"Rustle... rustle..." In the darkness, red-flecked black skin gleamed with a terrifying metallic sheen beneath the sunlight. One after another, beasts with short forelegs, powerful hind legs, fearsome teeth, and razor-sharp claws burst from the ground. The entire process took no more than two seconds!
Two seconds—barely a blink for some of the soldiers—and the Zerglings were right in front of them!
"Watch out! More beasts! Watch out!!!" The soldiers at the front screamed in utter terror. As the ones tasked with carrying out orders, they hadn't been allowed to see the Memory Crystal, so they had no idea that the death zone they'd just crossed had only been the appetizer for this war. The main force of the enemy army was only just beginning to bare its fangs!
A thousand Zerglings burst from the ground and gathered in formation around the edge of the mine pit. They didn't attack immediately. The soldiers, recovering from their initial panic, quickly reformed their ranks at the officers' command. "Shield-bearers, to the front! Spearmen, take your positions! The rest of you, support them and cut down the enemy! Remember, you are the heroes and pride of my kingdom! Prove your prowess with the enemy's blood, and defend our homeland with your own! Kill!!!"
The Zerglings looked terrifying, but there were only a thousand of them. What's more, they hadn't attacked right away, and instead had taken up what seemed to be a defensive stance. This gave the shaken soldiers fresh courage, and the battle formation they'd reassembled made them even more confident!
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Greatswords pounded against shields like war drums. Amid the steady thunder, the soldiers formed neat squares and advanced toward the Zerglings step by step! With every step, their morale soared. After ten steps, all the soldiers seemed to be pumped full of stimulants, their eyes bloodshot and muscles taut as they waited for the moment to kill the enemy and earn glory!
But... Ye Luo wasn't stupid. Why would he give the enemy time to regroup?
Hunters liked to lay one bait after another. The bait might seem to offer prey a reward, but anyone could see that the price of that apparent gain was their life...
"Boom! Boom! Boom!" Before the soldiers could reach the Lurkers and Zerglings, twelve enormous Earth Spikes shot up simultaneously in the middle of their formation!
More than thirty soldiers were hurled straight into the air! Then, one Zergling after another suddenly burst out of the ground within the ranks!
"Watch the ground! There are beasts beneath us too!!!" An officer's scream heralded the beginning of the slaughter!
Unlike the first thousand Zerglings, which had taken two seconds to emerge, bringing their forelegs out before their hind legs, these newcomers leaped straight out of the earth. Before their feet had even touched the ground, their sharp teeth and blade-like claws were already attacking the nearest soldiers!
Zerglings leaped straight out of the earth. To them, the supposedly solid ground was like a river around a fish: it didn't hinder their movements at all. Instead, it made them all the more terrifying... One Zergling sprang from the ground where an Earth Spike had just retracted. With a swipe of its claws, it ripped a huge gash from a soldier's chest to his abdomen. Blood, intestines, and organs spilled through the torn flesh of his belly. Most terrifying of all, the soldier didn't die right away. He watched helplessly as his entrails and blood covered the ground, swallowed by unimaginable pain and terror. "Aaaaaah!!" He screamed as if that were the only way to ease his suffering.
But as mentioned earlier, emotions were contagious...
"Oh, God! What are these things? Retreat, retreat!"
"Don't eat me, don't eat me! Help! General, help me..."
The first square of the front line, a full four thousand soldiers, collapsed in an instant beneath the assault of six thousand Zerglings leaping from the ground...
Dieter, Robert, and Aubrey, the general of Arika Province, stared in utter shock at the vast numbers of beasts before them, exchanging stunned looks.
"Retreat!" Dieter bit out the two words through clenched teeth.
Aubrey was appalled. "General Dieter, we were sent here by the king to capture this newly appeared Magic Beast Clan! If we retreat just like this, His Majesty will never forgive us!"
Dieter glared at him. "This beast clan is terrifyingly powerful, and it has exceptional tactical intelligence. When brilliant tactics are combined with a vast number of soldiers, we don't stand a chance. Even the Third Legion behind us might not be able to defeat them! Continuing the attack now would only get some of our men killed alongside the beasts. Our deaths would mean nothing. Instead, we should report these beasts' methods of attack, their numbers, and their combat strength to the Third Legion. With its organized combat-magic battalions, the Third Legion can come prepared. As long as we force these beasts to fight us head-on, our formation can easily crush them into a pulp... Aubrey, do you still have any objections?"
Aubrey flushed. He had to admit that of the three of them, Dieter was the most arrogant, but he truly had considered things more thoroughly than his two older colleagues...
"Retreat!!"
"The whole army, retreat!"
As soon as the order to retreat rang across the battlefield, the soldiers who had already lost all will to fight bolted, abandoning their armor and weapons as they fled toward the rear. Faced with the threat of death, everyone pushed themselves to their limits. They ran even faster than they had when charging through the death zone...
But though they wanted to flee, Ye Luo wasn't about to let them get away so easily!
"Come and go as you please? Do you think this place is an inn?" Ye Luo surveyed the whole battlefield and spoke softly.
"Rustle... rustle..." Just as the soldiers fleeing the edge of the mine pit began to believe they might survive, the sound of something bursting from the earth rang out again!
"There are more bugs! More bugs!!!"
"Run! They're different bugs—these ones are different!" Some sharp-eyed soldiers immediately noticed the change in the creatures behind them. They lacked the powerful hind legs and sharp fangs of the others. Their claws were still there, but thinner, and most importantly, they seemed to have no feet at all. Instead, they had tails like pythons.
"These beasts shouldn't be very fast, right..." Seeing that they had no feet, many soldiers had the same thought...
Actually, they weren't wrong. Hydralisks were much slower than Zerglings. But when had Hydralisks ever needed speed to defeat their enemies?
"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh..." Two hundred Hydralisks burst from the ground. They were the last force Ye Luo had hidden in ambush!
They all opened their mouths at once, sending spikes flying like arrows after the fleeing soldiers. The spikes pierced their armor with ease, taking away the last of their hope...
Before you continue