Chapter 73

In his field of vision, the wolf cavalryman who was waving a throwing net suddenly disappeared.

Sarota's expression was momentarily stunned; he even suspected that he was hallucinating. The team was now spread out, with each member being more than four to five meters apart, so the sudden disappearance of the orc left a particularly noticeable gap.

Where did he go?

Sarota felt as if he had encountered several inexplicable events today, which left him somewhat dazed.

While he was pondering, another wolf cavalryman suddenly fell not far from him—without any arrows or attacks. After a closer look, Sarota's lips twitched as he realized that the tribal warrior had fallen into a water pit over half a meter deep because his wolf had stepped on it!

A water pit...?

A flash of insight suddenly crossed his mind. He abruptly looked up and instantly understood the reason—his team had unknowingly been led into a swamp area by the humans!

The swamp area was somewhat different from the grassland, with the key difference being the various traps that were hard to detect. After heavy rains, the area was filled with gray pits of varying depths—some only ten to twenty centimeters deep, others over a meter, and some even several meters deep, including ponds over ten meters deep!

For the orcs, such an area was extremely dangerous, as no one could react in time to the seemingly small water pits while running at high speed. If they stepped into one, they might be lucky enough to cross it, but if not, they would end up like the orcs who had just fallen.

Realizing this, Sarota immediately understood the cunning intentions of the humans.

"Close the ranks! Follow them!"

Seeing the humans skillfully navigate through the water pits in a long line, Sarota, though he did not understand how they found a path to quickly move through, immediately made the only appropriate response.

However, the inevitable still happened—because the team had been spread out, by the time the wolf cavalrymen tried to regroup and follow Sarota's orders, over fifteen of them had already fallen into the water pits in various ways, completely detaching from the team.

What was supposed to be a straightforward pursuit and slaughter had now become complicated. Sarota felt a bit anxious because he knew that the "Bloodlust" effect had only about twenty seconds left, but the team's speed had slowed due to the congestion... What made it even more unbearable for Sarota was that the human with the short bow seemed to have noticed their inability to counterattack and turned to shoot an arrow, which pierced the chest of the orc at the front of the charge!

The wolf cavalryman, unable to dodge in time, was knocked backward by the immense force of the bow, and as he fell to the ground, he was trampled into a pulp by the following wolves.

To avoid him, several wolf cavalrymen deviated from the path and fell into the unidentifiable water pits, splashing down.

Chaos ensued, complete chaos.

Unable to catch up, unable to spread out, and unable to attack... Sarota first felt angry, then a chill ran down his spine. He realized that he had been outmaneuvered from the start—just by chasing, over twenty of the seventy wolf cavalrymen had been reduced, and the human at the rear was still continuously shooting arrows, almost every one lethal!

In such a situation, with no ranged attack skills, Sarota felt a genuine sense of powerlessness.

But what he did not expect was what happened next. As the team closed the distance, the human team suddenly began to turn left. Because the team was long and narrow, the orcs chasing behind immediately recognized their intention and prepared to turn left.

However, just as they leaned to the side and were about to turn their wolves to the left, the guy at the rear of the scout team suddenly broke away and ran in the opposite direction to the right!

This situation caught the orcs off guard. Seeing this, Sarota immediately understood that the humans were deliberately creating a choice to make him hesitate. He cursed their cunning in his heart but did not hesitate, making a quick decision—

"Those who have already charged, don't look back. The rest, follow me and kill the archer!"

Taking advantage of the remaining ten seconds of the Bloodlust effect, Sarota was determined that his troops would not be helpless against these humans who had not even brought weapons!

His authority and leadership were evident as the wolf cavalrymen immediately followed his orders—over forty wolf cavalrymen continued to chase the human scouts, while Rody was followed by Sarota and the remaining eight orcs.

Like a swift stream suddenly splitting into two, one path was the twenty-nine scouts and over forty wolf cavalrymen, the other was Rody and the eight orcs behind him...

"It's about to start..."

Soderlor, leading the charge, turned his head and whispered. He saw Rody's figure gradually disappear into the mist of the deep swamp, and his mind was filled with the knowledge Rody had taught him that morning and the route he had memorized—Soderlor knew that how to deal with the forty orcs behind him depended almost entirely on him.

The sound of the horses' heavy breathing echoed around, and the soldiers' faces were tense. Although they understood this was a pre-planned strategy, the unease in their hearts was unavoidable.

"Follow! Don't fall behind!"

Soderlor's reminder made the soldiers focus on the road ahead—most of them could not see much else but the backs of their teammates ahead, but the steady sound of the wolves' hooves behind them reminded them that this was a brutal battle between life and death.

No one dared to look around. The team moved as one, rapidly navigating the swamp filled with traps. Soderlor, leading the way, constantly adjusted the direction, looking at the seemingly random water pits ahead and recalling Rody's words from the morning, shouting commands: "Turn left! Then turn right!"

The twenty-nine scouts followed the backs of their teammates, like a snake in the swamp, making continuous turns.

A few seconds later, the wolf cavalrymen, almost catching up to the scouts, suddenly began to slow down—the side effects of the "Bloodlust" disappearing finally began to show!

"Keep going! Don't stop—don't look back!"

Hearing the sound of the wolves' hooves gradually fade, Soderlor finally breathed a sigh of relief but did not let his guard down. He loudly directed the team to weave through the narrow path, gradually pulling away from the orcs behind...

Although so, the wolf cavalrymen did not give up. They understood that in this terrain, a single "small" mistake by the humans at the front would result in a catastrophic failure!

What they needed to do now was to follow these humans and wait for the opportunity to "reap the benefits"—the wolf cavalrymen did not believe that in such a vast swamp, the humans could avoid making any mistakes!

That was something even orcs who lived on the grasslands their whole lives could not do.

Despite their hopes, the expected situation never occurred. The humans kept turning left, right, left, right, with no discernible pattern—while the wolf cavalrymen, to avoid falling into the water pits, initially followed the horses' tracks carefully, but as their speed slowed, they could only watch as the scouts gradually pulled away.

As the distance increased, the waterlogged ground made it difficult for the wolf cavalrymen to distinguish the hoof prints, and the trail became increasingly unclear. What made it even worse was that when the distance between the two sides increased to nearly a hundred meters, the leading wolf cavalrymen found that the swamp path, previously full of hoof prints, suddenly became unrecognizable due to a large shallow water area.

"Trouble!"

Just as the leading wolf cavalryman had this thought, his wolf stepped into a seemingly harmless but actually over a meter deep water pit, and he uncontrollably fell in.

Immediately, the sound of splashing echoed as the wolf cavalrymen, having taken the wrong path, fell into the muddy swamp, almost half of them. Those who tried to avoid it could not help but enter the swamp, and their wolves' paws sank into the mud.

In the end, only sixteen wolf cavalrymen managed to stop on relatively solid ground. Looking around, they found that the remaining twenty-four teammates had all fallen into the water pits, unable to move.

Some orcs jumped off their mounts to try to pull their wolves out, only to find their legs also stuck in the mud.

One orc struggled to climb out of the water pit. Perhaps because the orc kingdom had few ponds or water sources, most of them did not know how to swim, and even a waist-deep water pit caused a strange fear. Fortunately, their natural strength helped, and after struggling with a curved sword, he finally found a shallow area and was about to pull himself up when his face suddenly changed.

"There's something below! What is this—what is this thing!?"

He kicked frantically, but his body did not move an inch toward the nearby shallow area. His voice was filled with unmasked panic and fear, which soon turned into a painful scream.

"Damn! What is this?"

He swung his curved sword wildly at the water below, but the murky water revealed nothing. Just as a nearby orc freed himself from the mud and reached out to help, the struggling orc suddenly screamed in pain and was dragged under the water without warning.

Bubbles rose, and the orc who had reached out stood frozen, his hand suspended in the air, unable to find his comrade.

"What is going on—"

Not far away, an orc with his legs stuck in the mud tried to speak but suddenly trembled and fell into the not-so-deep water pit, screaming as he was dragged under.

The six orcs standing there were stunned. They tried to help but watched helplessly as one after another of their comrades was dragged under by an unknown creature, even the wolves that did not have time to escape.

In less than a minute, over twenty orcs struggling in the water pit had vanished, leaving only the sixteen orcs standing there, too frightened to move.

"What... what do we do?"

One orc looked around the swamp, which showed no signs of blood, his fear reaching its peak, and his legs trembling.

"Back... we go back the way we came—"

Before he could finish, the sound of hooves interrupted them. In the distance, they seemed to hear a human shout something. Looking up, they saw a dense shower of arrows coming their way.

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