The Beastman Leader quickly spotted Laine and roared, "Human! Exterminate! Execute!"
"The ones dying today are you beasts!" Laine charged out from behind the snowy hill, leaping high, his warhammer slamming fiercely onto the head of an Inferior Horned Beast.
"Boom!" The head of the Inferior Horned Beast exploded instantly, splattering red and white matter all over the ground. Following up, Laine swung his warhammer around, and an Inferior Horned Beast instinctively raised its shield to block. The result was that both the beast and the shield were sent flying, landing over ten meters away with its shield and chest armor deeply dented, its body shattered and clearly beyond salvation.
Two more Inferior Horned Beasts roared and charged, their mouths exuding a foul stench. They thrust their inferior long spears at Laine's shoulder. Laine paid them no mind, directly smashing his warhammer into one of the Inferior Horned Beasts.
"Hiss~" The heated hammerhead pressed onto the Beastman's head, emitting the scent of grilled meat. Amid its screams, the Beastman's head turned to mangled flesh, dropping its long spear to the ground.
Immediately after, Laine sidestepped, evading the long spear's thrust. The Kingdom Knight snapped off the spearhead, pushing it into the central skull of the Beastman before kicking it away.
In one exchange, four Inferior Horned Beasts died at Laine's hands.
"So strong, truly strong, is this Mr. Laine?" The Imperial Merchant was full of astonishment and excitement, and the mercenaries shielding the female sorcerer nodded in agreement, except for the handsome mercenary wielding a two-handed greatsword, who muttered, "What's so special about that?"
"Roar!" The Horned Beasts noticed Laine as a threat, abandoning the mercenaries they were fighting and charging towards Laine. Fearlessly, he wielded the warhammer with both hands, first dodging a chop from a beast, then hopping onto its axe, and smashing its head in with his hammer. Using the headless corpse of the dead Horned Beast as a shield against the others' attacks, he claimed another Horned Beast's life.
The Kingdom Knight plunged into the Beastman mob like a tiger into a flock of sheep. In merely three minutes, five Horned Beasts and over a dozen Inferior Horned Beasts fell to him.
"Thunder Strike!" Laine raised his warhammer and slammed it into the ground, unleashing a massive wave of force that swept through the Beastman Warband. It seemed to have the power to crush gold and stones, and the surrounding Beastmen were left dizzy and too afraid to advance. Seizing the moment, Laine suddenly extended his right hand, shifting the warhammer to his left hand. A powerful white light converged into a tangible Spiritual Blade growing from his right wrist, casting a soft white glow into the air.
With the Spiritual Blade, Laine spun in place, swinging it around himself.
The surrounding Beastmen all froze.
No, they weren't completely motionless.
The Beastmen's bodies seemed to shift laterally.
They slid in perfect, straight lines.
All the Beastmen surrounding Laine were sliced in half at the waist, their agonized howls and struggles echoing across the battlefield. Laine's chain armor was already soaked with the beasts' blood; the foul stench couldn't halt this Kingdom Knight as he charged at the remaining Beastmen, commencing a slaughter.
The situation on the battlefield flipped; the morale of the Beastman Warband plummeted, and even the powerful Horned Beasts began retreating. Laine's display of combat prowess instilled fear in these beasts.
"Roar!!!" The Beastman Leader immediately realized the dire situation, abandoning Boris, who was rolling on the ground and struggling under his assault, and charged at Laine. "Human... Knight... Die!"
"The one dying is you!" Laine tightened his grip on his sword, pointing it at the Beastman Leader, while thinking that the time was just right.
"Everyone retreat, the spell is coming!" advised the Mercenary Leader lying on the ground.
"Blizzard!" Just as Laine anticipated, while he was single-handedly repelling the attack, the female sorcerer completed the chant for the Sixth-Ring Magic—Blizzard.
Hundreds of ice cones crystallized in the sky, forming sharp, prismatic shapes, which the female sorcerer controlled to rain down upon the Beastman Warband. The power of Sixth-Ring Magic far surpassed that of the earlier Second-Ring Ice Arrow. Hundreds, even thousands, of ice cones pierced through most of the Beastmen's bodies, causing them to emit wretched howls as their blood was frozen by the powerful magic force. Some Inferior Horned Beasts and Chaos War Dogs even had their heads and limbs severed by the sharp ice cones.
"Wuuu!!!" The Beastman Leader knelt on one knee, barely withstanding the Blizzard's onslaught, with countless gashes on its arms and calves and its body continually retreating, carving a line in the snow.
Roughly a minute later, the magic's power finally dissipated. The Beastmen who failed to dodge were nearly all dead, with the Beastman Leader encased in ice.
After unleashing the Sixth-Ring Magic, the female sorcerer's face turned pale as snow, and she swayed, almost collapsing to the ground.
"Lady Trovik!" The young mercenary standing beside her impulsively reached out to support her, but the female sorcerer waved off his hand with her Magic Staff. "No need to support me! Mr. Banda! I'm not that fragile!"
"Uh... yes." Banda, the young mercenary, retreated his hand awkwardly.