Chapter 81 Chapter Eighty: Numerical Advantage
The smile on the ugly face of the Troll River Witch froze for a moment, then she turned to flee, shouting for the other trolls to save her. At first, her limbs trembled with fear, then she was struck by a rocket, her sticky black hair burned completely, and finally, George leaped up and used his Holy Slashing technique to sever her head.
Her head flew into the air, spinning, as she saw her body engulfed in flames, tumbling to the ground.
The Troll River Witch was slain.
At this moment, the stone wall that had previously isolated the troll king from the trolls was cracking under the impact of countless huge clubs, with fissures spreading across the entire wall.
Bald Qiang stood guard next to the troll king’s ice amber, occasionally exchanging fire with a few charging trolls. The dwarves, carrying round steel shields, rushed to the ice amber’s side, preparing to form a human wall to separate the troll king from the trolls, creating an opportunity for a strike.
Saintess Jenna raised her hands, drawing the last bit of magical wind from this land, ready to cast another battlefield spell.
With Bald Qiang’s sight, Jima noticed that deep wounds on the troll king’s neck and chest, inside the ice amber, were growing flesh buds that twisted together, healing at a visible pace. She controlled Bald Qiang to knock on the ice amber, discovering it was actually filled with water, the ice water enveloping the troll king.
At the same time, she spotted a faint crack.
Controlling Bald Qiang, she struck down with a sword, the ordinary magic steel great sword vibrating, only causing the crack to spread further.
Jima suddenly realized that the “ice amber” was nearing its expiration. She controlled Bald Qiang, looked at George, and shouted:
“George, come defend!”
George glanced over, even though only a slit was open in his visor revealing part of his azure eyes, Jima still felt two sharp, disdainful gazes piercing through her chest, stabbing through her heart; they were the eyes of an evil enemy.
Jima finally realized that she had been donning the skin of her past life. She gently covered her chest, brows furrowed, rationally contemplating, with an increase of fear in her heart.
George flapped his wings, landing on the other side, separated from Bald Qiang by a block of ice amber, just as he was about to speak.
The stone wall before them collapsed, and trolls surged in like a flood breaking a dam. Another fiery orb appeared above the trolls’ heads, slowing their charge.
The first confrontation was between George and Bald Qiang.
With superhuman strength, Bald Qiang and George barely held their ground against the tide of trolls.
The dwarves formed a shield wall, each barely reaching the knees of the trolls, who would stomp and swing clubs at them. The dwarves were as tough as copper peas, stomping over them would crush their toes, send them flying like golf balls, but they’d get back up and rejoin the battle without shaking off the dust.
Everyone struggled to hold on, but the first to falter was Jima. She pressed down hard on her chest, controlling Bald Qiang to execute beheading strikes, but after taking down four or five trolls’ heads, she could no longer hold on and dismissed Bald Qiang, who vanished into the tide of trolls.
The fear weighing on the trolls suddenly disappeared. They grew bolder, swinging their clubs with increased force, battering George and the dwarf fighters against Jenna’s fiery orb.
Even George found it incredibly difficult. Despite his formidable strength, divine protection, and the blessings from Jenna, the cramped space filled with trolls pressing against him and hammering him down made it impossible for him to lift his sword; he had already thrown his exquisite golden sword away and grabbed a hammer from his waist, smashing it into the trolls’ bodies, denting them repeatedly.
But that was all he could manage.
At this point, the cracks in the ice amber rapidly spread throughout. George was overwhelmed by the wave of trolls and could no longer be seen. Jenna immediately projected a beam of red light that landed on George’s position.
George instantly transformed into a beam of light, breaking free from the encirclement, becoming human-shaped in the air, flapping a pair of light wings, and shouted towards the battlefield below: “Come!”
The great sword he had previously thrown flew back to his hands, and just as a troll attempted to grab his calf, George dodged, resting the sword on his right shoulder, preparing to strike at the soon-to-emerge troll king.
The ice amber exploded, blue ice mist swirled along with hail, engulfing George, spreading a frost nova.
Countless hailstones shattered against the dull armor of the dwarves, killing the armed refugees that had come to help. The frost nova froze the resistant dwarves, their armor joints encased in ice.
The trolls charged into the ice mist, knocking a dwarven ice sculpture aside, and the already struggling dwarf line collapsed completely.
Jima stood atop the stone wall, staring at the still lingering ice mist as it brightened with a flash of light. Not long after, the troll king dashed out from the mist, injured with an additional wound on his back, diving into the tide of trolls, marking the complete failure of the assassination attempt.
Injured and battered, George had no choice but to raise his left hand, the finger of his iron glove shooting out a white light ball as a signal to retreat.
Everyone had done their best; this last explosive effort had drained too many extraordinary resources, making a second strike impossible, they could only retract their line.
Jima shook her head, took up her brass horn, and blew forcefully.
But the dwarves were unwilling to retreat, especially the butcher wielding two axes, who vigorously struck at the trolls’ knees. George had to pick him up from behind, while he flailed his little legs in the air, shouting and cursing:
“Don’t carry me away! I want a glorious death!”
After retracting their line, relying on the terrain, they resisted step by step, moving out from the second stone wall and taking up positions at the third. As the trolls dulled in their offensive, unable to organize a strong attack, they dragged back their yet-to-be-burned kin’s corpses and retreated to regroup.
Jima put away her branch axe, leaning against the third stone wall, took a deep breath, and her face turned pale.
George approached, removing the somewhat deformed Shalel helmet, the visor unable to lift due to its distortion.
Jima instinctively turned her head away, avoiding his gaze because she recalled the fierce and righteous look George had previously shown.
She remained alive, not facing judgment from George. Wasn’t it just relying on this superficial skin and a facade riddled with lies?
“Are you okay?”
“There’s a little over twenty percent magic left.” Jima fixed her eyes on him, smiling: “I can hold on, what about you?”
“I’ve got a fracture.” George said: “Jenna healed it.”
Jima closed her eyes: “Mm.”
After being “educated” by three women, George was no longer the same ironclad man he used to be; he could sense that Jima was in a bad mood, but what exactly was bothering her? Why was she feeling this way?
He didn’t know.
So he asked, “Jima, why do you feel bad?”
Jima lifted her right eyelid:
“I think in this situation, feeling good is abnormal. I just feel a bit tired.”
It must be an illusion.
George fastened the deformed Shalel helmet, going to count heads and assess their remaining strength.
In the recent battle, the armed refugees had suffered an astonishing one hundred and twenty-two casualties, and subtracting the non-combatant children, the remaining fighters could barely fill one side of a stone wall, enough to intimidate the trolls.
The four extraordinary beings were not seriously hurt but Jenna had consumed a lot of magical power, using battlefield spells, healing the wounded, etc., which depleted much of her magic. Many of the stabilized injured had to wait for her to recover her full magic before they could receive treatment.
She estimated that she had only about thirty percent magic left, more critically, the local magical winds had been nearly depleted, the wind direction was chaotic and difficult to utilize.
To replenish it, they had to wait until the wind was no longer chaotic, Jenna calculated and gave a desperate figure of five days.
Eve Frostleaf was not doing much better, her magic was around thirty percent as well.
The dwarves fared slightly better, having only lost three, while the others sustained minor injuries.
However, a dwarf engineer protested, saying that Eve Frostleaf intentionally struck her teammates, as an arrow detonated above his head, leaving him deafened. Eve Frostleaf insisted that she had saved his dwarven life. Although she could have aimed higher to shoot the trolls’ faces, avoiding the deafening of the dwarven “teammate.”
The dwarves were very angry, arguing that “the long-eared ones should see the strength of the mountain boys.”
The collapse of the first and second stone walls interrupted this quarrel. The dwarves pointed at the collapsed walls, grinning widely as they said: “Look, the craftsmanship of the long-eared ones.”
“Fake stone is just brittle.”
After saying that, they left comfortably.
The morale of the armed refugees was low, as they counted the trolls’ losses. Fifty-four charred troll corpses remained on the battlefield, which slightly raised their spirits.
During the temporary meeting among the four, Jima complained: “After all this time, the number of trolls we’ve killed is about the same as we four killed together.”
George replied: “We couldn’t annihilate the enemy; the trolls’ bodies that we couldn’t burn were all taken away by their kind.”
Jima still felt this battle was quite foolish, saying:
“It was wrong from the start, which is why it was so hard to fight. To be honest, these trolls are already dumb enough. If it were me, I would definitely not rush to fight; I’d scout the area in advance, knowing this is a ravine, sending someone to find another exit, flanking from both sides to leverage our numerical advantage; if they had done that, we wouldn’t have had to run just now.”
“Do you have any good suggestions?”
“There’s a sage in ancient East who didn’t say this truth, ‘The fool draws his sword against the stronger; the wise draws it against the weaker.’” Jima sighed: “This is how it ends when one clashes head-on with a strong opponent; the trolls have died more than the four of us managed to ambush and kill.”
“Feels like you adapted someone else’s words a bit.”
“This just shows I’m not afraid of authority and am good at independent thinking.”
Afterward, the four discussed and concluded as follows.
Given the current situation, they couldn’t retreat and could only rely on the terrain to hold out here.
Outside the valley, the trolls remained outside, unafraid of the ice and snow, settling in, showing no signs of retreat.
George said: “They’ve suffered so many dead and wounded, yet they’re not retreating. They must be after something.”
“What else could it be?” Jima lazily replied: “Breaking through here, at most, they would have two hundred people to eat, it’s not worth it at all. It means that one of the dark four gods has offered the troll king a price, wanting either living people or corpses for some kind of sacrifice, and it must be a great deal, otherwise, given the trolls’ nature, they would have run away long ago.”
On the other side.
In the Arctic.
Above the ice was a group of penguins, squawking and using their sharp beaks to feast on a polar bear.
Demon King Marlux was stepping on the thick snow, watching the demonized penguins share the polar bear, trying to pass the time.
Next to him, a penguin with three eyes squawked:
“Eternal God’s Chosen, Master of the End, Chosen by the Four Gods… Great Demon King, Marlux, please be patient, my master promises that with just a little more time, once the sacrifice is completed, you won’t have to walk through the Arctic, but can directly kill through a stable portal.”
But Demon King Marlux punched the three-eyed penguin into the adjacent iceberg.
“W-why?”
“I asked you just now.” Demon King Marlux said: “Your master actually sought a group of trolls for the sacrifice.”
The three-eyed penguin felt very wronged, poking his head out of the ice hole and saying: “You clearly didn’t ask me.”
Demon King Marlux was certain that the future could change.
Because he had just foreseen himself asking the three-eyed penguin questions and received the answers. Now not asking and punching the three-eyed penguin ahead of time didn’t trigger a paradox.
While Demon King Marlux was troubled.
Jima was also feeling anxious, though not as much as he was, primarily because she didn’t know that the trolls’ sacrifice was intended to summon Demon King Marlux directly. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been unconcerned about the lives of the armed refugees.
Her current worry was about another meeting. Jenna had seen an ogre entering the troll camp, projecting the image onto the ground with light.
Jima took a glance and said, “This is bad; everyone should run.”
The second sentence was: “This is likely ogre mercenaries, and with our current capability, there’s a question of whether we can even withstand the next trolls’ attack. Plus with ogre mercenaries, there’s no need to fight; they’ll surround us from both sides, ensuring our defeat.”
