Chương 329: 329：The End of the Vanguard

The battle, amidst this apocalyptic atmosphere, officially escalated into a white-hot, brutal meat grinder!

"Brace for impact!" Standing at the absolute frontline, Soren violently cleaved a blazing piece of timber in half with a single stroke of his sword, unleashing a deafening roar. One hundred frontline elites, fully clad in gleaming [Dark Silver Plate Armor], stood like unshakeable iron monoliths in the freezing mud. Their two-and-a-half-meter-long, armor-piercing heavy halberds were angled flawlessly toward the incoming horde. BOOM! The rabid remnants of the Centaur army violently crashed into the defensive line.

Yet, to Soren's genuine surprise, this clash... felt staggeringly easier than the day before! Yesterday, they had faced two thousand five hundred perfectly organized, physically peak, and arrogantly confident Centaur vanguard elites. And today?

"Their kinetic strength has dropped by over half, and their charging velocity is completely shattered." Even as he barked orders, Soren's mind executed a chillingly clear tactical assessment of the battlefield.

"The ones leading this charge are primarily the elderly and the frail—the ones caught in the blast radius of the hellfire who haven't even caught their breath."

"They aren't executing a military charge; they are just blindly slamming into us, driven purely by the primal instinct to escape the flames."

"As for the true threat—the core Centaur elites? They number barely a thousand today."

"They are severely burned by their own air force's Alchemical Fire-Oil. Not only is their physical combat effectiveness catastrophically crippled, but far more fatally... their will to fight has been completely and utterly pulverized by Warchief Blackstone's merciless betrayal!" Reality played out exactly as Soren predicted. Faced with this impenetrable wall of one hundred frontline elites, the rabid, mindless Centaur remnants couldn't even organize a basic wedge formation.

They were simply throwing themselves into the meat grinder aimlessly. CLANG! A Centaur warrior brought his heavy saber down violently upon a suit of [Dark Silver Armor]. Not only did the blade completely fail to breach the metal, but the human infantryman didn't even flinch. With a casual, brutal sweep of his heavy halberd, the elite soldier cleanly severed the Centaur's neck.

"Second-line Phalanx, free-fire at will! Longbow Squad, Magic Rangers, execute targeted wipes on any elites attempting to close the distance!" Accompanied by Soren's ice-cold directives, Greywater Village's ranged matrix unleashed absolute hell. Clack! Clack! Down in the trenches, the pikemen of the Macedonian Phalanx didn't even need to consciously aim.

The kill zone directly ahead was so suffocatingly packed with thrashing, burning Centaurs that they could have fired their repeating heavy crossbows with their eyes closed and still scored lethal hits.

"Whispers of the Wind!" Atop the watchtowers, Ilya's Magic Ranger Squad leveraged their absolute altitude advantage. Every single time their cyan, wind-enchanted arrows shrieked through the air, they flawlessly assassinated the few remaining Centaur Centurions desperately trying to rally a final stand. And far in the rear, Luger, the Hobgoblin Arsenal Master, absolutely refused to miss out on beating a drowning dog.

"Listen up, you brainless whelps! Since these four-legged freaks have breached the five-hundred-meter mark, give 'em a proper rocky welcome! FIRE!" The heavy catapults and towering trebuchets unleashed their deafening, mechanical roars. Gargantuan siege boulders, accompanied by the piercing shriek of tearing wind, plummeted with surgical precision directly into the utterly immobilized Centaur horde.

Every single apocalyptic impact violently carved out a massive crater of pulverized meat and shattered bone within the densely packed enemy ranks. It was a defensive counter-massacre with an absolute, predetermined outcome. Suppressed by Greywater Village's apocalyptic heavy firepower and facing a staggering, insurmountable disparity in equipment, the vaunted Centaur charge—once renowned for trampling everything on the open plains—now appeared pathetically comical and profoundly tragic.

They couldn't even breach the physical iron wall formed by a mere one hundred frontline elites. They could do nothing but fall in massive, bloody droves beneath an inescapable, suffocating matrix of heavy bolts, venomous spikes, magical wind blades, and plummeting boulders. The grueling, hours-long meat grinder of a defensive battle finally drew to a close across this desolate expanse of mud and blood, fading alongside the last dying embers of the Alchemical Fire-Oil amidst the swirling blizzard.

The resulting battlefield was a spectacle of such absolute, visceral carnage that it would have driven the most battle-hardened veteran of the Imperial army to his knees in terror. The rotting mire had been permanently dyed a nauseating, sickly purple-black—the gruesome product of thousands of gallons of Centaur blood mixing with the highly acidic mud.

Severed limbs, ruptured internal organs, and the gargantuan, charred husks of Centaur warriors were piled so high in front of the primary defensive line that they formed actual mountains of flesh. However, this was completely unlike the historical, tragic meat grinders where human armies were forced to trade three lives for every single Orc they killed. The absolute vanguard of Greywater Village's defensive line—the one hundred frontline elites who had ingested the [Troll Serum]—were practically indestructible.

They simply could not be breached. Fully clad in their gleaming [Dark Silver Plate Armor], after weathering an apocalyptic barrage of raw-iron arrows and thousands of frenzied saber cleaves, their gear bore nothing more than a few microscopic, superficial white scratches. The [Repeating Heavy Crossbows] clutched in their hands—terrifying weapons powered by advanced mechanical winches—possessed a point-blank kinetic penetrative force capable of effortlessly pulverizing any flesh and bone in their path.

And stationed directly behind them was the densely packed second-line Macedonian Phalanx. They were uniformly equipped with standard-issue [Repeating Heavy Crossbows]. Stolen story; please report. These dual layers of heavy, mechanized firepower flawlessly intertwined, generating an absolute, suffocating kill box utterly devoid of blind spots. Yet, what was even more mind-numbingly terrifying was Greywater Village's cost-blind, hyper-efficient medical and logistical infrastructure.

The absolute microsecond a soldier was even grazed by a stray arrow, Chief of Logistics Kyle would ruthlessly drag the wounded down into the subterranean tunnels. Exorbitantly expensive [Battlefield First-Aid Potions] and [Low-Tier Life Restoration Potions], perfectly synchronized with Silver-tier Mage Victor's [Healing Water Spell], were instantly applied. Zero casualties!

In this apocalyptic bloodbath, the three thousand core Centaur elites who participated in the final charge were completely, mercilessly gunned down in front of the chevaux-de-frise by this modern tactical doctrine. And Greywater Village? Not a single soul had perished! Centaur Chieftain Heka—the arrogantly tyrannical, bloodthirsty alien overlord—had finally paid the absolute, ultimate price for his blinding hubris.

In the dying moments of the battle, watching his elites slaughtered to the last man and realizing all avenues of retreat were permanently sealed, Heka completely snapped. Unleashing a harrowing, grief-stricken roar, he wildly swung his gargantuan spiked flail and launched a suicidal, solo charge directly toward Greywater Village's command watchtower!

"DIE! EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU IS COMING TO HELL WITH ME!" Heka shrieked, weeping actual tears of blood as his gargantuan hooves hammered a heavy, dull rhythm across the mountains of his kin's corpses.

"He doesn't even possess the qualifications to touch the barricades." Ein, the Master Marksman, stared coldly ahead. His arms flexed, effortlessly hauling the Imperial Military Longbow to an absolute full moon. Thrum! Accompanied by the violent sonic boom of the releasing bowstring, three [Tri-Edged Armor-Piercing Broadheads] shrieked through the air in a flawless, triangular cluster, effortlessly piercing the swirling blizzard. SQUELCH! SQUELCH! SQUELCH!

The first arrow brutally severed Heka's right arm right as he swung his flail. The second arrow flawlessly punched straight through his fiercely proud, heavily muscled chest cavity. And the third arrow violently, mercilessly pulverized his skull! Driven by apocalyptic kinetic inertia, Heka's gargantuan, headless frame violently skidded forward for over ten meters before crashing heavily into the rotting muck.

His remaining eye remained bulged in absolute, unresigned fury, glaring lifelessly at the war banner of Greywater Village whipping in the wind. He had died without so much as brushing the hem of a single human soldier's tunic. Chieftain Heka was dead. The three thousand core elites were entirely exterminated.

At this very moment, across the sprawling expanse of the battlefield, all that remained were the over six thousand Centaur elders, women, and cubs who had been ruthlessly forced onto the frontline as sacrificial fodder. The freezing gale howled mournfully. This pathetic cluster of surviving Centaurs huddled tightly together in the rotting mire two hundred meters away, unleashing harrowing, utterly heart-wrenching wails of grief and terror.

Even though the baseline physical stamina and arm strength of an adult Centaur woman vastly eclipsed that of a standard human infantryman, they had completely, irrevocably lost their will to fight. A vast majority of them had just endured the horrific, indiscriminate carpet-bombing of Alchemical Fire-Oil deployed by Warchief Blackstone's own Wyverns. Catastrophic, wide-scale burns had left the elders and cubs covered in festering, necrotic sores.

In many cases, the charred flesh of the young cubs had violently fused with their tattered rags, emitting a sickening, suffocating stench of roasted meat. Forget picking up weapons to continue the war—trapped within this highly toxic mire amidst sub-zero apocalyptic temperatures, whether they could even physically survive the night was a complete unknown.

Faced with Greywater Village's heavily armed military—an army whose morale had just skyrocketed to an absolute, bloodthirsty fever pitch—attacking these crippled, exhausted, and defenseless survivors wouldn't be a battle. It would be a one-sided, merciless execution. SHING! His expression chillingly stoic, Soren slowly, deliberately drew the refined steel longsword from his waist. The crisp, resonant hum of cold steel echoed chillingly across the blood-soaked defensive line.

Since the Centaur race possessed the sheer audacity to act as the vanguard for the Orc Alliance and invade his territory... completely, ruthlessly exterminating them was the absolute, unquestionable iron law of survival in this brutal, rotting world.

"My Lord, issue the absolute decree!" Down in the trench, Talon, Commander of the Macedonian Phalanx, roared. His eyes were burning crimson as he white-knuckled his blood-drenched repeating heavy crossbow.

"SLAUGHTER THEM ALL! AVENGE OUR FALLEN BRETHREN!"

"MAKE THEM REPAY OUR BLOOD WITH THEIR OWN!" The bloodlust across Greywater Village's ranks was soaring to an unprecedented, apocalyptic high. The blood feud between humanity and the Orc Alliance spanned centuries. It was a deeply ingrained, irreconcilable hatred forged from generations of being brutally corralled, enslaved, and slaughtered like livestock.

The vast majority of the human soldiers standing in these trenches had personally witnessed their homes trampled into ash, and their families eaten alive by these very alien beasts. Every single soldier knew the brutal truth better than anyone: if it wasn't Lord Soren standing at their helm today... if they didn't possess their impenetrable [Dark Silver Armor] and hyper-lethal [Repeating Heavy Crossbows]...

Any border city within the Silvermoon Kingdom boasting a mere two thousand defenders would have already been effortlessly pulverized by the hooves of these ten thousand Centaurs! Every man inside the walls would have been butchered, and every woman chained as a slave. Today's miraculous, zero-casualty defensive war wasn't merely a supreme tactical triumph. It was the absolute spark that ignited humanity's towering, unquenchable inferno of vengeance against the Orcs!