"Commander Libre! Look! Over there!"
Facing the frantic shout, Libre Fermi, the serpent commander, immediately snapped her reptilian gaze in the direction the soldier was pointing.
Her scaly expression instantly became incredibly ugly.
Thick, black smoke was billowing into the gloomy sky from the very heart of their own camp.
"So that's it... that was their true objective," Libre murmured softly, her slitted eyes narrowing as she turned back to look at Regulus, who was still surrounded by layers of Demi-Human soldiers.
Regulus naturally also noticed the massive fire emerging in the distance and the flames spreading rapidly through the tents. He knew without thinking that Sphinx must have successfully ignited the army's central food supplies.
"Hmm?" Regulus looked up at the gloomy sky as a cold drop of water hit his cheek.
It was raining.
And the rain came very quickly; from the first warning drop, a torrential downpour continuously fell across the wetlands, soaking the battlefield.
'My luck is a bit bad,' Regulus thought, wiping his face.
However, it shouldn't have too much impact. The massive stockpiles of food supplies had already been thoroughly ignited. Even if the heavy rain could save a little bit of the grain, it certainly couldn't save enough to sustain an army of this size. What's more, with a Great Mage like Sphinx personally taking action to burn it, whether the heavy rain could even extinguish her magical flames was highly unlikely.
Since Sphinx had already fulfilled her role...
Regulus lazily raised his hand.
He violently swung his arm through the torrential downpour. Infused with the absolute Authority of Stillness, the thousands of falling raindrops he touched immediately froze in time, defying gravity and physics before accelerating into deadly, invisible weapons.
If the heavy rain brought trouble to Sphinx's fires, then for Regulus, it was undoubtedly an extremely convenient, omnidirectional weapon delivered right to his doorstep.
In a brief, terrifying fraction of a second, even under direct observation, Libre Fermi was completely unable to react.
And it wasn't just Libre alone.
She, the elite guards standing with her, and even the hundreds of soldiers mobilized behind her, all had their bodies instantly and effortlessly pierced by the frozen water droplets without exception.
A massive, gruesome mist of blood filled the air, instantly dyeing the slanting rainwater and the muddy ground a deep, horrific red. As countless Demi-Human soldiers fell simultaneously like harvested wheat, it gave the surviving onlookers a tremendous, mind-shattering visual shock.
"You…" Libre gasped, falling to her knees. Her throat had been perfectly pierced, preventing her from speaking further as blood bubbled from her lips.
She hadn't expected it. She hadn't even sensed mana. She couldn't comprehend that this man would suddenly launch an attack of such magnitude, let alone use mere rainwater as a means to unleash unimaginable, armor-piercing destructive power.
"Oh? You didn't die after all?" Regulus tilted his head, looking at Libre, whose scaly body was already riddled with dozens of tiny, bleeding holes. "Your vitality is incredibly tenacious."
He genuinely marveled at her ferocious, unwilling-to-fall appearance.
But while exclaiming his mild surprise, Regulus simply swung his arm again. He had no habit of talking nonsense or gloating, especially when facing a scaled monster he wasn't sexually interested in at all.
This time, Libre, in her severely wounded state, could not withstand the second volley of suspended rain.
Along with another massive burst of blood mist, the tattered, lifeless body of Libre Fermi collapsed heavily into the red mud.
Regulus, having effortlessly dealt with his primary target, looked at the other Demi-Human soldiers trembling around him.
But then, what frustrated Regulus occurred.
Logically, the brutal, instant death of a supreme commander would cause an ordinary army to instantly rout and collapse. But these surrounding Demi-Human soldiers showed no intention of fleeing at all.
"He killed Commander Libre!"
"Damned human monster!"
"Avenge the Commander! Tear him apart!"
The Demi-Human soldiers, their eyes entirely bloodshot and seemingly driven completely berserk by grief and rage, swarmed forward like fire ants drawn to sugar water.
This suicidal scene, naturally, could not make Regulus cower. Because no matter how many thousands of Demi-Human soldiers there were, they could not pose even a microscopic threat to his Stillness.
'Could it be that I actually have to slaughter every single Demi-Human soldier in this camp manually?' Regulus thought, rubbing his temples as a headache began to form.
Just as Regulus was getting annoyed at the prospect of a tedious genocide...
"Alright. Take Libre's body, and everyone retreat."
The voice wasn't loud, but fueled by mana, it perfectly reached the ears of every Demi-Human soldier present, cutting through their berserk rage.
"Commander Sphinx!" The demi-humans present gasped, noticing the hooded, pink-haired girl who had suddenly floated above the fray.
"Libre wouldn't want all of you to throw your lives away pointlessly here," Sphinx persuaded the enraged soldiers, her tone flat and commanding. "Besides Libre, you still have Valga Cromwell. If all of you are lost here against an invincible enemy, Cromwell will have no army left to command. Furthermore, you wouldn't want Cromwell to become a lonely, general-without-an-army, would you?"
She wasn't actually doing this out of the goodness of her heart for these soldiers. When burning the provisions earlier, she had personally and ruthlessly slaughtered all the guards who saw her. She wouldn't care at all if all the demi-humans here died. The main reason she intervened was simply that her new master, Regulus, looked like he would find the mass slaughter tedious.
"Retreat!" a surviving lieutenant shouted from the troops.
With that desperate order, and Sphinx's logical intervention, the emotionally unstable Demi-Human soldiers quickly began to fall back, dragging Libre's mangled corpse with them.
Regulus had no intention of pursuing them. He watched the rapidly retreating army, and even Sphinx, who was retreating alongside the troops.
'She is preparing to continue acting as the general of the Demi-Human army,' Regulus analyzed calmly.
That was entirely understandable. One of the three great generals, Libre, was dead. With Cromwell currently absent, if Sphinx didn't continue to hold the fort and maintain order, given how these soldiers behaved just now, a large-scale, self-destructive riot would immediately break out.
'For now, let it be,' Regulus decided.
Moreover, he would have to think carefully about how to deal with the demi-human problem later. Judging from the fanatical phenomenon just now, ending this war couldn't be solved simply by killing the commander and burning the provisions. They were too ideologically driven.
But a total, absolute massacre was definitely not advisable in Regulus's eyes.
Why? Because he was very interested in the demi-human races.
For example, races like the Oni tribe where the twins Rem and Ram belonged. If he went too far and genocided the entire Demi-Human alliance, those beautiful and exotic girls might just disappear into history forever.
Therefore, if conditions allowed, he wanted to preserve some living space for the demi-humans as much as possible.
'Speaking of which, I definitely want some Monster Girls... no, Non-Human Girls in my mansion!' Regulus thought, his greed flaring. 'Should I find an opportunity to capture one on this battlefield?'
'No, no, no,' he quickly corrected himself. 'Given my current position as the Kingdom's grim reaper, even if I captured one now, she wouldn't offer her loyalty willingly, and she might even try to assassinate me in my sleep. It would be best to wait until the war officially ends, and the political relationship between humans and demi-humans stabilizes, before considering "recruiting" a few demi-human girls.'
As the Demi-Human troops gradually moved further away into the deep wetlands, Regulus also turned and headed back towards the hiding place of his wives.
When Regulus found them hidden in the dense reeds, they had all turned into drowned rats, completely soaked from head to toe by the torrential rain.
Under normal circumstances, seeing his beautiful wives soaked in the rain would be very alluring, and Regulus would certainly be unable to resist having some very wicked thoughts. But the problem was that, to traverse the dangerous wetlands, they were all dressed very conservatively in thick, plain travel gear.
Even though they had specially brought high-tier magic items that could repel mosquitoes, they still had to wear thick layers to guard against leeches and other harmful small creatures in the swamp.
"Is it resolved, Husband?" Lycoris asked, shivering slightly.
"A part of it is resolved," Regulus replied, pulling her into a protective embrace to share his warmth. "But never mind that. Let's head back quickly. In your current state, if we don't dry you off soon, you might actually catch a cold."
"Don't worry, our bodies are very healthy," Carol said, wringing out her blonde hair. "We won't catch a cold so easily."
"Being healthy doesn't mean you're immune to the elements," Regulus scolded gently. "Alright, let's go back quickly. And on the way..."
Regulus's eyes darkened slightly, a ruthless glint appearing in his gaze.
"...We also need to clear out the remaining scouts and witnesses who saw us traveling with Sphinx earlier."
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