[My god, this is the first time I've actually seen "cool" as an aura on a Dark Beast.]
[I want a pair of those shoes too! Wu Family, put them on the shop shelves immediately!]
[Three heads and six arms, feet treading on Wind-Fire Wheels... wait, why does this setting feel so familiar?]
[First time learning that those disgusting Facehuggers can be used like this. Next time I see one, I won't be in such a hurry to chop it to death.]
The comments were mostly jokes; everyone's mindset was relatively relaxed. With humanity's significant advantage this time, people had the heart to jest. However, there were also those analyzing seriously, sparking constant discussion.
[Wei Huan already took his people out? Is there a special operation?]
[Will this affect the main army's movements? What are the military experts saying?]
[I think this is right. Wei Huan should engage in special operations. Confining him to a group army would be a waste of talent.]
[As expected of my Brother Wei, he's incredible. While others are just entering and getting familiar with the environment, he's already charging in aggressively. He might truly catch the Dark Beasts off guard. For anyone else, charging in now would be suicide, but I believe Brother Wei can carve out an advantage.]
[Already anticipating the dumbfounded looks on the Dark Beasts' faces.]
[Anticipating +1.]
[Anticipating. It's a pity the Fog of War makes it impossible to see the situation on the Dark Beasts' side.]
[That's normal. If we could see, intelligence would be leaked. For the first time, I'm grateful for this setting; otherwise, our sneak attack would lose its effectiveness.]
[Go go go! Keep recruiting!]
[Insane! As they travel, the undead army just keeps gushing out. I've been watching for a long time and they still aren't all out.]
[This is just the beginning. I heard Wei Huan's Swift Wolf army exceeds fifty thousand. At that number, even if ten portals spit out 30 simultaneously per second, it still takes a while for all of them to emerge.]
[In the past, I wished the battlefield was larger to give us more room for flanking and maneuvering. Now, for the first time, I feel this battlefield is a bit too big.]
The battlefield was indeed quite large.
Wei Huan had already completed the deployment of the undead legion, yet they hadn't even covered half the distance. It seemed he had summoned the undead army a bit too early; the long-awaited Opening Battle had finally begun, making him a bit overexcited.
However, it didn't really matter. During daily adventures in the Challenge World, the undead were always out guarding the vehicle anyway—he just usually didn't release the Shura Horses, whose movement speed was slightly slower, during non-combat times.
Wei Huan didn't bother to correct it. He simply ordered the "Burrow Mother" to release more Burrow Beast Mothers, allowing the nearly ten thousand Swift Wolves that had just emerged to board their shells, solving the movement speed issue.
The Swift Wolves were half-useless in seawater, but this wasn't a major problem. The Dark Beast race was not an aquatic species either and was equally unadapted to the sea. Since both sides were weakened, rounding it off meant their combat effectiveness remained equal; the Swift Wolves were still effective on such a battlefield.
Stopping the release of Swift Wolves and having them board the shells—jokingly dubbed "Troop Carriers" by the live-stream viewers—Wei Huan ordered the AI Butler to slightly increase their speed.
They were marching at a speed that nearly pressed against the ceiling of Tier 4 war vehicles. Among the thousand vehicles, only 220 were Tier 5; the rest were all Tier 4.
This was unavoidable. Humanity had been in the Tier 5 world for less than a year when the Tier 6 Opening Battle began. Before Wei Huan entered, the Pioneer Army's speed in gathering materials was relatively slow. If Wei Huan hadn't "plowed the fields" in the Tier 6 world later on, humanity would have even fewer Tier 5 vehicles than they did now. Furthermore, they couldn't all be assigned to him; other legions also needed Tier 5 vehicles as their primary combat strength.
The entry-level Tier 4 vehicles had a speed of only 800 km/h. After upgrading several speed-related components, they could reach 1,200 km/h—a speed slower than Wei Huan's usual "plowing" pace.
But Tier 4 vehicles were useful. They couldn't lay siege to cities, but they could carry people. Official analysis of Wei Huan's past battles showed that while the undead army's siege appeared grand and tumultuous, the decisive factor was actually the "airdropped" assault squads inside the city.
Therefore, the authorities had arranged a large number of special ops crew members suited for deep infiltration. They would enter the Dark Beast cities directly to fight. Close-quarters combat deep behind enemy lines was a dangerous mission, but if everyone feared death and dared not go, the war would surely be lost. This battle was crucial; even with sacrifices, victory was mandatory.
Within the thousand vehicles behind him, over eighty thousand warriors followed Wei Huan with the conviction to die.
On the screen before Wei Huan, a dense array of over a thousand communication avatars appeared. They were the commanders of every vehicle, driving their vehicles in close pursuit of Wei Huan's vehicle, awaiting the latest orders.
However, Wei Huan was clearly not a leader who liked to use words to mobilize morale. The command channel remained silent throughout, filled only with the heavy thumping of heartbeats and the sound of gradually quickening breaths.
They were nearing the Dark Beast territory.
Wei Huan did not know which Royal clan he would face, nor what abilities they possessed. This unknown danger was like opening a blind box to him. If he could face the Dark Beast King directly, that would be ideal. He was confident he could kill a Tier 5 Dark Beast King. If the King fell, the Dark Beast race would surely fall into chaos, and the subsequent battles would be an easy victory for humanity.
What a pity...
Finally, the Fog of War broke, and they arrived before the territory of a Dark Beast Lord. They encountered the first wave of low-tier units hurriedly dispatched after receiving the news.
Through the eyes of the Demon Eye Lord positioned 30 kilometers ahead, Wei Huan saw his enemies clearly. It was a group of Snakemen—units he used to encounter frequently when fighting Tier 3 Dark Beast Lords. These Snakemen had snake heads, human torsos, and snake tails with four arms; they were units with very high combat effectiveness.
If a human challenger of the same level were surrounded by three or five of them, they would likely find them difficult to handle. Most importantly, these Snakemen were poisonous. One could be poisoned through their claws, teeth, or even by inhaling the toxic mist they sprayed during prolonged combat, resulting in blood loss, slowness, and hallucinations. It was known that in PVE, they were one of the favorite units for Dark Beast Lords to recruit in the early stages.
However, once a Lord reached Tier 4, new units with better cost-performance, such as Medusas, would replace the low-tier Snakemen.
Wei Huan watched the unknown number of Snakemen approaching, but he was not pleased. Had he accidentally stumbled upon a low-tier territory? Had the Dark Beast Royalty placed low-tier Dark Beast Lords at the front this time?
Soon, Wei Huan realized his suspicion was correct. Facing a suddenly dominant Human Race, the Dark Beast race—which had always seemed at ease and extremely arrogant—had actually chosen to defend this time.
Without needing the army of challengers brought by Wei Huan to act, the Tier 5 Ghost Crows and Tier 5 Facehuggers he sent ahead easily slaughtered these Tier 3 Snakemen. As the Snakemen died, their toxic blood flowed into the sea, staining the water red. Wei Huan also realized the enemy's tactic.
Indeed, Snakemen were not only cost-effective, but the snake race also had a movement advantage in the sea. Additionally, these Snakemen had the ability to pollute the water. If they managed to poison some human challengers by chance, it would be a gain for the Dark Beasts. The Dark Beast race was experiencing the deep-sea world for the first time; unable to grasp its rules, they were using their low-tier kin for trial and error.
This was truly something the Dark Beast Royalty would do under the Hive Mind model. One couldn't say these probes were entirely useless. At the very least, they measured that the enemy charging in at this time was Wei Huan. Furthermore, they learned that poison attacks were useless against an undead army.
As for anything more... it could only be said that in the face of absolute combat power, all tricks were futile.
Wei Huan's undead army simply rolled over the wave after wave of units sent by this Dark Beast Lord. Soon, a clearly "flimsy" city wall appeared before Wei Huan's eyes. A wall less than five meters high faced his direction, with only five watchtowers upgraded to Tier 4.
Three long-range heroes of unknown level—one human and two unknown demonic races—attacked them with "dauntless" resolve. There was no sign of the Dark Beast Lord; they were likely hiding somewhere, continuing to hand-craft units.
The Dark Beasts knew fear, but under the influence of the Hive Mind, if the Royalty gave a "defend to the death" order, they would never flee. Even if biological instincts made them fear death, the will of the Royalty still reigned supreme.
Facing a territory that was, as guessed, only Tier 3, Wei Huan felt no joy; instead, he furrowed his brow.
The headquarters in the rear synchronized his visuals and information. Commander Dong, who was focusing on this area, said, "It seems the Dark Beasts have realized the change in the situation and altered their strategy. Our reconnaissance vehicles haven't arrived yet, but you've managed to see the latest intel."
Commander Chai frowned. "The longer it drags on, the more familiar they become with the environment. These outer Dark Beast Lords are mere cannon fodder; killing them won't affect the Dark Beasts' overall combat power."
Wei Huan thought of something and contacted Yake. "Yake, can you see further away?"
Yake nodded. "I just took a look. Everything within 50 miles consists of Tier 3 territories. We can look deeper."
Commander Chai heard this and asked Commander Dong, "Commander-in-Chief, should we press our main army forward? Level the cannon fodder ahead as quickly as possible?"
Commander Dong chatted with the staff officers beside him for a few moments and said, "I've shared the latest military intelligence with the other national legions. However, regarding changing the plan, we must handle it with caution. The Dark Beasts will not always take hits passively. Once the main army sets out, it's hard to turn back. I believe current combat should focus on special operations until we truly scout out the intel and then decide on a strategy."
Commander Chai nodded and fell silent.
While Wei Huan listened, he had already leveled the territory blocking his path. In Wei Huan's eyes, a Tier 3 territory wasn't even worth being called a steamed bun—at least a bun leaves a clump of dough when squeezed; this territory was a block of tofu, crushed without even using strength.
As the Lord's Hall was destroyed and the territory rapidly turned to sand, Wei Huan gazed at the hazy path ahead, not in a hurry to let the undead army move further in.
"Yake, look again."
"Understood."
Instead of wandering aimlessly forward and killing meaningless Dark Beast Lords while giving the Dark Beast elites time to develop, Wei Huan believed it was better to perform precise strikes.
Standing on the war platform atop the vehicle, Yake raised his hands above his head, his slightly cupped hands seemingly catching the wind. Although the water was kept out by the protective shield, there was indeed a circle of wind swirling around him, tossing his hair and converging into his tightly shut eyes, occasionally leaking a flash of pure gold.
Simultaneously, within a 50-kilometer range, pairs of golden eyes appeared in the sky. Although it was just a field of vision, it lit up dense small dots on the human side's map. Zooming in on these dots revealed a visual point roughly one kilometer in diameter that could pierce through the Fog of War, revealing the eyes of the hidden Dark Beast Lords.
When Yake's Eagle Eye descended, the Dark Beast Lords reacted one after another, looking up at the sky. Although it was only reconnaissance, the Dark Beast Lords would receive a system notification of "being spied upon." For a moment, all the Dark Beast Lords sent to the front to block the way became uneasy, and their speed of deploying troops quickened.
However, some Dark Beast Lords did not panic. Mist Towers had already been built within their territories. Although the human Eagle Eye dispelled a small patch of mist above them, their buildings would soon be obscured by the mist from the towers. In this vast, star-like Dark Beast camp, finding them precisely wouldn't be so easy.
One particular Tier 5 Dark Beast Lord was the Sovereign Lord of this region. Over a thousand low-tier Dark Beast Lords in the surrounding circle followed its command. There were factories within these Lords' territories; the produced resources would gather at the Sovereign Lord, who would then hand them over to the Royalty. The Dark Beast race didn't have the habit of "skimming off the top," but the Dark Beast King allowed it to use a portion of the resources.
In the Lord Challenge World, it was merely an ordinary Tier 5 Lord; most resource points in its territory couldn't be mined. But here, with the supply from a thousand low-tier Lords, it had still managed to complete one building: a Mist Tower.
With the Mist Tower, it could completely hide its tracks. It didn't believe its luck would be so bad that, before the final decisive battle began, the Necromancer's single army would find its territory right in the center of a thousand territories. Furthermore, it was just one of many Sovereign Lords; surrounding it were thousands more Sovereign Lords and the Dark Beast Royalty they protected. Its luck couldn't be 'that' bad...
As it thought this, the Sovereign Dark Beast Lord checked a system report. 30 miles away, a second territory had been destroyed.
[Notification: ￥#%￥ has been killed by the Human Wei Huan; the territory has been destroyed simultaneously.]
'Just a Tier 3 territory controlled by a member of the Shura Horse race, a group of lower-tier Dark Beasts,' the Lord thought. 'Upon confirming they were being attacked, they should have chosen to take the Lord Core and flee with their lives to offer themselves to the King. That is what a low-tier Dark Beast should do. To perish with the territory instead?'
This Tier 5 Lord was naturally a Two-Headed Phantom Demon. Fortunately, when recruiting heroes, it had recruited two Legendary heroes in succession, earning the appreciation and cultivation of the Royalty. The Lord Challenge had slightly altered the rules of the Dark Beast race. Hero recruitment had changed the social structure of pure bloodline elitism; even the lowest-tier Swift Wolf, if lucky enough to recruit a Legendary hero at the start, would be cultivated by the Royalty. Currently, there was a Kobold—originally of low bloodline—who had become a new favorite of the Royalty, attending to the King's side, simply because it had recruited a Pseudo-God hero.
The monthly hero draw was essentially a grand reshuffling of the low-tier Dark Beasts' fates. Of course, to have a higher probability of drawing high-tier heroes, one had to continuously build higher-level Hero Temples. Because low-tier Dark Beasts lacked the ability to mine special resources in their territories, they naturally couldn't build advanced Hero Temples, making their probability of drawing high-tier heroes extremely low.
But this Lord, as a Seven-Star Dark Beast, could develop over 85% of the resource points in its territory. When necessary, the King would even send troops to help it campaign, allowing it to have a sufficiently high Hero Temple and earn two Legendary heroes!
Hero grades were divided into "Common," "Epic," "Legendary," "Pseudo-God," and "Divine." The strength of one Legendary hero was enough to easily face five war vehicles. If a long-range hero was recruited, they could even kill human challengers from ten miles away. It had become a Sovereign Lord precisely because it possessed two long-range Legendary heroes.
The Two-Headed Phantom Demon Lord armed its two most important Legendary heroes to the teeth and continued to recruit units focused around them. It occasionally checked the notifications of the Lord System. This human named "Wei Huan" was uprooting territories at a very fast pace—averaging three territories per minute. This caused its system to refresh notifications non-stop.
A sense of urgency unknowingly surged in its heart. It stopped its recruitment actions and opened the map to look at its own side. It found that to its front-left, this Wei Huan was like a savage beast, biting off a large "crescent-shaped" area of territories. Only ten minutes had passed since the first notification, yet 33 territories had been leveled. The speed was too fast.
Although it appeared the human's path would not lead to its territory, it still felt inexplicably and exceptionally nervous. Especially as it focused more, it could feel the strength of this human. Whether it was the speed of leveling cities or the fact that rarely did any Dark Beast Lord escape the falling territories, his strength was evident. The Lord's sense of urgency reached its peak.
Without knowing when, its mindset shifted from a desire for battle to: "Don't see me, don't see me."
Especially in these last few minutes, whenever a notification rang, it would tirelessly open the system map to check the opponent's route. A wide route spreading nearly 40 kilometers—even a human group army entering would only push through an area that large. It was right on the edge of his path; it was too dangerous. Should it just take the Lord Core and flee the moment he was discovered?
'Don't see me.'
'Don't see me...'
"Commander, it's right around here," Yake said over the link. "I'm certain it's within this range."
Wei Huan nodded to acknowledge and looked left and right. The battlefield map was too large, and with the Mist Tower providing cover, it was difficult to precisely lock onto the suspected high-tier territory.
However, this wouldn't stop them. They would just push through the approximate range and search outward in a spiral. Once they knew the general location, were they still afraid they wouldn't find it?
Wei Huan ordered Yake: "Forget about this territory. I'll find it. You keep looking further out and find other high-tier Lords."
"Yes, Commander." After taking the order, Yake ended the communication and continued to cast Eagle Eye from the top of the vehicle.
No one had anticipated beforehand that Yake's special talent would become the key to breaking the stalemate; otherwise, Wei Huan could only have wandered blindly like a headless fly. Furthermore, in this kind of deep infiltration operation, even Wei Huan was not safe. If he fell into an encirclement of high-tier Lords, he might fall into a bitter struggle or even die. Thus, uprooting high-tier territories specifically while moving deeper ensured, at the very least, a safe retreat path.
Now, Yake continued his reconnaissance mission while Wei Huan, according to plan, began to explore outward in a spiral from this area as the starting point. He had to find the high-tier Dark Beast territory here no matter what before he dared to move further forward. He was responsible for his own life and the lives of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers following him.
If it was slow, so be it.
The Two-Headed Phantom Demon Lord, which had been focusing on Wei Huan's movements, saw Wei Huan and his fleet graze the edge of its territory and push deeper. Even as a member of the Two-Headed Phantom Demon race—the "War Gods" of the Dark Beasts—it felt the terror of Death brushing past its side.
Did... did I dodge it?
But before it could breathe a sigh of relief, several Ghost Crows suddenly flew in from the horizon. The moment they entered its territory, it received a system alert.
[Warning: Enemies have appeared on the edge of your territory. Please prepare for battle.]
The heart it had just let down suddenly leaped into its throat.
Simultaneously, through the vision Wei Huan projected onto the hero-level Demon Eye Lord, he saw that unique city wall. It was loftier and thicker, a massive wall built of solid materials standing 30 meters high. The wall was covered with watchtower embrasures, and the soldiers training on top wore high-level equipment. Everything reflected that the Lord of this territory was of extraordinary strength.
Had it been anyone else, they might have handled it with caution. But in Wei Huan's eyes, it was like a bee seeing honey. His mood, which had been gloomy for a while, suddenly dispelled the mist, and the sun shone brightly.
"Found it!!"
Wei Huan's spirit jolted. Upon discovering the territory, ten portals opened simultaneously on both sides of the war vehicle.
The AI Butler, upon receiving the notification, suddenly accelerated and issued the latest command.
"Notification! Notification! All departments attention! High-tier Lord territory discovered! Prepare for battle!!"
"Notification! Notification!..."
The urgent voice rang out in all the war vehicles. As the leader vehicle, and given the extremely high AI grade on his ship, Wei Huan easily took control of all the vehicles; broadcasting a notification was the simplest task.
In the various vehicles, the long-waiting warriors all showed the excitement of being about to rush into battle, along with a dash of resolute determination. If they died here, it would be a small step toward the future of humanity; even if it was only one centimeter, it was a path forward!
They stood in a line, waiting before a small, fist-sized Kobold. They didn't know what the battlefield ahead looked like, what kind of intense environment they would face, or if they would be able to return after leaving this time.
But none of that was the most important thing. What mattered most was that they were rushing toward their ideals, fighting for the human race and for their mission!