Chương 324: 324：A Pathetic Theater of War

"Kill them! Chop these two arrogant human bastards into bloody pulp! We will string their intestines up as a sacrifice to our fallen warriors!" Heka roared, wildly swinging his spiked flail as he issued the absolute execution order.

"ROAR!" Dozens of Centaur elites, already unable to control the violent bloodlust in their hearts, instantly swarmed forward from all directions. The heavy, raw-iron sabers and thick javelins in their hands—weapons packing the astonishing kinetic force to shatter boulders—rained down densely upon Renn and Duran's heads! Faced with this concentrated onslaught—an assault carrying enough power to hack a dozen heavily armored knights to pieces—the two human powerhouses didn't show a single sliver of intent to retreat.

"Duran, finish this quickly. Don't miss the extraction window set by the Lord," Renn the Monk growled in a low voice. In a fraction of a second, Renn took a violent, deep breath. A resonant, rumbling sound actually echoed from deep within his chest and abdomen! Driven by a highly specialized breathing technique, every single muscle in Renn's body contracted into a state of absolute, hyper-dense solidity. A layer of dark, metallic, blue-black luster rapidly bloomed across the surface of his skin!

"Die, you pathetic human!" A Centaur Centurion possessing an exceptionally gargantuan physique sneered savagely. Wielding a two-handed, broad-bladed raw-iron saber, he brought the weapon down with a piercing shriek of tearing wind, aiming a brutal, full-strength cleave directly at Renn's neck. The Centurion was already envisioning the beautiful, bloody spectacle of the human's head tumbling into the mud amidst a geyser of blood. However. CLANG!

A deafening, thunderous explosion of metal violently impacting metal ruptured the eardrums of every Centaur present! That razor-sharp raw-iron saber had viciously struck the completely unarmored, exposed side of Renn's neck... yet it actually erupted into a blinding shower of sparks! Relying solely on his [Hardened Skin] talent, not only did Renn flawlessly absorb the apocalyptic blow, his neck didn't even tilt a fraction of an inch!

Conversely, it was the Centaur Centurion who felt a terrifying, rebounding shockwave travel straight down his hilt! The flesh between his fingers violently ruptured, sending blood spraying into the air, as that thick raw-iron saber snapped clean in half with a sharp CRACK!

"T-this... how is this physically possible?! Is your body forged from solid steel?!" The Centurion's face warped in absolute, unadulterated horror, entirely unable to comprehend reality.

"Too weak," Renn stated expressionlessly. His massive hand violently shot forward like a striking viper, ruthlessly locking onto the Centurion's thick, muscular neck. Accompanied by the sickening sound of fracturing bone, Renn, relying entirely on the monstrous, terrifying strength of a single arm, actually hoisted the gargantuan beast clean off the ground! Then, with terrifying ease, he hurled the Centaur like a massive projectile directly into the charging horde on his left! SMASH!

A chaotic chorus of shattering bone and agonized screams erupted instantly. While Renn acted as the ultimate focal point for enemy fire, the Unarmed Brawler, Duran, was unleashing a terrifyingly elusive, phantom-like martial prowess.

"Having a massive body in this godforsaken swamp... sometimes just means you're a bigger target for lethal strikes." Duran let out a cold, mocking sneer. In that moment, his innate [Agile Footwork] talent was pushed to its absolute limit. A thick, heavy javelin tore through the air, grazing his cheek and striking nothing but empty space. Instead of retreating, Duran executed a hyper-agile glide step directly along the shaft of the spear!

His body contorted with unnatural fluidity, slipping effortlessly past the Centaur warrior's guard and stepping directly into his inner circle. Close-quarters combat... this was the absolute domain where Duran reigned supreme! Staring up at the Centaur's gargantuan physique, Duran appeared almost comically small. Yet, every single strike he unleashed possessed a chilling precision and lethal brutality. He didn't foolishly attempt to contest the Centaur's rock-hard bones or thick muscle mass.

Instead, he exclusively targeted their fragile joints and lethal vulnerabilities! CRUNCH! Duran's hands violently clamped down onto a Centaur warrior's front knee joint. Utilizing flawless leverage and explosive torque, he viciously twisted! The thick equine leg snapped backward with a sickening crack. The Centaur let out a harrowing, blood-curdling shriek of agony, its massive body involuntarily collapsing forward into the mud.

The exact microsecond the beast fell, Duran's right knee—packing a terrifying, explosive kinetic force—viciously smashed upward, utterly pulverizing the Centaur's jaw! In a seamless, fluid transition, both his arms wrapped securely around the beast's thick neck, and he violently torqued his waist. [Close-Quarters Grappling and Strangulation]! CRACK. A crisp, horrific snap echoed through the air.

That Centaur warrior's incredibly robust neck was brutally, effortlessly snapped by Duran's flawless application of force! The massive head slumped over at a grotesque, unnatural angle. Instant death! A perfectly fluid chain of motion—one strike, one kill! The ensuing five minutes became an absolute, psychological nightmare for this ten-thousand-strong Centaur army.

Dozens of handpicked, apex elite warriors were rendered entirely defenseless before two humans who weren't even wearing a single scrap of metallic armor! They couldn't cut him! Renn's terrifying, unnatural physical hardness reduced every single Centaur weapon to useless scrap iron. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. They couldn't touch him!

Duran's evasive footwork was so blindingly fast and elusive that any Centaur attempting to close the distance was brutally dispatched in less than three breaths—their necks snapped by vicious joint locks, or their windpipes crushed by lethal chokeholds!

"Move! Stay out of our way!" Seeing that their objective of absolute psychological deterrence had been achieved, Renn and Duran exchanged a brief glance. They completely abandoned any further entanglement. Working in flawless synchronization—one acting as a ferocious, unstoppable juggernaut brutally bulldozing a path forward, while the other moved like a lethal phantom, executing pinpoint harvests on the flanks—they violently carved a bloody path straight through the heavily guarded Centaur encampment!

The mangled corpses of Centaurs lay haphazardly strewn across the bloody mud in their wake. As the silhouettes of the two humans vanished back into the blizzard, swaggering arrogantly toward the Greywater Village defensive line, the entire Centaur encampment plunged into a dead, suffocating silence. Only the howling wind and the agonizing groans of the dying survivors remained.

This staggeringly exaggerated display of individual combat prowess delivered a far more visceral, direct psychological blow than any repeating heavy crossbow or anti-air ballista ever could. It utterly pulverized the Centaur warriors' mental fortitude!

"Humans... since when did humans possess such terrifying physical strength? Aren't they just pathetic cowards who hide behind stone walls and fire cold arrows?" A Centurion who had miraculously survived the encounter collapsed into the muck, staring blankly at his severely chipped blade. He mumbled to himself in a daze, his entire, deeply ingrained worldview shattering into dust in that singular moment.

This wasn't merely a profound psychological humiliation for the Centaur race; it instilled a creeping, bone-deep dread into the heart of every single Centaur commander present. Soren had merely dispatched two completely unarmored subordinates, yet they had effortlessly slaughtered over a dozen elites right in front of a ten-thousand-strong army! They had arrogantly dropped a declaration of total racial extinction, and then walked away without suffering a single scratch!

This broadcasted one absolutely terrifying message: in Soren's eyes, their massive horde wasn't an army at all. They were nothing but a herd of livestock penned up in a mud pit, waiting to be casually butchered at his absolute leisure!

"AGHHH! SOREN! THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE INSULT! YOU HAVE PUSHED US TOO FAR!" Heka stared at the carpet of mangled corpses. His eyes bulged so wildly they threatened to pop from their sockets. The apocalyptic fury burning in his chest was so intense he actually coughed up a mouthful of hot, coppery blood. He wanted to roar the order for a full-army charge. He wanted to throw everything away, completely obliterate that village regardless of the cost, and wash away this suffocating disgrace with a sea of blood.

Yet, when he opened his mouth, the word "charge" remained agonizingly lodged in his throat. He couldn't force it out. He didn't dare. He truly didn't dare anymore. Faced with Greywater Village's unfathomable, three-dimensional overlapping defensive matrix, Soren's ruthless warning of total extermination, and the terrifying individual combat prowess displayed by those two human monsters...

Having just lost over one thousand four hundred core elites, the overall strength of the Centaur tribe had already suffered catastrophic, irreversible damage. Heka knew in his heart better than anyone else: if he allowed fury to hijack his rationality right now and ordered a densely packed, suicidal mass charge... what awaited them would absolutely not be the glorious victory of breaching the village. It would be exactly what Soren promised: the absolute, total extermination of their entire race!

Those repeating heavy crossbows and trebuchets would effortlessly pulverize the remaining thousands of Centaurs into bloody dust!

"Chieftain... what do we do?" Commander Luke asked, his face a deathly shade of gray as his voice trembled.

"If we do not attack, the moment Warchief Blackstone's main force arrives and discovers our cowardice, he will absolutely strip you of your title... he might even reduce our entire tribe to eternal slavery!" It was an inescapable, absolute dead end!

"I... how the hell should I know what to do?!" Heka's gargantuan frame actually shivered slightly in the freezing wind. Time ticked away relentlessly, second by second, while the howling blizzard grew increasingly vicious. Ultimately, crushed beneath the dual, agonizing pressures of base survival instinct and absolute terror of Warchief Blackstone's wrath, Heka's pathetic brain capacity squeezed out a compromise—a tactic so humiliating and comical even he felt ashamed.

"Pass down my orders..." Heka powerlessly lowered his spiked flail. Gritting his teeth, he issued a military decree:"Break the main army apart. Do not form up anymore... From the seven thousand elders, children, women, and the remaining broken troops... draw lots of one hundred at a time to form dozens of small skirmish units." Heka stammered as he outlined this utterly absurd tactic:"Have them... have them march toward Greywater Village's defensive line in scattered batches! Do not get close!

They are absolutely forbidden from stepping into the kill zones of the crossbows and trebuchets!"

"Just wander around the outer perimeter and execute low-intensity arrow harassment! Shoot and run! Then swap out for the next batch and continue!"