Chương 328: 328：Wrath of Winter

Luger, the Hobgoblin Arsenal Master who spent his life handling highly volatile materials, took one look at the crimson danger runes painted across those plummeting clay vats and unleashed a terrified shriek. The blood completely drained from his green face, turning it a sickly, ashen pale.

"COVER! GET INTO THE SUBTERRANEAN TUNNELS NOW! THAT'S ALCHEMICAL FIRE-OIL! IT WILL MELT YOUR BONES TO SLAG!" But Luger's warning came half a second too late. CRASH! SMASH! SHATTER! Countless gargantuan clay vats violently detonated dozens of meters in the air above the defensive line, while others smashed brutally against the heavy timber chevaux-de-frise, shattering into a million pieces! An apocalyptic torrential rain of thick, foul-smelling, murky liquid cascaded down from the heavens.

It didn't just drench Greywater Village's primary trenches and stilted longhouses; the vast majority of the payload violently showered over the absolute frontline—directly onto the charging Centaur women and children, and the elite Centaur execution squads driving them from the rear, a mere dozens of meters from the human barricades!

"IGNITE THEM!" the Orc Wyvern Riders roared from the sky, mercilessly hurling dozens of blazing torches down into the mire. FWOOSH! BOOM! The exact microsecond those torches made contact with the dark-yellow sludge, an apocalyptic nightmare was born! The flames hyper-expanded at an incomprehensible velocity!

A terrifying, explosive shockwave, carrying temperatures of several thousand degrees, instantly transformed Greywater Village's frontal positions and the entire half-mile expanse of the wasteland into a violently churning, hellish sea of thick black smoke and toxic green fire! This was, without a doubt, the most catastrophic, apocalyptic firepower strike Greywater Village had endured since its founding!

"AGHHHH! ARGHHHH!" Harrowing, blood-curdling shrieks of pure agony instantly drowned out the deafening roar of the inferno. However, the vast majority of these agonizing wails did not originate from the defenders of Greywater Village. They came from the thousands of Centaurs trapped in the killing field just outside the trenches! Alchemical Fire-Oil possessed a horrifying, glue-like adhesiveness. The moment it splattered onto the coarse, thick hair of the Centaur bodies, it became permanently welded to their flesh.

It was physically impossible to extinguish by swatting or rolling. A Centaur woman, completely engulfed in flames, thrashed and rolled desperately in the freezing, acidic mud. Yet, the apocalyptic alchemical fire continued to burn violently underwater! It brutally seared through her flesh, emitting a sickening sizzle, as the choking stench of roasting fat and burnt hair rapidly blanketed the entire battlefield.

A Centaur cub, transformed into a living torch, shrieked in terror and blindly galloped backward toward the execution squads. In his desperate panic, he violently collided with the saber-wielding Centaur elites, instantaneously igniting their bodies as well!

"GREAT WARCHIEF! WHY?! WHY DO THIS?!" Centaur Commander Luke was drenched in the volatile sludge, the entire left half of his body burning with intense, agonizing green flames. Staring at his kin being reduced to thrashing, blazing pillars of fire all around him, consumed by profound grief and excruciating pain, he unleashed a harrowing, blood-curdling scream of betrayal aimed at Warchief Blackstone.

Only in this exact, horrific moment did Soren finally fully comprehend the absolute, rock-bottom cruelty of Warchief Blackstone.

"What a ruthlessly venomous scheme!" Soren stood atop the command watchtower. The apocalyptic inferno bathed his face in a harsh, crimson glow, the terrifying ambient heat physically distorting the air around him. His tactical mind operated with chilling clarity as he mentally dissected the gruesome reality:"Warchief Blackstone forcing the entire Centaur race to charge wasn't to drain our bolt reserves at all!"

"He deliberately used those ten thousand Centaurs as an inescapable meat wall! He jammed them right up against our defensive line to completely pin our forces down, forcing us to man the trenches to repel them!"

"And then... he ordered the Wyverns to carpet-bomb the entire area with Alchemical Fire-Oil, executing an absolute, indiscriminate saturation strike!"

"He is perfectly willing to burn ten thousand of his own warriors, elders, and children alive in a sea of hellfire, solely to ensure that Greywater Village's defensive line is reduced to ash alongside them!" This level of absolute, sociopathic ruthlessness—mercilessly eradicating one's own army to achieve an objective—sent a genuine, bone-deep chill through Soren, despite his vast experience as a modern special forces operative.

"PUT IT OUT! PUT THE FIRE OUT!" Down in the trenches, several second-line soldiers had their [Padded Cotton Armor] ignited by the splattering sludge. They patted frantically at their bodies in pure terror, only to realize the apocalyptic flames burned even more aggressively the more they tried to smother them. Simultaneously, several stilted longhouses situated near the vanguard could no longer withstand the terrifying temperatures.

They collapsed with a resounding crash, sending massive showers of blinding, lethal sparks spraying across the compound.

"My Lord! The ambient temperature is too high! The trenches are buckling! If the men don't retreat into the subterranean tunnels immediately, they are going to be roasted alive!" Talon roared frantically over the roar of the fire, desperately requesting orders. If they retreated into the tunnels, they would preserve their lives. However, this meticulously constructed primary defensive line—the very foundation of Greywater Village's three-dimensional overlapping matrix—would fall directly into enemy hands!

Their overall defensive lethality would be catastrophically crippled!

"Absolutely no retreating!" Soren violently drew his longsword, standing as unshakeable as a mountain right at the edge of the inferno. He snapped his head around, his piercing gaze locking onto the silent, motionless silhouette standing atop the rear watchtower.

"Victor! Now is the exact moment for you to demonstrate the absolute, true value of a Silver-tier Mage!" High atop the rear tower. Chief Mage Victor—the Silver-tier spellcaster who had strictly, impeccably adhered to Soren's military doctrine throughout the entire battle, exclusively casting low-mana [Healing Water Spells]—finally, slowly raised his magical staff. Within his pupils, the apocalyptic sea of toxic green fire was reflected brilliantly.

Yet, deep within his gaze burned a surging, explosive excitement he had suppressed for days.

"My Lord. My mana reserves have been preserved to their absolute peak specifically to counter a catastrophic disaster of this magnitude!" The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Victor inhaled a massive, shuddering breath of freezing air, his exquisite robes violently whipping in the howling gale.

As a Silver-tier Mage boasting both [Omni-Element Mastery] and the [Double Mana Pool] innate talent, his ability to hijack and utilize ambient battlefield elements was nothing short of monstrous!

"Look around us! The howling winter blizzard! The apocalyptic sub-zero temperatures! The endless, dense water vapor rising from this rotting mire! This... this is the absolute, flawless amplification field gifted by nature itself for Water and Ice-attribute magic!" Victor's eyes snapped shut. The entirety of his mental energy, pooled and compressed to its absolute limit, was ruthlessly, completely unleashed!

His long, profound, and ancient Elven incantations somehow pierced flawlessly through the deafening roar of the explosions. Every single obscure syllable he uttered seemed to violently resonate with the absolute laws of winter itself! VWUUUM! An impossibly blinding, ice-blue halo violently erupted from the gemstone of his staff! The runic light hyper-expanded, instantaneously forming a massive magical dome that entirely blanketed the airspace above Greywater Village!

"Composite High-Tier Magic! [Wrath of Winter]!" Accompanied by Victor's earth-shaking roar, he violently slammed the butt of his staff into the wooden floorboards. In that exact microsecond, every single ounce of freezing ambient air above the battlefield was instantly siphoned and hyper-compressed! Immediately following, directly above the trenches of Greywater Village, the massive volume of moisture in the air spontaneously condensed into a gargantuan, churning tidal wave! Yet, this was no ordinary water.

It was a torrential flood of sub-zero frost debris, violently intertwined with terrifying, absolute-zero magical energy! RUMBLE! Guided by Victor's absolute will, the gargantuan, apocalyptic waterfall of ice plummeted from the heavens! Packing an astonishing, crushing momentum, it fell with surgical, pinpoint precision—exclusively washing over Greywater Village's defensive line! The absolute-zero magical deluge violently collided with the several-thousand-degree inferno of the Alchemical Fire-Oil! HIIISSSSS!

The entire battlefield was instantaneously swallowed by an apocalyptic, sky-piercing eruption of blinding white steam! The fog was so suffocatingly thick it completely obliterated all visibility. Alchemical Fire-Oil was undeniably terrifying; it was practically immune to being extinguished by mundane water. However!

Faced with Victor's composite dual-element magic—a spell steeped in the high-tier laws of ice and exponentially magnified by the apocalyptic winter climate—the hellish green flames were finally, brutally suppressed. The absolute-zero frost violently froze the volatile sludge, while the suffocating deluge of magical water entirely severed its oxygen supply. In the span of a mere dozen breaths... As the howling winter gale finally shredded the blinding white steam, an absolute miracle was revealed.

The apocalyptic alchemical inferno—a fire designed to reduce the entire Greywater Village defensive line to ash—had been completely, flawlessly eradicated! Aside from a handful of stilted longhouses that had sustained direct kinetic hits and been reduced to scorched husks, the heavy logs reinforcing the trenches were now thickly coated in a sturdy, gleaming layer of frost and icicles!

"W-We're... we're alive!" The second-line soldiers whose [Padded Cotton Armor] had previously caught fire stared blankly at their own chests. The lethal sludge had been violently flash-frozen into brittle blocks of ice! With a casual, trembling swat of their hands, the frozen fire-oil shattered, cascading harmlessly into the mud alongside shards of ice. They had suffered absolutely zero substantive burns!

"Move! Drag the wounded down into the tunnels! Apply the [Battlefield First-Aid Potions] immediately!" Kyle roared, leading his logistics medical corps as they burst from the subterranean entrances. Operating with clinical, practiced efficiency, they rapidly evacuated the handful of soldiers who had sustained minor facial burns from the initial blast proximity.

Under this flawlessly executed, cost-blind rescue operation, an apocalyptic aerial bombardment designed to wipe out an entire army had resulted in an absolute, mind-shattering near-zero casualty rate for Greywater Village! However... this surreal, heaven-and-hell dichotomy belonged exclusively to the forces standing behind Greywater Village's defensive line.

"Help me... please... save us..." A mere fifty meters outside the trenches, the apocalyptic, visceral nightmare was still raging in full force! Victor's magical control was terrifyingly precise; absolutely not a single drop of life-saving water had been allowed to spill past the barricades! Those thousands of Centaur warriors, elders, and children were still helplessly, agonizingly trapped within the merciless, searing hellfire of the Alchemical Fire-Oil. They possessed no Silver-tier Mage to offer them salvation.

They possessed no exorbitantly expensive alchemical potions. Pinned between the human trenches and the execution squads, they didn't even possess the physical space to retreat! They could do nothing but thrash in unimaginable agony as their gargantuan bodies were slowly, brutally reduced to blackened, charred husks. The suffocating stench of roasting meat drifting across the battlefield was absolutely nauseating.

"Warchief Blackstone... you merciless, butcherous tyrant... you betrayed us all!" The surviving Centaur elites, clinging to their final, agonizing breaths, stared at their wives and cubs being reduced to ash by the bombs of their own Orcish air force. Then, they looked past the flames at the human soldiers standing perfectly safe and fully healed within Greywater Village. In that singular moment, their mental fortitude completely, irreparably shattered.

Unfathomable agony transmuted into an apocalyptic, suicidal cocktail of rage, grief, and despair! Every last microscopic shred of racial pride and loyalty to the Orc Alliance was violently incinerated, leaving behind absolutely nothing but the primal, rabid instinct of a cornered beast.

"KILL THEM ALL! SMASH THROUGH! EVEN IF WE BURN, WE WILL DIE ON GROUND THAT ISN'T ON FIRE!" The elite Centaur warriors—their gargantuan bodies so horribly charred and melted they no longer resembled living creatures—unleashed harrowing, blood-curdling shrieks. Mercilessly trampling over the blazing, scorched corpses of their own kin, they launched a final, rabid, and completely suicidal charge directly into the barricades of Greywater Village!