225：Crossfire Kill-Zones
As an aerial elite forged in countless slaughters, the Orc Captain quickly suppressed his panic. His mind raced, rapidly adjusting his tactical approach.
He locked his eyes onto the six heavy ballistas below; their crews were frantically cranking the winches, desperately trying to reload.
"As long as we uproot those wooden machines, the rest of this wretched human territory will be entirely defenseless! We'll slaughter them at our leisure!"
"Listen to my command!"
The Orc Captain raised his solid steel spear, roaring into the biting, high-altitude wind. His voice was carried and amplified by the unique, resonant shrieks of the Wyverns.
"Change targets! Ignore those wooden shacks! Squads One and Two, tear that northern anti-air battery to shreds! Smash those ballistas to splinters!"
Accompanied by his rabid roars, two exceptionally massive Wyverns in the sky violently tucked their broad, leathery wings.
The terrifying gravitational momentum of their plummet triggered ear-piercing sonic shrieks. Plunging straight from the high heavens, they initiated a suicidal dive-bombing run directly toward the northern high ground.
Facing the murderous, rapidly approaching enemy elites, Soren, standing at the command post, displayed absolutely zero panic on his face. He kept his unbroken focus locked onto the descending black dots.
This entire scenario was playing out exactly as he had calculated.
In the face of high-altitude bombardment, an anti-air battery wasn't just an offensive weapon; it was a highly exposed, fragile target. And that was precisely what Soren wanted! He was explicitly weaponizing the absolute 'aggro' generated by those six ballistas to execute a classic, textbook anti-air bait-and-ambush tactic!
"Hold the line! Feint squad, prepare to fire!" Soren drew his fine-steel longsword, the blade gleaming coldly as he pointed it straight at the sky, unleashing a thunderous war-cry.
The seventy vanguard elites standing by instantly reacted.
The newly equipped [Black Steel Full-Plate Armor] they wore weighed well over a hundred pounds, radiating a cold, impenetrable metallic luster under the dim sky. These burly juggernauts, all having consumed the [Basic Troll Blood Serum], stared down the descending monstrosities without a single man taking a step back.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
Seventy heavy geared repeating crossbows were leveled simultaneously, the mechanical grinding of the winches merging into a single, unified roar.
"Fire!"
VMMMM!
Powered by robust mechanical springs, seventy thick, solid steel bolts were instantly launched into the air. They transformed into a dense, upward-surging storm of black steel, flying directly in the face of the dive-bombing Wyverns!
However, while heavy repeating crossbows possessed horrifying armor-piercing capabilities against ground infantry, their maximum effective range when firing vertically was only seventy to eighty meters. Upon reaching that altitude, the bolts' kinetic energy decayed rapidly. Striking the Wyverns' virtually impenetrable ventral scales, they merely erupted into a series of brilliant sparks, producing crisp pinging sounds without inflicting a single drop of substantive damage.
But killing the enemy was never the goal. This was a naked, blatant provocation! It was a feint!
The dense barrage of pings completely infuriated the dive-bombing Orc riders. Baited by the aggressive volley, the riders' vision became entirely locked onto the seventy humans clad in thick Black Steel, continuously firing at them.
Their eyes bulged with rage, their minds consumed by a single, overriding thought: Crush those annoying heavy infantrymen into the dirt!
The battle instantly escalated to a boiling point.
Merely fifty meters from the surface! The two Wyverns drew so close that the vanguard could literally smell the putrid, rotting stench radiating from their massive maws. Gale-force winds howled as their broad wings blotted out the sky.
"Die, you miserable worms!"
The Orc riders frantically hacked through the main vines holding the payload nets.
RUUUMBLE!
Hundreds of pounds of jagged boulders, mixed with dozens of brutally sharpened, solid iron spikes, cascaded from the heavens in a massive, indiscriminate scatter-shot. They plummeted ruthlessly toward the anti-air battery defended by the vanguard elites!
"Maintain formation! Evade direct impacts! Hold the perimeter strictly within ten paces! No retreating!" The veteran squad leader roared until his lungs burned.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The massive boulders slammed into the muddy earth, triggering deafening, muffled explosions. Geysers of mud erupted meters into the air as the ground convulsed violently. A razor-sharp iron spike cleanly impaled a thick wooden cheval de frise barricade nearby, pinning it half a meter deep into the bedrock.
Yet, an absolutely awe-inspiring scene unfolded.
In the face of this catastrophic area-of-effect bombardment, the seventy vanguard elites displayed terrifying combat discipline. Blessed by the hyper-reactive neural pathways granted by the Troll Blood Serum, and combined with Soren's brutally strict CQC footwork training, their agility was entirely unnatural for heavy infantry.
Rapidly slide-stepping and pivoting through the gaps in the falling debris, they flawlessly evaded direct hits from the massive boulders.
BANG!
A shattered fragment of rock ricocheted off the ground, closely followed by a deflected iron spike. Both violently impacted the breastplate of a frontline soldier simultaneously. The intense kinetic shockwave forced a muffled grunt from the man's throat, pushing him a half-step backward as his fine-steel boots violently plowed two deep trenches into the mud.
However, that was the absolute limit of the damage.
The ricocheting shrapnel and iron spikes fundamentally failed to penetrate the defense of the [Black Steel Full-Plate Armor]. Bouncing off its meticulously engineered, sloped curvature, the splash damage merely left a few shallow, pale scratches across the matte-black surface!
"Hahaha! This armor the Lord Commander gave us is tough as a motherfucker! Brothers, hold the line! Keep cranking those winches! Don't stop firing!"
The veteran who took the hit stabilized his stance. Laughing maniacally, he wiped the mud from his visor. Flexing his augmented arms, he unleashed a second, dense wave of suppressive fire from his heavy crossbow.
Braving the dense barrage raining from the sky, the vanguard elites anchored their defensive line, refusing to yield a single inch. Their sheer, stubborn existence perfectly held the absolute, undivided attention of the two Wyverns.
This incredibly high-risk feint finally yielded the exact payoff Soren had been waiting for. It bought the six heavy siege ballistas behind them the absolute perfect firing window!
With one of the Wyverns utterly blinded by the aggro from the vanguard's crossbows, it arrogantly lowered its altitude and entered a glide to maximize the accuracy of its payload drop. In doing so, it entirely missed its window to accelerate and pull up, effectively hovering at a dangerously low altitude of less than forty meters!
Soren glared upward, his murderous intent surging.
"Now! Ballista battery, deploy overlapping crossfire! Fire!" Soren barked his cold-blooded command.
THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!
The mixed crew of goblin and human veteran gunners operated with flawless synchronization.
In a mere ten-second window, the six freshly cranked ballistas erupted with terrifying force, firing at varying elevations and perfectly calculated leads. Heavy bolts, as thick as a man's arm and tipped with solid-steel armor-piercing cones, surged upward with earth-shattering kinetic energy!
These six bolts wove together in mid-air, forming an inescapable, zero-blind-spot web of overlapping crossfire!
"What?!"
The low-altitude Orc rider finally sensed the impending doom. Hearing the shrill screams of tearing wind, he looked down, his face entirely draining of color.
Caught within this meticulously orchestrated, high-density crossfire at such close range, and burdened by the massive physical profile of his mount... evasion was absolutely impossible!
SHLUCK! SHLUCK! SHLUCK!
The horrifying sound of tearing flesh and violently severed muscle erupted in mid-air.
One heavy bolt cleanly impaled the Wyvern's left wing joint—its proudest physiological feature. With a sickening CRACK, the thick bone entirely snapped. Immediately following, a second and third bolt struck with apocalyptic momentum, simultaneously penetrating the Wyvern's underside. Its tough scales shattered as the massive projectiles instantaneously pulverized its heart and liquified its internal organs!
But the most lethal was the fourth bolt. Striking with flawless precision, it punched straight out through the Wyvern's back, violently impacting the utterly terrified Orc rider!
"Gaaa—"
Before he could even formulate a complete scream, the heavy bolt cored straight through the Black Steel-armored Orc's abdomen. The terrifying kinetic transfer launched him bodily off his saddle and into the air!
A massive, gruesome shower of dark green, putrid blood exploded violently across the forty-meter skyline. The lifeless, multi-ton monstrosity went rigid for a split second before violently tumbling down into the toxic depths of the outer swamp, ending with a heavy, muffled crash.
"Beautiful!" A thunderous, earth-shaking cheer erupted from the soldiers manning the anti-air battery.
However, the battlefield was an ever-shifting beast.
Witnessing this execution, the rider of the second Wyvern—the one that had dive-bombed alongside the now-dead beast—let out a scream of pure, unadulterated terror. He desperately hauled on his reins, forcing his mount to beat its wings with frenzied, manic energy. Hauling itself upward in a near-vertical climb, it barely managed to scrape past the edge of the lethal crossfire by a hair's breadth.
Higher up, shrouded within the cloud layer, the remaining six Wyverns had a crystal-clear view of the entire engagement.
The Orc Captain's eyes practically bled with rage, yet he hadn't completely lost his mind. His sharp instincts immediately locked onto the fatal vulnerability below.
"Those ballistas just emptied their payloads! It takes at least thirty seconds of cranking those gears to reload! They have absolutely zero anti-air capabilities right now!"
This was their one and only window of opportunity!
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