Chương 310: 310：Arrows Like Mud, Ballistas Like Thunder

"T-this... this is impossible!" Five hundred meters away, the booming laughter on Urgar's face instantly froze. Absolute panic flooded his eyes, and the hand gripping his heavy longbow actually began to tremble. What in the name of the ancestors was he looking at?! The armor-piercing heavy arrows that the Centaur race prided themselves on... couldn't even scratch the surface of these infantrymen's armor!

"Monsters... what kind of cursed metal are they wearing?!"

"Now... it's our turn." Standing at the absolute front of the defensive line, Soren stared coldly at the horizon. His longsword violently slashed downward.

"Raise crossbows! Level sights! Free-fire at will! Pour everything you have into them!" Clack! Clack! Clack! One hundred [Repeating Heavy Crossbows] were raised in perfect unison, aiming directly at the Centaur vanguard five hundred meters out. At this extreme range, the Centaurs' physical strength couldn't pierce the humans' armor. But Greywater Village's heavy crossbows—powered by mechanical winches and heavy tension torsion—could erupt with a staggering, apocalyptic lethality! THWUMP!

The violent release of a hundred heavy mechanisms echoed like a thunderclap. In a fraction of a second, hundreds of thick, blackened armor-piercing bolts shot forward! Carving perfectly flat, hyper-velocity trajectories through the air, they viciously slammed directly into the Centaur formation! SQUELCH! THWACK! AAAAAH! Agonizing, blood-curdling screams instantly tore across the desolate wasteland. The terrifying speed the Centaurs were so deeply proud of was utterly useless in this moment.

Without any heavy plate to protect them, their gargantuan bodies became massive, inescapable targets. One heavy bolt cleanly punched straight through a Centaur's chest cavity! Retaining a terrifying amount of kinetic force, the bolt tore out his back and violently snapped the front leg of the Centaur galloping directly behind him! Blood and pulverized meat sprayed wildly through the air! In just the very first volley of exchanges, one hundred repeating crossbows had unleashed hundreds of armor-piercing bolts.

Under this suffocating blanket of heavy firepower, the five-hundred-strong Centaur vanguard fell in massive droves. In the blink of an eye, over half of their forces were wiped out! Over two hundred gargantuan corpses and critically wounded Centaurs crashed into the bloody mud, thrashing and howling in sheer agony.

"It's a trap! This is a godforsaken trap! How can their bolts fly this far?! Why are they so fast?!" Urgar's right arm had been grazed by a stray bolt, cleanly shearing off a massive chunk of flesh. His face contorted in excruciating pain. The arrogant conceit in his heart had been completely and utterly pulverized by raw terror. They couldn't fight this! This wasn't a battle; it was a one-sided slaughter!

"Retreat! Turn around! Full retreat! Get us out of here immediately!" Urgar roared at the top of his lungs, violently yanking his reins. Desperately attempting to leverage the Centaurs' high mobility, he led the two hundred surviving kin in a frantic, panicked flight back toward the way they came.

"You think you can come and go as you please? Do you think Greywater Village is a public tavern?" Standing atop the watchtower behind the defensive lines, Soren let out a cold, merciless sneer. At the exact critical juncture when the surviving Centaurs had just finished turning but hadn't yet accelerated to full speed... AWOOOOO! From the edge of the primeval forest on the right flank, a bone-chilling chorus of wolf howls abruptly erupted!

"Brothers! The Lord's orders are absolute! Not a single one escapes! Bog them down!" Radiating a ferocious aura, Buck, the Wolf Cavalry Commander, led his ninety-three fully equipped Wolf Riders. Like ghosts, they burst violently from the dense fog on the flank. Despite facing Centaurs whose bodies were twice the size of his Direwolves, Buck maintained absolute rationality, flawlessly executing Soren's tactical doctrine.

"Maintain your distance! Skirmish and fire! Seal their retreat route!" The Wolf Riders did not do something as idiotic as charging directly into the enemy formation for a melee brawl. Instead, relying on the extreme agility of their wolves, they rapidly circled the outer perimeter of the Centaur vanguard. Controlling the reins with one hand, they raised their meticulously crafted [Triple-Shot Repeating Hand Crossbows] with the other.

They continuously fired cold, calculating shots directly into the thighs and hooves of any Centaur attempting to break out! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!

"SCREEE!" Several Centaurs charging at the very front had their front hooves pierced by the sudden bolts. Their massive bodies crashed heavily to the ground, instantly tripping and tangling the massive cluster of kin galloping closely behind them.

"Get out of the way! You godforsaken mutts! Trample them!" Urgar swung his heavy bow wildly, attempting to lead his subordinates in a brute-force charge straight through the Wolf Riders' blockade. However, a brutal, unforgiving reality slapped them right in the face. This was the Misty Swamp! The ground was heavily saturated with highly acidic rot-mud and hidden sinkholes. This soft, treacherous terrain severely restricted the heavy hooves of the Centaurs, violently sapping their traction and acceleration.

They simply couldn't build up speed! Conversely, the Direwolves under Buck's command—with their wide, padded paws and innate jungle agility—moved through the freezing muck as effortlessly as if they were sprinting across a paved road! Their retreat route was entirely sealed. Flanking them were pools of lethal toxins and boiling mud. Blocking their front were the highly mobile, skirmishing Wolf Riders. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

These surviving two hundred Centaur vanguards had been forced into an absolute dead end—unable to advance, unable to retreat! Thud... Thud... Thud... From behind them, the steady, rhythmic footsteps of death encroached once again. Urgar looked back in pure terror. He saw Soren leading the one hundred completely uninjured frontline elites. With their repeating crossbows freshly reloaded, they were slowly, methodically advancing, pressing inward in a flawless, half-moon encirclement.

"No... Great Warchief, save me..." Urgar dropped his heavy longbow, his face twisted in the absolute horror of a dying beast. Soren's voice was as cold as the grave.

"Fire." THWUMP! The final execution descended. A merciless, suffocating storm of heavy bolts shredded the air, completely swallowing the last remnants of the Centaur vanguard. In less than half an hour... the battle was over. Across the wasteland five hundred meters in front of Greywater Village's northern slope, five hundred gargantuan Centaur corpses lay scattered in a chaotic, mangled mess.

The pungent, acidic mire had been stained a shocking, sickening dark crimson by beast blood, sending thick, billowing clouds of white, bloody vapor rising into the freezing air.

"Victory! All hail the Lord! Victory!" It wasn't until this exact moment that the second-line regulars hiding in the trenches finally snapped out of their daze. Staring in absolute disbelief at the frontline troops—who hadn't suffered a single casualty—they erupted into deafening, earth-shattering cheers. These were Centaurs! Elite alien warriors that used to require a three-to-one casualty ratio just to hold back! Yet they had been utterly annihilated in under an hour!

"Maintain vigilance! Clear the battlefield!" Soren slid his longsword back into its scabbard. His steady, authoritative command instantly reined in the soldiers' euphoria. Kyle, the Chief of Logistics, immediately led a massive detachment of logistical personnel. Pushing wheelbarrows and trudging through ankle-deep bloody mud, they surged onto the battlefield, expertly beginning the loot collection. However, halfway through the cleanup operation... Luger, the Hobgoblin Arsenal Master, kicked Urgar's corpse.

With a face full of sheer disgust, he spat a glob of bloody phlegm onto the ground.

"Bah! Beggars! What a godforsaken bunch of broke beggars!" Soren walked over, observing the piled-up loot. It was indeed pathetically poor. These elite Centaurs wore nothing but incredibly crude, foul-smelling, hardened leather armor. The craftsmanship was so atrocious it wouldn't even block a standard sword slash. And as for the heavy bows they were so proud of—while the limbs were crafted from the sinew and bone of magical beasts, the construction was severely lacking.

Some of the arrowheads were even chiseled from jagged rocks and rusted scraps of iron.

"My Lord, these beasts are poorer than the vagrants starving on the wastelands." Kyle threw his hands up in sheer exasperation.

"Aside from a few scraps of rusted iron and some low-grade pelts, we can't find a single decent set of metallic armor or weaponry. And the draw weight on these heavy bows is absurdly high. Our regular soldiers' arm strength simply isn't enough to draw them. They're completely useless for direct military distribution."

"Do not be deceived by surface appearances, Kyle." Soren didn't show a shred of disappointment. He crouched down, picked up a Centaur heavy bow that had been snapped under a hoof, and tested the incredibly tough magical beast sinew forming the bowstring, his mind racing. In the eyes of a modern special forces operative, absolutely nothing captured on a battlefield was useless!

"If the weapons can't be used directly, we dismantle them! These bowstrings are top-tier torsion material. Send them all back to Luger's arsenal to be re-woven into tension cables for our heavy siege ballistas!" Soren stood up, pointing toward the field of Centaur corpses, systematically and ruthlessly maximizing the value of the spoils.

"Those rusted iron scraps might be low quality, but toss them into the geothermal furnace to be smelted and purified, and they become perfectly good pig iron for our crossbow bolts! As for this leather armor..." Soren paused, turning to Buck, the Wolf Cavalry Commander.

"Buck. Strip the meat from the Centaurs. This is highly nutritious, protein-rich feed. It's more than enough to give your wolves a massive feast! Have the hides peeled and sent to the logistics department to be tanned. We'll turn them into winter boots and heavy gloves for our night sentries!"

"Understood! The Lord's wisdom knows no bounds!" The commanders roared in unison. Even though they hadn't captured any finely crafted sets of equipment, the raw materials, beast meat, and scrap iron harvested from five hundred Centaurs undeniably served as a highly valuable resource injection for a Greywater Village currently undergoing breakneck expansion. It was absolutely a profitable harvest. RUMBLE! RUMBLE! RUMBLE!

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Centaurs comprising the main vanguard force were pushing forward through the swamp. Though the terrain was grueling, they advanced with terrifying, brute-force momentum. Thick, rotting mud was violently kicked up into the air by their iron hooves, painting the desolate landscape in a suffocating layer of darkness.

Riding at the very front of the massive army, Centaur Chieftain Heka aggressively chewed on a chunk of raw meat crusted with ice, his face radiating pure, unadulterated excitement. At this very moment, his mind was entirely consumed by rabid, greedy fantasies—fantasies of Greywater Village's granaries overflowing with fine sorghum, and massive, sloshing wooden casks of sweet, fiery rum.