Chapter 172: Act 106 – Luring the Snake out of its Hole (5) (Second Update, Thank you all for supporting me)
“Not interested?”
Naminez turned and glanced at him, her eyes filled with mockery.
”Interested? Of course, I’m interested.” Brendel hurriedly replied, nonsense, who wouldn’t want the combat skills of the elven sanctuary? Only an idiot wouldn’t.
”Elven combat skills are definitely not something I can teach you, don’t even think about it.” Naminez looked at him with a bland expression, answering: “Don’t rush, I’ve already said it, the battle techniques of the Silver Elves are tailor-made for my people.”
Brendel nodded, but inwardly dismissed it: “Then?”
”I can teach you something we’ve personally understood,” the Silver Elf paused: “You know, learning how to judge how powerful your enemy is on the battlefield is an important thing—”
”Wait!” Brendel took a deep breath, interrupting him: “Are you talking about ‘Detection’?”
The young man barely restrained his urge to go crazy, trying to ask this question as calmly as possible. Joke, that’s Detection. He now looked at this cold Silver Elf, for a moment feeling that the other party had become kind and approachable. Used to using data to measure the strength of forces, it was rather awkward for him to judge enemies like NPCs by class. Moreover, without the Detection skill, he couldn’t know what skills his opponents had at all—of course, experience could provide some information, but this was not quite accurate against humanoid creatures.
Brendel hadn’t been arrogant enough to think he could remember the skills and tactical preferences of thousands of NPCs.
In the game, originally Marden should have taught the Detection skill, but after probing this veteran in Bruglas, Brendel found that the other party simply didn’t have this skill. He thought for a moment, the time he saw the other person in the game was already in the very late stages, so it wasn’t impossible that Marden had learned this skill from someone else during that period.
However, after losing this clue, he found it somewhat unrealistic to find another person to learn this skill. If it wasn’t too far away, it was simply on the enemy side. And now, Brendel had a lot of spare skill experience, but he discovered he had lost the opportunity to learn these necessary skills. He had been troubled by this issue for a while, and unexpectedly Naminez appeared.
Bear in mind, this Detection skill is like an inquiry about others, seeing the basic attributes of a character and their most commonly used skills. Later, it can also evaluate absolute strength, making it incredibly easy to assess the strength of enemies. However, he looked at this Silver Elf full of hope, only to see the other shake their head.
”Detection?” Naminez answered: “We call this ability ‘In-depth Analysis.'”
”What?” Brendel was startled. What’s this ‘In-depth Analysis’? He had never heard of it. He did know that Detection had a high-level version called Eagle Eye, a skill so overpowered it not only possessed the same capabilities as Detection but also had a chance to steal skills from defeated enemies. Unfortunately, Eagle Eye was Budukeis Duke’s forte, and the requirement to learn this skill was at least the “Alliance” level of reputation—besides, this old man was Erluin’s most stubborn opponent and Princess Grifian’s arch-nemesis. There was no way the former Brendel could go to this guy to farm reputation.
Not to mention the huge cost he would have to pay for doing so, and even then, his senior guild leader would likely challenge him to a real-life PK first.
”In-depth Analysis.” Naminez repeated: “This is actually a technique that every Silver Elf warrior can master; we use it to control the situation on the battlefield.”
”Hmm? What use does it have?” Brendel became interested upon hearing that it was a technique every Silver Elf warrior could master. As far as he knew, Silver Elves were all born warriors, so the combat techniques and knowledge they acknowledged certainly wouldn’t be weak at all.
The Silver Elf commander stared at Brendel and replied: “I remember you said you would bring us victory and asked me to record those words. Well, I’ve noted it down. This skill is like a bet; if you keep your promise, I will teach you this skill.” Having said that, she turned her head and smiled slightly when Brendel wasn’t looking.
Go! I knew it wouldn’t be that simple! Brendel cursed inwardly. Still, he thought it was fine, after all, whether it was the victory of this war or this skill, he was determined to get both. He wanted to know what this “In-depth Analysis” skill was exactly. After a decade or more in the same game in his previous life, there were very few skills in this game he didn’t know about, of course—except for Traveler Mages and Fate Cards.
Just then, he felt Husher nudge him with his elbow.
He looked up and noticed the mercenaries lying in ambush stirring below, though it lasted only a moment, yet it was enough to perceive a problem.
The long-awaited enemy had arrived—
The dragoons led by the lizardmen were the first to enter the valley, numbering about thirty riders. They clambered forward over the cold rocks under the moonlight, soon crossing the bottom of the valley. Then came the large groups of lizardmen foot soldiers carrying spears and crossbows. Due to not being regular troops, these monsters had no neat equipment or banners. Squad leaders wearing armlets commanded nearby to maintain the order of their own small squads, shouting out unclear high-pitched calls to prevent the ranks from becoming too scattered.
Because this place was far from where the scouts reported they had encountered humans, the lizardmen did not deploy in broad formation but maintained two or three columns in depth. The long snake-like formation wound through the valley—mercenaries turned to look at Brendel, waiting for his command to attack. But Brendel shook his head, letting the front section of the lizard army pass by. The time to attack had not come yet.
Soon, the dark priestess finally arrived. Since she was not a physical combatant, she did not appear on the sides or front of the formation but was surrounded by a group of Blackfire Knights. Brendel almost didn’t need to think to know that those were all high-ranking Blackfire cultists. He also noticed several towering one-armed demons among those cultists. These were the Bachesa demons, legendary creatures where a warrior’s soul that fell into hell turned into Bachesa demons—rare strong offense demons among low-ranking demons.
The first part of the lizard army had already passed through.
Brendel suddenly looked around and asked: “Where is Antinna?”
”Miss Antinna seems to have been called away by Miss Romaine.” Husher replied.
The young man muttered: ‘Oh’. He was a little worried that Romaine might cause trouble without anyone to supervise her, but hearing Antinna was with her, he felt reassured. For the remaining part, all he had to do was deal properly with this battle. He stared at the valley; the lizardmen were completely unaware of the danger lurking hidden on this hillside. Drawing his longsword—its edge was pitch black, not reflecting a single ray of light—he pointed the sword downward.
It was the signal to attack.
The carnage of this night was opened by the forceful vibration of the four-armed crossbows. The mercenaries tightly held the handles of these powerful weapons against their shoulders, targeting their already chosen prey. Biting their teeth, they pulled the triggers hard. The metal filaments rapidly resumed their original state upon losing restraint, producing a deep resonating sound, ‘tang, tang’. Dust rose from the crossbows as the tightly stretched elastic potential energy instantly transformed into strong kinetic energy.
The battle began.
From the perspective of the lizardmen, as soon as the deep sounds of ‘boom, boom, boom’ echoed all at once, dozens of fine lines extended momentarily from the forests on the side of the hill. In that single moment, the lizardmen only managed to turn around in time to see more than ten of their comrades at the outermost edge of the formation instantly fall. Although most of these lizardmen were not hit in vital areas, the powerful impact of the bolts still rendered them combat ineffective within moments.
Attack!
These incompletely evolved reptilian creatures instinctively, in panic, wanted to get into combat mode, but the second wave of blows followed as planned. Each lizard crossbowman with long-distance attack capabilities was singled out one by one. Panic, much like an inescapable disaster, inevitably enveloped these lizardmen. Then, the bushes on the hillside parted, and a line of elf warriors clad in silver armor, armed with double-headed swords, emerged orderly from behind – although there were only twenty of them, they were perfectly disciplined, as if they were still on the battlefield of seven centuries ago, with the grand armies of the ancient Silver Elf Empire Hyarlan at their backs.
It was awe-inspiring.
When the low-level dark priestess from the Blackfire cult saw this scene, she almost fainted. She thought it was because the lizardmen’s violation of the tomb of the Silver Elf King had angered that ancient empire, causing this race, which had been hidden for hundreds of years, to reappear in this world again. At the moment the Silver Elves emerged, she almost wanted to kill the damn lizardmen leader Hyeugil. Joke, on the other side was the Silver Elf army in the Holy War, whose reputation as an invincible force!
Twenty warriors at the Gold level, the hands of the dark priestess trembled involuntarily.
He truly hoped that the lizardmen cannon fodders below could buy him some time, but apparently, things only got worse. When the first unit of Silver Elves rushed into the densely crowded masses of lizardmen, the sheer force of impact sent these underfed creatures flying high into the air, landing on the ground either dead or severely wounded. Then these fully armored elven heavy infantry simply trampled through their enemies—literally stepping over the backs of those who hadn’t even had the chance to get up.
The battle situation was essentially nonconstructive. Even though the number of lizardmen was ten times that of the Silver Elves, the Golden tier facing lower-end Black Iron was a one-sided massacre.
And when the Elven Guard started charging, the mercenaries were just loading their third round of crossbow bolts. At this moment, Brendel, Husher, and the Silver Elf commander all simultaneously rushed into the fray. The fastest among the three was undoubtedly Brendel. The young man had noticed an anomaly from the very beginning of the battle, but it was not a bad one, quite the contrary—he found his available experience was skyrocketing rapidly.
But by rights, even though the mercenaries under Lubis and the Graywolf Mercenaries counted as his summoned creatures and subordinates, the most kills were credited to the Silver Elven Guard. Furthermore, these elves were allies to him, which meant a team mode was in effect. But logically, with so many high-level characters (the elves were all level 40 at this time), the experience he should have shared should have been minimal!
…(To be continued, if you want to know what happens next, please log in. There are more chapters and support for the author for legitimate reading!)
