Chapter 65 Chapter 64 Pursuit
The shouts of the many-eyed ogres behind grew louder, shifting from initial calls to curses.
The longhorn ogre’s dull mind sensed something was amiss, and he turned to take a look.
The ogres “celebrating” formed a thick wall of flesh, and if this was a celebration, it was quite strange.
Ji Ma urged, “Run quickly. If he asks later, just say you didn’t hear.”
At that moment, a distant, anguished scream rang out, the sound akin to throwing a pig into hot water, high-pitched and piercing.
But the ogres were utterly convinced by Ji Ma’s words, believing that this scream represented the failure of their attempts to share the blessings.
The longhorn ogre suddenly remembered the blessings and ran even faster.
At this time, the ogres on the battlefield scattered in a rush, fleeing in all directions.
Ji Ma loved to pursue fleeing enemies. Whenever she caught up with a wounded deserter, she could hack away to her heart’s content without worrying much about retaliation.
She felt an itch in her hands and sighed, “Listening to his voice, he seems very angry. You all keep running, don’t worry; I’ll go back and explain to them.”
The longhorn ogre, belly wobbling as he ran, felt moved by Ji Ma’s words and said, “You really are a good ogre, even though you have the powder skin disease and look ugly.”
Ji Ma silently marked this ogre on her personal blacklist; he was so smelly and ugly it nearly caused her eyes to deform on the spot, yet he still talked about her looks?
She gave a meaningful smile, flapped her wings, turned around, and flew toward the battlefield. Gaining altitude and closing the distance, Ji Ma got a clear view of the battlefield.
In the hero trio, they stood back to back against the earthen wall created by Eve Frostleaf, facing the ogres attacking from all sides, pouring out their full power.
Ogre corpses surrounded them in a circle of death, each in various states of demise: some with their legs frozen in ice, some with arrows embedded in their heads, some with broken limbs, half-charred, burning, or heads crushed. The number of dead ogres was difficult to estimate immediately.
Ji Ma smartly scanned the fleeing ogres; there were about twenty, half of which were already dead. Just as she remembered, ogres loved to flee, and while they would run, upon discovering their wounds were nearly healed, they would regroup and rush back into battle, which was quite annoying.
However, it was clear that Eve Frostleaf didn’t want to give the ogres a chance.
She exerted her legs, lightly leaping onto the earthen wall, looking down from above, drawing her longbow tightly to shoot at the ogres within range, specifically aiming for their kneecaps. The ogres fell one after another, George following up to fell them, but the ogres were fast and not just running in one direction.
Before long, they moved out of Eve Frostleaf’s precise range, and she could only shoot elemental arrows.
A somewhat lucky ogre, not heavily injured, was struggling to flee, wielding a weapon and glancing back occasionally to dodge Eve Frostleaf’s arrows. Ji Ma dove down, gripping the spear tightly, the blood-red tip aimed directly at the “lucky ogre.”
The lucky ogre roared, raising his club to confront Ji Ma.
Ji Ma didn’t dodge; she charged straight down as she saw a ghostly blue arrow tracing a high-angled parabolic arc in the air, flying slowly.
At close to two hundred meters, the elemental arrow appeared slow, but it was faster than Ji Ma, precisely hitting the lucky ogre’s back, exploding into a massive splash of icy water, as if someone poured a bucket of ice water over his head.
The blue icy water engulfed the lucky ogre’s head, encasing him in ice, the icy water mixture instantly stripping the heat from his muscles.
Ji Ma precisely pierced her spear into his face; the ogre’s head snapped back, and Ji Ma smoothly withdrew her branch axe-spear. The lucky ogre fell heavily behind her, and Ji Ma gave a thumbs up to Eve Frostleaf in the distance.
Eve Frostleaf lowered her longbow and raised her forearm to indicate she had seen, choosing not to shoot anymore.
It was likely out of range.
Ji Ma hovered in the air, looking over the battlefield; far away, six ogres still lived, scattered in different directions and isolated from each other by a considerable distance.
This chase was enough.
She thought, flying toward the two women, pondering how to find a chance to get close.
Instinctively, she felt the magic wind gathering overhead, and alertly looked up to see a large area of the sky darken. With the help of the Tyndall effect, Ji Ma spotted a dazzling beam of light descending from the sky, creating a bright, blinding spot on the ground.
Ji Ma immediately understood that Jenna had created a magnifying glass to focus sunlight.
The light spot easily caught up with the distant ogres, following them no matter how they moved, as if they were ants under a magnifying glass, unable to escape the fate of becoming charred corpses.
First, smoke began to rise from their bodies, thickening and mixed with fire, the smoking ogres ran desperately trying to escape the light spot. Ultimately, they fell to the ground, clawing at the earth, but failed to escape the spot and were burned to charred remains.
The other fleeing ogres could not escape the light spot either.
Ji Ma flew to Jenna, praising, “Jenna is amazing! Your magnifying glass focus attack is more precise and further than before.”
Jenna seemed a bit unhappy, lost in thought. Her facial muscles reluctantly formed a smile as she responded, “Thank you for the compliment.”
Eve Frostleaf “floated down” from the stone wall, facing the ogre corpses, her pale pink lips parted as she breathed out roaring elemental flames, incinerating all the ogre bodies.
Ji Ma noticed one familiar ogre still alive, missing four limbs; his back must have been stomped down hard, bending the ogre in half with the center concaved and both ends lifted. The injuries were severe; even if it was an ogre, it would take a while to recover. Fortunately, he was an ogre; otherwise, he would have long since died.
On closer inspection, it was the many-eyed ogre.
Jenna was worried, saying, “It was George who did this. He has always been righteous, but that was rather concerning just now.”
At that moment, George rushed over, running like a whirlwind, and nodded to Ji Ma from a distance before heading straight for the many-eyed ogre.
Jenna shouted, “George, that’s enough.”
George looked at Jenna.
Jenna said, “Your emotions feed the Blood God.”
George lifted his helmet, silent, walking toward the three women. Eve Frostleaf raised her hand and threw a fireball, incinerating the many-eyed ogre completely.
Jenna said to George, “Be wary of the Dark Four Gods.”
“Thank you.”
Ji Ma rather looked forward to George’s downfall, as long as he didn’t believe in the Filth, she wouldn’t have to worry about him swinging his giant sword and slicing her into pieces to make Ji Ma kebabs.
“We should first gather the survivors.” George looked at the distant white wasteland, where two hundred survivors were scattered, like sesame sprinkled on white dough. Fortunately, they were all facing the same direction, with some survivors lingering a hundred meters away, watching them.
George continued, “I see the ogre’s main force is coming this way.”
Jenna agreed.
Eve Frostleaf nodded.
But Ji Ma shook her head, “No, why don’t we kill some more ogres instead?”
George said, “Killing ogres isn’t easy. Your tricks may have worked significantly, but if the other half of the ogres weren’t fooled by you, the ogre army would be here by now. We’d only be able to gather some survivors. Unless you can trick them into jumping into a pit so we can burn them all, we should retreat for now.”
“We have a mobility advantage,” Ji Ma said. “That half-witted ogre is still chasing after blessings; we can catch up, kill them, and eat as much meat as we can, then swagger away in front of the ogre army.”
As she spoke, Ji Ma couldn’t help but recall the sweet moments of victory before, with iron hooves trampling their comrades into mush while flaunting to the enemy forces, which excited her, lifting her tail high.
“What about the survivors?” George asked. “We came to save people.”
Saving people is truly troublesome. I’ll just divine which guy can be a guide, make a deal with them, follow the group, and take down those ogres. That longhorn ogre was missing an axe on that dumb face of his.
But Ji Ma knew that saying this would get the other three to disagree. They wanted to save more people, not kill more ogres.
She thought further that if they saved everyone, they’d still have to figure out how to accommodate those two hundred survivors.
Seriously, how did so many survive? It’s a hassle.
“Okay, here’s what we’ll do.” Ji Ma suppressed the bloodlust from the “branch axe-spear.” “I’ll use my mobility to gather the survivors and withdraw to the planned location. How about you guys go kill those weakened ogres?”
George thought for a moment and agreed, while the other two women didn’t object.
“Then it’s settled.”
“Wait.” Ji Ma handed the “branch axe-spear” to George, saying, “It’s making me crave blood; please help me satisfy its bloodlust and suppress its negative effects.”
George took the axe-spear, “Alright.”
“By the way, find the longhorn ogre,” Ji Ma said. “Hack that axe hard into his ugly face.”
