As the witch doctors exerted their strength, more than a dozen arm-thick vines studded with sharp thorns bored out of the ground and churned up and down through the enemy ranks.
As for how many casualties they caused, there really were not many. At most, the thorns scraped those they struck, tearing strips of flesh and blood and leaving patches of serious-looking wounds.
Blade Tusk was somewhat dissatisfied. He wondered whether he should have the witch doctors who specialized in this sort of thing find a way to incorporate "plant toxins" into it in the future.
Even so, the role those vines played at this moment could not be underestimated.
At precisely the right time, they writhed through the enemy formation like giant serpents. The commotion they caused, coupled with the anguished screams of the wounded, seemed to become the last straw that broke the camel's back.
At last, deserters appeared in the enemy ranks.
At first, there were only a scattered few at the very outer edge. But once cowardice appeared, it easily triggered a chain reaction among nearby comrades.
In just a few moments, the trolls began turning and fleeing in groups.
Seeing this, Blade Tusk raised a hand and fired a flame projectile he had been charging for some time into the sky. He controlled it to burst at its highest point, blossoming into beautiful fireworks.
The next instant, as if they had been waiting for that signal, the tribe's gates suddenly opened. Four secondary leaders with no trolls on their backs led thirty moose cavalrymen pouring out of the gates in a swarm.
They advanced at a measured pace. Once they reached a distance of eighty meters, they launched a charge that seemed like the advance of a thousand troops and ten thousand horses.
The eighty-odd