Chapter 182: Act 116 – The Final Battle (Part 4)
When Brendel engaged with Conrad, Yuhjiker was already driving his lizardman warriors to split into two directions, bypassing the central battlefield and attacking the ruins on both sides.
The Silver Elves had long been waiting. Naminez divided her warriors into two teams, leading one herself while handing command of the other to Husher, securing the flanking doors of the elven ruins. They quickly clashed with the lizardman warriors that had stealthily approached from the forest.
Those savage, simple-minded creatures screamed as they charged out of the woods, nimbly rushing towards the collapsed elven building remains. However, what awaited them was often a blinding flash. The elven warriors, standing high above, plunged their double-headed swords downward, piercing the throats of these crawling beasts, and with a light push of their elbows, sent the cold corpses tumbling down into the ruins. At the edge of the elven ruins—at the moment the dark green tide met a silver line—seven or eight lizardmen were sent flying, crashing into their kin and knocking down several others in the crowd.
The momentum of the lizardmen’s attack instantly halted. How could Lubis and the Grey Wolves mercenaries hiding in the back miss this good opportunity? They immediately released arrows and crossbow bolts from their drawn strings, creating a chaotic sound as white lines connected from the ruins to the front, extending into the formation of the lizardmen—causing them to crash into an invisible wall.
These dark green, slender warriors fell back in rows.
In Vaunte, an ordinary person, a trained human crossbowman could shoot six times in a minute. Not to mention these agile, seasoned mercenaries whose strength exceeded that of regular humans by tenfold or even near twentyfold. Even with heavy four-arm crossbows, they could pour out fifteen to twenty bolts in a minute.
For the lizardmen, this was nothing short of a disaster; as the steel rain fell upon them, it was as if a grim reaper in a black cloak wielding a scythe passed overhead, slashing down upon their ranks. Death followed in rapid succession.
The squad leaders and squad lizardman lieutenants in the rear tried to rally their crossbowmen to fight back, but let’s not forget that most lizardman crossbowmen were below black steel strength (as the general rule states, ranged units are often weaker than melee units among the same type of monsters)—or were newly promoted to this tier without proper training. Moreover, at the start of the battle, the nearest crossbow unit had already been scattered by Medisa.
Though the Silver Elf princess was of royal lineage, she was born during the greatest era of turmoil in Vaunte, and her instinct for battlefield situations had long since formed.
Lacking ranged counterattacks and cover, the lizardmen began to hesitate and even retreat.
The elven commander, wearing a golden helm, glanced below and immediately took out a dragon horn from his waist, blowing a mournful call. This horn’s long tune had been rooted in the hearts of these warriors for seven centuries—it represented one meaning: charge! The Silver Elves raised their double-headed swords, their blades gleaming, to their right chests.
“Who are we!”
“The Sword of Ahalan!”
Naminez nodded and waved her commander’s sword downward, whereupon the Silver Elves erupted in a roar and charged. It was like mercury spilling down, a true flood of silver cascading forth; the lizardmen were utterly powerless to resist, as they faced not only a group of silver-tier warriors, seamlessly coordinated, but also eleven masters of combat.
The mercenaries’ ranged strikes began to extend backward, and in a short span, they had already damaged seven heavy crossbows. When the last spare heavy crossbow was taken away, Sanford was forced to switch to a short bow, yet even so, this young man felt his blood boiling.
Less than seventy paces ahead was the endless—should one say, the mass that continued to the edge of the forest—dark green army. However, those savage beings could not breach that silver line, no matter how they charged. Even more, the Silver Elves took the initiative to initiate a charge:
Ten men charged against hundreds of lizardmen.
This was true combat. Sanford listened to the Silver Elves singing their ancient war songs, feeling his blood burning from his very bones. A tremor swept through his entire body, as though he had returned to a battlefield that once existed to resist the forces of darkness.
It was a grand war, in which all nations and races poured their strength into, fighting for freedom and honor, an epic battle. As he retaliated with his short bow, Sanford felt strangely as if he had come to love this feeling.
Not just becoming a mercenary.
When the long sound of the horn rang out, it swept across the entire battlefield like a distant dragon’s chant. No matter how far, almost everyone stopped.
That was the war horn of the Silver Elves—
Conrad’s expression changed repeatedly; from his position, he couldn’t see the flanks obscured by the forest, and naturally, he didn’t know what was happening there. But the sound of the dragon horn did not lie. After nearly three hundred years of seclusion, the Silver Elves—had appeared once more! The leader of the card mercenary group firmly believed that it was Yuhjiker, that stupid and arrogant lizardman chief with a dreadful sense of aesthetics like a nouveau riche, who had messed up the entire matter. However, he wasn’t thinking about how to find that incompetent fool and beat him viciously.
Because that damned lizard wouldn’t have a good end either, and he didn’t want to lose his life here. The dragon horn only meant one thing: one of the strongest battle formations amongst the Silver Elves—the Phoenix Guard—had appeared on the battlefield.
He just didn’t know if the Silver Elves’ elite cavalry and the Song Knights (Unicorn Knights) had also arrived. If that were the case, he wouldn’t even have a place to cry. The Song Knights were legendary troops that charged into the ranks of tens of thousands of Minren, singing the ancient songs of the Silver Elf Empire.
Thinking of this, he felt no desire to continue fighting and glared resentfully at Brendel nearby before retreating. The agility of the Wizard Hunters was not low, and Conrad’s figure floated backward, like a leaf about to merge into the backdrop of the forest.
Brendel froze; he was afraid that Conrad would bypass them to create havoc in the rear. At this moment, the Silver Elves could handle the lizardmen, but adding in a golden-ranked Wizard Hunter would complicate things. He immediately shouted to the Silver Elf princess rushing towards him, “Medisa! Stop him!”
In fact, she did not need his reminder; Medisa had already considered this. Firming her grip on her lance, she immediately activated her charge skill—Unicorn Knights were frighteningly fast. In this instant, she became like a silver comet, tracing a beautiful arc along the edge of the forest, and the next moment, she and her steed blocked Conrad’s path of retreat.
“Mr. Conrad, you’ve done too many evil deeds; please stay and face the consequences along with your companions. You have disregarded the dignity of the living and desecrated the peace of the dead; you must pay for this—”
Medisa crossed her spear, positioning her unicorn companion to face the man draped in a cloak of black and red while speaking in a clear voice.
Conrad inwardly gritted his teeth; he didn’t want to talk to this Silver Elf lady knight at all. Brendel’s command deepened his suspicions—obviously, the enemy was confident and intended to keep them here. This was a trap. Though he didn’t know how this party connected to the Grey Wolf mercenary group or Aike, he had grown deeply wary.
“Damn it, the damn Song Knights!”
He cursed inwardly, turning to bolt in one direction. However, his speed could not match that of a unicorn; by the time he turned, the Silver Elf princess was already coldly waiting in his path.
Conrad tried three times and was intercepted each time. He was beginning to panic; the opponent dared to be so confident in blocking him, so they must have some backing. All he could think of was that ancient empire. While the pastoralists might not fear a fight with those arrogant tree bastards, he could not.
He was also not bold enough to expect that he could trick this Silver Elf girl as he had tricked the red-haired girl Xi; directly before him stood one of the most skilled combat nations on the continent, and only a fool would expect such an opponent to make a mistake.
So it seemed only that one move was left.
But just as Medisa blocked Conrad, Brendel, who had just grabbed Xi by the arm and was retreating, immediately felt darkness envelop him; a cold and dangerous aura rushed towards him, and the young man could almost guess what it was without thinking—the Earth Spirit, Eckmen.
Only it could keep up with his charging speed—
This gigantic monster lifted its forelimbs, towering three times over an adult’s height, seemingly blocking out the sunlight. It then shrieked and made a downward chop; the air stirred violently, and Brendel felt the ground beneath him suddenly surge upward before it cracked apart.
Elemental, strength of stone.
Without a moment’s thought, he rushed to embrace Xi and launched into a roll, the two of them tumbling several times through the forest—as Eckmen’s palm slammed down with a thunderous sound, earth and dust flew, and stone teeth protruded upwards from the ground, forming a stone cage around this BOSS’s palm.
To onlookers, it seemed as if this gigantic monster had smashed down its palm, lifting stones from the ground, forming five stone claws that tightly gripped upward. But as soon as its hand left the ground, these rocks immediately crumbled and dissolved into mud and dust, returning to the forest.
Brendel, rising from the ground, could not help but suck in a breath; although that strategy guide had mentioned Eckmen’s rough strength and preferred tactics, facing it was a completely different experience.
Now he had a feeling akin to that of when he was over forty levels back in the day. At that time, Torrential Rain had released the new version ‘Temple Knights,’ and he, along with the senior sister captain and others, had participated in the new map’s RAID for the first time. The BOSS known for enlightening the ‘elements’ left a profound impression on them—
That was when players first learned about the Temple Knights and the realm of ‘elements.’
But now he seemed to need to reacquaint himself with that realm.
(PS: Yesterday while writing, I made a stupid error, = =, the Earth Spirit is called Eckmen—though one can understand. After all, you know, you can never really tell what a bug is called, especially when they can’t even pronounce a rolled ‘r’ yet.) (To be continued. To know what happens next, please visit the site for more chapters, support the author, and support legitimate reading!)
