Chương 309: 309：The Centaurs' Pride

Zagar's lips trembled violently. He looked as though he wanted to spit a vicious, dying curse, or perhaps desperately demand to know how on earth Soren had pulled this off. But Soren did not act like the triumphant heroes in traditional tales. He didn't deliver a grand, mocking monologue to the defeated, nor did he utter a single word of unnecessary nonsense. Staring down at the dying high-ranking Orc, Soren's thoughts couldn't help but drift back to three months ago.

Back then, Greywater Village was nothing more than a dilapidated refugee camp. To slay just two [Sons of Titan] at the Deadbone Shallows, he had to exhaust every conceivable method to exploit the terrain, risk his life, and even rely on a stroke of pure luck just to eke out a pyrrhic victory. And now? Soren swept his gaze across his elite soldiers, fully clad in gleaming [Dark Silver Plate Armor], and glanced at the [Pyroblast Wands] that could unleash high-tier magic with a flick of the wrist.

In just three short months, his forces were capable of meeting a full assassination squad of [Sons of Titan] in a head-on, brutal collision—and effortlessly slaughtering them all!

"The times... have truly changed," Soren murmured silently in his heart. He didn't spare Zagar a second glance. With a fluid, elegant motion, Soren raised his left hand, gripping the Elven creation etched with triple-layered cyan wind runes: the [Windwhisper Bow]. His right hand drew a silver-plated arrow from his quiver. He nocked the arrow. Drew the string. Thrum! The crisp, resonant twang of the bowstring was the absolute final sound the Shadow Priest would ever hear in this world.

A streak of silver light flashed through the ruins. Squelch! Packing terrifying penetrative force, the silver-plated arrow pierced perfectly through the dead center of Zagar's forehead, violently pinning him to the charred wooden beam behind him. Shadow Priest Zagar's head slumped forward lifelessly. The last, pathetic remnants of his shadow mana dissipated into the freezing wind alongside his life force. The grueling, freezing long night of the Misty Swamp finally reached its end amidst the howling gale.

Early the next morning, as a sickly, pale gray hue began to bleed into the horizon, the air above Greywater Village's northern slope defensive line was biting and suffocatingly tense. There was no birdsong. There wasn't even the roaring of the blizzard. The entire wasteland was so utterly silent it made a man's eardrums ache. Inside the defensive trenches, the soldiers of the second-line Macedonian Phalanx gripped their spears tightly, their eyelashes completely crusted in white frost.

They held their breath, their eyes wide as they stared dead ahead at the snow-covered, muddy expanse to the true north. Rumble! Rumble! Rumble! At first, the sound was a low, muffled thudding drifting in from beyond the horizon. But in the span of just a few breaths, the noise rapidly magnified into a continuous, violently dense tremor. Even the loose pebbles inside the trenches began to rattle and bounce uneasily against the dirt. They were here! A sprawling, mud-yellow line violently shattered the horizon.

It was the very first wave of the Orc Alliance's Centaur vanguard! A full five hundred Centaur elites—surging with a hyper-violent momentum and radiating a sky-piercing stench of blood and savage killing intent—were the first to close in on the frontal slope of Greywater Village's northern defenses. The Centaur Centurion leading the charge was named Urgar. He possessed a gargantuan physique standing nearly three meters tall.

The equine muscles of his lower half bulged grotesquely; every single heavy stomp of his hooves shattered the frozen mud, leaving deep craters in his wake. His wild mane thrashed in the wind, and in his hands, he gripped a massive heavy longbow strung with the taut sinew of a magical beast.

"Halt!" Exactly five hundred meters from Greywater Village's chevaux-de-frise line, Urgar violently yanked his reins. Neiiigh! The five hundred Centaur elites displayed terrifying equestrian mastery and mobility. Accompanied by a synchronized chorus of warhorse shrieks, this furiously galloping vanguard actually managed to brake and come to a dead, perfectly steady halt in a mere matter of seconds, exactly five hundred meters out. This was the arrogance and cunning carved deep into the bones of the Centaur race.

Five hundred meters—this was an incredibly meticulous tactical distance. Urgar swept a contemptuous glare over the distant wooden settlement. Centaurs were born with monstrous strength. The oversized heavy bows in their hands could effortlessly bridge a distance of five hundred meters and pin a long arrow straight through a human's skull!

"Boys! Let those pathetic humans hiding behind their wooden sticks taste true fear!" Urgar roared with laughter, drawing a crude, black-fletched heavy arrow and nocking it against his bowstring.

"Use our signature tactic! Rain hell on them! Bleed their courage dry!" Upon the Centurion's command... Creaaak! Five hundred heavy bows were drawn to a full moon by sheer, monstrous strength. Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! An utterly terrifying number of black-fletched arrows blackened the sky. Emitting a piercing, mournful shriek as they tore through the air, they carved massive parabolas through the dim morning light.

Crossing the vast five-hundred-meter gap, they rained down upon Greywater Village's positions in a devastatingly dense barrage. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. This was the tactic that brought the Centaurs flawless victory across the Continent of Aeresia: horse-archer harassment! Against conventional human border garrisons, this tactic was an absolute nightmare. They refused to engage in melee.

They simply leveraged their extreme range advantage to bleed the enemy dry from afar. If human heavy infantry dared to charge out, they would use the high mobility of their four legs to immediately fall back, endlessly kiting the enemy and dragging them to death through sheer exhaustion. If the humans stayed hidden behind their walls, the Centaurs could safely probe the enemy's firepower without suffering a single casualty.

The massive volley of arrows howled downward, embedding themselves deep into the mud just in front of Greywater Village's positions. Their fletchings vibrated violently, emitting a terrifying, continuous thrum. Down in the trenches, several raw recruits newly assigned to the second-line battalions couldn't help but shrink their necks, their faces pale with dread. This suffocating, helpless feeling of being beaten without any way to strike back was the easiest way to completely shatter an army's morale.

However, amidst this baptism of arrows, Soren stood unmoving upon the central command platform, as unshakeable as a mountain. He pierced through the swirling snow, his gaze utterly locked onto the Centaur vanguard five hundred meters away.

"Defend? No. In my dictionary, the ultimate counter to horse-archers has never been taking a beating!" Soren abruptly drew the refined steel longsword at his waist. Pointing the blade directly toward the open wasteland, his roar echoed across the battlefield:"Frontline Elites! All units! Step out of cover! Form ranks and advance!" BOOM! Accompanying Soren's military decree, a scene unfolded that would be seared into the minds of those five hundred Centaurs for the rest of their lives.

From behind the trenches, one hundred hulking frontline elites, their entire bodies radiating a dark metallic sheen, stepped forward. They didn't raise a single shield. They didn't flinch or cower. Marching with a synchronized, earth-shaking, and perfectly steady cadence, they stepped right past the protective cover of the chevaux-de-frise and strode out onto the completely exposed frontal slope!

Every single one of them was fully equipped in [Dark Silver Plate Armor]—masterpieces personally forged by the Hobgoblin Arsenal Master, Luger. It was the flawless fusion of Mithril and Black Steel. And resting in each of their hands was a menacing, brutally designed [Repeating Heavy Crossbow].

"My Lord! It's too dangerous!" Darion, the Vice-Commander of the Macedonian Phalanx, roared frantically from the rear.

"Hold your lines!" Soren stood tall at the front of the formation. His mind possessed tactical doctrines that surpassed this era by a thousand years, dictating this absolute, calculated decision!

"In a conventional cold-weapon military system, everyone fears horse-archers. But they forget one fundamental truth: while the mobility of horse-archers is terrifying, the chaotic bouncing of horseback dictates that their firing accuracy and frequency can never reach maximum efficiency!"

"Stationary infantry fire is the natural, ultimate counter to horse-archers! As long as the infantry possesses armor capable of completely ignoring enemy arrows, and heavy firepower that vastly outpaces the enemy's rate of fire... then advancing in a steady line is an absolute, merciless tactical steamroll!" Opposite them, Centurion Urgar watched the hundred humans slowly marching out of cover. He froze for a second before erupting into booming, earth-shaking laughter.

"A hundred pathetic fools! They actually dare to walk out of cover and make themselves living targets?! Aim directly at them! Turn them into pincushions!" Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! The second and third volleys of Centaur heavy arrows rained down in a suffocatingly dense cluster, entirely focused on pouring directly into those one hundred frontline elites. CLANG! TING! CLANG-CLANG-CLANG! A heart-stopping cacophony of metal violently impacting metal exploded continuously across the northern slope.

A raw iron heavy arrow, fired by a Centaur and packing enough terrifying kinetic force to punch straight through rhinoceros hide, viciously slammed into the breastplate of a frontline elite. Yet, the expected scene of splattering blood never occurred. The exact microsecond the raw iron arrow struck the surface of the [Dark Silver Plate Armor], it was as if it had slammed into an impenetrable fortress wall.

The unyielding toughness of Mithril and the extreme hardness of Black Steel fused flawlessly in that instant, instantly shattering the iron arrowhead into dust! The snapped wooden shaft bounced off harmlessly, dropping into the mud.

What was even more terrifying was that, even though the heavy arrow delivered a staggering kinetic shock, once the impact was filtered through the Dark Silver Plate, the residual blunt-force trauma was completely absorbed and perfectly cushioned by the thick [Padded Cotton Armor] worn beneath it. The one hundred frontline elites stood their ground like iron monoliths. They allowed the torrential rain of arrows to violently batter their bodies, kicking up blinding showers of sparks.

They didn't take a single half-step backward. Hell, the arrows couldn't even scratch the surface polish of their Dark Silver Plate!