesh and bone being brutally torn apart echoed in rapid succession.

Those [Abomination Corpse-Fiends]—monsters renowned for their terrifying strength and utter lack of pain—were absurdly fragile under the concentrated, point-blank bombardment of heavy crossbows! The sheer kinetic impact of the heavy bolts effortlessly punched straight through their thick, stitched hides, violently pinning their mangled limbs and severed torsos directly into the muddy ground and the wooden walls of the courtyard! Five minutes! That was all it took!

Without being able to launch a single charge, without even touching the wooden steps of the command post, this vanguard detachment that Zagar had pinned all his hopes on was reduced to countless piles of pulverized meat and bloody slurry! Thick, viscous black blood and ruptured internal organs painted the entire command courtyard pitch black. Lurking in the shadows of the outer wall, Zagar's entire body trembled violently, his shadow mana destabilizing in sheer panic.

Peering through the cracks in the wooden barricade, he watched in abject horror as the thirty-strong vanguard of [Abomination Corpse-Fiends]—the masterpieces he had exhausted all his energy to forge—were brutally torn to shreds before they could even let out a single roar! Those massive bodies they prided themselves on were nothing but paper before the heavy ballistics.

"This is a trap! A flawlessly orchestrated pocket-trap!" Zagar's sinister face twisted in absolute terror. His arrogance as a high-tier spellcaster was utterly shattered in that single moment. He simply couldn't comprehend it. How had his shadow infiltration—a spell capable of masking all sensory detection—walked directly into Soren's jaws?!

"Retreat! Maximum speed! Fall back! Get out of this godforsaken courtyard!" Zagar shrieked frantically through the mental link. He didn't hesitate for a microsecond. Sweeping his bone staff, he conjured a foul black wind, turned on his heel, and sprinted madly toward the darkness of the village perimeter, with the five surviving [Sons of Titan] closely trailing behind him. However, having stepped into the kill zone, how could they possibly be allowed to leave alive? Swoooosh!

Just as Zagar and the [Sons of Titan] bolted into a narrow, muddy alleyway flanked by two rows of stilted longhouses, a piercing shriek of wind tore through the night sky ahead. Ilya, the Half-Elf Commander, had silently materialized atop the rooftops and crossbeams blocking the exit, leading a detachment of one hundred and thirty Magic Rangers.

"In the name of the wind, seal this path!" Ilya's slender fingers released her bowstring. Instantly, over a hundred arrows imbued with wind mana rained down with pinpoint precision, embedding themselves in a dense line across the muddy path directly in front of Zagar's retreat route. BOOM! The violent wind elements detonated the second they struck the ground. Countless razor-sharp cyan wind blades linked end-to-end, spontaneously manifesting a violently rotating cyclone-net directly across the narrow bottleneck!

One of the leading [Sons of Titan] couldn't brake in time. The instant its arm brushed against the wall of wind, a horrific slicing sound echoed. A massive chunk of its flesh was instantly sheared off, exposing the gleaming white bone beneath, forcing a roar of agony from the beast's throat. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. The path forward was sealed shut! Clank. Clank. Clank.

Simultaneously, the heavy, synchronized thud of armored boots echoed from behind Zagar. The frontline elites who had just finished the slaughter in the courtyard were pouring out in mass formation. Led by Renn the Monk and Duran the Unarmed Brawler, these one hundred heavily armored infantrymen leveled their freshly reloaded repeating crossbows, completely blocking Zagar and the five [Sons of Titan] inside the narrow alleyway. Sturdy stilted longhouses flanked their left and right.

A lethal wind-blade array blocked their front. Merciless, heavily armored elites sealed their rear. It was an absolute, inescapable dead end!

"ROAR! Tear these pathetic humans to pieces!" Cornered and desperate, the vicious, primal instincts of an ancient beast lineage ignited within the [Sons of Titan]. Across the surface of their towering, four-meter-tall bodies, a layer of incredibly dense, earthy-yellow [Rock Shields] rapidly condensed. Immediately following, the thick veins across their bodies violently bulged outward—the activation of their innate [Permanent Bloodlust]!

Accompanied by deafening roars, the five gargantuan [Sons of Titan], braving the howling blizzard and the razor winds, launched a ferocious, suicidal counter-charge directly into the frontline elites blocking their rear! A brutal, life-or-death melee instantly erupted within the claustrophobic confines of the alley!

Had this been any standard human regular army, facing [Sons of Titan] buffed by [Rock Shields] and [Permanent Bloodlust] in such a narrow chokepoint, their frontline phalanxes would have been instantly shattered upon impact, their bones pulverized and their formations completely routed. But the men standing here today were the elites Soren had meticulously forged with [Troll Serum], [Dark Silver Plate Armor], and modern tactical doctrine!

"Use the longhouse support pillars as cover! Leapfrog firing formations!" Renn's calm, commanding roar exploded across the battlefield. There was no idiotic, tightly packed shield wall attempting to absorb the brute force. Leveraging their absolute familiarity with their home terrain, the frontline elites rapidly dispersed into three-man fireteams.

They wove nimbly through the muddy alley and between the thick wooden pillars beneath the stilted longhouses, their heavy crossbows spitting a relentless stream of steel. Clang! Clang! Clang! Armor-piercing heavy bolts hammered relentlessly against the [Sons of Titan]'s [Rock Shields], kicking up showers of pulverized stone and violent sparks. Although the shields were incredibly thick, under such suffocatingly dense heavy firepower, the protective glow was dimming at a visible rate.

The battle escalated into an absolute meat grinder. In a tight gap between two longhouses, a battle-hardened [Son of Titan] traded the permanent loss of its right eye to an arrow in order to violently smash through a load-bearing wooden pillar, lunging directly at an elite human soldier! Its gargantuan shadow completely engulfed the man, its massive, boulder-like fist plummeting straight toward the soldier's skull! Click. The soldier's repeating crossbow let out a hollow click. His bolt magazine was empty.

In the minds of every Orc, once a human soldier lost their prized ranged weaponry, their only remaining option when facing the monstrous strength of a [Son of Titan] was to squeeze their eyes shut and wait for death. Yet, this elite soldier did not flinch—not even a fraction of an inch! His mind processed the tactical situation with terrifying, icy clarity: 'Distance too close. Reloading impossible. Enemy strikes are sluggish and heavy. Vulnerabilities located at the armpit and lower guard.

The strength granted by the Troll Serum, combined with the defense of my Dark Silver Plate, is enough to sustain one heavy counter-strike!' At the absolute critical juncture, just as the monstrous fist was inches from caving in his skull... The soldier let out an explosive roar. Instead of retreating, he violently stomped his boot forward, driving himself directly toward the Titan's chest!

Utilizing the agile footwork brutally drilled into him by Duran, he slipped seamlessly through the blind spot of the falling fist, sliding directly into the Titan's inner guard! In the same fluid motion, he dropped his empty crossbow, his hands reaching back to reverse-grip the two-and-a-half-meter armor-piercing heavy halberd strapped to his back.

"BREAK!" Channeling the rotational torque from his waist, the soldier erupted with an astonishing, monstrous strength that rivaled a magical beast's. The crescent blade of the heavy halberd carved a chilling, lethal arc through the air. Striking upward from below, the blade slid flawlessly through the thinnest gap in the Titan's [Rock Shield]—right under its armpit—and cleaved diagonally inward with devastating force! SCHLICK! The horrific sound of severing bone and ripping flesh echoed loudly.

Relying on a flawlessly executed, unbroken chain of close-quarters combat maneuvers, this frontline elite had used his heavy halberd to brutally sever half of the gargantuan Titan's chest, taking the entire arm right off with it! Scalding, boiling beast blood erupted like a geyser, bathing the armored soldier from head to toe in crimson.