Lord of the Myriad Worlds

Chapter 353: The Battle of the Great Bridge

The moment the Neanderthal spurred his horse and charged out, the centaur count was briefly stunned. If his entire force had been cavalry, would he even be wrestling with this decision?

The Neanderthal was riding south — clearly not counting on reinforcements at all. Was that really a good idea?

He still had eighteen heavy-armored half-boars and ten heavy-armored half-bulls. What were they supposed to do?

Abandoning the fortifications to flee across open ground — were they just lining up to get skewered?

So this was the advisor's great wisdom.

Though, to be fair, it wasn't entirely without logic.

He gritted his teeth and looked at the comrades around him. If they committed to a full charge right now, the thirteen centaurs alone could probably get ten of them out alive.

But he couldn't do it.

Since the apocalypse began, every rule had been overturned. They'd gone from confusion and terror, to the wild joy of becoming Ability Users, to the creeping dread of discovering the drawbacks — and finally, under Frost Duke's leadership, they had found a path more suited to the new humanity. Why? Why couldn't they be the masters of this new age?

None of you were born in this world. What right did you have to judge and define?Yes, they had become strange and twisted in form — but they still held onto reason. They still counted themselves as human. Going from ape to man, from man to beastkin — what was wrong with that?

This battle was a fight for survival. It was a fight for the right to speak. It was a fight for the future of humanity in this world.

You could run — because you were an outsider.

But they could not.

"Brothers! Friends! My beloved kin — the moment to prove our right to exist has come! Show them who truly deserves to live in this world!"

"It's us!"

The centaur count roared, his voice raw with grief and defiance. Beside him, the Neanderthal held his spear level, battle-fury blazing in his eyes, charging straight at Li Wei.

To the north, on the bridge deck, two enchanted chariots weighing nearly ten tons each were accelerating to full speed — two tanks bearing down.

In the sky, a great crow with a wingspan approaching six meters circled like a demon.

Reinforcements were twenty-five kilometers away — impossibly far.

Death had never felt so close. But as the centaur count's battle cry rang out, something shifted at this moment of life and death — all the Ability Users began to shed their fear, replaced by something else entirely.

Finally, they roared back.

"It's us!"

"Who kept the old world's flame alive?"

"It's us!"

"Who lit the road to the future?"

"It's us!"

"Who are the true masters of this world?"

"It's us!"

"We are done with schemes! Done with being manipulated! We will be the masters of our own fate — the guardians of our own home! We have fought for fifteen years. We have lost everything. And still we choose to keep fighting — no matter how monstrous our faces, no matter that the past is gone!"

"Kill!"

With a roar, the centaur count wheeled around and leveled his bow at the north. He had made his choice — to fight to the death, whether or not reinforcements ever arrived.

"Fwip-fwip-fwip!"

Arrows flew, arcing over the enchanted chariots and raining down toward Zhao Xuanxuan and her four companions.

"Fall back — watch for explosions!"

Zhao Xuanxuan bellowed, her Tiger Head Great Blade sweeping in a blurred arc, shielding everyone around her.

The next second brought a terrifying blast and a wall of flame.

Horses screamed. Everyone watched as Zhao Xuanxuan was swallowed whole by the inferno — and then she came charging out the other side like nothing had happened. Her warhorse was barely even startled.

No one else could match that. Benjamin, Santiago, Grant, and Xavier were still light cavalry at best — only Zhao Xuanxuan was armored from head to toe.

A four-star enchanted blacksmith had the home advantage, and she had used it to the fullest.

She'd claimed the set of royal enchanted heavy armor that had once belonged to Brother Scar. On top of that, she'd forged her own three-star enchanted great helm, three-star enchanted refined steel leg guards and boots — and layered chainmail and leather armor underneath.

She had strength to spare, so the weight meant nothing. An ordinary person in three layers of armor couldn't even stand up after falling down — Zhao Xuanxuan could knock out a thousand push-ups without breaking a sweat.

Sit-ups, sprinting — all effortless.

She could even dual-wield the Tiger Head Great Blade in her left hand and the iron hammer in her right and go berserk for several minutes straight.

Even her warhorse wore heavy armor. Li Yue had taken one look and said she needed a stronger horse — a weaker one simply couldn't survive being ridden by Zhao Xuanxuan.

But without that foundation, what would Zhao Xuanxuan have to lead three squads of Freeman soldiers into battle with?

Those Freeman soldiers were only marginally better than hired mercenaries. You could count on their loyalty to Li Wei as their lord, but expecting them to be fearless and immovable in the face of death was asking too much.

Zhao Xuanxuan knew this herself. She had to bring Benjamin, Santiago, and Grant along — had to set the tempo of the battle herself.

The hard fights were hers to take. She'd be first to charge, first to break through. They'd follow behind and clean up, then gradually improve, accumulate experience, and grow into it.

That was the plan.

"Fire!"

"Suppress their archers!"

From the electric trucks at the rear, the order rang out, and six massive crossbow bolts screamed forward. Two punched through the makeshift fortifications; the other four hit their marks directly.

Hit — as in, obliterate.

Six centaur archers were blown apart in an instant. They wouldn't die from it, but with limbs flying and flesh scattered, firing those explosive arrows again was out of the question.

"Fwip-fwip-fwip!"

At the same time, soldiers on all three electric trucks raised their own siege crossbows and unleashed a torrent of bolts, blanketing the centaurs in a downpour of arrows.

In moments, the archers were completely suppressed.

"Crash!"

The two enchanted chariots finally hit maximum speed and slammed into the makeshift fortifications head-on, triggering who knew how many traps along the way — but that was exactly the point.

The fortifications that had looked so solid were smashed open by brute force, and the entire bridge shuddered.

Four heavy-armored half-boars and three heavy-armored half-bulls were crushed outright by the impact.

But the collision also lit up the front of the enchanted chariots with swirling magical light — mana resonating, enchantment durability burning away.

"Moo!"

Two heavy-armored half-bulls transformed into raging beasts and slammed into the chariots. One sent an enchanted chariot spinning with a massive dent, then flipped it entirely off the bridge and into the water below.

These berserk heavy-armored units weren't just tough — their raw strength was terrifying.

Of course, the impact left them reeling too, their skulls rattling like they'd been filled with porridge.

"Kill!"

Zhao Xuanxuan roared, her warhorse surging forward. In the instant the enchanted chariot was flipped, she was already there — blade flashing.

Two heavy-armored half-bulls lost their heads in a single stroke. But they each had at least three life cores, so they wouldn't die that easily.

"Rear up!"

Zhao Xuanxuan wrenched her warhorse onto its hind legs, and the heavy hooves came crashing down onto the spine of a headless half-bull still thrashing blindly.

The next second, a light-armored half-cat lunging in for a sneak attack was split clean in two by her blade.

But from another direction, a half-dog was already howling and leaping — only to have its skull caved in by a refined steel lance.

Grant had arrived on horseback.

Benjamin charged in from the other side, covering Zhao Xuanxuan's flank.

If they couldn't even manage that much, they had no business growing stronger. Every moment of this battle would be reviewed by Li Wei through his Prestige Card afterward.

"Form up! Defensive formation!"

Behind the line, the centaur count was still bellowing orders. He'd been turned into a pincushion — an arm-thick crossbow bolt had punched through his chest, and he was bristling with arrows all over — yet he still refused to die. That was the terrifying resilience of Ability Users. Whatever else you could say about them, they were extraordinarily hard to kill.

The second enchanted chariot had also gone silent, rammed into a crumpled wreck by two more heavy-armored half-bulls — some wiring had been severed in the impact, and it simply stopped moving.

Seizing the moment, the light-armored half-dogs and half-cats swarmed forward in a frenzy, trying to blunt Zhao Xuanxuan's momentum. The remaining heavy-armored half-boars and half-bulls rapidly reorganized — a new defensive line was taking shape.

Zhao Xuanxuan was right at the tip of the spear.

In an instant, seven or eight spears stabbed toward her, four or five javelins flew in — too many to block, so she didn't bother trying.

As her warhorse screamed and buckled from its wounds, she dismissed it outright. Magical light blazed across her body — the enchantment durability on her four-star royal heavy scale armor burning away under the assault.

"Whoosh-crack!"

Two javelins hit home, finally exhausting the last of her armor's enchantment.

"AAAAAH!"

She let out a savage roar, and a haze of blood mist rose around her entire body — her Blood Burning talent activating in full.

In that instant, she swung the Tiger Head Great Blade in a wide horizontal arc and cut down three light-armored half-cats. Then she dropped the blade — too long for close-quarters fighting on foot — and snatched up the enchanted iron hammer.

"Mrow!"

A blur of motion — razor claws slashing for Zhao Xuanxuan's throat. The thick armor caught them.

The next second, Zhao Xuanxuan grinned savagely. Her hammer moved slow, then impossibly fast — and the half-cat was reduced to pulp.

"AAAAAH!"

She screamed and charged, hammer swinging, bowling over two light-armored enemies and then bringing it down full force onto a heavy-armored half-boar's tower shield. Two spears punched through her armor and into her body — she didn't even flinch. The next swing caved in the half-boar's skull, then shattered the spear shafts, and then she just kept hammering.

The heavy-armored half-boars tried to trap her behind a wall of shields — useless. No matter how thick the shield, no matter how high the defense, one hammer blow meant broken bones and shattered joints. The only reason they were still standing was the Ability Users' extraordinary vitality — otherwise Zhao Xuanxuan alone would have wiped them all out.

Even so, she alone had smashed through the defensive line they'd barely managed to form.

By now she had dozens of wounds across her body, her heavy armor battered to ruin.

But the breakthrough had been made.

Behind her, Benjamin, Santiago, and Grant, who had been fighting furiously in the rear, dismounted and pressed forward on foot, catching up to Zhao Xuanxuan and pressing the assault.