Chương 315: 315：Terror in the Skies, Comedy on the Ground

Just as the Centaurs were preparing to launch their second volley... Whoosh! Whoosh! The violent, heavy beating of massive wings suddenly tore through the sky. Carried by the freezing wind, a sickening, suffocating stench of rotting meat washed directly over the battlefield. Both the defenders of Greywater Village and the massive Centaur horde instinctively looked up. Piercing through the blizzard from the outer fringes of the Misty Swamp were over a dozen gargantuan beasts!

Covered in dark green scales, they sported grotesque, bat-like fleshy wings and thick, elongated tails tipped with venomous stingers. Wyverns!

"It's the Wyvern unit! The Great Warchief has sent the air force to support us!" A wave of triumphant cheers erupted across the Centaur ranks. According to the conventional military doctrine of the Orc Alliance, once the Wyverns secured air superiority, they would immediately dive past the enemy's defensive lines. They would rain highly corrosive acid down upon the rear echelons or effortlessly pluck soldiers from their trenches with their massive talons, violently ripping them to shreds in mid-air.

However, what happened next left every single Centaur staring in absolute, bewildered shock. Those dozen-odd, fiercely terrifying Wyverns... abruptly slammed on the brakes the absolute second they entered the airspace five hundred meters outside Greywater Village! SKREEE! The Wyverns let out harrowing, intensely anxious shrieks. Thrashing their fleshy wings desperately, they forcibly halted their forward momentum in mid-air.

No matter how viciously the Orc Wyvern Riders whipped their backs, the beasts absolutely refused to fly a single inch closer! Because, as creatures possessing the keen survival instincts of high-tier magical beasts, the Wyverns' vertical slits had already locked onto a terrifying sight. Sitting atop the high ground of Greywater Village's northern slope, gleaming ominously amidst the blizzard, was a battery of six [Siege Ballistas]!

At this very moment, all six ballistas were locked at a steep, seventy-degree elevation angle. Armor-piercing heavy bolts—each one as thick as a standard infantry spear—were fully loaded and cranked to maximum tension. On their fully rotating 360-degree base plates, goblin engineers were flashing sinister, wicked grins as they continuously calibrated the sights, ruthlessly tracking every single living creature in the sky.

The Wyverns instinctively knew that the microsecond they dared to cross into Greywater Village's airspace, those six spear-sized bolts would instantly obliterate the distance and brutally eviscerate their stomachs! Driven by an absolute, primal dread of the anti-air ballista battery, these supposedly arrogant aerial predators completely abandoned their bombing run. Instead, they began to fly erratically in chaotic circles, helplessly hovering directly above their own Centaur allies!

This spelled absolute misery for the Centaur horde below. Wyverns possessed a hyper-active metabolism, and due to a diet consisting entirely of rotting meat, their waste contained highly potent, corrosive acid. SPLAT! A massive, foul-smelling glob of dark green excrement plummeted from hundreds of meters in the air... landing squarely on the face of a Centaur Centurion who was currently looking up to draw his bow!

"AGHHH! My eyes! My skin!" The Centurion erupted into a blood-curdling shriek. The potent acid instantly ate through the flesh of his face. The agonizing pain forced him to drop his bow and thrash wildly in the freezing mud. But that wasn't even the worst of it. As the Wyverns circled frantically, their panicked thrashing and the intense friction of the air currents caused some of their hardened scales to dislodge and plummet from the sky. These scales were massive, and their edges were razor-sharp.

Dropping from several hundred meters high with the acceleration of gravity, they possessed terrifying kinetic force—enough to effortlessly cleanly sever limbs! SCHLICK! A dark-cyan scale whistled through the air, brutally slicing clean through the right arm of a Centaur warrior holding his bow! A geyser of blood erupted from the stump.

"Dodge! Scatter! Get out of the way!" Because the Centaur army was tightly packed together to concentrate their volley fire, the plummeting toxic waste and razor-sharp scales instantly injured dozens of warriors, triggering a chaotic panic across the formation. This bizarre, humiliating spectacle of being relentlessly bombarded by their own air force left the Centaurs boiling with rage and suffocating frustration. They had already swallowed a massive amount of grief during yesterday's disastrous vanguard defeat.

Now, they couldn't hold back anymore. Warriors began screaming curses at the sky.

"You brainless pigs up there! Get your flying lizards out of here! Are you trying to smash us all to death?!" At the front of the Centaur formation. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Vice-Chieftain Luke wore an incredibly grim expression as he reached out to wipe a splatter of foul, acidic slime off his shoulder armor. He slowly raised his head, his gaze piercing past the circling Wyverns, locking directly onto the Orc Wyvern Riders sitting on their backs.

The Riders completely ignored the casualties and curses of the Centaurs below. In fact, they were openly laughing, their faces dripping with absolute, unconcealed contempt. In that singular moment, a profound, bone-chilling disappointment washed over Luke. He was a smart man. He understood exactly what this scene implied.

"The Wyverns don't dare to attack the enemy's defensive lines, yet they shamelessly hover directly over our heads... These elite guards of the Warchief aren't here to support us at all! They are an execution squad!"

"From the very beginning, Warchief Blackstone has viewed the Centaur race with nothing but contempt and absolute disregard."

"If we fail to breach the defenses ahead, or if we so much as attempt to take a single step backward... the very first targets those Wyverns bathe in acid will be us!" The dozen-odd gargantuan Wyverns continued to circle relentlessly above the northern fringes of Greywater Village. These aerial predators, brandishing their grotesque fleshy wings and venomous stingers, let out harrowing shrieks. They did not launch a direct assault.

Instead, they cunningly inched forward just a bit, perfectly maintaining an altitude of roughly three hundred meters—hovering just barely outside the maximum effective range of standard longbows. A scar-faced Orc Wyvern Rider Captain was arrogantly yanking on his beast's reins. He deliberately forced his Wyvern into highly provocative, mock-dive maneuvers, plummeting slightly before violently pulling up at the last second. SKREEE!

The Wyverns' massive wings generated violent sonic booms as they sheared through the air. A shower of jagged rocks clutched in their talons, accompanied by globs of foul, acidic waste, were deliberately hurled down toward Greywater Village's anti-air positions.

"Captain! These winged green bastards are too damn arrogant! Let me shoot its eyes out!" Inside the anti-air trenches on the northern slope, a young, second-line longbowman was completely enraged by the relentless provocation. He abruptly stood up, drawing his military longbow so hard the wood groaned, aiming the broadhead directly at the sky.

"Get down! Release your bowstring!" A powerful hand violently clamped down on the young archer's shoulder, ruthlessly dragging him back down into the cover of the trench. Ein, the Master Marksman and Longbow Captain, was half-crouched in the dirt. His terrifyingly sharp eyes peered through a narrow gap in the sandbags, absolutely locked onto the arrogant Wyverns above. As a peerless sniper possessing the dual talents of [Natural Hunter] and [Cold Composure], Ein's breathing was impossibly steady.

He didn't exhibit a single trace of emotional fluctuation.

"Use your damn brain, rookie," Ein reprimanded coldly. His strict, authoritative voice carried clearly to every single archer in the trench.

"At an altitude of three hundred meters, factoring in the complex, high-altitude wind shears... your arrow wouldn't just lose all its kinetic force by the time it reached them. All you'd accomplish is instantly exposing your firing position!" Rapidly dissecting the tactical intent of the Orc air force in his mind, Ein explained the reality to the soldiers around him:"These Orc Wyvern Riders might be arrogant, but they are not stupid! They are executing an active reconnaissance-by-fire!

They are deliberately provoking us from a safe distance for one specific reason: to bait our anti-air [Siege Ballistas] into firing prematurely!"

"The moment our heavy ballistas fire at this extreme range, they will effortlessly dodge. Then, by calculating the trajectory and elevation angle of the bolts, they will accurately map out the blind spots and absolute limits of our anti-air matrix."

"Once they have that data, they will fly straight down those dead angles and drop massive boulders directly onto your skulls!" This razor-sharp, chillingly rational tactical analysis instantly drenched the backs of the agitated archers in cold sweat. Over in an entirely different concealed position, the Half-Elf Commander, Ilya, gripped her slender Elven war bow. Faint streams of natural mana circulated within her emerald eyes; she had clearly seen right through the Orcs' ruse as well.

Utilizing a captured [Orcish Communication Slate Replica], she initiated a terse, tactical exchange with Ein.

"Ein, we cannot allow them to continue probing like this. If the battlefield remains entirely passive, they will grow suspicious and refuse to lower their altitude," Ilya's calm voice echoed through the slate.

"I know," Ein replied softly.

"We need to feed them a little bait. We need to make them believe that Greywater Village's anti-air defense is nothing but a disorganized, undisciplined mob firing blindly in panic."