Chapter 66: Counter-flanking

As soon as Velvet saw this it was clear that the snakemen were already in a full offensive formation and aggressively charging toward their group. So she immediately shouted an order, "Magenta,Fiona! Retreat and hold position! The rest of you, hold the alleys!"

​Upon receiving her command, the group retreated to their previous positions. During their initial charge, they had left Smith behind, so Fiona and Magenta, together with their pawns, directly blocked the alleyway to form a bottleneck. They rushed forward simultaneously while the rest of the group retreated into the passage. Fiona and Magenta were left alone to face the full brunt of the charging snakemen. However, neither panicked as the others vanished from sight. They activated their titles and readied themselves for impact.

​Seeing this, the snakemen leader was briefly confused, but he didn’t bother dwelling on it. He viewed this as a clear advantage: over the past few days, his side had been terrified by this group of humans, and the enemy split their forces meant he could overpower this pair quickly before hunting down the rest.

​The two sides collided. A forest of spears met the razor-sharp swings of Magenta’s axe and Fiona’s defensive line. the snakemen’s slithering movement made charging awkward due to their anatomy But still sheer numbers generated overwhelming momentum. However, because of the narrow bottleneck, only a few of the snakemen could engage at once. Flanked by high rock walls, they couldn’t exploit their numbers to surround the pair.

​After neutralizing the initial charge, Magenta and Fiona launched their counterattack. In this narrow space, the enemies were essentially throwing themselves directly onto Magenta’s massive axe—the exact style of combat where she excelled. Every exchange was devastatingly efficient. Magenta used her Heavy Stomp to disrupt the snakemen’s stance, followed immediately by her second skill, Heavy Strike. With a single sequence, she took down two to three snakemen at a time. Activating her title had boosted her stats to 48 points, placing her firmly in the mid Intermediate Rank. Because she relied on raw physical strength, both novice and intermediate rank snakemen stood no chance against her axe swings they were all severed in half.

​Beside her, Fiona was equally formidable in her own right. She absorbed the majority of incoming damage, holding the frontline securely. Once she accumulated enough energy, she launched periodic, highly aggressive counterattacks. These offensive windows allowed Magenta and her Pawns brief moments to step back, catch her breath, and recuperate. When Fiona and her pawns had spent their energy and Magenta’s stamina restored, they seamlessly switched roles again. The doorway became an meat grinder, steadily eroding and slaughtering the enemy forces.

​The snakeman leader quickly realized the battle was turning against him. His initial breach had failed, and his troops were now stalled in a deadly bottleneck. He considered ordering a retreat to regroup, but he feared the missing elite archers who were nowhere to be seen would pick his forces off one by one, just as earlier they had done. Instead, he ordered the snakemen unable to fight at the front to find an alternative route. He planned to launch a pincer attack, trapping the two women in the middle and wearing them down through attrition, knowing that sustaining high-output combat power would eventually exhaust them.

​A detachment of twenty Intermediate-Rank snakemen split into two groups of ten, venturing down the left and right passages along the outer edges of the large rock formations flanking Magenta and Fiona.

​As the right-hand group rounded a sharp corner—just a few paces away from gaining a clear line of sight on Magenta and Fiona’s unprotected rear—they believed their maneuver had succeeded. But just before they could execute the flank, the last snakeman in the line felt a sudden chill. Intuition told him something was wrong, but it came too late. A shadowed figure dropped from above, slicing his throat before he could sound an alarm. Vespers and her pawns struck silently, slitting the throats of the remaining rear guards in seconds.

​By the time the remaining snakemen realized their rear guard was dead and turned to retaliate, Valeria and her pawns charged around the corner. Directing powerful spear thrusts straight through the distracted flankers, they instantly eliminated three more snakemen.

​With their numbers reduced from ten to four, the fight was over before it truly began. While two pawns held off one Intermediate snakeman each, Vespers and Valeria engaged the last two in direct combat, killing them within moments.

​Once the area was secured, they spotted Brenda and Velvet finishing off the second flanking group on the opposite side.

​"Is your side cleared?" Velvet called out.

​"Cleared," Valeria confirmed.

​Without missing a beat, the two team melted back into the shadows of the corridors.

​On the main frontline, the snakeman leader watched in mounting dread as his numbers dwindled at a terrifying rate. Though Magenta and Fiona were finally showing signs of fatigue, he knew that any victory here would be far too costly. Worse still, he had received no word or signal from either of his flanking detachments. Realizing they must have run into a fatal trap, he knew the battle was already lost.

​Suddenly, the hidden archers reappeared directly behind his rear defensive line, firing a coordinated volley of arrows. While not every shot landed, each wave brought down another one or two snakemen. Simultaneously, the ambushers who had wiped out the flanking parties charged into the snakemen’s exposed flanks. Caught entirely off-guard, the snakemen’s formation collapsed into chaos.

​Desperate and seeing his forces disintegrate, the snakeman leader raised his spear and charged into the fray himself forna despite struggle. Seeing the enemy formation shatter, Velvet signaled the group to press the advantage. Magenta and Fiona instantly abandoned their defensive stance, switching to a full, aggressive forward push.

​The snakeman leader locked eyes with Magenta and charged at her with full momentum. He activated a physical enhancement, boosting his aura points from 60 points up to 75. Ignoring all self-defense, he thrust his spear directly at Magenta’s head.

​Magenta knew better than to take the blow head-on. Even if his spear couldn’t pierce her armor, the massive impact from a 75-point creature strike would give her a severe concussion. Gritting her teeth, she leaned to the right and deflected the spear blade with her left arm arm guard and As the shaft slid past, she pinned it firmly against her side with her left arm.

​Before the leader could pull his weapon free, Magenta activated Heavy Strike and using her free right arm she swung her axe back toward him in a powerful arc.

​Unable to block with his trapped spear, the snakeman leader released his grip and crossed his armored arms in an "X" in front of his chest. As a defense-oriented combatant with denser bone structure and scales, he managed to catch the physical force of the axe head on his arms, saving himself from being cleaved in two, though the impact shattered his arm bones.

​However, Magenta’s skill carried a secondary shockwave effect. The massive internal force passed straight through his guard, rupturing his internal organs. Blood gushed from his mouth and eyes as he collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.

​With their leader dead and their formation destroyed, the surviving snakemen panicked, threw down their weapons, and tried to flee. But their anatomy was ill-suited for sprinting away; the girls easily pursued and eliminated every last one.

​Once the battlefield fell quiet, the girls cleared the area and regrouped around Smith at the back of the passage.

​"Good job, girls," Smith said "But we can’t relax yet. We still don’t know the situation on the other side, and we need to hit them before they realize what happened or reinforcements full gathers"

​Nodding in agreement, the group followed Smith without delay, plunging deeper into the cave.