Chương 338: 338：Ghosts in the Swamp

In his vision, the [Eagle Eye Perception] talent was pushed into absolute overdrive. This was not the night sky as seen by ordinary men. In Soren's sights, the pitch-black, suffocating fog turned semi-transparent. The massive bodies of the Minotaur warriors, radiating astonishing body heat, stood out as stark, blazing crimson thermal signatures against the freezing backdrop of the swamp.

Even their heavy breathing, the twitching of their muscle fibers, and the arduous, sluggish motion of pulling their hooves from the muck were crystal clear to him!

"One hundred and fifty meters to our front-left. A Minotaur company of about three hundred," Ilya whispered. The half-elf commander by Soren's side, who shared the [Eagle Eye Perception] talent, relayed the intel to the marksmen behind her, her knuckles white around her longbow.

"They just lost their commanding officer. Their formation is severely bottlenecked on a hard-packed land bridge. They can't deploy."

"Three hundred blind targets tightly packed together..." Soren raised his right hand, his voice utterly ice-cold.

"Frontline Elites, Longbow Battalion, Magic Rangers—take your marks."

"Show them the meaning of crossfire." With a brutal, downward slash of Soren's hand, the ferocious strike force hidden in the darkness unleashed pure hell! The half-elf Magic Rangers mounted firmly on the direwolves struck first.

"Wind's Whisper!" Ilya shouted. Over a hundred [Wind-Blade Enchanted Arrows], pulsating with cyan wind magic, tore from their bowstrings. They flew through the air in absolute, deadly silence, only detonating with a concussive BOOM the moment they reached the airspace directly above the three hundred Minotaurs! SHHHCK! SHHHCK! SHHHCK! Countless razor-sharp cyan wind blades chained together, forming a massive, sweeping torrent of localized wind-shear.

The thick, leathery hides the Minotaurs took such immense pride in were torn apart like wet tissue paper. Massive chests were flayed open, thick arms were cleanly severed, and boiling hot Minotaur blood sprayed violently into the freezing air.

"GAAAH! ATTACK FROM ABOVE!" The Minotaurs screamed in agony, instinctively raising their massive arms to protect their heads. But they guessed wrong. That aerial bombardment was just the bait to lock down their upper guard. CLACK! CLACK! CLACK! Firmly anchored on the broad backs of the Centaur youths, the one hundred frontline elites pulled the triggers of their [Heavy Repeating Crossbows].

Over a hundred incredibly thick, dark-iron armor-piercing heavy bolts tore out of the darkness, hugging close to the ground in a devastatingly flat trajectory! SQUELCH! SQUELCH! Driven by the terrifying kinetic energy stored in the winches, these heavy bolts punched cleanly through the Minotaurs' thick thighs and broad abdomens. Some of the bolts carried so much momentum they blew right through the first Minotaur and buried themselves deep into the chest cavity of the warrior behind him!

Two massive behemoths were violently skewered together, collapsing into the acidic muck with blood-curdling shrieks. And perfectly woven into the gaps between this high and low barrage, Ein's Longbow Battalion transformed into cold-blooded, precision executioners. Guided by the target callouts from Soren and Ilya, their [Tri-Edged Armor-Piercing Bodkins] specifically hunted down the squad leaders desperately trying to hoist their totem poles to rally a defense, or the exceptionally massive Centurions.

Often, the very second a Minotaur commander opened his mouth to roar a battle cry, an armor-piercing bodkin would flawlessly thread the needle straight down his throat, instantly terminating him. Flat trajectory heavy crossbows shredding the lower guard. Precision longbow snipes assassinating the command nodes. Sweeping wind-blade magic completely locking down the airspace. In barely three minutes, on this narrow land bridge, they had executed a pristine, one-sided slaughter! MOOO!

With a final, agonizing bellow, the last Minotaur—turned into a literal pincushion with dozens of arrows jutting from his massive frame—crashed to the earth. This entire three-hundred-strong Minotaur company stationed at the rear had been completely annihilated! The mud around them was absolutely saturated with boiling blood and violently shredded limbs. And yet, right up until their deaths, they hadn't so much as touched a single hair on the human-led forces.

"My Lord, this is too damn satisfying! These braindead cows are practically target dummies!" Seated upon a massive direwolf, Buck licked his lips in sheer excitement, his eyes shining with bloodlust as he gripped his war spear.

"The enemy is in total disarray! The Minotaurs up front are still squeezing backward into the bottleneck. Let us fire two more volleys! We can harvest at least another two hundred heads!" The frontline elites holding their repeating crossbows also began to expertly crank their winches, eager to unleash another devastating barrage. However, Soren abruptly raised his left hand, violently halting all action.

"Cease fire! All units, pivot immediately! Withdraw five hundred meters to the right-rear!" Soren's command brooked absolutely no defiance, heavy with an awe-inspiring, ironclad military authority.

"But my Lord, they're..." Buck began, visibly reluctant to let go of the easy kills. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"There are no 'buts'. Execute the order!" Soren said calmly. He kept his voice low against the blizzard, yet every single syllable sliced clearly into the ears of his officers.

"Buck, Ein! Drop this blind, glory-chasing mindset right now."

"On a cold-weapon battlefield, taking on ten thousand men with only two thousand has never been about hot-blooded, brute-force brawling!" While guiding the Centaur youths to smoothly pivot their hooves, Soren rapidly drilled this era-transcending guerrilla doctrine into his commanders' heads:"What does it mean when I say: The enemy advances, we retreat. The enemy camps, we harass. The enemy tires, we attack. The enemy retreats, we pursue?"

"We are a high-mobility, light-armor strike force! Our absolute advantages are our range and the dark!"

"If we get greedy over a few hundred easy kills and stay planted in one spot to chain-fire, the relentless mechanical clacking of our crossbows will absolutely broadcast our exact coordinates!" Soren pointed toward the Minotaur formations ahead, who were already descending into a blood-drunk frenzy at the sight of their slaughtered kin.

"Once ten thousand enraged Minotaurs lock onto our position, they could literally bury us under a mountain of their own corpses! They would surround us and crush our three hundred men to death right here in this mudhole!"

"Remember: as long as we maintain mobility, as long as we vanish into the pitch-black night, they are the ones who will forever live in terror! Change vectors! Flank around and strike their left wing!"

"Yes, my Lord! We hear and obey!" Buck and Ein snapped out of their bloodlust, a cold sweat drenching their backs as the realization hit them. He was right. If they got bogged down in a prolonged engagement, the direwolves and Centaurs wouldn't be able to build any speed in this cramped swamp. It would instantly become an inescapable death trap. SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!

Moving with absolute, practiced synchronization between the Centaur youths and the direwolves, the three-hundred-strong high-mobility detachment executed a flawless tactical withdrawal without a single wasted movement. They rapidly melted back into the howling winds and blinding snow of the dark abyss. Less than twenty breaths after they vanished...

"ROARRR! HUMAN COWARDS! SHOW YOURSELVES!" Over a thousand bloodshot, enraged Minotaur vanguard troops came charging wildly through the muck from the front. Hauling massive totem poles weighing thousands of pounds, they thundered into the slaughter zone. They swung their colossal weapons with blinding fury, smashing wildly into the dark at any patch of shadow that vaguely resembled an enemy, sending mud geysering into the air and shaking the very earth.

Yet, all that greeted their devastating rage was a carpet of their own slaughtered kin and the howling, empty winter wind.

"Where are they?! WHERE ARE THOSE DESPICABLE HUMAN RATS?!" Standing in a literal lake of blood, a Minotaur Myriarch held up a sputtering torch, staring out at the completely barren swamp. Driven completely mad by rage, he slammed his massive totem pole into the earth, letting out a suffocating roar of absolute frustration.

The sickening sensation of throwing a full-strength haymaker only to strike empty air was driving these Orcish warriors—creatures who lived and breathed for frontal melee combat—to the absolute brink of insanity. Meanwhile, having long since fallen back to a perfectly safe standoff distance, Soren was just preparing to order the detachment to initiate a fresh harassment run on the Minotaur's left wing. [Eagle Eye Perception]! In that precise moment, Soren's eyes flared with an intense, piercing luminescence.

His vision sliced effortlessly through the heavy blizzard, pierced the relentlessly churning miasma of the swamp, and completely bypassed the utterly chaotic and panicked Minotaur rearguard. He looked straight into the absolute, heavily-guarded core of the ten-thousand-strong Minotaur army! And at the very limit of his vision... Soren's steadily beating heart suddenly skipped a beat.

"Hold..." Soren abruptly raised a fist, signaling the entire detachment to come to a dead halt. His eyes, burning bright in the darkness, locked firmly onto the dead center of the Minotaur army's formation—a highly anomalous, massive open zone. The standard Minotaur grunts were currently slogging through knee-deep, highly acidic mud, violently shoving each other just to advance.

Yet, exclusively in the very core of this massive army, a wide swath of the swamp had been forcibly frozen solid by some extremely potent Ice-type magic, paving a broad, perfectly flat, and stable road right over the muck! But what truly sent a shockwave through Soren's ironclad composure was the entity traveling along that frozen highway. Guarded by layer upon layer of elite Royal Guards clad in pristine, pitch-black heavy steel plate...

Eight colossally massive, heavily armored Kodo beasts suddenly entered Soren's sights! These Kodo beasts had two-inch-thick cast-iron plates violently riveted directly into their broad backs and massive skulls. With every single step they took, the dull, earth-shaking thud completely overpowered the howling blizzard. And strapped to these eight terrifying, titanic war beasts were thick chains forged from pure enchanted magi-gold. Together, what they were pulling through the swamp...

was an absurdly massive, exorbitantly luxurious, mobile Royal Pavilion!