Free Web NovelChapter 115: Titan Anatomy
Muddy riverbanks tore past in a green blur.
Riding the crest of the leviathan’s artificial tsunami, forty obsidian galleons surged over the ten-foot shallows.
Hulls scraped against submerged logs with deep, vibrating thuds that rattled the deckboards.
Holding the main steering rudder with white-knuckled focus, Kaelia rode the boiling wake until the tributary suddenly opened into the sweeping rearguard marshes of the Menual encampment.
With a deafening crash of displaced water, the wave flattened out.
The unburnable armada skidded right onto the soft banks, grounding securely behind enemy lines.
Spitting a mouthful of river spray over the gunwale, Thora spun her twin axes. Her hazel eyes locked onto the panicked camp two hundred yards away.
"We are in their backyard, Chief!" Thora laughed, pointing a blade toward the staging grounds.
"Look at those oversized pigs!"
Across the marsh, Menual mahouts were screaming, desperately trying to wheel their iron-plated war elephants around to face the impossible flank attack.
The ground shuddered as four hundred beasts roared in confusion.
’Standard infantry blades won’t even scratch the laminated iron plates covering those skulls,’ Kane calculated, his eyes tracking the reinforced bone structure of the lead bull.
’I need enough velocity to punch straight through the armor.’
Bypassing his physical inventory, he pulled directly from his accumulated wealth mid-stride.
[Sovereign’s War Cache: Spent 10,000 Gold Coins]
[Unlocking Class Feature: Titan Sunderer (Passive)]
[Description: Converts 30% of your current total Strength into kinetic shockwaves. Weapon density increases by two tiers during downward swings.]
[Title Synergy: Sovereign of the Black Tides active — Stamina drainage negated in river basins.]
’Ten thousand gold to turn my axe into a siege engine,’ Kane smirked internally, feeling a fresh heat flood his forearms. ’Worth every single coin.’
Vaulting directly off the wooden bowsprit, he hit the marshlands at a full sprint. Mud kicked up behind his boots.
A three-ton bull elephant charged down the bank to intercept him, its tusks reinforced with jagged steel bands.
Kane didn’t step aside.
[Feature Activated: Titan Sunderer]
Planting his lead foot, he brought Mjoldr down in a savage, unhurried overhead arc.
Crimson steel met the reinforced steel tusk-guards.
The ancient blade bit straight through the metal bands, ignoring the iron skull-plating entirely to split the beast’s head wide open.
Concussive pressure echoed across the river valley like a dry thunderclap, flipping the colossal frame sideways into the reeds.
[Critical Strike Triggered: Armor Ignored] [Menual Land Forces Terminated: 1/400 Elephants]
"Ripping them down already?" Seraphine’s voice called out.
The former paladin cleared the ship’s rail a split second later.
Shared Tri-Bond Synergy sparked between them, wrapping their movements in a pulsing crimson aura.
Wearing her fitted black scout leathers, Seraphine slipped right between the stomping legs of a second charging elephant.
Her broadsword sang in a low, vicious horizontal sweep that severed the unprotected tendons behind the animal’s knees.
As the beast buckled forward, Thora vaulted off its collapsing flank.
Her twin axes took the heads of three Menual crossbowmen tumbling out of the wooden deck-howdah.
Landing lightly in the mud, Seraphine wiped a streak of warm blood from her cheek. Her silver eyes glowed with the fierce, addictive rush of their shared rhythm.
"Your new upgrade makes quite a mess, gladiator!" Seraphine yelled over the trumpeting beasts.
"I figure the fields needed plowing anyway!" Kane rumbled back, wrenching Mjoldr free from the shattered iron collar.
Clearing the immediate perimeter left a brief, quiet pocket inside the stampede, but Kane didn’t drop his guard to celebrate.
His boots sank into the red marsh as three more armored bull elephants broke formation, charging abreast to crush their pocket.
Their iron skull-plates gleamed under the midday sun.
’Three of them at once,’ Kane calculated, his eyes tracking the narrow gap between their reinforced knees.
’The mahouts are trying to box us against the hull. If they pin us in the reeds, the crossbowmen on the towers will chew us to pieces.’
"Keep your spacing tight! Don’t let their vanguard reform the line!" Kane roared.
Reaching out, his calloused palm caught Seraphine by the shoulder, physically shoving her five paces to the left or right as a spiked iron flail whipped through the empty air where she had just been standing.
"Take the left flanks!" Kane barked, launching himself forward into the center beast.
[Feature Activated: Titan Sunderer]
He didn’t aim for the top of the skull this time.
Sliding low on his shins beneath the center elephant’s jagged tusks, Kane brought Mjoldr upward in a vicious, rising vertical arc.
The kinetic shockwave bypassed the exterior iron breast-plating entirely, exploding upward through the animal’s soft palate.
Wood and bone shattered above him.
The three-ton behemoth dropped instantly, its collapsing bulk forcing the remaining two elephants to violently swerve and crash their massive shoulders into one another.
"They are bottlenecking themselves!" Thora roared. freēwēbnovel.com
Vaulting straight onto the tangled, thrashing beasts, the blonde warrior spun her twin axes in a blinding scissor-strike, burying both blades deep into the chest of the nearest screaming mahout before he could blow his signaling horn.
Panicked trumpeting drowned out the shouts of the Menual vanguard as the surviving war elephants finally lost their nerve.
Three-ton behemoths realized no amount of laminated iron plating could stop kinetic shockwaves from turning their brains into jelly, so self-preservation took over. Ignoring the frantic whipping of their mahouts, the animals pivoted in the reeds and charged backward right into their own advancing infantry columns.
’They spent an imperial treasury breeding these monsters, and now their own investment is stomping their soldiers into paste,’ Kane observed, casually sidestepping a spinning wooden howdah that detached from a fleeing bull.
’Morvak really should have trained them for an ambush.’
"Chief! The vanguard is buckling!" Sira shouted, vaulting off a marsh rock to land beside his shoulder.
"Firlia’s archers have the northern ridge covered, but those elephants are trampling the enemy supply wagons!" ƒгeewebnovёl.com
"Let them chew their own rations," Kane laughed, pointing his dagger toward the retreating officers.
"Focus your volleys on the mahouts trying to steer them back toward the ships! Keep the herd running south!"
