160: Chapter 160 Zero-Loss Crushing

Guling Holy City.

An ice-blue pillar of light lit up at the twin-city teleportation array.

The Winter Sovereign stepped out from the light.

With every step it took, a layer of white frost condensed on the ground and spread outward.

Following closely behind it were sixty thousand Ice-Armored Undead.

Wrapped in thick crystal-ice armor and wielding cold-iron longspears, their steps were neat and uniform.

Counting the one hundred thousand original garrison troops of the holy city, the total force had now reached one hundred and sixty thousand.

The Winter Sovereign walked up to the city wall, its ice-blue soul fire looking down past the city.

...

Outside the city.

Shiro Kobayashi, the lord of the Iron-Armed Ape-Men, was pumping up his ape-man warriors.

"Strike fast and retreat fast! Grab the resources and leave!"

Beside him, Tomoaki Koizumi, the lord of the Scorpion-Tail clan, said with a sinister smile:

"My stone scorpions have sent back a reconnaissance report showing that the aura of living creatures inside is very faint, so faint it can be ignored."

"I believe there are at most ten to twenty thousand garrison troops in that ruin."

"So desu ne."

Shiro Kobayashi stood up,

"Ware wa! Ape-man vanguard, break the gate, you guys follow up!"

The nine lords thus reached an agreement.

Shiro Kobayashi turned around, just as he was about to raise his fist to order a Charge...

Suddenly, his peripheral vision caught sight of the top of the city wall.

Then, his movements froze.

At the top of the city wall, a huge figure was standing up.

A pitch-black skeleton twelve meters tall, its joints covered in crystal ice,

holding a giant sword nearly ten meters long in its hand.

In its eye sockets, two clumps of ice-blue flames looked down at them.

"Nani?"

Shiro Kobayashi's voice suddenly rose,

"Baka na!!!"

He opened his command panel, and his face instantly turned pale.

Before he could even react...

Bang!

The city gate in front opened.

Moreover, it wasn't just one gate that opened.

The city gates facing east, south, west, and north opened simultaneously.

One hundred and sixty thousand mighty undead surged out from all four directions.

The front row consisted of one hundred thousand ordinary undead troops, whose footsteps were chaotic yet covered the sky and earth.

The back row of sixty thousand Ice-Armored Undead marched in neat steps,

chilling aura overflowing from the ranks, visible white mist rolling across the ground.

Above the city wall, that eighty-meter-long skeletal giant python slowly poked its head out.

Tomoaki Koizumi, the lord of the Scorpion-Tail clan, instantly widened his eyes.

"An—an Undead Army?"

Without another word, he turned around and ran.

Seeing this, the other lords also reacted instantly.

Thirty thousand fighting over one hundred thousand undead?

And there was a major boss holding down the fort?

This wasn't a siege; this was courting death.

"Retreat!"

"Fall back! Fall back completely!"

However, it was already too late.

The Winter Sovereign had already leaped down from the city wall.

Boom!

The twelve-meter skeleton slammed into the ground, and frost exploded outward.

[Eternal Frost Domain]!

A fifty-meter radius of piercing cold unfolded.

The front-row Iron-Armed Ape-Men rushed less than ten steps before they were frozen so stiff they couldn't lift their legs.

The Winter Sovereign swept its sword horizontally.

Swish!

That frost greatsword nearly ten meters long

traced a cold, biting arc,

sweeping across seven or eight ape-man warriors.

-38000!

-38000!

-38000!

-38000!

...

The health points of the Iron-Armed Ape-Men instantly hit rock bottom.

One-shotted.

The Winter Sovereign did not stop.

It strode forward and charged directly into the enemy formation.

Behind it, one hundred and sixty thousand undead closed in from all four sides.

The Scorpion-Tail archers wanted to retreat and output damage,

but their movement speed was reduced by eighty percent,

and their retreat was instantly blocked by the undead surging out from the north gate.

They raised their stingers and shot them at the charging Ice-Armored Undead.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

Clang, clang, clang!

The Ice-Armored Undead didn't budge an inch and continued moving forward.

The cold-iron longspears thrust forward.

-4800!

The scorpion-tail archers fell to the ground in response.

The Stone-Skin Trolls were quite tough, charging outward while bearing the slowing effect of the Eternal Frost Domain.

They had thick skin and thick flesh, with health pools as high as eighty thousand.

Seeing them, the Winter Sovereign directly turned its direction and slashed down with its sword.

Boom!

-38000!

Most of the Stone-Skin Trolls' rock armor shattered.

Immediately following was the second sword.

-41000!

The trolls shattered.

It took no more than two seconds in total.

Shiro Kobayashi desperately rode his mount and ran outward.

His speed was the fastest, and he forcefully broke through the interception of several undead.

But the skeletal giant python was faster than him.

The eighty-meter-long snake body circled around from the side, its python tail flicking out.

Boom!

Shiro Kobayashi and his mount were whipped flying together, slamming into the ground and rolling over ten meters.

He struggled to climb to his feet, but the ground in front of him was already covered in white frost.

Then, the shadow of the Winter Sovereign cast down from above.

Shiro Kobayashi looked up, meeting those two clumps of ice-blue soul fire.

"It's over!"

Boom!

The frost greatsword fell.

-82000.

Instant kill.

From the start of the battle to the end, four and a half minutes.

Thirty thousand alien allied forces, nine lords, none escaped.

The Winter Sovereign put away its greatsword and turned to walk back into the city.

The sound of footsteps faded away.

Shattered bones littered the battlefield, and the chill had not yet dissipated.

...

Floating City.

A new prompt popped up on the command panel.

[Battle Report Update!]

[Guling Holy City Defense Battle, Victory!]

[Battle Duration: 4 minutes 38 seconds]

[Enemy Lords Killed: 9]

[Enemy Troops Annihilated: 31,247]

[Own Casualties: 0]

[Battle Evaluation: C]

[Talent "War Gift" triggered! Current level 22! All loot × 23!]

Xu Qin curled his lips.

Zero casualties and a C rank?

Is Winter this fierce?

He continued to scroll down through the loot list.

[Iron-Armed Ape-Man Bones × 295,090]

[Scorpion-Tail Clan Bones × 193,591]

[Stone-Skin Troll Bones × 69,552]

[soul energy + 1,438,000]

Adding them all up, it was close to six hundred thousand skeletons.

"Winter."

"Present."

"Push all these bones into the teleportation array and send them over to my side."

"As you command."

Xu Qin turned off the communication and stroked his chin as he calculated.

Six hundred thousand skeletons. According to the ratio of twelve skeletons per Stitched Bone Beast, he could churn out nearly fifty thousand beasts.

Coupled with the newly baked thirty thousand iron-spined Bone Beasts,

eighty-six iron rhinoceros-type Bone Beasts...

"The scale of the frontline legion should be enough."

Just as he was calculating how to distribute this batch of new bones,

a reconnaissance report suddenly popped up in the upper right corner of the command panel.

[Skeleton Vulture Reconnaissance Report (Abnormal)]

[About 30 kilometers to the southeast, a floating gravel fragment with an area of about 3 square kilometers has been detected, drifting slowly.]

[Current drifting speed: about 30 kilometers/hour.]

[Estimated to merge into the mainland in 1 hour.]

Looking at the report, Xu Qin opened the regional map and zoomed in on the southeast direction.

Sure enough, a grayish-brown fragment of gravel was moving slowly in the void.

It had an irregular shape and wasn't very large, around 3 square kilometers.

Xu Qin stroked his chin.

In high-tier planes, gravel fragments represented ownerless resources.

There might be ore veins, monsters, or other things on it...

But a gravel fragment with an area of 3 kilometers could not be underestimated.

What if there were troops hidden on it?

"I need to figure out what's on that gravel fragment first."

Xu Qin opened the troop panel and summoned the Skeleton Vulture and Skeleton Sand Rat.

"Vultures patrol the air, and Sand Rats burrow inside to scout the bottom after landing."

The order was given.

One hundred Skeleton Vultures took flight from the edge of the Combat Readiness Platform,

each clutching a Sand Rat in its claws, and flew toward the southeast direction.

...

Twenty minutes later.

The first batch of reconnaissance reports was sent back.

[No life reactions detected.]

"Empty?"

Xu Qin raised an eyebrow.

Could it really be a 3-square-kilometer floating gravel fragment?

"Sand Rats, burrow down and take a look."

The command was transmitted through the command panel.

One hundred Skeleton Sand Rats jumped down from the Vultures' claws. Upon landing on the surface of the gravel fragment, they immediately found rock crevices and burrowed in.

Three minutes later.

Ding!

[Discovery: High-Tier Magic Iron Ore Vein (Medium)]

[Estimated Reserves: 8,000-12,000]