Chương 146: 146：No Time to Reload Before My Arrows

Nock. Draw. Release. The entire sequence flowed like water, completely devoid of a single wasted movement. Empowered by the monstrous arm strength granted by his [Faint Blood of the Son of Titan], a heavy warbow that would normally require three grown men working together to draw was effortlessly pulled back into a perfect full moon. Combined with the dynamic kinetic vision of his [Eagle Eye], the dense, suffocating fog might as well have been crystal-clear glass. Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!

The violent thrumming of the bowstring blurred into a single, continuous hum! Wrapped in the cyan wind-elemental mana of the [Windwhisper Bow], the arrows flew at speeds that completely defied the naked eye. Squelch! Squelch! Crack! Reflected in Lyra's trembling pupils was an utterly incomprehensible masterpiece of slaughter. The Black Iron Orcs—who mere seconds ago believed they were the absolute masters of the hunt—were now being reaped like stalks of wheat in a hurricane.

One brute barely managed to raise his shield before a shaft threaded the needle, passing perfectly through the two-finger-wide vision slit to obliterate his left eye. Another lunged toward Soren with a guttural roar, only for an arrow to plunge straight down his gaping maw, shattering his cervical vertebrae and pinning him to the rotting trunk behind him. Ten seconds. It took barely ten seconds! The entire pursuit squad—ten fully armored, elite Black Iron Orcs—was completely eradicated.

Every single one executed via a flawless shot to the vitals. Their massive corpses littered the acidic bog in a chaotic pile, the pooling thick green blood filling the air with a suffocating stench of iron. Meyer finally managed to catch up from behind, gasping for breath with his shortsword drawn. Staring at the absolute carnage, he audibly gulped. He knew it deep in his bones: even if he watched it a hundred times over, his Lord's brutally precise, art-like archery would still make him tremble in pure awe.

A deathly silence reclaimed the woods. Clad in his heavy black cloak, gripping a longbow that pulsed with cyan runes, Soren casually parted the fog like a man taking a leisurely stroll through his own courtyard, coming to a halt right before Lyra. Staring up at this domineering, god-like young man who had just descended into her nightmare, Lyra momentarily forgot the agonizing pain in her leg. Soren didn't spare a second glance at the butchered orcs.

Dropping directly to one knee, he pulled a leather flask from his belt pouch and bit the wooden stopper off with his teeth.

"Bite down and bear it." Splash. He poured raw, high-proof alcohol directly over the gaping puncture wound in Lyra's right calf.

"Hnngh!" Lyra's entire body violently arched from the blazing agony. She clamped her teeth ruthlessly down on her collar, refusing to let out a single scream. Moving with clinical precision, Soren drew his bone-handled dagger. With a sharp crack, he severed the thick wooden shaft of the throwing spear still protruding from her flesh. He immediately packed the wound tightly with coagulant powder, binding it securely with a clean linen bandage. The entire field-medic procedure took less than thirty seconds.

"Drink some water. Keep your core temperature up." Soren casually tossed a separate waterskin into Lyra's lap. Feeling the tight, secure pressure around her agonizing wound, and looking at the mysterious man who had just saved her life, the rims of Lyra's eyes instantly reddened. But a fraction of a second later, the true terror of the situation slammed back into her mind!

"M-My Lord! Run!" Ignoring all pleasantries and fighting through the searing pain, Lyra shot out a mud-caked hand and gripped Soren's bracer like a vice. Her voice cracked into a desperate, frantic shriek:"Leave me! Take cover! Those ten Black Iron Orcs weren't the real hunters! They were just the hounds, trained to drive prey blindly through the swamp!"

"The real monster hunting me is a literal Reaper hiding in the dark! He's infamous throughout the entire Orcish Horde..."

"The Elite Sharpshooter, Krag!" BOOM! As if the grim reaper himself was answering her warning, before Lyra's voice had even fully dissipated, a terrifying, explosive crack of a heavy mechanical spring detonated from deep within the fog! SCREECH! Accompanied by the ear-piercing shriek of parting air, a singular point of cold light crossed a hundred meters of distance in the blink of an eye!

"It's too late!" A hundred and fifty paces away, hidden high within the canopy of a centuries-old redwood. Clad in dark green, camouflage-patterned chainmail, the Orc Sharpshooter, Krag, wore a mask of sheer, sadistic cruelty. As a premier assassin who had blown the heads off countless human officers, Krag possessed a wealth of hunting experience that bordered on the supernatural. During that ten-second massacre earlier, he had actually already been in position.

But he hadn't blindly opened fire to save his comrades. Trading the lives of ten lowly, thick-skulled frontline grunts for an absolutely flawless sniping angle? To him, that was a bargain of a lifetime. He had watched the entire scene unfold with absolute, cold-blooded patience. He had even perfectly pre-aimed for the exact moment Lyra's shoulders would jerk upward as she shouted her warning! SQUELCH!

"AGH!" Along with the sickening, brutal sound of tearing flesh and shattering bone, the solid-cast [Heavy Armor-Piercing Steel Bolt] punched clean through Lyra's right shoulder! The sheer kinetic impact lifted her completely off the ground, throwing her backward and nailing her firmly into the trunk of a dead tree! This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Torrents of crimson cascaded down the rotting bark.

With her feet dangling uselessly in the air, the world-ending agony pushed Lyra right to the razor's edge of shock.

"What a deeply moving display of human camaraderie. It makes me want to vomit." The heavy, ratcheting clack-clack-clack of mechanical gears echoed through the trees. Like a dark phantom, Krag's towering silhouette slowly strolled out of the noxious fog just a few dozen meters away. Gripped in his hands was a viciously designed, long-stocked crank-winch weapon: a master-crafted [Heavy Siege Crossbow] forged by goblin engineers.

Without breaking his leisurely stride, Krag coldly used his thumb to force a brand-new armor-piercing steel bolt directly into the grooved firing rail. Clack. Loaded. Krag's singular, scarred eye locked onto Lyra dangling from the tree, before sliding over to deliver a look of absolute, mocking contempt at Soren, who was still half-kneeling on the ground. With a single, perfectly placed shot, he had completely paralyzed the battlefield. Now, it was time to put these two miserable wretches out of their misery.

But in the exact fraction of a second Lyra was violently pinned to the tree...

"You're courting death." Soren's gaze turned as cold as a butcher's blade. There was absolutely zero hesitation. He didn't even bother wasting the kinetic energy to stand up. Maintaining his crouched, one-knee posture, Soren's right hand whipped over his shoulder toward his quiver like a bolt of lightning! You chose to expose your position. Now we duel. The [Windwhisper Bow] let out a bone-chilling hum! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!

In an instant, locking on via the flawless precision of his [Eagle Eye], Soren unleashed a rapid-fire volley at a physically impossible, staccato rhythm! Three black iron arrows, swirling with cyan wind magic, erupted from his bow like a burst from a gatling gun. Leaving fierce white contrails through the misty air, the three arrows formed a lethal, inescapable triangle, completely locking down Krag's vectors of escape! Too fast! Krag's mocking smirk instantly vanished into sheer, unadulterated panic!

The absolute second the arrows left the string, the orc felt an icy wind capable of flaying his scalp slice toward him. His instincts screamed that if he tried to tank the shot, that terrifying wind-elemental kinetic force would punch clean through his heavy siege crossbow—and right through his chest! Pure, beastly survival instinct completely overrode his desire to kill. Krag's boots skidded wildly against the mud.

Like a massive, slippery eel, he threw his center of gravity into an awkward, disjointed reverse roll, sending swamp water flying as he threw himself desperately behind a solid slab of granite! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The three black iron shafts completely detonated the exact spot he had been standing a millisecond prior, burying themselves so deep into the earth they blasted out three cratered divots! Safe behind the massive rock face, Krag pressed his back flush against the freezing granite, gasping for breath.

Yet, as the undisputed apex sniper of the Orcish Horde, there wasn't a single shred of true fear in Krag's eyes. Instead, his face twisted into an expression of absolute, frenzied bloodlust! This! This was the caliber of prey he lived to hunt! The fog wrapped around the battlefield like a shroud. Krag squeezed his singular eye shut. His pointed, hypersensitive ears flared, meticulously isolating and dissecting every microscopic ripple of sound in the air. The rustling of dead leaves in the wind.

The faint bloop of acidic swamp bubbles bursting. And there... the subtle, lingering, metallic hum of the young human's fingers still gripping the elven bowstring! Using nothing but the microscopic vibrational frequency of the string, Krag's mind was instantly able to map and perfectly replicate the human's exact tactical rhythm. Drawing, nocking, releasing. In a sniper duel of this caliber, victory didn't go to the man with the longest sightlines. It went to the man who could perfectly seize his opponent's timing!

I can count the exact number of arrows left in your quiver, Krag mentally sneered, a manic grin splitting his face. Three suppressive shots fired. That is a massively high-poundage magical warbow. The physical toll it takes on the muscles to draw it that rapidly is immense... Krag was trapped in an absolute state of chilling tranquility. Crouched behind the granite, he was the spider waiting for the fly to stop thrashing in the web.

He silently counted down, waiting for the single, unavoidable, physiological flaw inherent to all human archers. He was waiting for the exact moment Soren emptied the arrows resting in his hand. The moment the draw hand had to fall, the moment the other arm had to reach back over the shoulder into the quiver. He was waiting for that minuscule, inescapable, zero-point-five-second reload gap! One second. Two seconds... Thump. Thump.

Hiding completely paralyzed behind a massive tree, Meyer felt his heart attempting to beat its way out of his ribcage. And then, right at the exact apex of the fifth second! Down on the muddy slope, Soren's left hand remained locked around the grip, but the continuous, deadly hum of the bowstring suddenly fell dead silent! NOW! The fleeting, ultimate kill-window had arrived!