‘AWUUUUUUUUUUU’

The werewolves started moving.

On top of the western wall, Acma expressionlessly watching the werewolves that were closing in. He unsheathed his sword with a calm manner and moved toward the frontline.

“Alice, I’m going to fight those werewolves head-on. Collect all their data and use it for our defence strategy”

“Yes, Master”

The information of the enemies he needed was about their speed, reaction, defence and strength but the most crucial data was their speed and reaction because they would rely on these two factors to bypassed the defence line. That’s why Acma would be the first one to face those werewolves because this will let Alice to concentrate on controlling the guardians.

The werewolves were still about 500 metres from where Acma was currently standing. From his observation, it was clear that some of them were sluggish and their movement were somehow look restrained. Acma was delighted seeing this because the effect of his poisonous fog was better than he expected.

“They might be sluggish, but I still don’t know about their strength. Let’s find out”, he thought and then immediately he sprinting towards the incoming enemies.

Watching a lone swordsman sprinting towards them unhesitant, several werewolves quickly changed their direction and moved to intercepted him like a group of wolves toying with their prey.

“This puny human really couldn’t wait to die. Brothers, I will have its heart”, one of the vanguard said it cheerfully.

“Hahahaha. Its heart belong to the one who kill it first”, replied another as it hasten its pace.

The werewolves were physically stronger than humans so they were arrogant. Unfortunately for them that this lone swordsman was a human with a level they couldn’t hope to reach in their lifetime.

‘WIND BLADE’

A low shout was heard.

They immediately halted their advance as their face were stricken with fear. In front of them, a large arc of a glowing pale blue light with several metres width rapidly flying, cutting everything on its path. One of the werewolves tried to dodge while shrieking in fear, but its effort was futile as its body was cleanly cut into two parts.

“DAMMMMNNNN!!!! Magic swordsman. Quick, alert the lead.....”, it couldn’t finish the word when another wind blade cut its head off.

Acma was expressionless even after killing several dozens of werewolves. These level 40-50 monsters were not enough to give trouble. His tactics was simple. He fired several wind blades towards the incoming werewolves and then killed any survivor with his sword. Occasionally, he used Earth Spike spell too. With his superior strength and agility, he easily outmanoeuvred the enemies but he never delved too deep into enemy ranks.

“Alice, how’s the fight?” asked Acma while evading a claw attack.

“The werewolves manage to slip through our first defence line due to interference from the centaurs, but all of them were killed inside the wall. As for the centaurs, I allocate 25 guardians to intercept them. Elder Ma had dispatched two hunter squads to fortify our defence”, replied Alice.

“Is there any casualties?” he asked again.

“No injuries so far. Most of the enemies become a hedgehog once they step on the wall. The luckier one were cleaved into two parts before their foot touch the floor and the luckiest who manage to touch the floor have become a mincemeat. Looks like they never anticipate that our defence is tighter inside the wall”

‘EARTH SPIKE’

“How many werewolves have been killed?”

“283 werewolves and counting”

“Good, that was close to half of their numbers. If I kill their leader, this fight will be over. Tighten the defence”

“Yes, Master”

Acma took a breather and scanning his surrounding, looking for the leader. Currently he was surrounded by his enemies, but they clearly terrified of him, unwilling to get close.

“Hey you. Yes, you. Where is your leader? I want to fight him”, asked Acma nonchalantly as he pointed his finger at the werewolf in front of him.

‘...’

The pointed werewolf just exchanged glances with its companion next to it and didn’t answer the question.

As he tried to open his mouth to rephrase the question, Acma sensed something was approaching at a neck-breaking speed from his left side. Without delay, he raised his sword to block it. At the same time, he lightly jumped backward to reduce the impact of the collision.

‘BOOOMM!!!’

“Grrrrr.... Are you looking for me, human?”

Acma turned his head toward the voice.

Werewolf Captain LVL 64

This was the highest level monster he seen in the battlefield today. Even the leader of the centaurs was just level 56. Its strength also praiseworthy. No wonder it’s attack just now sent Acma flying for several metres.

Without saying anything, Acma dashed toward the newcomer and swung his sword downward, aiming to end the battle as fast as possible. The werewolf captain’s eyes almost pop out, not believing the speed of the human in front of him projected. But it quickly regained its senses and took a step backward to dodge the slash, followed by a horizontal claw slash aimed at Acma’s head.

Without losing momentum, Acma brought his sword to the left and slashed its chest. This time, his attack was fast enough to meet the target and forcing the werewolf captain to retreat further.

“Master Bardalph!!!” one of the nearby werewolves shouted full of worry.

“Shut up you worm”, spat Bardalph. It pressed its right hand on the wound to stop the bleeding. After several seconds, the bleeding stopped and the wound slowly regenerating. Then he glared menacingly at Acma.

“Grrrrrrrr.... You are quite fast for a human. I’ll go all out this time”

The surrounding werewolves murmured excitedly. From their words, looks like Acma was definitely doomed.

‘MIRAGE!!!’

As soon as Bardalph shouted the word, its body blurred for a second and then several of its images appeared. Slowly, they encircled Acma to attack him from all direction.

Facing this move, Acma relaxed his body and closed his eyes. No matter how many doppelgangers the enemy has, only one of them was real. As long as he could determined the timing of the attack via sound, Acma could counter the move.

“Nice skill”, praised Acma. “But it won’t work on me”

‘EARTH SPIKE!!’

Acma immediately used a tier 2 Earth Spike spell and set it as an AOE attack. He felt relieved that it worked as he imagined. An area within 50 metres with Acma as its center was full of earth spike.

One by one, the images of Bardalph disappeared, leaving only the original one, which have been impaled with several spikes and struggling to get free. Adding to its misery, several wind blades was released at its body and limbs, send it tumbling several metres. Luckily it was just a low tier wind blades. If not, Bardalph would surely lost its life.

Everything went quiet. Acma turned his body toward Bardalph and lowered his sword.

“It’s better for you to regroup and retreat. It was meaningless to continue fighting”, advised Acma.

Initially, he wanted to annihilate the whole werewolf troop to prevent future headache. But, considering the location of Orca Village that was surrounded with a hostile forces, annihilating them wasn’t a wise decision at this time because it may incite the enemies to send more troops. If he let the remaining werewolves to retreat, they might warned their people about the strength of Orca Village and make them fearful and hesitated to send another attack. Furthermore, the werewolf captain in front of him was surely a highly regarded warrior within its tribe, so killing it will surely increase the enmity between them and Orca Village.

With full of difficulties, Bardalph stood up. The wounds on its body had stopped bleeding, but losing a lot of blood weaken both its strength and fighting will.

“I’m not trying to humiliate you, but look at your surrounding. Look at the eyes of your troop. There’s nothing but fear. About your allies, it’s only time before they were annihilated. If you’re thinking about your brethren who manage to pass over the wall, all of them were already dead”, explained Acma as short as he could.

Bardalph stubbornly staring dagger at Acma. Then slowly it turned its head around and look at its troop. Bardalph was silent. It took glance at Orca Village, find out that there was no smoke or screaming. Meaning that what Acma just said was right.

“Do you think I will retreat just like that, after all my brethren you killed?” exploded Bardalph. Its eyes emanating with a thick killing intent and ready to attack Acma again.

Acma sighed heavily.

“Do you want everyone to die?” he questioned Bardalph.

“DIEEEEE!!!”, instead of answering, Bardalph lunged toward Acma.

‘PHANTOM STEP’

Acma reappeared behind Bardalph and hit behind its neck hard enough to knock it out. With a loud ‘thud’ sound, it fell on the ground. Acma turned his body around and pointed his finger at the werewolf he questioned earlier. Although all werewolves look similar, but this one was the only uncommon werewolf around.

“You, come here”, shouted Acma but that werewolf turned its head and look behind, hoping that Acma was calling for someone else.

“Tskk, don’t turn around, it’s you that I call. Come here and take your captain. The battle is over already. So go back to where you came from”

That werewolf was hesitant at first, but after its friend nudged it, it slowly stepped forward and carried the unconscious captain on its shoulder. Then they disappeared inside the forest, followed by the other werewolves.

‘AWUUU AWUUUU AWUUUUUUUUU’

A wailing howl could be heard after some time.

“Master, the werewolves are retreating. Should I give a chase?” reported Alice.

“There is no need to chase them. Alice, when all the werewolves have retreated, assign 50 guardians from the western wall and all the guardians from the eastern wall to the main gate. Also, inform Duo Nan that I will return shortly”

“Yes, Master”

Meanwhile,

In front of the main gate, Grufin and its swordsman unit still struggling to breakthrough the final defence line formed by two elite stone golems and an elite mountain harpy. Thus the main gate was still standing firm. These three unit was the summons given by Acma last night. One of the stone golem belong to Chief Pai while the other stone golem and mountain harpy was given to two hunter squad leader.

This final defence line works wonder. The golems just trading all the attacks they received on their sturdy body with a devastating blow of their fist. Each blow if connected, sent the centaurs flying with a shattered bones. To make thing worse, an ear-shattering shriek came from the sky, leaving no room for the centaurs to dodge. Even Grufin itself was rendered immobile by the continuous shriek from the fugly harpy. With these three unit working together, Elder Ma has long given an order to stop firing, so all the hunters on the platform happily enjoyed the show below.

After quite some times, the remaining Grufin’s troop took some distance from the main gate bringing the injured with them under the watchful gaze from the hunters. Grufin and its officers were wrecking their brain on how to breakthrough the main gate. They surely cannot scale the wall and the final defence line was deadly. So they were left with no options. Thankfully the humans had stop attacking, if they didn’t, they surely have long perished from this world.

“Those damn werewolves, what took them so long to open the main gate?”, complained Grufin. The werewolves were his final hope to win this battle because since the beginning, he never dreamed to open the main gate with his troop. That was the werewolves task. If the werewolves failed to penetrate the humans defence and opened the main gate for them, this battle was deemed to lose.

‘AWUUU AWUUUU AWUUUUUUUUU’

“That’s not a howl for victory”, exclaimed a centaur swordsman next to Grufin.

“Master Grufin, look. The troop that went to the western side has returned. They look miserable”, said another centaur swordsman.

Grufin quickly turned his body toward the returning troop. Because of his injury, he could only waited for them to arrive.

“Grufin, the werewolves have retreated. Although we manage to distract the human defence and let them breakthrough, they couldn’t harm the human village at all. I think, those humans had set up a tighter defence behind the wall”, reported Glaraios.

“How come that stupid Bardalph failed? Scum, he couldn’t even accomplish that simplest task”, Grufin raged.

“There is a demonic magic swordsman among the humans. I saw it with my own eyes. It manage to wreck havoc among the werewolves front lines single-handedly and easily defeated Master Bardalph. Grufin, I think the humans inside this village are strange. They’re nothing similar to the humans we knew before. Let's retreat. The werewolves have failed, so we have no mean to enter the village”, said Glaraios.

“What nonsense are you spouting? Are you telling me to retreat?” Grufin raised his voice.

“If you keep stubborn, all of us will be annihilated, just like your younger brother”, Glaraios tried to reason. Then he pointed his finger at the main gate and said, “Look there, look at those stone statues, do you know how strong they are? Look at my troops, we’re thrown into this state by just 25 of those statues. Now the main gate were guarded by 100 of them. Tell me, how are you going to defeat them?”

Grufin was startled and nothing could come out from his mouth. He just stared blankly at Glaraios.

“But my brother is still with them”, Grufin finally managed to calm down.

“Lets the elders think about that. Right now we need to fall back”, replied Glaraios.

Grufin took a deep breath and then ordered his remaining troops to retreat.

Acma who was lurking inside the western forest, silently watched the retreating centaurs.

“It’s time to return. Phantom Step”

Acma returned to Western Wall. After retrieving all his guardians, he walked toward Duo Nan and his squad, who were smiling to their ears. And then, he found out the reason.

Apprentice Knight Duo Nan LVL 34

“Awesome”, he praised.