Chapter 257: Act 24 – Expansion (Part 5) (Happy Children’s Day to everyone, here’s the first update)
But after a brief chaos on the battlefield, the Troglodytes quickly restored order, just as their nature dictated.
Tagib eased the tension in his heart. Numerous rumors about the surface dwellers circulated beneath Jotungrund, some describing their greed, while others narrating tales of the prosperous surface Empire.
This shaman from the depths of Jotungrund was once deeply influenced by these legends, believing the surface to be a dangerous and barren world.
However, he soon grew dismissive, as the humans of Toniger left him with an extremely negative impression. In Tagib’s eyes, the human army was weak, powerless, and lacked discipline—his tribe was considered weak in the underground world, yet they easily crushed the so-called “great army” of the Baron Grudin.
At first, this leader of the Troglodytes was suspicious, thinking that humans had set a trap for them. Even when Grudin’s envoy approached secretly, he doubted whether that noble of the surface was deceiving him.
But in the end, Tagib confirmed that this suspicion was unnecessary; the tales were nothing but fabrications. The legendary human Empire, which was said to bear the eagle banner and be vast, now appeared to be merely stories meant to frighten children.
Yet greed indeed matched the descriptions of these humans.
After a brief shock, a sense of self-inflation replaced his initial caution. He began to expand recklessly into the forest, seizing all the human logging sites and even contemplating using this forest as a base to expand and conquer all of Grudin’s territory.
However, the terrifying numerical superiority of humans discouraged him from this idea, although it did not alter his impression of humans as weak.
This time, the mercenaries took down a logging site, which he thought was merely due to the opposing wizard performing wonderfully in battle. But as soon as he made a move, he could teach them a profound lesson.
Those cowardly yet greedy humans indeed had to be taught a lesson with blood and fists, Tagib thought, subconsciously regarding these surface dwellers as some kind of inferior beings or savages.
However, those two humans who dared to charge at his vast army truly surprised him; the returning Troglodyte warrior informed him with a low-frequency scream that those two were quite strong, likely possessing the strength of slave masters—
In Jotungrund, the title of “slave master” represented a level of capability in the upper mid-tier of the surface world, such as the Minotaurs living in the labyrinth or the gold dwarves.
Tagib couldn’t help but feel a chill run down his spine, a natural instinctive alert for a Troglodyte. He knew that these two beings firmly held the fourth tier in the hierarchy of underground lords. They were entities to be looked up to, not just for him, but for the entire Troglodyte society.
Yet before him stood neither a minotaur gladiator with a double-bladed axe nor a gold dwarf from the Hall of Gold, but merely two seemingly weak humans.
It turned out there were indeed powerful beings among humans.
“However, they are still humans lacking the probability,” Tagib thought casually, considering them merely savages without systematic tactical thinking. In the underground, war had developed into an art form; although he had only grasped the basics, it seemed enough to look down on these barbarians.
He immediately raised his banner, signaling his kin to surround the two humans. Even if they were “slave masters,” they still couldn’t contend alone against the ocean of his troops.
…
As the Troglodytes grew frantic at the onset, Brendel’s attack was rather smooth.
He raised his head and saw a massive sheep’s head banner amidst the throngs of Troglodytes. That was the symbol of the Troglodyte tribal leader, only about a hundred meters away from where he was positioned.
But as the scattered Troglodytes withdrew, they finally encountered their fellow warriors who were driving them back. These burly, purple-bump-caked subterranean beings mercilessly wielded their spears against their own kind, forcing them to snap out of their panic and return to their positions.
The Troglodytes shrieked as they were herded back.
Thus, Brendel quickly realized he had to face this returning regular army of Jotungrund, which arrayed in a line, tentatively probing with their not-so-powerful forelimbs as they extended their spears toward him—but frankly, it was hard to call this an effective attack. Brendel easily swept aside these inferior spears, slicing through the wall of flesh and once again shattering them.
The first row of Troglodytes, leaving behind five bodies covered in frost, scattered once more, their defense melting like winter snow. Brendel pressed forward again, but he soon saw more Troglodytes being driven back; due to the time bought by their fellow kin, these beings had calmed down in no time.
The Troglodytes were reacting now.
“Lord,” Xi whispered, intending to inform him that the dispersed Troglodytes were beginning to close in around them.
Brendel didn’t need to turn around to see what was happening.
An ocean of bodies surged from all sides, but the two found themselves only ten meters deep into the enemy’s formation; they began to feel resistance. Two or three Troglodytes even shrieked as they charged at them, their strong and robust hind limbs giving them a cavalry-like power behind their spear tips.
This form of attack was not to be compared to before.
After fending off two or three attacks, Brendel couldn’t help but feel a headache coming on; he saw the banner representing Tagib moving in the opposite direction—north or northeast—anyway, it was too chaotic to discern directions.
At first, Brendel found himself reminiscing about his initial plan, the one he felt tempted by while on the mountaintop—that was to charge down on a silver warhorse from above; however, in thinking this, he completely forgot the danger of launching an aerial assault—his enemies might have a spellcaster among them, and Brendel seldom dealt with Troglodyte shamans, but he knew well that anti-air spells were not rare.
Thoughts aside, both Brendel and Xi did not hold back, unleashing arcs of brilliant electricity and frost-blue ice that extended for dozens of feet, obliterating the Troglodytes’ third organized encirclement into mere ashes.
But both stopped to catch their breath slightly.
Brendel felt he had taken down at least forty or even more, as only Xi was sharing the experience. Each Troglodyte provided him with seven to eight hundred XP, and had it not been for the severe depletion of stamina, he could say he achieved a glorious feat.
Xi’s cheeks were slightly flushed, sweat beading on her forehead. While it could be said that her absolute strength exceeded Brendel’s by ten percent, the young man had spent years in prior games fighting multiple foes and developing a life of survival amid chaos; the seemingly endless lives of players allowed them to attempt various tactics, accumulating experiences enabling Brendel to habitually conserve stamina in such situations.
But he remained cool and collected, which stirred a subtle admiration in the red-haired girl.
The Lord truly was a Lord.
She thought.
Yet at this moment, Brendel calmed himself to listen to a low-frequency vibration around him. He pushed back the encroaching Troglodytes with his sword and carefully captured that sound—a sound that resembled a branch of draconic language, which ordinarily shouldn’t be within human hearing range.
However, one of the settings in the Amber Sword was this: every time one’s perception rose by a level, the range of sounds detectable by the human ear would geometrically increase.
At that moment, Brendel’s perception had already reached 20 ‘Oz’.
He quickly discerned the unique sound; it was the warriors of the Troglodytes communicating in their special way, relaying commands to the next tier of Troglodytes.
Brendel did not understand their language, but he could guess the meaning quite accurately. He knew that as long as he disrupted these hidden “command nodes” within the army, the Troglodytes would automatically fall into chaos.
For players, such a tactic was trite.
He quickly locked onto the source of the sound and turned his head sharply in that direction; behind the throngs of Troglodytes, three to five sources of sound were evident, and based on their movements, they seemed to be organizing a fourth encirclement.
“Xi,” he called out immediately, “Open a gap in that direction.”
Xi blinked, her fiery amber eyes shifting to where Brendel’s sword pointed; there, the Troglodytes were gathering, over a hundred strong, quickly forming an impregnable defensive line.
Clearly, the Troglodyte warriors behind sensed Brendel’s aura of murder.
But their movements also caught Xi’s attention; their behavior bared the unmistakable suggestion that something important must be hidden behind that defense.
The girl whipped her long red ponytail and, without needing further prompting, thrust her spear forward—an arc of lightning flashed in the darkness!
The blinding electric spark pierced through the three Troglodytes blocking the perimeter and immediately penetrated their bodies, the electricity fanning out like a peacock’s tail.
With a deafening explosion, the Troglodytes collapsed in a huge fan shape backward, the front lines turning to charcoal while the rear were paralyzed and incapable of movement.
When the breach opened beyond the dense wall of bodies, Brendel squinted; he could finally see towering Murugen Troglodytes behind the swirling crowd, but the Troglodytes on the flanks were closing in, and the gap in the human wall was growing smaller—not much time left.
Without hesitation, he activated his charge skill, breaking away from Xi, who had always advanced back-to-back with him; in an instant, his body transformed into a striking black line.
The black line shot past that row of Troglodytes, who barely reacted in mere tenths of a second, turning their heads late. But Brendel had already leapt over their shoulders, arriving directly before the group of Troglodyte warriors.
In his view, there were six Troglodyte warriors in total. Those purplish-skinned beings were quite clever; upon discovering that the defense line had been breached, they came forward to block, but more were scattering in retreat.
But Brendel immediately unleashed a powerful sword wind. The surge of force and the full execution of White Crow Swordsmanship wove a seven to eight-meter-long transparent ripple in space; it advanced forward under the cover of night, traversing dozens of meters in an instant—
Those Troglodyte warriors staggered forward but immediately found themselves severed from head and body, collapsing to the ground.
Brendel paused to look back; the surrounding Troglodytes had finally scattered due to the loss of leadership.
…
(PS. I seem to have a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder, always feeling like what I write isn’t good enough, unable to satisfy myself. Happy Children’s Day to everyone, and please support with monthly votes. I just checked and surprisingly have only 14 votes, tears.) (To be continued. For more chapters and to support the author, please log in for more and support legitimate reading!)
