Chapter Forty-Five: The Great Centaur Tribe (Vote Requested)

PS: Brothers, at the start of the month, I’m asking for a wave of monthly votes.

A centaur tribe with a thousand members could be considered a large tribe. The tribe Chucheng was attacking now was the largest centaur tribe north of the Embroidered River, and the leader of all the other tribes; all the smaller tribes had split from this main one.

Such a massive tribe had a centaur chieftain with a terrifying template at level 36. In terms of level and template alone, he was no weaker than the Black Sail Pirate King...

Of course, when it came to actual strength, there was no comparison—after all, the Pirate King was a grand mage. Still, the chieftain’s template and level spoke for themselves: he was certainly formidable.

Yet, this powerful boss was now pitifully trapped behind his own centaurs, continuously sliced by spatial blades, -30 in damage flying off him again and again.

It was just that simple and unadorned.

By exploiting the dense ranks of ordinary centaurs as a bug, Chucheng managed to trap several centaur captains, centaur champions, and the centaur chieftain himself outside, forcing all the damage to reflect onto them.

Every attack round, a steady 300 points of pure damage that ignored defense landed on them.

Because there was a ring of centaur archers outside and a layer inside, the attack frequency—and thus the frequency of reflected damage—was extremely high. In barely over half a minute, one centaur captain and two centaur champions had been bounced to death alive.

This was only because the other centaur captains outside couldn’t squeeze in and hadn’t yet entered the range for maximum spatial reflection. But as more centaurs died, those in the rear squeezed forward. Given time, the rest of the centaur captains would eventually make their way in.

Especially the furious centaur chieftain. The terrifying template gave him the build of an armored elephant, his body clad in armor like a living war machine, wielding a massive saber nearly eight meters in length. Having held back at first, he finally exploded in rage after seeing too many of his kin slaughtered. Relying on his brute strength, he forced his way through his subordinates and brought his huge blade down with an overhead chop.

Chucheng crossed his twin blades to block. With a deafening clang, the immense force pressed his swords down, the giant blade cleaving into his shoulder—an enormous -298 damage floated up.

“Hiss!”

“What terrifying strength!”

Without hesitation, Chucheng bent low, dove between the legs of a nearby centaur, and vanished from sight, chaos erupting among the surrounding centaurs.

If the chieftain’s basic attack did that kind of damage, Chucheng couldn’t take many more hits.

The best way to fish in troubled waters was to blend in. After a dozen seconds, he broke out from another group of centaurs, now seventy or eighty meters away from the chieftain.

The rhythm resumed: swathes of outer centaurs were killed by reflected spatial damage.

The enraged chieftain shouted loudly, giving orders—it seemed he was trying to get the ordinary centaurs to retreat, but with so many, it was impossible to clear them out quickly.

Moreover, Chucheng kept darting under centaur legs. In this cramped terrain, the centaurs couldn’t charge properly; the occasional trampling didn’t even scratch him, yet it let him evade the chieftain and other captains. It was almost too easy.

By the third minute, most of the tribe lay dead or dying. Chucheng’s position had shifted deep into the heart of the settlement, between two large tents, where he made his stand.

At that very moment, a third party arrived outside the tribe.

Wang Weilong led a group from Squad Six, joined by Zhang Chunlei and others. After destroying a centaur tribe upstream, they headed down the Embroidered River and happened upon this place.

They immediately spotted Yu Hong’s team waiting outside. Seeing the corpses piled at the entrance, Wang Weilong stepped forward and greeted them, asking curiously, “Which team is inside? They’re impressive.”

Yu Hong returned the greeting and replied, “No team. Just one person.”

Wang Weilong’s expression shifted. He asked immediately, “Is it Chucheng from Squad Five?”

Yu Hong smiled. “Exactly.”

Zhang Chunlei and his group exchanged glances, silent for a moment.

Someone glanced into the centaur settlement and then asked, “How long has he been inside?”

“Six or seven minutes.”

“He killed this many in just six or seven minutes?”

Wang Weilong glanced at the speaker—a member of Squad Six who hadn’t seen Chucheng’s monster-clearing speed—and explained, “He’s got an incredible talent, a godly skill for clearing mobs. Killing this many in six or seven minutes isn’t surprising.”

“Is that for real?”

“Isn’t the evidence right in front of you?”

Everyone fell silent again, until someone suggested, “We don’t know how the situation is inside. Should we go in and have a look?”

“Just a look.”

Many people were tempted, nodding in agreement. “We’ll just watch, not steal the boss.”

“All right.”

Yu Hong was itching to see as well, so he agreed at once.

Together, the two groups—thirty or forty people in all—entered the centaur settlement, stepping over piles of bodies.

They wound their way past tents and wooden stone walls, quickly reaching the depths of the settlement. There they saw more corpses strewn everywhere, and a dozen or so wounded centaurs circling a stone altar, occasionally hurling rocks or javelins upwards.

The altar was the tallest structure in the tribe—not high in itself, but built against a massive rock some twenty meters tall.

At that moment, Chucheng was sitting atop the altar, constantly shifting to dodge the furious projectiles from below.

In less than eight minutes, nearly all the centaurs were dead, only the chieftain and a handful of regular centaurs remaining—deliberately spared by Chucheng.

With the centaur horde gone, there were no natural shields left. Unable to withstand the chieftain head-on, Chucheng had no choice but to leap onto the altar for safety.

Though the chieftain had no magic like the Pirate King, his might was overwhelming: fully armored, with over ten thousand health, immense strength—he could outpower Chucheng by at least a hundred points—wielding a long-handled broadsword for relentless charges and trampling attacks. There was no way to fight him directly.

Even after Chucheng had worn down over sixty percent of his health by reflected damage, the remaining HP was still too much for him to handle alone.

Fortunately, the centaur chieftain was a terror on the ground but only average at jumping—he could manage just over ten meters, nowhere near enough to reach the twenty-meter summit of the rock. This allowed Chucheng to hang on for now.

While this stalemate persisted, Wang Weilong and the others entered the tribe out of curiosity.

Chucheng saw them first and immediately sent a private message to Zhang Chunlei: “Only the centaur chieftain is left, with half his health. Want to team up to finish him?”

Zhang Chunlei replied at once, “I’ll ask the others.”

He cut the comms and raised his hand to halt the group, lowering his voice. “Chucheng says only the centaur chieftain is left inside, down to half health, and wants to know if we’re interested in a joint attack.”

Wang Weilong and Yu Hong stopped as well. After just two seconds, Wang Weilong said, “Tell him to send the chieftain’s detailed stats and combat abilities.”

“Okay.”

Ten seconds later, Zhang Chunlei posted a screenshot of the chieftain’s stats to the team channel.

Then came a chorus of shocked exclamations: “Holy crap, is this for real?”