Chapter 336 - 309: Whose Hunting Ground

Chapter 336: Chapter 309: Whose Hunting Ground

The tunnel was dimly lit, the ceiling low.

An occasional drop of condensation from the rock walls made a clear dripping sound in the silence, deepening the surrounding gloom.

A troop of Di Luo Dwarves was advancing along the tunnel.

There were over twenty of them in the party, each one stoutly built with broad shoulders and thick backs. They were clad in heavy leather armor studded with iron plates and held warhammers, two-handed axes, or Nail-Head Hammers.

Despite the gloomy darkness, the Di Luo Dwarves paid it no mind, looking completely accustomed to it.

"Those pointy-ears finally decided to crawl out of their broken shells."

The Di Luo Dwarf at the very front grinned, revealing a set of crooked, yellow teeth.

An old scar ran across his face, slashing diagonally from between his brows to his left cheek, making him look exceptionally fierce and terrifying.

"I thought they were gonna turtle up in there until they died."

"No kidding," a Di Luo Dwarf behind him chimed in. "All day long, they just hide behind those lumps of iron. Now we can finally have a real fight."

"We always hear about how tough the surface Elves are, but now it looks like they’re nothing special," another Di Luo Dwarf sneered. "Just a bunch of trash who only know how to hide behind lumps of iron. They don’t even have the guts to face us head-on. Without those hunks of metal, what are they gonna fight us with?"

The group broke into raucous laughter.

The coarse laughter echoed endlessly through the tunnel, carrying far into the distance.

For them, born and raised in the Dark Nether Realm, the dark and cramped environment, the uneven terrain, and the rock strata that could collapse at any moment were all as natural as breathing.

This pitch-black subterranean world had nurtured them, teaching them how to survive in this barren and brutal land.

In their eyes, no matter how skilled in combat the surface Elves were, they were ultimately outsiders.

Stepping into the Dark Nether Realm was like stepping into a natural hunting ground.

And they were the masters of this hunting ground.

So when they heard that Nine Nether City was mobilizing its army for a decisive, head-on battle with Red Blood Fertile Soil, they were overjoyed rather than alarmed. They immediately requested to be sent into battle, full of fighting spirit and eager to teach those surface Elves a harsh lesson.

They had long since grown tired of dealing with those lumps of iron every day, and they craved the blood and screams of their enemies.

"The Dark Nether Realm is no place for those surface mongrels to trespass. Down here, they can’t even tell north from south. How are they going to fight us?"

"If we meet them head-on, we can crush them in a single charge!"

"When we run into them, don’t be in a rush to kill them all. Leave a few alive. I’ve always wanted to get an Elf slave..."

That last sentence made the other Dwarves chuckle with knowing smirks.

In the Dark Nether Realm, many subterranean races had a habit of keeping slaves.

The Di Luo Dwarves were, naturally, no exception.

Their cruel racial nature made them take endless pleasure in torturing and abusing slaves.

A considerable number of slaves died from this treatment every year.

And if one were to ask what kind of slave they wanted most, it was, without a doubt, a Dark Elf.

Unfortunately, the Dark Elves were vengeful to a fault. If anyone dared to capture one of their kind as a slave—even a low-status male Dark Elf—they would retaliate by any means necessary.

Over time, no faction dared to openly keep Dark Elf slaves.

But if they couldn’t keep Dark Elf slaves, using their surface-dwelling kin as substitutes wasn’t a bad idea either.

While surface Elves lacked the bone-deep ruthlessness and arrogance of the Dark Elves, making them less satisfying to conquer, they had the advantage of being easier on the eyes, and one didn’t have to worry about long, insidious retaliation afterward.

A few of the Di Luo Dwarves exchanged glances, their minds already churning with plans for what they would do after capturing an Elf. Even their voices took on a more eager tone.

Just then, the scar-faced Dwarf suddenly sensed something was wrong. He immediately raised a hand, signaling for the group to halt.

"Careful. There’s something up ahead."

The twenty-some Di Luo Dwarves stopped in their tracks, their expressions hardening. They tightened their grips on their weapons and stared ahead warily.

At the far end of the tunnel, a grayish-white mist was silently creeping toward them along the ground.

"What is that?"

The Di Luo Dwarves looked at each other, shocked and uncertain.

The scar-faced Dwarf had a bad feeling. Just as he was about to order a retreat, the mist suddenly accelerated, rushing toward them like a grayish-white curtain being violently ripped open and thrown over their heads.

Immediately after, seven or eight blurry figures charged out of the mist.

They hovered several inches off the ground, clad in armor with their faces covered by helmets. Only two motes of eerie green light were visible in their eye sockets, flickering in the darkness like a pair of undying will-o’-wisps.

What was terrifying was that they charged with a speed far exceeding that of ordinary infantry.

Moreover, they completely ignored the uneven ground and its obstacles. Sharp, protruding rocks and jagged edges passed right through their bodies, not affecting their charge in the slightest.

In the blink of an eye, these spectral monsters were upon the Di Luo Dwarves.

One of the Dwarves cried out in alarm and instinctively swung his axe down hard at the foremost specter.

The War Axe sliced through the air with a whistle, but there was none of the expected clang of metal on metal.

The axe blade passed straight through the translucent body, as if striking a substanceless shadow.

The Di Luo Dwarf froze. His arm, having met no resistance, swung slightly forward, and before he could recover his balance, a cold gleam of a blade fell, striking him hard on the shoulder.

The Di Luo Dwarf let out a muffled grunt and staggered back, glancing at the wound on his shoulder out of the corner of his eye.

The wound had an unnatural, grayish-white pallor. The flesh was bloodless, its edges pale and withered, as if something had drained all the color from it.

A sinister chill spread from the wound, seeping through his shoulder blade and into his chest. It made him shiver involuntarily, and the War Axe in his hand felt a little heavier.

"Dammit!" he growled through gritted teeth. "What the hell are these things?"

The words had barely left his mouth when more armored, blade-wielding translucent figures suddenly emerged from the tunnel walls on both sides and from the ground behind them, swarming toward them in silence.

In an instant, the Di Luo Dwarves were completely surrounded in the narrow tunnel.

Chaos erupted in a flash.

The Di Luo Dwarves swung their weapons, hacking at the translucent monsters, but every attack felt like striking a weightless cloud of mist.

Warhammers smashed through their chests, Nail-Head Hammers cracked their helmets, and axe blades severed their arms...

But the wounds would knit back together in an instant, like scattered smoke reforming its shape.

But the Shadow Soldiers’ counterattacks were merciless. Every time a longsword or shortsword fell, it would leave a pale, bloodless gash on their bodies.

The wounds were not deep, but the sinister cold they contained seeped ceaselessly into their bodies, eroding them from within. Their movements became visibly sluggish and stiff as the warmth was drained from them, bit by bit.

"What the hell are these damned things?!"

"Dammit! My attacks are useless against them!"

"Fall back! Retreat!"

Cries of alarm and screams rose and fell in waves.

The scar-faced Dwarf swept his axe in a wide arc, mustering all his strength to shatter a Shadow Soldier’s helmet.

However, the Shadow Soldier’s form merely dimmed for a moment before it quickly reformed, like a puff of smoke that had been dispersed and then gathered again.

Watching this, the scar-faced Dwarf felt an unprecedented chill rise in his heart.

Even when facing a swarm of Dark Elves, he had never felt so helpless.

’What in the world are these things?’

’Specters?’

’But I’ve never heard of specters wearing armor and carrying blades!’

The monsters before them attacked relentlessly and without a sound. They didn’t roar or shout, nor did they make any pained noises when struck. They didn’t even seem to breathe.

They just kept attacking in silence.

But it was this very silence that terrified the Di Luo Dwarves all the more.

They would rather face an enemy in a bloody, head-on clash than be entangled with these monsters that couldn’t be killed no matter how they were struck.

In just the blink of an eye, half of the Di Luo Dwarves had fallen.

Most of them had no fatal wounds, yet their bodies were rigid, their faces ashen. They were curled up on the rocky ground as if frozen alive, unable to even straighten their fingers.

The remaining Di Luo Dwarves were scared out of their wits. Their will to fight completely shattered, they turned to flee.

But after finally managing to break through, they discovered to their despair that in the treacherous terrain of the tunnel, the monsters were faster and more agile than they were.

They didn’t get far before they were overtaken. With a slash of a blade, their bodies would stiffen and fall, never to move again.

A few moments later, the tunnel fell silent.

The bodies of more than twenty Di Luo Dwarves lay strewn across the ground, surrounded by shattered armor and broken blades.

The Shadow Soldiers hovered silently in mid-air, their eerie green eye sockets slowly scanning the carnage. After confirming there were no living targets left, their forms began to fade away like scattered ashes, disappearing into the thin mist.

The mist then rapidly contracted, flowing into two Soul-Gathering Banners that had been planted in the ground around a bend in the tunnel.

The dark red patterns on the banners’ surfaces glowed faintly for a moment, as if they had swallowed something, before dimming once more.

Ryan reached out and pulled up a Soul-Gathering Banner, a touch of emotion on his face. "In the Dark Nether Realm, Shadow Soldiers are so much more useful than Yellow Turban Warriors."

Evan, standing to the side, also pulled up a Soul-Gathering Banner and said with a smile, "The Yin Qi is heavy in the Dark Nether Realm. In a place like this, the combat power of Shadow Soldiers is thirty to forty percent higher than in the surface world. Even the speed at which their souls reform after taking damage is much faster. This place is indeed perfect for them."

In terms of pure combat power, lower-quality, wandering-soul-grade Shadow Soldiers are actually weaker than Yellow Turban Warriors.

But when it comes to killing efficiency in the Dark Nether Realm, the Yellow Turban Warriors are far inferior to the Shadow Soldiers.

Whether for tracking or killing enemies, Shadow Soldiers have advantages that Yellow Turban Warriors can hardly match.

As they spoke, the two of them efficiently collected everything of value from the battlefield, stuffing it all into a Qiankun Bag.

In no time, the two had finished cleaning up the battlefield.

"Let’s go. Time to find more enemies," Evan said, dusting off his hands.

"Right," Ryan replied.

Without lingering, they continued down the tunnel, their footsteps soon vanishing into the darkness.

Meanwhile, similar scenes were playing out in multiple locations along the border between the Red Blood Fertile Soil and the Nine Nether City Domain.

Narrow tunnels, constricting crevices, abandoned mine shafts tangled like a labyrinth... The complex terrain that the Fertile Soil Alliance once considered a natural advantage had now become the perfect hunting ground for the Shadow Soldiers.

They ignored rock barriers and were not constrained by the direction of the tunnels, appearing at any moment from the ceiling, the floor, or the walls, always striking from the most unexpected angles.

The subterranean soldiers, accustomed to fighting flesh-and-blood opponents, were no match for these monsters that feared no blade and felt no pain. They would often collapse into a rout after just a few exchanges, utterly annihilated.

The allied subterranean army, which had expected to take advantage of Nine Nether City’s offensive to fight a satisfying, decisive battle, had yet to even meet the Elves face-to-face before tasting a crushing blow from the Shadow Soldiers.