Emerging from the Earth, Death and Slaughter

"Rustle... rustle..." In the darkness, skin tinged with red shimmered under the sunlight with a terrifying metallic luster. One by one, magical beasts with short forelimbs, thick hind legs, and horrific fangs and claws erupted from the ground—the entire burrowing process taking no more than two seconds!

Two seconds; for some soldiers, it was nothing more than a blink of an eye before the Zergling appeared right before them!

"Watch out, there are new magical beasts, watch out!!!" The roar from the front-line soldiers was piercingly shrill. As the executors of orders, they had no qualification to view the Memory Crystal, so they had no idea that the death zone they had passed was merely an appetizer for this war. As the main force of this conflict, the enemy had only just begun to bare their fangs!

One thousand Zergling crawled out from the ground, neatly encircling the edge of the mine. They did not launch an immediate attack. The soldiers, recovering from their initial panic, reorganized their formation under the officers' commands! "Shield-bearers, take the front! Spearmen, take your positions! The rest of you, coordinate to slaughter the enemy! Remember, you are the warriors of my kingdom, the glory of my kingdom! Use the enemy's blood to prove your achievements, use your own blood to defend our homeland! Kill!!!"

Though the Zergling looked intimidating, there were only a thousand of them, and they did not attack upon appearing, instead adopting a defensive posture. This restored courage to the terrified soldiers, and the newly established battle formation boosted their confidence significantly!

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Greatswords struck shields like war drums. Accompanied by the rhythmic drumming, the soldiers lined up in neat phalanxes, advancing step by step toward the Zergling! With every step, their morale surged. By the tenth step, every soldier felt as if they had been injected with stimulants; their eyes were bloodshot, their muscles taut, waiting for the moment to kill the enemy and earn merit!

However... Ye Luo was no fool. Why would he give the enemy time to reorganize their formation?

A hunter loves to lay bait after bait. These lures might seem to benefit the prey, but any fool knows that behind these apparent gains lies the price of one's life...

"Boom, boom, boom!" Before the soldiers could even reach the Lurker and Zergling, twelve massive earth spikes erupted simultaneously from the center of the battle formation!

Over thirty soldiers were sent flying into the air! Then, within the ranks, one Zergling after another suddenly burst from the ground!

"Watch the ground, there are more magical beasts in the ground!!!" A soldier's scream signaled the start of the slaughter!

The suddenly appearing Zergling did not take two seconds to emerge limb by limb like the previous thousand; they leaped directly out of the soil. Before their feet even touched the ground, their sharp fangs and blade-like claws began attacking the nearest soldiers!

One Zergling after another vaulted from the earth. To them, the supposedly hard ground was like water to a fish; it did not hinder their movement but instead made them incredibly terrifying... A Zergling lunged from the hole left by a retracted earth spike, its claws raking across a soldier's chest and abdomen, leaving a massive, gaping wound. Blood, intestines, and organs spilled out through the ruptured belly. Most terrifying of all, the soldier did not die immediately; he watched his own viscera and blood pool on the ground, drowning in endless fear and pain. "Ahhhhh!!" It was as if only screaming could alleviate what he was enduring.

But as mentioned before, emotions are contagious...

"Oh my god, what are these? Retreat, retreat!"

"Don't eat me, don't eat me! Help, General, help me..."

The first phalanx of the front line, consisting of four thousand soldiers, collapsed instantly under the assault of the six thousand Zergling leaping from the ground...

Dieter, Robert, and Arika province's General Aubrey stared in utter shock at the massive number of magical beasts, looking at each other in disbelief.

"Retreat!" The word was bitten out fiercely from Dieter's mouth!

Aubrey was alarmed. "General Dieter, we are under the King's orders to capture this suddenly appearing magical beast colony. If we just retreat like this, His Majesty the King will not forgive us!"

Dieter glared at him. "The power of this magical beast colony is too terrifying, and they possess superior combat intelligence. When excellent tactical application is combined with such vast numbers, let alone us, even the Third Legion behind us might not be their match! Continuing to attack now serves no purpose other than dragging a few beasts down with us to our deaths. Instead, reporting the attack methods, numbers, and combat strength of these beasts to the Third Legion—which possesses organized combat mage squadrons—will allow them to come prepared. As long as we can force these beasts into a head-on confrontation, our phalanxes can easily crush them into pulp... Aubrey, do you have any objections now?"

Aubrey's face flushed slightly. It had to be said that among the three, Dieter was the most arrogant, but he had indeed considered things more deeply than his two senior peers...

"Retreat!!"

"All troops, retreat!"

Once the order to retreat echoed across the battlefield, the soldiers, who had long since lost their will to fight, immediately took to their heels, discarding their armor and weapons as they fled toward the rear. Under the threat of death, everyone unleashed hidden potential, running even faster than they had when charging through the death zone...

However, while they wanted to run, Ye Luo would not let them escape so easily!

"You come when you want and leave when you want? Do you think this is an inn?" Ye Luo surveyed the entire situation and said softly.

"Rustle... rustle..." Just as the soldiers fleeing the edge of the mine thought they had luckily escaped with their lives, the sound of breaking soil echoed once more!

"There are more bugs, there are more bugs!!!"

"Run, these are different bugs, different bugs this time!" Some sharp-eyed soldiers immediately noticed the change in the bugs appearing behind them. They lacked those strong legs and sharp fangs; even though they still had claws, they were much thinner. Most importantly, these magical beasts seemed to have no feet, possessing tails like pythons instead.

"These magical beasts shouldn't be very fast..." Lacking feet, this thought crossed many soldiers' minds simultaneously...

In truth, this thought was not wrong, as the movement speed of the Hydralisk was indeed far inferior to the Zergling. But when did a Hydralisk ever need speed to crush its enemies?

"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh..." Two hundred Hydralisk emerged from the ground. They were the final force Ye Luo had kept in ambush!

They opened their maws in unison, and spines flew like arrows, chasing down the desperate soldiers, piercing their armor with ease and stealing away their final hope...