Translator: AnubisTL
Several thousand wizard apprentices from Noren Academy, blinded by the false victory they had achieved earlier, surged into the valley identified by intelligence as the location of the "indigenous leaders."
Their eyes gleamed with avarice for high scores and glorious war achievements, completely oblivious to the fact that they were charging headfirst into a trap laid by seasoned hunters.
The dense swarm of magical beasts outside the valley posed no obstacle to the massed wizard apprentices, who swiftly bypassed the various traps and entered the valley.
Deep within the valley, several "chiefs" clad in exquisite armor, flanked by a small but fully armed army of extraordinary warriors, came into view.
"Enemies! Those must be the leaders from the intelligence reports!"
"Watch your surroundings! There's bound to be an ambush. Activate your shields first, just in case!"
"Charge! Kill those leaders!"
The apprentices erupted into a frenzy of battle cries. Led by Augusta and Horn, they charged toward the enemy with overwhelming momentum.
Lightning crackled around Augusta, her speed rivaling a thunderbolt, while Horn's feet churned the earth into rolling waves of rock, as if he were walking on a living tide.
The other apprentices unleashed their spells, converging elemental torrents that converged in the valley, aiming at the distant enemy.
Just as the two armies were about to clash, an unexpected twist occurred!
Rustle... rustle... rustle...
From the previously silent slopes surrounding the valley, countless dark figures suddenly emerged.
It was an overwhelming force of indigenous warriors, clad in animal hides and woven grass, their hands gripping longbows and throwing spears.
These soldiers had concealed themselves perfectly, blending into the terrain with animal hides and grass, and suppressing their life force signatures using the combined power of priests and shamans. They had completely evaded the wizard apprentices' crude detection methods.
"Loose your arrows!"
With a low growl imbued with ancient shamanic incantations, the tens of thousands of indigenous warriors hidden on the slopes simultaneously drew back their longbows.
In an instant, a dense rain of arrows descended upon the wizard apprentices in the valley below.
These were no ordinary arrows. For this battle, the indigenous warriors had brought forth every resource they could muster.
Each arrow was imbued with enhanced spells and extraordinary power by shamans and priests, while the arrowheads themselves were forged from special minerals and biological materials, capable of piercing through magical defenses.
Such anti-magic arrows had previously been reserved as trump cards for the kingdom's most elite knightly orders. Yet now, in the Indigenous Allied Forces ambushing the valley, even ordinary soldiers carried several anti-magic arrows.
The air crackled with the sounds of arrows piercing the sky, impacts, and tearing flesh.
The wizard apprentices' shields proved utterly fragile against the arrow storm, shattering one after another.
Some apprentices reacted too slowly and were pierced through the body by arrows, collapsing into pools of blood.
Even those who activated their protective wizard artifacts felt a tremendous force surge through their shields, shaking their mental power and throwing their formations into chaos.
The indigenous warriors' trap was remarkably simple: a crude ambush.
But their overwhelming numbers, combined with the completely unexpected attack, produced an effect far beyond what anyone could have imagined.
The apprentices, who had believed themselves fully prepared, were instantly plunged into a desperate disadvantage.
"Scatter! Find cover!"
"Damn it! Why are there so many of them?!"
"Retreat! Get out of here!"
Lacking unified command, the apprentices scattered in panic, desperately trying to escape the arrow-swept zone.
"My flight spell... it's another anti-air barrier! When did they set this up? It wasn't here when we entered the valley!"
"Bastards! Why is the area of spatial confinement so huge?!"
Desperate cries echoed through the valley.
Having been ambushed multiple times, the apprentices had learned that the spatial confinement zone rarely extended beyond fifty meters. Breaking through this distance meant escape from the battlefield.
In this valley, Priest Oswald had deployed a spatial confinement barrier at the cost of his own life force, its diameter stretching over a terrifying kilometer.
Combined with the shamans' instantaneous deployment of an ultra-wide anti-air barrier—achieved by exhausting their reserves, sacrificing ancestral totems, and expending their very essence—the apprentices found themselves trapped.
The apprentices' earlier predictions had been correct: traps and spatial confinement barriers were indeed present.
However, the intelligence gathered from previous skirmishes with the indigenous forces had led them to drastically underestimate the danger posed by these traps.
With no escape to the heavens or refuge on the earth, the apprentices were utterly cornered.
Even Augusta and Horn, the two most brilliant geniuses among them, found themselves powerless against this sudden reversal of fortune.
The Indigenous Allied Forces had meticulously prepared for this battle, drawing on their intelligence to devise targeted strategies.
An elite squad clad in special armor and empowered by shamanic curses was specifically tasked with neutralizing Augusta's lightning-fast speed, weakening her electrical attacks, and restricting her mobility.
Meanwhile, another group of indigenous warriors armed with armor-piercing weapons and specialized spells relentlessly pursued Horn, gradually eroding his vaunted defenses.
The apprentices' formation completely collapsed under the combined assault of arrow volleys and charging indigenous warriors. They retreated step by step, the valley floor stained crimson with blood.
At a temporary command post overlooking the valley, several leaders of the Indigenous Allied Forces watched with exhilaration as the wizards below were slaughtered like sheep.
Priest Oswald's face was as pale as paper, his body visibly weakened. He gasped for breath, cold sweat streaming down his forehead—the cost of casting the massive spatial confinement spell had been immense, nearly draining his entire life essence and the divine power bestowed upon him by the divine being.
"We did it! We succeeded!" The young knight commander's eyes burned with fanatical fervor.
"These foolish outlanders! They thought they could trample our world at will!" The shaman leader grinned savagely.
All eyes turned to Oswald with gratitude. Though he had paid a terrible price, the massive spatial confinement spell he had cast was the key to their victory.
"Lord Oswald, you've worked so hard!"
"Thanks to you, we've trapped these vile wizards in one fell swoop!"
Oswald weakly shook his head, offering no reply as he quietly observed the carnage below.
The young knight commander hesitated no longer. He roared his orders to his troops: "All forces advance! Give them no quarter! Crush them!"
Nearly ten thousand of the Indigenous Allied Forces' most elite warriors surged down the mountainside like a tidal wave, engaging the remaining apprentices in a bloody slaughter within the valley.
Relying on the massive rock fortress Horn had painstakingly conjured with his spell, some wizard apprentices made a final, desperate stand. But it was merely the death throes of cornered beasts; they had no escape.
(End of the Chapter)