Chapter 23: A Pyrrhic Victory

When the harpies and the sprites received the news and rushed back to the place where Li Mingxing was fighting, the report brought by the scouting eagle proved entirely accurate. At that moment, Li Mingxing was indeed caught in a desperate battle.

Of the fifty brown bears used as his shield, nearly half had already fallen beneath the enemy’s attacks. Of the centaurs and the hundred little wolves that formed his main striking force, fewer than thirty remained. Not a single one of the vipers used for ambush had survived.

By contrast, the gray dwarves whom Li Mingxing valued most had suffered very little, because from the very start of the battle they had stayed at his side.

Of course, no enemy could truly force Li Mingxing into such a miserable state without paying a price of their own. If he had lost so many troops, the opposition had certainly not escaped unscathed.

As the harpies flew in, they discovered that the force lurking behind Li Mingxing and striking from the rear had also suffered severe losses. On the battlefield itself, they could even see more than five hundred corpses from various races.

Though most of those bodies belonged to the expendable jungle lizardmen, there were still a great many troops from other races among them.

The harpies had lived here for quite some time and could naturally recognize what those races were.

The harpy demon leading the white harpies was quietly counting them off one by one. “That one is the satyr tribe from north of our old settlement. This one seems to be waspweed, a plant-type creature and a distant relative of the dryads. This one looks like a shoe sprite. None of them are important troops. This one is a boar-man; they are a fairly rare race. But this one seems to be of that race. How could this be? Why would my lord not deal with them first?”

As she spoke, she pointed at a troop type with mushroom-shaped heads.

Her last words were loud enough to catch Li Mingxing’s attention as well. He glanced at the blue mushroom heads and, recalling their combat strength, shouted back, “Why must they be dealt with first?”

“My lord, you do not know this, but the blue fungoids possess a rather vile ability,” the harpy demon explained as she ordered all the harpies to take to the sky, then descended to Li Mingxing’s side.

Before Li Mingxing could even ask what sort of vile ability the blue fungoids had, more than seventy of them suddenly burst apart. A cloud of blue dust spread across the battlefield.

Then Li Mingxing saw that whenever the dust settled on a corpse, a new blue mushroom sprouted from the body. Yet those mushrooms did not transform into fungoids. Instead, they exploded on the spot. With every blast, the entire battlefield was shaken by one explosion after another, large and small, and Li Mingxing’s remaining forces suffered considerable losses.

The troops besieging Li Mingxing had long since learned the fungoids’ trick. The moment they saw the fungoids burst apart, they had already scattered and fled, so they lost very little. Even so, there were still roughly four hundred of them surrounding Li Mingxing.

Fortunately, the harpy demon had already sent the harpies into the sky. None of Li Mingxing’s more than a hundred harpies had been lost. Although the blue harpies had almost exhausted their magic, the white harpies could still fight, and Li Mingxing’s elite dwarves had not yet taken the field.

Seeing the harpies land one after another beside him, hope slowly rekindled in Li Mingxing’s heart. He knew that if he could just get through this ordeal and bring news of his extermination of the Amazons back to that witch, he would soon receive a new batch of troops.

By then, he could sweep away the nearby tribes. Once those tribes had suffered massive losses, he could pacify the surrounding land.

After that, he would transport the totems, stone pillars, and similar relics from those tribes into the forest that was already beginning to darken. With that, this mission would be more than half complete, and all that would remain would be to wait for time to pass.

But just as hope had begun to rise in Li Mingxing’s heart, a change came over the enemy ranks as well. They had apparently learned how to coordinate with one another.

The smallest of them, the shoe sprites, actually climbed onto the boar-men’s backs and rode atop them as they charged toward Li Mingxing.

At this point, only three brown bears remained from the shield force, and those three were already badly wounded. Even if they stood in front of Li Mingxing, they would be unable to withstand the boar-men’s charge. Worse still, the boar-men had been blessed with good fortune by the shoe sprites, greatly increasing their chances of landing critical blows. Li Mingxing estimated that even if the three bears stood in the front line, they would not hold for long.

So Li Mingxing simply released all of his dwarf saboteurs, then turned and said to the red-eyed dwarf gunners, “Your numbers are already few, and each of you can only fire three shots. So I want your targets to be them.”

He pointed toward the rear of the enemy force, where the leaders of the various tribes were standing, guarded by their more elite and higher-level troops.

But once Li Mingxing had pointed out the target, how could his dwarf saboteurs, who were already crazed and eager for blood, possibly wait any longer?

They discussed it briefly, then took out the flying carpets Li Mingxing had brought back from the desert. At that same moment, the three harpies who had followed Li Mingxing from the very beginning also took flight. For some time they had not been able to play a major role, and now it was finally their turn to contribute.

Those three harpies were also one of Li Mingxing’s hidden secrets. This was the critical moment to reveal that secret trump card.

Sure enough, when Li Mingxing’s flying carpets and the three harpies of a completely different kind rose into the air, the tribal commanders were all startled.

Only then did they realize that Li Mingxing seemed to still have cards left in reserve. At that point, they no longer dared hide anything themselves, and they brought out all of their elite troops.

Even so, they had still underestimated the strength of the three harpies under Li Mingxing’s command. Though these harpies were only second-tier troops, the spring-loaded attack grenades and spring-loaded poison-gas grenades in their hands were no ordinary weapons. Their skill in throwing those spring-loaded grenades was likewise something unseen in this forest.

Those men clearly saw the harpies hurling grenade-like weapons in all directions, yet for some reason the grenades still flew back toward the very people they had been thrown at.

In the end, the grenades rebounded with even greater speed and force, leaving those men with nowhere to dodge.

At that moment, Li Mingxing’s dwarf gunners, seated on the flying carpets, rushed right up to them. They paid no attention to the enemy’s condition at all. Their firearms thundered together.

At the first volley, the commanders’ subordinates still tried to leap in front to block the shots. But as the dwarf gunners fired faster and faster, by the time they had discharged their third shot, several commanders had already been blown to pieces.

Seeing the commanders torn into fragments, and seeing the blue harpies preparing lightning magic, the morale of every troop present collapsed completely. They dropped their weapons and fled in all directions.

Yet Li Mingxing had no ability to pursue the routed enemy. He glanced at his remaining forces, gritted his teeth, gathered what troops he had left, collected the spoils dropped by the enemy, and left the battlefield at full speed.

His decision proved entirely correct. Less than fifteen minutes after his departure, another coalition force arrived, and this one even included elves.

After seeing the heaps of corpses here, they hesitated only briefly before swiftly setting off in pursuit of Li Mingxing and the others. Perhaps, in their eyes, Li Mingxing was the greatest threat. Perhaps, in their eyes, his doom was already near.

What they could never have imagined was that once he had left the battlefield, Li Mingxing did not stop at all. Even when he encountered troops on the verge of death from severe wounds, he simply threw them aside and ignored them. Right now, he was rushing nonstop toward the witch’s cottage.

After abandoning more than ten critically wounded men, Li Mingxing finally reached the witch’s cottage before his army’s morale completely collapsed.

By the time he arrived, his remaining forces consisted of only seventy-four blue harpies, seventy-six white harpies, nineteen centaurs, three brown bears, fifty sprites, sixteen little wolves, eighteen gray dwarves, and three underground harpies.

Looking at the state of Li Mingxing’s army, the night elf witch kept shaking her head. “Have you really been treating my place like a supply depot? The soldiers I gave you last time were the result of all my efforts over these many years. It is not likely that I can give you more troops from here.”

Hearing this, Li Mingxing felt somewhat helpless. In truth, he had calculated this battle rather well. If not for the enemy force that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, he would not have suffered such catastrophic losses.

However, the proud Li Mingxing naturally would not say any of that aloud. He merely stood there calmly and asked the night elf witch for the reward he was owed.

After scolding him for a while, the night elf witch also felt that she had gone too far. She gently tapped the table, composed herself, and said, “Very well. You have indeed helped me quite a bit, so this reward will naturally be yours. Take these items. Also, I have something else I need you to do for me.”

Li Mingxing glanced at the things laid out on the table, silently collected them, and then looked toward the night elf witch, waiting for her to name the task he would need to complete next.