Chương 165: 165：Crushing the Elites

The moment those words fell, the four Half-Elf elite warriors were instantly enraged. What absolute, unbridled arrogance! Half-Elves were born with incredibly lightweight skeletal structures; they prided themselves on being absolute masters of arboreal combat. Yet this human—massive and heavily muscled—actually delusionally believed he could take on all four of them simultaneously amidst the complex, towering canopy and teach them a lesson?

"You asked for this! When your bones are shattered to pieces, don't blame us!" Farness let out a bark of furious laughter. Executing a flawless backflip, he leaped straight out of the treehouse window and into the rainy night. Moments later. In the rear of the camp, under torrential rain, stood a primitive arboreal gladiator arena woven from dozens of towering spruces rising hundreds of feet into the air. This was the Half-Elves' exclusive training ground for climbing and close-quarters combat.

The massively thick, intersecting branches were thickly coated with slick, treacherous moss. Hanging vines obscured vision completely. For standard human soldiers accustomed to fighting on flat ground, merely standing upright up there was a pipe dream. Ilya and over a hundred Half-Elf tribesmen gathered in the mud below, staring up into the canopy. Ilya's hands were clenched into tight fists. Deep down, she desperately wanted Soren to win—to utterly obliterate the final shreds of her hesitation.

But she also knew exactly how terrifying these four elites were when coordinating a hunt through the trees. Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish! The absolute second the spar began, the four Half-Elf warriors silently and instantly vanished into the gloomy upper canopy. Leveraging their racial agility, they swung effortlessly through the slick vines. The rustling of the leaves in the storm perfectly masked their trajectories. Soren, meanwhile, stood completely alone on a thick spruce branch thirty feet above the ground.

Unbound by heavy armor, the freezing rain soaked his linen tunic, clinging tightly to his skin and perfectly outlining the terrifying, explosive muscle fibers beneath. It was the monstrous physique granted by his [Faint Blood of the Son of Titan]. Above me, huh... Soren slowly closed his eyes. He didn't even bother activating his [Eagle Eye].

Relying entirely on the hyper-tuned auditory senses forged from his past life as a special forces operator, combined with the faint, needle-like prick of his [Danger Sense] echoing in his mind, he instantly locked onto the screech of parting air coming from his twelve o'clock and four o'clock blind spots! Here they come! Using a massive green vine as a pendulum, Farness and a flanking Half-Elf warrior swung down from above!

Carrying the kinetic force of hundreds of pounds of swinging momentum, they launched a devastating, coordinated pincer attack, driving their elbows and knees directly toward Soren's blind spots! Faced with a high-altitude, swinging pincer strike of this magnitude, an ordinary human warrior would either be blasted off the branch to a gruesome death or forced to cower and desperately try to tank the blow. However, Soren didn't even attempt to dodge using conventional logic.

His eyes snapped open, blazing with electrical intensity! [Military Swordsmanship: Grandmaster-Tier]! It wasn't restricted to just swords! The Grandmaster-level footwork carved directly into his muscle memory was displayed with absolute, breathtaking perfection.

"Too slow!" Soren's boots violently ground against the slick moss. Instead of retreating, he lunged forward! Arching his back to coil his strength, he contorted his body into a physically impossible diagonal slant, slicing flawlessly into the razor-thin, millimeter-wide gap between the two incoming attackers! Under Farness's utterly horrified gaze... Soren shot his hands out!

His left hand clamped like a steel vice around Farness's rapidly swinging ankle, while his right hand flawlessly pressed against the lumbar nerve plexus of the flanking Half-Elf!

"Get down!" Using his own upper body as a fulcrum, Soren effortlessly redirected their kinetic energy. Not only did he completely nullify their swinging momentum, but he hijacked their inertia! The veins in his arms bulged violently as he ruthlessly yanked downward! Oh no! Farness felt an unstoppable, tyrannical force rip through his ankle. His center of gravity was utterly obliterated. BOOM! CRACK!

Completely robbed of any ability to resist, the two elite warriors were violently ripped from their thirty-foot high-ground advantage by sheer, monstrous brute force! They smashed cleanly through two dead branches on their way down, crashing tragically into the mud below and sending freezing sludge flying in all directions! What?! The entire sequence happened so fast the spectating Half-Elves below didn't even have time to gasp. Up in the higher canopy, the remaining two Half-Elf warriors went completely pale.

Just what kind of terrifying, explosive power is required to physically rip two swinging adults out of their mid-air trajectories?!

"Do not give him room to breathe! Force a melee scramble!" The remaining two elites were furious. Abandoning their flashy swinging tactics, they leaped straight down the trunk. Their boots tapped frantically against the complex branches, launching an impossibly fast, high-frequency barrage of close-quarters strikes intended to completely seal off Soren's routes of retreat. Faced with this blindingly dense assault... If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Soren simply let out a cold, mocking laugh. Planting his boots firmly onto the trunk, he didn't retreat. Instead, he aggressively thrust his back and shoulders straight into their incoming blows! BANG! BANG! BANG! The Half-Elves' fists and kicks—strikes carrying enough force to shatter solid rock—landed flush against Soren's back and shoulders three consecutive times. Yet, the exact moment their strikes connected, the Half-Elves felt as if they had just punched a slab of solid steel!

A tearing, agonizing pain shot directly through their knuckles! This was the terrifying power of Soren's Talent, [Hardened Skin]—absolute immunity to 70% of conventional physical damage!

"Are you done? My turn." Soren's low growl vibrated through the rain. He violently spun around. His left foot literally pulverized the rotting wood beneath it as his body launched forward like a fired arrow. Soren completely ignored their incoming defensive maneuvers. He threw a simple, devastating straight right hook. The sheer speed generated a sonic crack in the air, flawlessly tearing right through the enemy's guard! THUD! His fist slammed brutally into the Half-Elf's chest plate!

The warrior's eyes rolled back into his skull. Without even letting out a grunt, he went completely limp and tumbled backward off the tree! Three down. At that exact moment, the final Half-Elf was desperately attempting to leap to an adjacent giant tree to open the distance.

"Think you can run?!" Soren took a massive, leaping stride. His launch generated so much force the massively thick tree trunk violently shuddered. Launching himself into the air, he caught up instantly! Hovering mid-air above his target, Soren viciously swung his lower leg downward like a falling battleaxe! The crushing heel kick crashed directly onto the final opponent's desperately crossed defensive arms! BOOM!

Accompanied by a horrifying crash, the final Half-Elf was utterly suppressed by the mind-numbing kinetic force. Eyes wide with absolute shock, he plummeted rigidly to the earth alongside a shower of splintered branches. The battle was over. It hadn't even taken the time it takes to boil a cup of tea. Less than sixty seconds! Amidst the pouring rain, Soren remained towering amidst the canopy, dozens of feet in the air. Aside from his slightly disheveled clothing, his breathing hadn't even quickened by a single beat.

He looked down at the four completely defeated Half-Elf elites. Dead silence. Farness, clutching his completely numb ankle, struggled to crawl out of the mud. His fiercely proud agility and arboreal combat mastery had been rendered completely, utterly useless in front of this human.

That unimaginably tyrannical physique, combined with footwork calculated down to the literal millimeter, made him completely understand one thing: The commander of this human army was absolutely no weakling who hid behind his men barking orders. This level of raw, dominating martial prowess was entirely worthy of their race's submission!

"We... we yield." Farness bowed his fiercely proud head. The freezing rain washed over his pale face, but his tone was filled with unprecedented, heartfelt submission. Standing amidst the crowd, the Supreme Commander, Ilya, was currently enduring a mind-shattering tsunami of shock. Terrifying. His anticipation of combat timing... it surpasses even the High Bladedancers of the Elven Royal Court! Ilya stared up at Soren.

In her breathtakingly beautiful eyes, there wasn't just shock; a profound, desperately long-forgotten spark of hope had finally been ignited. With a supreme commander like this, perhaps this 'Greywater Village' he painted truly could become an impenetrable sanctuary in this chaotic, blood-soaked world. But... she couldn't hand over absolutely everything just yet. Melee prowess represented the savage courage to lead a vanguard charge.

But in Half-Elf culture, Archery was the absolute, core metric of battlefield dominance!

"A breathtaking display of close-quarters mastery, Lord Soren." Ilya's voice rang out clearly over the storm. She strode right through the mud, walking straight toward a towering, ancient tree that had been charred to charcoal by lightning.

"Since you have conquered my royal guard through martial arts... may I ask you to accept one final test, within the domain I am most proud of?" At some point, a deep-green longbow, intricately carved with ancient elven runes, had materialized in her hand. Soren leaped lightly from the canopy, landing smoothly in the mud. He looked at the female leader with a gaze of intense, burning interest.

"How do we play?" Ilya raised her longbow, pointing it toward the outer perimeter of the camp. It was a dense, gloomy forest completely swallowed by the howling wind and torrential rain. The sky had already turned pitch-black. Combined with the driving rain, visibility was horrifyingly low.

"Two hundred meters out." Ilya's words radiated the fiercely aloof, absolute confidence of the elven race.

"Right in the dead center of that storm front ahead of us. The rules are simple. In a pitch-black, rain-drenched forest where you can barely see your own hand in front of your face... we each fire a single arrow."

"The target is not a tree stump. It is not a flying bird..." She pointed a slender finger at the dead leaves violently tumbling through the gale.

"Hit a single, specific Soapberry leaf blowing erratically in the hurricane winds. And you must pierce it dead-center!"