Chapter 35: Welcome to My Domain

"The enemy’s finally reacting!"

Mirela had just shifted her senses back from her own territory when she was delighted to find that the demons the centaurs had been picking off one by one were finally moving.

Her excitement came from one realization.

This unknown new lord seemed to be...

A complete amateur among amateurs!

At that moment, her sparrow was perched on a branch of a giant tree in the middle of the forest.

From that height, she could use her druid senses to watch nearly the whole forest at once.

And from up there, she could see the demons making an almost fatal mistake under their lord’s foolish command.

He knew perfectly well his demons were slower than the centaurs. Yet instead of gathering his troops and retreating together, he had split them into nearly twenty separate squads!

By the military standards of many worlds, centaur warriors counted as light cavalry; mounted skirmishers with bows.

The Imps and Lesser Demons, meanwhile, were light infantry with no armor at all.

With a gap that wide, Mirela believed his best move was to pull his greater numbers together into one big army.

Then, knowing the centaurs would attack, he should retreat toward his gate as fast as possible.

The reason was simple.

Light cavalry weren’t built for charging straight into a formation. Their real strength was harassment and hit-and-run attacks.

Using their speed, they could keep striking from outside an enemy formation, circle around it, and shoot down stragglers or valuable targets.

Charging recklessly into a packed army would only get the centaurs killed in heavy numbers, especially since they had no armor to protect them.

So, as far as Mirela could tell, he had only one real option.

Gather his soldiers into one huge formation the centaurs wouldn’t dare charge.

Only then would that army have a chance of escaping a forest that had already bared its fangs, even if it cost him nearly half his troops.

And that wasn’t even his worst mistake.

The Imps and Lesser Demons in those twenty squads were moving in completely chaotic directions!

They were so disorganized that even Mirela couldn’t bear to watch.

Some squads were heading for the gate.

Others were moving deeper into the forest.

Still others were heading in directions that made no sense at all. Their goals changed three times in a single minute, and sometimes they even blocked the escape routes of other squads.

Meanwhile, terrifying centaur warriors lay in wait all around them!

They waited patiently, ready to let the curved blades in their hands and the bows on their backs drink their enemies’ blood.

Scattered squads, each fighting alone, had no way to stand against those fast, ferocious centaurs.

In short, nearly three hundred demons were doomed!

"Hahaha! I can’t believe it! He got lucky, reached the Tithe Lands first, and started harvesting, and he’s such an incompetent fool he doesn’t even understand basic tactics!"

"If I’d known he was this stupid, I wouldn’t have worried so much. A lord this foolish would get wiped out by the others sooner or later anyway."

The sparrow hopped excitedly on its branch.

"Now I can finally relax and focus on my own territory. Even someone as clever as me is almost worn out from handling two fronts at once for so long~"

However, just as Mirela released the sparrow and settled in her own territory to wait for news that Ursok had slaughtered every last demon, Ursok himself began to sense that something was wrong.

No...

Something was very wrong!

"Whoosh!"

Ursok, a powerfully built centaur, raised his bow and shot an Imp at the tail end of a squad.

The Imp couldn’t dodge in time. The arrow went straight through its body and killed it on the spot.

But the Imps ahead of it immediately turned as one.

Without even looking back, they fled deeper into the forest.

Ursok could easily have chased them down and kept slaughtering the panicking creatures like a hunter beating a wounded dog.

But he didn’t.

For one thing, the direction they were running wasn’t a good one to chase in.

And for another...

"You bastards! You’re late!"

"Didn’t I tell you all to keep up with me?"

Six centaur warriors trotted over to Ursok, wiping sweat from their brows.

"Sorry, Chieftain. We were following you, but a squad of those monsters showed up nearby without any support. So we went after them."

Before Ursok could lose his temper, the others rushed to explain too.

"Chieftain, please don’t get angry yet. Those monsters really were close to us."

"Exactly! They were right in bow range, so we decided to hit them first!"

"If they’d been any farther away, our bows couldn’t have reached them. And if we’d chased too far, we couldn’t have caught back up with you."

Seeing how confidently his warriors defended themselves, Ursok found it hard to blame them too harshly.

After all, they hadn’t been slacking. They had spent their strength fighting the same enemy as the rest of the tribe.

"Fine. I understand."

Ursok nodded.

"But how many of those monsters defiling Mother Nature did you kill just now?"

To his surprise, the finest and most straightforward men in his tribe suddenly turned hesitant.

After a long silence, one warrior finally worked up the courage to answer.

"T-two."

Ursok nearly turned red with anger.

"Just two?! You’re shaming the ancestors of the Windstride Clan! Those things on your backs are bows, not children’s toys!"

"Ancestors above! Six of you, and you only killed two monsters?"

"And you fell behind me for that!"

Hearing his scolding, the other warriors flushed with embarrassment.

Six warriors. Six bows. Two kills in a single volley from horseback.

Any centaur tribe would laugh them off the grasslands for that.

"Chieftain, it really isn’t our fault."

"Those monsters are just too cunning! They’re a hundred times uglier than even the worst goblins, but the moment they realized we were attacking, they all turned and ran another way!"

Hearing that, Ursok felt a strange sense of familiarity.

Why did what these six were describing sound so much like what had just happened to him?

Something wasn’t right.

Something was very wrong!

Deep in the Third Layer, a newly risen lord of the deep watched the whole forest through his throne.

Looking at a forest on the verge of ruin, and at centaur warriors growing more confused and exhausted by the minute, Koda smiled a thoroughly sinister smile.

"Welcome..."

"To my domain!"