Chương 325: 325：The Night Hunters

Listening to this absurd decree, Luke closed his eyes in profound agony. He knew all too well that this couldn't even be loosely defined as a military tactic. Heka's courage to resist had been completely and utterly pulverized by Soren! This was nothing more than a pathetic, theatrical performance designed to appease Warchief Blackstone's distant overseers. It was solely to maintain the completely fabricated illusion that: "The Centaur army is relentlessly attacking Greywater Village!"

"But Chieftain, these zero-lethality skirmishes... these utterly powerless arrows! Against Greywater Village's impenetrable defensive matrix, they won't even splinter a single wooden barricade! What is the point?!" a Centurion asked, completely bewildered.

"I gave you an order! Do exactly as I say!" Heka roared with volcanic fury, desperately trying to mask the suffocating cowardice festering in his heart.

"At least... at least this way we won't lose any more warriors! As long as we drag this out until the Great Warchief's main army arrives, we will have fulfilled our objective to pin them down! When that time comes, let those thick-skinned Pigmen and Tauren throw their lives into that meat grinder!" Very quickly, this completely absurd theater of skirmish warfare began playing out across the northern slope of the Misty Swamp.

Small, scattered clusters of elderly Centaurs—their faces plastered with pure terror and deep reluctance—trudged into the freezing mud, keeping a massive, overly safe distance from Greywater Village. Lacking even the microscopic shred of courage required to properly aim, they simply fired their arrows blindly into the overcast sky. Naturally, these pathetic projectiles exhausted their kinetic force forty or fifty meters short of the trenches, plummeting powerlessly into the rotting mire.

After hastily loosing a handful of arrows, these Centaurs, consumed by sheer panic, immediately yanked their reins and galloped frantically back to their encampment. The next batch of scapegoats would then rotate in to continue this utterly meaningless, comical performance. Meanwhile, within the defensive line of Greywater Village. The second-line regular soldiers crouching in their trenches stared at the ridiculously comical behavior of the Centaurs in the distance, completely unable to believe their own eyes.

"Are these four-legged freaks purposely trying to make us laugh?" A pikeman of the Macedonian Phalanx leaned comfortably against a heavy log support, actually letting out a massive, exaggerated yawn as he boredly killed time.

"Shh, keep your voice down. Just let those beasts exhaust themselves," a grizzled veteran beside him chuckled, casually pulling a strip of cured meat from his pouch and tossing it into his mouth.

"Their spirits are completely shattered. This whole circus act is nothing but a pathetic attempt to save face." Faced with this seemingly continuous yet utterly powerless offensive, the entire Greywater Village garrison felt absolutely zero pressure. Instead, they ruthlessly capitalized on the opportunity. Remaining perfectly safe within their trenches, they executed rotational shifts to sleep, eat, and fully replenish their physical stamina.

High atop the central watchtower, Soren stared coldly at the Centaurs' atrociously clumsy performance in the distance, a deeply contemptuous sneer playing across his lips.

"It seems their psychological defenses have completely collapsed." Soren gently gripped the hilt of his refined steel longsword. Within his mind, the grand strategic blueprint for the total annihilation of the enemy army was piecing together its absolute final link, coming into perfect, chilling clarity.

"Heka, do you honestly believe that putting on a pathetic theater act to stall for time will save your miserable life?" Deep into the freezing night. Within the Greywater Village defensive line, the soldiers who had endured a full day of hyper-intense, apocalyptic slaughter were finally able to execute rotational rest shifts inside the warm, subterranean tunnels.

The rich, steaming aroma of meat broth and [Swamp Tubers] intertwined beautifully with the warmth of crackling firewood, profoundly soothing the soldiers' fiercely taut nerves. However, as the supreme commander of the entire army, Soren did not choose to sit in the warmth of his command post and passively await the dawn.

"In the dictionary of modern special operations, the term 'passive defense' absolutely does not exist." Soren stood entirely alone atop the watchtower, his black cloak whipping violently in the freezing gale. He peered through the dense, suffocating night, locking his piercing gaze onto the sprawling Centaur encampment dotted with hundreds of campfires two kilometers away.

"Heka suffered catastrophic losses today. His morale is in the abyss."

"After nightfall, a defeated army will inevitably retract its defensive lines. They will light fires, cook their rations, and bandage their mangled wounds, desperately hoping that a single night of sleep will replenish their physical stamina and suppress their absolute terror."

"But I will absolutely not grant them that luxury! I am going to utterly pulverize whatever pathetic sliver of psychological endurance they have left!" With his lethal resolve set, Soren strode purposefully down the wooden stairs of the watchtower.

"Summon Ein and Ilya. Have them report to me immediately." A mere moment later, Ein, the Master Marksman and Longbow Captain, and Ilya, the Half-Elf Magic Ranger Commander, arrived before Soren.

"My Lord, you summoned us?" Ilya asked, standing at crisp attention.

"Strip off your metallic outer armor. Wear only your [Padded Cotton Armor]. Bring your finest bows and a full quiver of arrows." Soren slung the Elven [Windwhisper Bow] diagonally across his back. His voice was laced with an absolute, chilling killing intent.

"Tonight, just the three of us are going to take a little stroll into the Centaur encampment."

"Just the three of us? To launch an assault on a heavily guarded encampment of ten thousand?" Ein's usually stoic face cracked with profound astonishment.

"Not an assault. An assassination," Soren coldly corrected, explaining his tactical doctrine to the two peerless sharpshooters. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"The dead of night is an absolute nightmare for those alien beasts, as they severely lack night-vision capabilities. It renders them completely blind."

"But for us? It is the ultimate, flawless camouflage."

"We are going to melt into the shadows entirely outside their visual range. And using cold, calculated sniper fire, we are going to teach them the true meaning of absolute despair." The freezing gale howled mournfully. Under the flawless cover of the pitch-black night and violently swirling snow, the three transformed into virtually imperceptible, blurry phantoms.

Without emitting a single microscopic sound, they vaulted over the heavy chevaux-de-frise of Greywater Village's defensive line, melting seamlessly into the highly acidic, rotting mire. Traversing the Misty Swamp in the dead of night was a phenomenally lethal challenge. A single misstep meant plunging into a suffocating sinkhole or startling highly venomous predators. However, empowered by the [Eagle Eye Perception] talent shared by both Soren and Ilya, the pitch-black swamp was completely deconstructed.

In their vision, the absolute darkness was replaced by a crystal-clear, thermal distribution map. Every single nest of venomous insects radiating ambient body heat, and the precise depth of every single acidic mud pit, was flawlessly exposed to their piercing gaze. Although Ein did not possess the Eagle Eye talent, as a battle-hardened, peerless hunter, he meticulously trailed Soren, placing his boots flawlessly within his Lord's exact footprints. He didn't produce even the faintest, crisp snap of a breaking twig.

Exactly one hour later. Moving with the terrifying agility of apex predators, the trio successfully infiltrated an elevated grove of withered, petrified trees situated a mere three hundred meters from the absolute outer perimeter of the Centaur staging ground. The terrain here was slightly elevated, offering a completely unobstructed line of sight. It was the absolute, perfect sniper's nest! Soren dropped into a low crouch behind a massively thick, petrified tree trunk.

His piercing gaze was utterly locked onto the sprawling Centaur encampment below, coldly assessing the battlefield from his elevated vantage point. At this very moment, the ten-thousand-strong Centaur staging ground could only be described as a portrait of absolute misery and chaos. Desperate to stave off the apocalyptic, blood-freezing temperatures of the Misty Swamp, the Centaur warriors had been forced to violently ignite hundreds of massive campfires throughout the encampment.

The roaring, blazing fires illuminated the entire sprawling encampment, rendering it as bright as high noon. Gargantuan Centaur warriors were clustered together in small, pathetic groups, violently shivering as they huddled as close to the flames as physically possible. They gnawed desperately on chunks of raw meat frozen solid as rock, their throats emitting harrowing, agonizing groans.

The catastrophic wounds inflicted by the spike-trenches and the storm of repeating heavy bolts earlier that day had not clotted in the sub-zero temperatures. Instead, they oozed a foul-smelling, sickly mixture of purple-black pus and blood.

"What an absolutely idiotic way to establish an encampment," Soren sneered mercilessly in his mind. Beneath the glaring illumination of those hundreds of campfires, the Centaurs' gargantuan silhouettes—down to the microscopic expressions of pure terror plastered across their faces—were flawlessly, unmistakably highlighted against the dark. Conversely, Soren and his two master archers, lurking silently within the deep shadows three hundred meters out, were completely, utterly invisible.

"My Lord, I have a clear line of sight, but Ein..." Ilya whispered, her voice barely a breath, shooting a highly concerned glance at the Longbow Captain beside her. Without innate night-vision capabilities, across a staggering three-hundred-meter gap, relying solely on the erratic, flickering glow of campfires to execute precision, lethal headshots... it was virtually physically impossible.

"Do not underestimate the apex marksman of Greywater Village," Soren replied, not displaying a microscopic shred of doubt. Ein slowly inhaled a deep breath of the freezing air. He narrowed his eyes into absolute, robotic slits.

"Talent: [Natural Hunter]." Stacked with the staggering 35% precision buff, the battlefield completely warped! Within Ein's vision—which previously could only discern blurry blobs of firelight—a terrifying, peerless intuition flawlessly, magnetically locked onto the physical silhouettes of the enemy! In his eyes, the gargantuan Centaurs clustered around the blazing fires transformed into glaringly obvious, high-contrast kill targets.

"My Lord, I can put an arrow through the skull of any prey that dares to expose its head to the firelight," Ein reported. His voice was chillingly calm as he fluidly drew a specialized [Tri-Edged Armor-Piercing Broadhead] from his quiver.

"Excellent. There is only one absolute rule of engagement tonight," Soren declared, officially issuing the kill order.

"You will exclusively target commanding officers barking orders, or the absolute most heavily muscled elites. The microsecond your string releases, you drop back into full concealment. Do not emit a single, unnecessary sound." Soren slowly, methodically raised his left arm. In his grip, the peerless Elven creation, the [Windwhisper Bow], began to pulse with a faint, lethal cyan runic glow within the pitch-black shadows. Target acquired. Bowstring drawn to a full moon.

Stacked with his terrifying, apex-tier dynamic vision, Soren's piercing gaze bypassed the rank and file, flawlessly locking onto a Centaur Centurion. The gargantuan beast was standing aggressively beside a roaring bonfire, wildly waving his heavy saber as he loudly berated a group of shivering subordinates. Thrum! Soren's fingers released with silken lethality. An arrow packing a staggering, explosive kinetic force instantly sheared through the violently swirling blizzard!

Carving a perfect, hyper-velocity trajectory across three hundred meters of night sky, the silver flash flawlessly, brutally pierced straight through the open, screaming mouth of the Centaur Centurion!