Chapter 1334: Meat on the Cutting Board
Before long, they reached a mountain hollow not far from the tribe.
Ethan released Dopey and Rocky from his spatial storage ring and pointed them toward the compound.
In a situation like this, Ethan didn’t even dare go over himself.
Sure, he could have Rocky cast Earth Ward on him—but no matter how strong Earth Ward was, it wasn’t going to hold up under nonstop fireball bombardment from a hundred thousand-plus Infernals.
Better to play it safe. He stayed put and let the two soulless thralls settle it the simple way—see who could rack up the higher body count.
The moment the order left his mouth, both thralls exploded forward.
They were absurdly fast. In the blink of an eye, they’d slammed straight into the Infernal tribe.
"BOOM—BOOM—"
The fight ignited instantly.
The Infernals didn’t even have time to understand what was happening before a huge chunk of them were erased.
"ROAR—!"
Savage howls rippled through the compound. Then, like ants pouring out of a kicked nest, dense waves of Infernals spilled out of rooms and buildings, swarming toward Dopey and Rocky.
It didn’t matter.
Their attacks might as well have been throwing pebbles at a landslide. Dopey and Rocky’s strength completely crushed them.
The slaughter kept rolling. Dopey and Rocky went at it like they were genuinely competing, both of them working like lunatics.
But in a fight like this, Rocky had a built-in advantage.
One casual skill from Rocky could wipe out thousands at once.
Dopey had to do it the old-fashioned way—one punch, one kill, over and over.
Finally, after the two soulless thralls had butchered tens of thousands, the Infernal leader let out a furious, unwilling roar.
And then the whole tribe broke.
Infernals scattered in every direction, fleeing like their lives had just remembered they existed.
This wasn’t a fight. It wasn’t even close. If you couldn’t win, what else was there besides running?
For a split second, some of them probably even missed their old world. Sure, it was harsh and miserable—but at least back there, they hadn’t had enemies like this.
This new world might’ve been comfortable to live in...
...but it was way too dangerous.
They scattered in waves, and one of those waves ran straight toward Ethan’s ambush point.
Everyone’s eyes narrowed. Hands tightened on weapons.
The moment the Infernals crossed into range—
"Kill," Ethan said, calm and absolute.
A storm of skills crashed down on them.
The fleeing Infernals clearly hadn’t expected an ambush here. They didn’t even get a chance to react before over half of them were shredded on the spot.
Then the second volley landed.
That was when the survivors finally understood what was happening and threw up Flame Shields as fast as they could.
Too late.
With the Fallen Star Squad leading the strike—and more than a thousand Tier 22 Enhanced joining in—their Flame Shields lasted maybe two seconds before they were smashed apart like glass.
The next wave of attacks hit, and the rest of the Infernals vanished under it.
The surge of battle energy drew the attention of other fleeing groups in the distance.
But none of them came to help.
They just ran faster.
So much for the whole point of merging in the first place.
Ethan didn’t even bother cleaning this little patch of battlefield. He had everyone mount up on Flamebirds and chase.
While the Infernals were in full retreat, they’d kill as many as they could.
They pursued for dozens of miles before the scattered Infernals finally managed to regroup and turn around to resist the hunt.
And the instant they did, Ethan stopped playing.
He didn’t fight them head-on. He pulled his people out immediately.
The Infernals stared at each other, unsure whether they should chase.
But the memory of those two soulless monsters was still fresh. In the end, nobody moved. Instead, they turned as one and fled to seek shelter with an even bigger tribe.
Only after Ethan’s group looped back did they start sweeping the battlefield properly.
In that one operation, they killed more than seventy thousand Infernals.
Rocky alone accounted for over forty thousand.
Everyone else combined had only a little over thirty thousand.
It was honestly ridiculous—Rocky, with those wide-area skills, was basically a walking slaughter machine in this kind of war.
Once all the crystal cores were collected, the Fallen Star Guard went through another round of upgrades.
Then Ethan moved them to a new area and kept doing the same dirty thing—over and over—using the exact same ruthless, effective playbook to keep cutting the Infernals down.
By now, the Infernal population was in full-on panic.
Faced with the humans’ disgusting, cheap-ass way of fighting, they had no answer.
Those two soulless thralls were beyond broken. Completely out of their league. It didn’t matter how many Infernals they had—numbers didn’t mean anything when the other side could erase thousands at a time.
If you couldn’t win, you ran.
But where the hell were they supposed to run to?
This was an island chain. Ocean on all sides. There was nowhere to escape.
What really crushed them was the fact that the passage back was gone. They couldn’t even retreat to their own world anymore.
They were meat on someone else’s cutting board—just sitting there, waiting for the knife.
Countless Infernals regretted ever coming here.
Inside the largest Infernal tribe, one especially massive Infernal slammed his fist down and shattered a dirt mound into chunks.
"ROAR..." (Holy shit. If I’d known this place was this dangerous, I never would’ve come.)
"ROAR...!" (Who the hell told me this place was good?!)
The leader glared down at the crowd of Infernals beneath him.
"ROAR..." (Chief... I think you were the one who said it was paradise.) one Infernal muttered.
"BAM!"
A dull impact cracked through the air, and that Infernal went flying.
The rest dropped their heads instantly, not daring to make a sound.
"ROAR...!" (Tell every tribe—everyone gathers here. They’ve only got that many people. I refuse to believe we can’t grind them down if all of us pile on.)
"ROAR." (Yes.)
The roars spread—echoing out from this place, answered from far off. Messages jumped from tribe to tribe as the Infernals relayed the order.
Soon, massive streams of red bodies were sprinting in the same direction.
Ethan and his people, meanwhile, were still using their dirty routine to carve up another mega-tribe with over a hundred thousand Infernals.
Then a roar rolled in from the distance.
A moment later, the Infernals in front of them abruptly stopped attacking—and bolted, all running the same way.
Ethan’s group stayed hidden at range... and ended up squatting there for nothing.
"Huh?" Chris frowned. "Why are they all running in the same direction?"
"Doesn’t look like a panic scatter," Ethan said, watching. "Looks like they’re rallying."
He made the call instantly. "Clean the battlefield fast. We follow and see what’s going on."
"Got it."
They swept up what they could and took off in pursuit.
With Flamebirds, their speed completely outclassed the Infernals on foot. They caught up in no time—and once they did, they started stabbing them right in the ass from behind.
Even then, the Infernals didn’t turn to fight.
They just kept running, dead-set on reaching whatever was ahead.
"Yeah," Ethan said. "They’re definitely regrouping."
He narrowed his eyes. "Take the free kills. Whatever you can get, get it."
"Say less."
They weren’t about to get polite just because the enemy had somewhere to be. The Fallen Star Squad didn’t do "courtesy." And if there was one thing they loved, it was punching people in the back when they were already running.
So they stayed on their tails and slaughtered the stragglers—anything that lagged even a little.
The pressure squeezed every last drop of potential out of the fleeing Infernals. Their running speed visibly jumped.
They didn’t have a choice. Fall behind and you died. Want to live? Don’t be the slow one.
So they ran faster.
And faster.
As they chased, Ethan caught sight of other Infernal groups in the distance, also funneling toward the same point from different directions.
That was enough to confirm it.
They were trying to gather everyone into one mass and fight back.
"Not a bad idea," Ethan muttered. "Too bad it won’t help. Numbers don’t mean much to Dopey and Rocky."
Then he added, almost casually, "Don’t take it personal—we just need your cores and your bodies."
