The Lord of the Hunt was an absolute villain.
He had all the traditional virtues of a qualified big bad. For instance, even after the Gnoll Warlord at the lord's position had been killed and his entire army was being scorched from the sky by heavenly fire, the evil god still refused to make a dignified exit.
Perhaps Murphy had enraged the Lord of the Hunt by executing one of his hunting spirits right in front of him. Whatever the reason, the divine field enveloping the battlefield hadn't dissipated. Instead, it showed signs of surging back to life.
The wave of purification that the Eastern Divine Spirit had unleashed earlier, alongside the opening of the Hall of Valor, had badly damaged the divine field. All they had to do was wait for it to fade away on its own. But Ao hadn't expected the Lord of the Hunt to be so greedy.
His servants had already failed, but he clearly hadn't "eaten enough."
The evil god was nearing the crucial moment of his awakening. Perhaps sending every gnoll on the western front to their deaths in this attack would let him open his eyes tonight—and personally hunt down that dog Murphy, who had killed his hunting spirit right in front of him, in place of his useless servants.
Driven by that reasoning, from the Lord of the Hunt's perspective, continuing the battle and using the Transians' airship bombardment to wipe out every gnoll on the ground was probably the best choice.
As the divine field strengthened again, the gnolls, already on the verge of retreating and left leaderless, turned around with bloodshot eyes. Their already-simple minds were temporarily suppressed by the bonds of faith, and something far more terrifying was poured into their savage bodies.
They forgot defeat, the torment