Chapter 234: Chapter 199: The Lord’s Night Raid on the Wilderness Tribe (Part 2)
Si Kai looked on, his expression worried.
’This Zor Priest...’ he thought. ’We only captured her less than a day ago. Even if she did surrender, who’s to say it isn’t just a ploy?’
’Is it really okay to let her start Casting right in the middle of our formation? What if she decides to just unleash her Magic on our own men?’
"Lord..."
Before he could finish voicing his concern, the Lord cut him off with a wave of his hand. He spoke with a righteous expression, putting on an air of broad-mindedness.
"Si Kai, as a commander, you have to live by this: trust the people you use, and don’t use the people you can’t trust."
"..." Watching Levi’s self-assured declaration, Si Kai wanted to scream that this wasn’t a matter of ’doubting people’—this was literally a freshly captured enemy combatant!
But he kept the words to himself, sighing internally at how Lord Li was truly unconventional and impossible to predict.
"My Lord, thank you for your trust." Heather felt a little better hearing his words, and her thanks were sincere.
’This human is crude and lacks any semblance of noble etiquette,’ she thought, ’but at least he’s magnanimous. He isn’t treating me with extreme suspicion just because I surrendered.’
Levi smirked internally. ’"Trust the people you use" my ass.’ The only reason was that this Zor, Heather, was the only one of the four captured Zor Priests who had sent him a request to join his party.
Levi had no idea what her thought process was, surrendering the moment she was captured, but it was a good thing, and that was why he’d brought her along for support.
If she hadn’t surrendered, Levi would have brought Masha instead.
After all, a Caster is more beneficial to the course of a battle than a Warrior.
"Alright, enough talk. Fujero is probably tied up for now, so we’ll have to rely on ourselves. Take your men and hold this position. Leave the rest to me."
Levi took a deep breath, lowered his visor, and jogged to the other side with his Giant Sword in hand.
"Panda! Panda!"
Cutting down a few unlucky schmucks who got in his way, Levi shouted from within the crowd.
"Lord, over here!"
A panting roar rang out, and Levi looked over.
About a dozen Minotaurs were surrounding Panda, hacking at him manically, looking intent on slaughtering the Panda-man right then and there.
"Damn it, these bastards only know how to pick on the weak!"
The Lord’s words made Panda so angry he almost choked. He was nearly smashed in the back by a Minotaur’s hammer, but his towering, burly body suddenly erupted with force. With a roar, he sent the four Minotaurs in front of him flying. He followed up with a spinning slash, and as silver light flashed, a large bull’s head soared into the sky.
He was the strongest Samurai of the Panda Race, with a body stronger than a bear and reflexes more agile than a cat. The Javelins he threw were comparable to bolts fired from a Bed Crossbow.
Yet now, he was being called weak. But then Panda recalled the astonishing feats this Baron had accomplished and fell silent. Compared to this Lord, he truly was weak.
With the Lord joining the battle, the few remaining Minotaurs met the same fate in the blink of an eye.
"Panda, rally your men! Follow me, and we’ll charge together!" Levi commanded, keeping his words short and to the point.
He had always lived by the principle that the best defense is a good offense. Holing up on this hill was useless. It was better to form the sharpest of blades, to carve through the enemy ranks again and again until they were broken by fear—until they were all annihilated!
But such a blade couldn’t be forged from just any group of nobodies. It required an exceptionally powerful warrior at its tip and a troop of ace soldiers who had no fear of death.
Only then would it be a sharp blade, and not some pathetic squad that couldn’t even charge ten paces before collapsing.
As it happened, Levi considered his own strength to be more than adequate, and these Panda People were undoubtedly the best troops he had for leading a charge.
A whistle sounded, and the surrounding Panda People gathered and snapped to attention. Their massive, hill-like bodies stood ramrod straight. Though there were only ninety of them, the killing intent they radiated was enough to rival an army of thousands.
Levi remembered that there should have been ninety-six Panda People. Now there were only ninety. The fate of the missing six was self-evident.
He said nothing more, simply moving to the very front of the troop.
As one of Bailiu City’s most elite units, the Panda Warriors not only possessed exceptional individual combat prowess, but were also well-versed in various battle formations.
Thus, without any need for commands, they spontaneously moved to their Lord’s flanks and rear, forming a wedge-shaped battle formation.
Every one of the Panda People was a master of Qi. This power, which stemmed from the spirit, allowed them to perceive their surroundings without using their eyes. The dim, flickering firelight didn’t affect them in the slightest; a night battle was a trivial matter for them.
Wielding two Giant Swords, Levi began the counter-charge. He was at the very tip of the spear, the equally silent Panda Warriors following close behind.
Just then, a purple halo materialized in mid-air and descended upon the Panda Warriors in the front rank. They immediately felt a weight settle over them, their Iron Armor growing noticeably heavier—this was the Armor Firming Technique cast by Heather, the Zor Priest.
She had indeed thrown a spell at the Lord’s troops, but it wasn’t a powerful Shaping Magic spell—it was a Blessing Magic.
The two sides slammed into one another without hesitation. The cries of battle and the clang of steel abruptly intensified. A single breath—no! Before even a full breath could be drawn, the outcome was decided.
Soldiers of the Wilderness Corps began to fall in droves. The charging squad, led by their Lord, tore through the enemy formation as if it were paper.
"They’re too strong!"
Si Kai watched the pack of big, black-and-white pandas carving a path back and forth through the Wilderness Alliance Army, sighing in utter amazement.
In truth, Panda had already attempted this tactic with his people.
It was effective at first, even forcing the enemy to halt their offensive for a time. But as soon as the Minotaurs joined the battle to intercept them, a few dozen of the beasts were enough to halt Panda’s charge. They would then be swarmed by other Wilderness People, bogging them down in a quagmire and making it impossible to advance another step.
Ultimately, they would be forced to retreat back to the hill.
But now...
No matter if it was ten Minotaurs or twenty, armored or not, none of them could last a single exchange against Lord Li.
He led the band of Panda Warriors like a great white shark cruising through the ocean, moving through the sea of bodies with not the slightest pause.
All one could see were the Wilderness People being cut down in swathes like wheat. This was no longer a slaughter; it was a visual spectacle!
Heather quickly finished chanting her Spell, but by then the human and his Panda People had already clashed with the Wilderness People, making them hard to distinguish. Her instincts screamed at her to wipe them all out in one fell swoop, but her reason ultimately won out. Glancing to another part of the battlefield, she fired the fully formed Blasted Giant Stone into a crowd of Lizardmen.
The stone sphere, weighing several thousand pounds, plummeted from the sky with enough force to frighten a timid Goblin to death on the spot.
The Giant Stone smashed down, crushing a swath of Lizardmen in the blink of an eye. The air filled with their screams and wails.
BOOM!
A massive explosion erupted in a burst of scorching, orange light, as dazzling as a miniature sun. The entire hill was instantly lit up as if by daylight.
The massive shockwave sent Wilderness People flying, and stone shrapnel, as deadly as Crossbow Arrows, sprayed in all directions, felling another swathe of soldiers.
From this single spell, the casualties numbered in the dozens at the very least. But the deaths and injuries were secondary; the blow to their morale was truly unimaginable.
"They still have a Caster!!"
The Wilderness People shrieked in terror, as if they had seen the Undead.
They had already suffered terribly at the hands of the previous Caster, the one who controlled the Ice and Snow Element.
They had painstakingly waited until her Magic Power was depleted, only for another Caster—one proficient in Molding Magic—to appear.
And besides, if their brains hadn’t been eaten by Goblins, they would have realized something: wasn’t this spell identical to the one their own Casters had used to attack the city walls that very day?
This caused their minds to waver, and they began to overthink things.
...
"How is this possible?"
In the distance, Leiden, who had been watching the battlefield the entire time, was dumbstruck.
He never imagined that the four Zor Priests would defect the moment they were captured, using Magic against troops who, just a moment ago, had been their allies.
"Those Zor dare betray the Matron?! A bunch of whores who’d spread their legs for a single Copper Coin! They should be exiled to the mines forever!"
Eliya Jin stomped her foot and cursed, her chest heaving with rage.
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