Chapter 457 - 205: The Battle Ends
Chapter 457: Chapter 205: The Battle Ends
As the Centaur Warriors were being steadily driven back and slaughtered by the Gnolls, no one noticed that one Centaur had become separated from the main force.
That person was none other than General Quintus.
The battlefield was a chaotic melee, plain and simple. General Quintus had no intention of making it back alive today.
With the Gnolls’ relentless assault and the Centaur Clan’s retreat, General Quintus had now fallen a great distance behind the Centaur army.
A pack of Bloodthirsty Jackal Wolfmen surrounded him, relentlessly attacking General Quintus.
Even General Quintus had to be wary of these persistent pests.
If these pests were all he had to deal with, that would have been one thing.
The real danger was an arrow that kept appearing out of nowhere. The Fighting Qi imbued in it was bizarre; though weaker than his own, it could devour his Fighting Qi!
This made it impossible for General Quintus to guard against completely.
An Extraordinary’s Fighting Qi was finite; this was true even for those at the legendary tier.
In truth, a person’s Fighting Qi reserves were largely determined by the Golden Ninth Tier. Reaching the legendary tier was about comprehending laws and refining its purity.
Finally, as General Quintus’s Fighting Qi was steadily depleted, wounds began to appear on his body.
He knew his fate was sealed.
With a furious roar, General Quintus reversed the flow of all the Fighting Qi in his body, pulling it back into his Dantian.
"AHHH!!!"
A piercing pain shot through him, and General Quintus felt as if his head were about to split open. His vision turned into a vast expanse of white, with no end in sight.
He knew that he had now returned to the embrace of the Great Power.
....
"Holy shit!"
Robson had never imagined the enemy Centaur would pull a stunt like this.
The self-detonation of a single Golden Tier warrior could clear out all fighters within a hundred-meter radius.
So what about one at the legendary tier?
Robson didn’t know, and right now, he didn’t want to find out.
The blast was so fierce that it forced him to activate his full Fighting Qi Body Protection, yet the aftershock still sent him flying ten meters.
After checking himself for internal injuries, Robson looked up at the spectacular scene. The explosion of a legendary-tier Extraordinary had created a mushroom cloud... ’So this is the legendary tier?’ he thought.
Just then, due to the explosion, a long string of red text appeared on Robson’s Mount & Blade panel. Focusing his consciousness on it, Robson discovered that General Quintus had taken more than three hundred Gnolls with him.
However...
Robson felt no pain over the loss. On the contrary, he began to smile.
’Worth it! Totally worth it!’
A few hundred Gnolls for a legendary-tier expert—and one of the enemy’s leaders, at that.
Robson looked up at the sky. To his relief, the Centaur Clan’s Bloodthirsty Cloud Qi hadn’t dissipated, though a large chunk of it had abruptly vanished.
....
This time, the Beastman General’s death did not fill the Centaur Warriors with fear. On the contrary, General Quintus had ignited the fire in their hearts.
A group of second and third-tier Centaur Warriors charged forward furiously.
Unfortunately for them, the Jackal Wolfman Warriors had not yet emerged from their bloodthirsty state.
Facing the charge of the Centaur Warriors, the Jackal Wolfman Warriors showed no fear, continuing their own valiant push forward.
The warriors of both armies were no longer holding anything back.
In a situation like this, the outcome depended on the warriors’ raw strength!
And clearly, when it came to raw strength, Robson had his Mount & Blade panel...
The Centaur Warriors soon discovered that even when they gave it their all, even when they fought with every ounce of their being, they still couldn’t defeat this Gnoll force.
This time, however, no one retreated. Behind them was South City.
The Gnolls’ encirclement of the Centaurs grew tighter and tighter, until they had completely annihilated the Centaur Warriors.
The battle lasted a long time, from General Quintus’s first furious roar to the glorious death of the very last warrior.
"AWOOOO!"
The Centaur Warriors’ battle had ended, but for the Gnolls, the fighting had only just begun.
....
The Centaur Warriors’ desperate, bloody struggle had indeed bought a significant amount of time for the Centaur civilians of South City to retreat.
But there were too many Centaur civilians... a hundred thousand of them. A full hundred thousand!
It was simply an impossible number to evacuate in a single day.
As the Gnolls drew closer, the Centaur civilian evacuation finally lost all semblance of order.
The Centaurs cried out in horror, watching the very Gnolls who were once their slaves and servants charge forward to kill their wives, their sons, their daughters... plundering their wealth and cutting them down where they stood.
For the Gnolls, this was a moment of release! A complete and utter catharsis!
Hundreds of years of resentment, hundreds of years of humiliation...
From the moment they first set foot on these grasslands, their hatred had been accumulating.
It wasn’t just the Gnolls. For the earth goblins and Kobolds behind them, it was also a release—a chance to charge into their former masters’ strongholds and smash everything to pieces.
At this moment, a deep-seated complex was finally, thoroughly broken.
......
The city-wide massacre lasted for a full day and night, from morning until evening, and from evening until the next dawn.
The air was filled with constant screams and weeping.
At first, Robson thought his psyche could handle it, and he later tried to rationalize it as a matter of racial conflict.
But in the end, he still couldn’t stomach it. It was brutal! Far too brutal!
He then led the Gray Rock Bear Race out of the Centaur King City, waiting until the mist of bloodlust above it gradually dispersed before re-entering.
Upon his return, the Centaur King City had been stained crimson. Corpses were strewn everywhere, making it impossible to distinguish between Centaur and Gnoll.
Lining the roads were Jackal Wolfman Warriors who had collapsed from the backlash of their excessive bloodlust, too exhausted to even move. Among them were even a number of fifth-tier Jackal Wolfman leaders.
The same was true for the Kobolds and the other assorted races.
The scene was enough to make even the battle-hardened Robson feel nauseous.
Robson searched through the ranks of Gnolls and finally found the handful of Jackal Wolfman Chiefs.
They were all completely spent from the ordeal.
The Gnolls’ bloodlust was a double-edged sword that had to be used with caution.
However, as Extraordinaries, they were in better shape than the others and could still barely walk.
Robson ordered his men into the city to drag all the weakened Jackal Wolfman Warriors outside. He then had them spend a day scouring the entire Centaur King City, driving all the obvious wealth, cattle, and sheep out of the Royal City.
Once that was done, Robson gave a direct order: burn the entire Centaur King City to the ground!
There was no other choice but to burn it.
There were simply too many corpses; sooner or later, they would cause a plague.
Robson’s army was still on the grasslands, and he couldn’t afford a plague breaking out. Otherwise, the first to suffer would undoubtedly be Lord Robson himself.
The great fire burned relentlessly. The Centaur King City, with its centuries of history, was reduced to ash and scattered into the sky on gusts of fierce wind.
The Royal City, established by the Centaur Royal Family at the start of the Beastman Empire’s reforms, had now been breached for the first time—and also for the last.
It was utterly obliterated.