My pets, the hind bear, Kumajirou, and the black wolf leader, Kurosaburou, both Ranked Up today.
After evolving, Kumajiro became larger even than the red bear, his originally grey fur darkened in color and a 50cm long sharp horn that looked like it's made out of obsidian extended out from his forehead. He's no longer a hind bear, but a [Demon Bear (Oniguma)].
As for Kurosaburo, he became as big as a warhorse. Moreover, now he has two heads that both of which think separately, and with every breath, black flames tinged with lightning leaked out from his two big mouths. It seems like the species he evolved into is called [ Orthrus ].
To find out how much the specs of the two of them have improved, all of the ogre-class members including me, Ogakichi-kun, and the other four ― in short, those of us who'd Ranked Up twice ― , in addition to our familiars, a total of only thirteen individuals attacked one of the human army's units.
The reason why we attacked them with only a small number of elites is for us to Level Up efficiently.
Recently, my policy have been to increase our overall power, so we, the top brass had to hold back when going against the human army, to give the others a chance to Level Up.
That's why the amount of Experience Values we got was small, moreover, after Ranking Up twice, the amount of Experience Values that we need to Level Up became very large, making it very difficult for us to Level Up, although I killed many things since I became an ogre, I didn't Level Up as much as I expected I would.
Although raising our overall power is important, in some situations we can rely only on individual strength, making it impossible for me to protect the important things to me if I'm weak.
That's why, I wanted to increase the Levels of our elites now.
I left the base to Rusty Iron Knight, who is acting as Redhead's instructor and Female Knight, and as insurance, I left behind three relatively big clones and a platoon of black skeletons.
Well, in the first place, the human army's goal is only the elves. They won't go out of their way to attack the home of another race residing in a place far from the Elves' Village
After sunset, I mounted Kumajiro and the others all mounted their respective familiars, before advancing into the forest.
The proportion of [Mages] at our destination is low, the unit camping there consisted mostly of those who have Jobs like [Heavy Warriors] and [Knights] which specialize in close-combat with high defense and offense in exchange for low mobility.
The unit was comprised of just a few under six hundred fighter. There wasn't a single demi-human, only veteran soldiers without a single conscript among them. Because there is another unit taking a nearby route, I intended to reduce their numbers as much as possible in a short frame of time before making our retreat.
We arrived at the enemy's encampment after riding for about an hour.
At this moment, darkness has already covered the forest, so we can make use of undeads, besides, humans can't see in the dark, making it easier for us to launch a surprise attack at them.
We stopped at a hill overlooking the encampment littered with tents and fireplaces from a distance and observed the enemy. There was only one enemy that we had to look out for, a white-haired old knight with a great mustache. Even when eating, he didn't put away his armor and black iron short spear that had a red blade with countless small thorns protruding from it, his armor was a scalemail that emitted a divine-like pale white light.
From the old knight's features and equipment, I could identify him as one from the "List of Strong Officers from the Kingdom and the Empire" that I made using the information I got from Rusty Iron Knight, Female Knight and other officers belonging to the human army that we captured.
Belonging to the Empire, he was a man known by the name "Eisen Ritter", who was renowned as an adventurer when he was still young. His black iron short spear is an [Ancient]-Rank magic item that he obtained by himself from one of the Empire's [Age of the Gods Dungeons]. It seems to be a spear with the power to inflict powerful Curses on a target with the slightest scratch, it's called [Barbed Spear of Cursed Wounds].
The white scalemail that he's equipping seems to be an armor-type magic item made using the materials he got from killing the white dragon that was protecting the [Barbed Spear of Cursed Wounds].
I absolutely want to taste the spear and the armor, in addition to their owner.
Deciding that this somewhat troublesome Eisen would be the first enemy to be killed, I prepared to launch a surprise attack that will eliminate the enemy's greatest force, Eisen, right off the bat, this will increase our chances of being able to wipe them out before having to retreat, plus it's safer.
As insurance, I decided to use my vermilion spear, taking it out from my [Item Box], then loading it into my silver arm, which I transformed into a ballista.
I activated [Job - Assassin] to raise my assassination rate, and because I was attacking using a ballista which is a long-range weapon, I activated [Job - Archer] and [Job - Hunter] to greatly increase the attack's power and accuracy, which I overlapped with [Throw] and [Needleshot] for further increase in accuracy and power. Then, I aimed at Eisen's torso and fired the vermilion spear.
After erasing all of my signs and firing the vermillion spear at Eisen who was sitting in the center of the enemy's camp, approximately three hundred meters away, it flew in his direction like a red comet rather than a bolt, landing on his white dragon scalemail clad body, and piercing it very easily.
As expected, even Eisen couldn't detect an attack fired at him at such high speed from outside his perception range.
His last expression was quite impressive, he looked completely bewildered, not understanding what exactly happened to him in that split second.
A few seconds after the vermillion spear pierced through him, the shattering sound of the soup plate that fell to the ground from his hands reverberated in the center of the enemy's camp where it became calm after the soldiers saw the hole in Eisen's body.
- At this moment, history's greatest, legendary one-sided surprise attack began.
- Who cares about fighting fair and square, that crap is for vegetarians.
- After all, in nature where the law is survival of the fittest, which also applies to wars, those who remain standing in the end are the law, they're justice, deciding what's right and what's wrong.
Thinking about these things unrelated to the battle, my attention got distracted a little, then I focused back to observe the enemy's situation.
After piercing through Eisen's body, the vermilion spear didn't slow down and stabbed deep into the ground, leaving behind a hole matching its trajectory.
There were many soldiers standing around Eisen's corpse that had a big hole in the place that was previously his chest, wondering what exactly happened. They looked silly with their mouths hung open, they simply couldn't believe the scene before them.
Although they are trying to accept the reality that Eisen had died, it seems like they feel like it's a hallucination because it was simply too sudden.
After waiting for more soldiers to move close to Eisen's body for some time, I activated one of the vermillion spear's abilities [Army of Blood-dyed Crimson Spears (Tseng Pesch)].
The moment I activated it, without any warning, vermilion spears sprang out from the ground. Countless vermilion spears sprang from their blind spots below their feet at high speeds, killing or heavily injuring all the soldiers within 100 meters radius of the original spear.
ADD A PHOTO TO THIS GALLERY
It would have been okay to kill all of the enemies in the spear's radius, but I didn't want to decrease the amount of Experience Values everyone else could obtain.
Laughing at the commotion caused by the sudden attack, we charged the enemy.
We took advantage of the confusion caused by the surprise attack to dispose of the enemy as quickly as possible.
At this point, trying to reorganize their lines and mount a counterattack against us is almost impossible for them. Which means, our surprise attack was a success.
I intend to annihilate them down to the last man, so I stationed black skeletons around the perimeter of the camp to finish off anyone who tries to run away.
It was a very easy job to annihilate the masses of disoriented soldiers.
The speed of the humans' horses couldn't be compared to the speed of demon bears, orthruses, hind bears and triple-horned horses. We covered the distance between us in the blink of an eye, spread out, and swung our weapons down at the confused soldiers.
Ogakichi-Kun's familiar took advantage of his speed and physique to rush the enemy soldiers, some got trampled and their organs flew around, while others got blown away after clashing against his huge build.
Ogakichi-kun swung his battle-axe from atop the hind bear, scattering flames at the many [Heavy Warriors] around him.
Probably due to experience, despite their confusion, they were still able to quickly prepare their multi-layered shield formation and block the battle axe. Due to the clash, a sharp metallic sound echoed.
Though, unable to block the flames that flew towards them, the soldiers at the first row got incinerated by the intense heat and the shields in the multi-layered shield formation got bent into the shape "く" due to the extreme heaviness of the attack.
The defensive power of many [Heavy Warriors] was almost meaningless before Ogakichi-kun.
As usual, he has great destructive power. Also, Ogakichi-kun's [Divine Protection] increased the amount of flames he can produce, thus the flames spread even more than what the axe can normally do, enlarging the damage and creating a mass of charred bodies in the process.
An ogre that possessed power great enough to bend shields, the ability to engulf his surroundings in flames and a problematic tower shield that made breaking through his defenses almost impossible.
There's no doubt, that from an enemy's point of view, he was an object of fear.
Dhammi-chan used her [Eyes of Bewitchment] to control the enemy soldiers and those who could not resist it were made to kill their allies.
She wanted to create as many victims as possible without dirtying her own hands. By the way, she can still gain Experience Values even when using this method, the efficiency is very good too.
However, as one would expect, she couldn't brainwash every single one. There were those who managed to resist her [Eyes of Bewitchment] by using magic items, arts, or other methods, though those who managed to completely resist it were very few, so most of them had their movements considerably slowed down.
She dealt with those who managed to resist her ability either by skewering them with ice spears that she created using her [Divine Protection], froze them to death, or slashed their bodies using the ice claymore that I gave her as a present.
Her appearance when she took the trouble to throw the enemies she slayed into the air, cut them apart using the ice claymore, showering in the raining down blood pleasantly, mysteriously looked both charming and terrifying. The sight of her licking the blood sticking on her cheek with her tongue looked bone-chilling.
In a place a little far away from me, while screaming a war cry, Asue-chan smashed the ground with her war-pick.
Earth walls rose from the sides, depriving the enemies in front of her from escaping. Then, the ground split open and swallowed those failed to escape before the walls rose, one after another.
Because all of her swings were packed full of strength, they leave significant openings, the enemy soldiers tried making use of them, coordinating their timing to launch a concentrated attack at her, but their steel swords were not able to even scratch Asue-chan, who's a half-earth lord, a species with high defensive powers among all half-lords. Even their attacks' shocks got absorbed by her thick muscles without causing any damage to her.
After seeing that normal attacks were meaningless against her, some tried to attack her using Combat Arts, however, the slight gap before the Combat Arts could be activated became a target and unlike the big moves she used until now, she burst their bodies open with fast attacks, like rock-crushing fists, kicks, and tackles.
Asue-chan's cheerful, hearty laughter reverberated in the middest of the enemy soldiers' screams.
Using magic, Supesei-san created a muddy stream that washed away the soldiers who were in a somewhat far away place from her.
Simply speaking, it was an attack that dumped humans into something like a washing machine which was filled with metal armor, spears, swords and so on. The fate of these soldiers was miserable.
It was as if she was cleaning the battlefield, seeing this, a wry smile appeared on my face.
The thirty blood swords Burasato-san created shredded the enemy soldiers as they brushed past them, they even grew bigger in size after absorbing their vicitims' blood.
The blades rotating at high speeds sliced any enemies who entered their range to small pieces. Burasato-san's red skin was dyed even redder by their blood. Her scarlet red figure madly slaying the enemies looked like nothing but a death god.
This is not a battle anymore, it's just a one-sided mass slaughter. In the first place, all of our species are inherently vastly stronger than humans, so it's only to be expected that this will be the result when that strength is further refined through harsh daily training.
While I thought about that, I cut down the enemy's numbers down using my halberd that Blacksmith-san reinforced with [Spirit Stones].
About twenty minutes after our attack began, the battle ended and the silence of the night returned.
Right after I hit Eisen with the vermilion spear, we surrounded the camp with earthen walls and I stationed the black skeletons outside, so most likely no one managed to get away. In addition, I used [Conceal] on everyone, so even if there are any survivors, it's not that big of a problem as they don't know of our real appearances.
With this, our goal today has been accomplished.
After pulling the vermilion spear from the ground, I collected the things that looked useful using my threads, then ate the bloody meat of our dead enemies.
Because there were so many, I activated [Improved Digestion], [Vampirephilia] and [Metamorphosis] to efficiently devour all of them at once.
Ability [Wind Blade] learned
Ability [Wind Storm] learned
Ability [Inhibit Regeneration] learned
Ability [Recognition Interference] learned
Ability [Uppercut] learned
Ability [Heavy Slash] learned
Ability [Warrior's Lineage] learned
Ability [Knight's Lineage] learned
Ability [Job - Dual Swordsman] learned
Ability [Job - Axe Lord] learned
Ability [Job - Spear Lord] learned
Ability [Survival Instinct] learned
Ability [Familicide] learned
Ability [Enhanced Arm Strength] learned
Ability [Hawk Eye] learned
Ability [Job - Berserker] learned
Ability [Chickenhearted] learned
Ability [Job - Grappler] learned
Ability [All Martial Arts Proficiency] learned
Ability [Flying Slash] learned
Ability [Crescent Flash] learned
Ability [Hundred Blossoms of A Thousand Spears] learned
Ability [Rush] learned
Ability [Heavy Axe Strike] learned
Ability [Create Trap] learned
Then I proceeded to eat today's main dish, Eisen, although most of his torso disappeared, turning into scraps of meat that flew in every direction, I could still secure enough meat that can be eaten from his body.
It would have been fine to keep the armor and the spear, but I decided to eat them as well.
Crunch, crunch. The armor had a crispy texture and tasted refreshing, the short spear had a hard, slightly sticky texture and a rich taste.
Ability [Grand Cross] learned
Ability [Job - Master Swordsman] learned
Ability [Job - Dragon Slayer]
Ability [Dragon Scale Formation] learned
Ability [Cursed Wounds] learned
We returned to the base with faces full of smiles, satisfied with the Experience Values we got and the abilities I obtained.