Chương 204: 204： Survive Through Death

"Everyone, grab your gear and prepare to..." The word retreat was right on the tip of Ilya's tongue when her gaze swept down the sheer cliff face. She locked onto a highly intoxicating battlefield reality. Down at the bottom of the gorge, the three-hundred-strong Orc infantry battalion had been utterly decimated. Between the initial volleys of arrow fire and the indiscriminate, frenzied trampling of the Ground Dragons, fewer than one in ten had survived.

The remaining few dozen routed grunts cowered in the corners, shivering in terror, posing absolutely zero threat. The only remaining threat on this battlefield emanated from those four colossal behemoths! If the ambush detachment retreated now, these four [Ironclad Ground Dragons] would casually march right out of Spine-Sever Gorge, arriving at the frontlines as apocalyptic siege engines. She absolutely could not let them leave this gorge alive! Yet, she was painfully aware of their current tactical dilemma.

The elevated high ground was a full two hundred paces from the gorge floor. Firing from this extreme altitude, the basic magical arrows loosed by the Half-Elf Rangers suffered severe [Mana Decay] as the wind and fire elements bled out over the long distance in the air. By the time the arrows struck the Ground Dragons, the residual magical detonations were so pitiful they couldn't even chip a corner off the granite slabs.

It was physically impossible to punch through the behemoths' layered defenses to reach their soft, vulnerable vitals.

"Lord Soren once said: when infantry faces heavily armored units, the only option is a close-quarters breach! We must jam our firepower directly into their defensive blind spots!" To successfully execute these arrogant, unstoppable leviathans, Ilya made an absolute, do-or-die decision.

"Cease fire!" Ilya abruptly stood up, her slender frame looking incredibly rigid and indomitable amidst the perilous battlefield.

"Half-Elf Magic Rangers, with me!"

"Are you out of your damn mind?!" Ein's eyes bulged wide. He violently grabbed her mud-caked armor.

"Down there is the heavy ballista kill zone! Where the hell are you going?!"

"I am abandoning the high ground! I am taking my men down the cliff face! We are going to shoot through their defenses from the ground!" Ilya's words rang like striking iron.

"You're going down the cliff?! That is pure suicide!" Ein roared in frantic anxiety.

"If you abandon the absolute kinetic advantage of this high ground and step onto flat earth, those heavy ballistae will nail you and your bows to the rock wall!"

"If we can't kill them from two hundred paces, we are just sitting here waiting to die! If we want to pierce those scales and three-foot-thick granite slabs, there is only one way: close the gap!" Ilya violently threw off Ein's arm, glaring down at the gorge.

"To maximize the destructive yield of our magical arrows, we have to do one thing: point-blank fire!" Ignoring the dumbfounded Ein, Ilya turned around. Behind her, not a single one of the one hundred and thirty Half-Elf Rangers showed an ounce of hesitation. From the exact moment they had been treated as absolute equals in Greywater Village, these formerly humiliated and enslaved Half-Elves had silently pledged their lives to Soren. To clear the obstacles for their Warlord, ten thousand deaths would not deter them.

"Ropes! Rappel!" Ilya barked her command. Swish! Swish! Swish! The Rangers immediately whipped out ropes woven from thick, durable swamp vines. They rapidly anchored one end to the massive roots of the cliffside trees and snapped the other to the specialized iron carabiners at their waists. These preternaturally agile warriors vaulted over their cover in perfect synchronization.

Against the sheer, ninety-degree vertical drop of the cliff face, they plunged toward the bottom of the gorge at an absolutely terrifying, breakneck speed!

"What?! Are those half-breed mutts trying to kill themselves?!" The Orc shooters mounted atop the Ground Dragons were completely dumbfounded. They fundamentally could not comprehend this suicidal act of willingly abandoning an unassailable geographic advantage.

"Hahahaha! They're serving themselves up! Level the ballistae! Wipe those cliff-crawling pests off the wall!" Faced with the fully exposed, rappelling Rangers, the three operational heavy ballistae rapidly adjusted their firing angles.

"Zig-zag rappel! Do not descend in a straight line!" Ilya roared while suspended in mid-air. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Kicking off the moss-slicked rock face, her posture was incredibly fluid. The innate, unparalleled agility of the Half-Elves was put on absolute, terrifying display as they executed erratic leaps and lateral evasions across the sheer cliff. KABOOM! KABOOM! Massive ballista bolts shrieked past them, embedding themselves deep into the bedrock.

The deafening roar of shattering stone echoed endlessly. One Half-Elf Ranger couldn't dodge in time. A massive chunk of flying shrapnel violently sheared a chunk of flesh right off his calf. Yet, he didn't even loosen his grip. Biting down on the agonizing pain, he flawlessly rode the rope all the way to the gorge floor. Touchdown! The moment her boots splashed into the ankle-deep, blood-soaked muck, Ilya immediately led the one hundred and thirty Rangers forward.

Braving the chaotic rain of suppressing fire, they utilized the uneven terrain and the literal mountains of Orc corpses as cover. Fanning out, they pushed forward like madmen. One hundred paces... Eighty paces... Fifty paces! The distance shrank at a terrifying rate. From a ground-level perspective, the titanic [Ironclad Ground Dragons] exuded an absolutely suffocating aura of oppression. A thick, rancid stench of blood and reptilian musk washed over them.

They closed the gap until they were a mere thirty paces away! For behemoths of this size, thirty paces didn't even constitute a full charge! This completely exposed the Rangers to the intersecting kill-box of the heavy ballistae and Orc longbowmen. Cover was largely rendered useless at this proximity. They could only rely on highly erratic tactical maneuvers, diving, rolling, and leaping through the bloody mud to evade the apocalyptic ballista fire.

"Die, human trash!" A heavy ballista locked onto Ilya's flank at point-blank range.

"Now!" Ilya locked her eyes dead onto the leading, heavy-class [Ironclad Ground Dragon]. She executed a violent slide-step out from behind a blood-soaked boulder, exposing herself entirely in the open. She slammed her right knee hard into the muck, flawlessly anchoring her stance. Gale-force winds converged around her! Thirty paces! This was the absolute hardest Ilya had ever drawn her bow in her entire life. Her knuckles turned bone-white, emitting a rapid succession of sharp cracks under the agonizing tension.

She frantically extracted every last drop of [Nature Mana] from her core, violently channeling it straight into the wooden arrow shaft. The arrow erupted with a profoundly dense, deep-green radiance, manifesting as a shrieking, miniature tornado-drill around the arrowhead. Her target wasn't the seam between the granite slabs and the scales!

Ilya's [Eagle Eye Perception] had long since pierced through the beast's defenses to find its absolute blind spot: as the monster roared in a berserk fury, its massive eyes bulged wide open. The tiny ring of fleshy folds directly surrounding its eyeball... was completely devoid of granite plating!

"Break!" She decisively released the string! Hot blood trickled down her torn fingertips. THWACK! The arrow left the bow, breaking the sound barrier in a flash of cyan lightning! The intimate, thirty-pace distance flawlessly bypassed the crippling [Mana Decay] suffered over hundreds of paces. This magical arrow, brimming with apex Nature Mana, tore through the raging wind and rain with absolute zero resistance.

Just a fraction of a microsecond before the Orc shooter could pull the ballista's trigger, the arrow struck with surgical, zero-margin-of-error precision. SQUELCH! It viciously punched straight through the absolute thinnest gap in the Ironclad Ground Dragon's defenses—its left eye socket! The entire length of the arrow buried itself deep into the colossal eyeball!

"ROOOAARRR!" The [Ironclad Ground Dragon] unleashed a bloodcurdling, agonizing shriek! But it wasn't over! Having entirely avoided long-distance mana decay, the violently compressed, explosive Nature Mana detonated directly inside the relatively soft, vulnerable brain cavity of the behemoth, unleashing absolute, catastrophic destruction! KABOOM! Brain matter, mingled with shattered bone, geysered violently out of the dragon's eye socket and nostrils.

The behemoth's titanic, unrivaled frame instantly locked into absolute rigor. Its massive pillar-like legs spasmed twice, before the multi-ton heavy-class [Ironclad Ground Dragon] crashed into the mud with an earth-shattering BOOM! A tsunami of blood and mud sprayed dozens of feet into the air! The Ground Dragon was instantly killed on the spot! The several Orc shooters manning the heavy ballista on its back were caught completely off guard.

The terrifying kinetic inertia of the beast collapsing violently catapulted them dozens of meters through the air. They slammed head-first into the sheer rock walls, their skulls bursting open on impact. Silence. After a fleeting, one-second pause, an earth-shattering roar of triumph detonated through Spine-Sever Gorge! The point-blank assault tactic was a success! The result wasn't just astounding—it was a literal miracle!

"It's dead! Its impenetrable defense has been broken!" Exhaustion intertwined with sheer, unadulterated adrenaline, flushing Ilya's cheeks a vibrant red. Panting heavily, she violently wiped the mud from her face. She raised her longbow, pointing it dead at the remaining three Ground Dragons, which were now shifting in panicked agitation. Her voice ringing with absolute authority, she immediately shifted their tactical deployment:"Half-Elf Magic Rangers, hear my command! Hold the thirty-pace danger line!

Do not retreat! Utilize the terrain! Fracture into three-man bounding overwatch teams! Total frontline advance!"

"Cease all meaningless area-suppression fire! Aim exclusively for their abdominal vents, their eyes, and the unarmored joints in their limbs! Point-blank, precision magical bombardment!"

"Bury your most violent elements directly into these beasts' brains!" Following that, Ilya unhooked a specialized, high-frequency whistle custom-crafted by Soren from her belt. Blowing it fiercely, she roared her second tactical mandate toward the cliff above:"Commander Ein! The high ground belongs to you!"

"Order your fifty longbowmen to exclusively lock onto the Orc shooters manning the ballistae on those beasts' backs!"

"Ignore the behemoths! Purge every last Orc from those saddles and give us cover fire!" This was a textbook, flawless execution of "High-Low Synergy: Combined Arms Infantry-Sniper Operations." Standing at the edge of the high ground, Ein witnessed the miraculous reversal play out before his eyes. The suffocating despair that had gripped his heart was instantly incinerated by absolute, roaring ecstasy! He finally understood the absolute core of Soren's tactical doctrine.

The battlefield was a living, breathing entity. There was no such thing as an impregnable, secure position. There was only the perfect kill distance required to push damage output to its absolute apex.

"If I, Ein, can't even snipe a few sitting ducks, what right do I have to call myself a Commander of the Lord?!" Ein violently hammered his fist against his breastplate, unleashing a thunderous roar:"Longbowmen! On your feet! Abandon your rock cover!"