Chương 321: 321：The Target Practice

Those five [Pyroblast Wands] capable of instant-casting Mid-Tier explosive magic, as well as the [Meteor Shower] Forbidden Magic Scroll that Victor was reverse-engineering, were currently resting quietly in the rear! Soren's current defense solely utilized conventional longbow sniping, the Magic Rangers' enchanted arrows, the repeating crossbow firepower of the second-line infantry, and Luger's trebuchet bombardment.

"I can't use them. It's not time to show my full hand yet," Soren analyzed the tactical board in his mind.

"If I use the Pyroblast Wands to execute a massive area-of-effect wipe right now, that terrifying, hyper-thermal magic will completely shatter the Centaurs' psychological defenses. They will instantly turn their horses around and flee deep into the swamp!"

"I don't want to just drive them away. I want to slaughter every last one of them! I want to slowly bleed them dry. I want to make them feel like if they just take one more step, they can win. I want them to endlessly feed lives into this meat grinder!" Under Soren's flawless command, the formations of Greywater Village did not falter in the slightest. For every single step the Centaurs advanced, they were forced to leave a carpet of corpses in the mud.

Even though the Centaur Centurions in the rear were frantically swinging their sabers, ruthlessly forcing their kin forward, it was utterly futile. Faced with this airtight crossbow matrix, the completely unblockable boulder bombardment, and the absolutely impenetrable heavy infantry in the front rank, the Centaur army's offensive was brutally thwarted. They were firmly suppressed within a one-hundred-meter death zone right outside the defensive line.

However, what truly shattered the psychological defenses of the Centaur warriors wasn't the terrifying crossbow bolts, but a scene that instilled them with a profound, suffocating sense of absolute powerlessness. Amidst the intense exchange of fire and brutal melee, human soldiers occasionally fell as well. While reloading his repeating crossbow, a second-line pikeman was struck by a treacherous stray arrow that grazed the unprotected side of his neck.

Blood instantly sprayed like a geyser, and he collapsed into the muddy trench with an agonizing scream.

"Hahaha! I hit him! Humans bleed too!" A hundred meters away, the Centaur warrior who fired the shot unleashed a roar of pure ecstasy, as if he had finally grasped a sliver of hope for victory. But his manic laughter lasted for less than five seconds. Inside the trench, several logistics medics hunched over and rapidly rushed forward. With practiced, mechanical efficiency, they dragged the critically wounded soldier to the rear.

Immediately after, a vial of pungent [Battlefield First-Aid Potion] was roughly poured directly over the wound. Accompanied by a violent sizzle and rising white smoke, the spurting blood was instantly clotted! Simultaneously, atop the command tower far in the rear, the staff in the hands of Silver-tier Mage Victor flared with a gentle glow. A soothing [Mass Healing Water Spell] sailed directly over the battlefield, landing with pinpoint precision upon the wounded soldier. That severe, bone-deep wound...

actually began to rapidly knit itself back together under the dual, miraculous effects of alchemical potions and magic!

"Huff... cough!" The human soldier—who by all rights should have been a cooling corpse—violently coughed up a mouthful of coagulated blood and actually staggered back up from the muddy water! Lingering fear in his heart, he touched the skin on his neck, finding nothing but a faint red scar. The terror on his face instantly morphed into an absolute, burning reverence for his Lord.

Without a microsecond of hesitation, he snatched up his dropped repeating crossbow, racked the mechanism, and unleashed a ferocious roar as he fired back into the enemy ranks!

"This is impossible... how is this possible?!" The Centaur warrior who witnessed this entire sequence felt his eyes bulge in pure horror. The hand gripping his longbow began to tremble violently. It wasn't just him. More and more Centaur warriors on the frontline were beginning to discover this blood-chilling reality! The armor worn by these human soldiers was already so impenetrable it left them completely helpless, flawlessly guarding all vital organs.

But the moment they actually did get injured, they didn't even need time to lie down and catch their breath. They were instantly dragged back from the brink of death by miraculous potions and magic from the rear!

"They can't die! These humans absolutely cannot die!" A suffocating sense of defeat spread like a plague through the Centaur army. The contrast was far too cruel! For the Centaurs, wading through this highly acidic mire filled with lethal bacteria and toxic miasma meant one absolute truth: if their skin was even grazed by a human heavy bolt, or if a barbed spear left a bloody hole in their flesh, even if they didn't die on the spot, the subsequent infection and rotting meant a guaranteed, agonizing death!

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"Why... why must we wait for death over a minor scratch, while they get to infinitely resurrect?!" An old Centaur veteran, his left arm completely skewered by a bolt, stared at the absurd scene unfolding before him. His spirit completely shattered. And this was but a microscopic glimpse into the total collapse of the Centaur army's morale. Over half a mile away in the rear staging ground. Amidst the howling wind and snow, Centaur Chieftain Heka and Commander Luke reigned in their mounts atop an elevated ridge.

Both men stared unblinkingly at the apocalyptic warzone ahead. Initially, upon seeing the first massive pit trap and the subsequent eruption of dense repeating crossbow fire, Heka's face was filled with the fury of being mocked and sheer disbelief. He refused to believe—and refused to accept—that a human village with a total population of barely two thousand possessed firepower so staggering it could brutally halt tens of thousands of Centaur elites outside its trenches!

"Charge! Make them keep charging! Their bolts have to run out eventually!" Heka, his eyes burning crimson and completely devoid of reason, screamed at the top of his lungs. However, as time crawled by and the battlefield dynamic shifted so violently, his arrogance was utterly pulverized. Massive numbers of Centaur warriors—elites who could easily fight ten-to-one on an open plain—were now being pointlessly, worthlessly fed into the meat grinder, wave after wave.

Beside him, Commander Luke gripped the hilt of his cavalry saber so tightly the veins on the back of his hand bulged. Watching his kin—the very brethren he had drank and eaten meat with—being ripped to shreds by falling boulders and heavy bolts, watching his wounded brothers howling in agony in the mud, Luke was consumed by agonizing grief. A wave of profound, tragic indignation swelled in his chest.

"Enough... Chieftain, we cannot keep feeding lives into this!" Luke snapped his head around, his voice cracking in a desperate, pleading roar.

"We have already lost over a thousand warriors! If we continue this completely exposed war of attrition, we won't even need Warchief Blackstone's main force to arrive! Our entire tribe will go extinct in this godforsaken mud!"

"You dare tell me how to fight a war?!" Heka spun around violently, shoving his spiked flail directly into Luke's chest. His face was twisted into a mask of demonic savagery.

"There is no retreating! The Great Warchief is watching us from behind! If we don't take this village, Greywater Village won't even need to kill us—Warchief Blackstone will butcher our entire tribe!" Luke squeezed his eyes shut in pure agony. With an impassable death line in front of them, and the cold, merciless Orcish military laws behind them... the Centaur race had officially become the pathetic, sacrificial pawns of this war. However, Heka's explosive fury did not last long.

When the Chieftain shoved Luke aside and cast his gaze toward the far rear of Greywater Village... his twisted, enraged face suddenly froze. Heka's line of sight bypassed the apocalyptic slaughter on the frontline, bypassed the second-line soldiers frantically reloading their crossbows, and finally locked onto the towering wooden command watchtower deep in the rear of Greywater Village. There, he saw the figure clad in exquisite mage robes: Silver-tier Mage Victor. Heka held his breath.

He stared unblinkingly at the spellcaster. Within the common military doctrines of the Aeresia Continent, Mages—these incredibly rare and powerful transcendent beings—usually meant one thing the moment they stepped onto a battlefield: terrifying, apocalyptic high-tier destructive magic! But... what in the world was Greywater Village's Mage doing? Heka realized with sheer, unadulterated horror that this formidable Silver-tier Mage was currently standing atop the tower with absolute leisure.

He would occasionally wave his staff, lazily tossing a few [Mass Healing Water Spells] down onto the frontline. He wasn't chanting long, apocalyptic incantations. He wasn't even casting a single glance at the absolute vanguard of the battlefield! Gulp. Heka swallowed hard. An unprecedented, bone-deep chill shot straight from his tailbone to the crown of his head! He finally understood.

"They... they aren't even trying..." Heka's hands began to tremble violently.

"That godforsaken human Lord absolutely still has hidden trump cards he hasn't played! Their Mage hasn't cast a single offensive spell! They are treating us like nothing but target practice for their troops!!" This aura of absolute, terrifying ease displayed by Greywater Village instilled a chill far deeper into his soul than any dense swarm of heavy crossbows or plummeting trebuchet boulders ever could!