Chapter 253 — Encounter
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Something was off nearby—a dangerous sign.
The patrol leader was no transcendent himself, nor could he sense his surroundings through mana. Yet an experienced veteran's battlefield awareness was hardly inferior to that of an ordinary low-tier transcendent. The crisis instinct honed through countless brushes with death let him sharply detect the air of danger around him, and the secondary mind-clearing spell imbued in the standard-issue helmet kept his spirit exceptionally focused—keen to a degree approaching that of a low-tier transcendent.
Hostile individuals were lurking nearby, their numbers unclear, but they did not seem to be monsters from the mountains.
They had already noticed the patrol's presence but had not yet acted—likely because they had not found a good angle of attack, or had not yet sized up their opposition.
The patrol leader did not speak rashly. Instead, without any outward sign, he formed several signals with his hand behind his back. These simple tactical hand signs were an essential skill of Cecil's combat soldiers—said to have been first inspired by a young man among the first wave of refugees—and every man in the patrol could use them fluently.
The soldiers saw the captain's signals and at once, without a flicker of expression, changed their marching formation, turning to face the direction he indicated and taking up a defensive stance. Then they dashed swiftly to the nearest cover and flicked off the safeties of their thermal ray guns. And in the very instant they made these movements, a faint whistling through the air came rushing toward them!
The patrol leader's heart lurched—the attackers' reaction speed surpassed his expectations. His soldiers had shifted formation naturally enough, and the messages passed between him and his men had been discreet enough, yet the enemy had still recognized their exposure in the first instant and struck without hesitation. These were no ordinary bandits or brigands—not even common professional mercenaries!
Fortunately, he had been on his guard beforehand. The moment the whistling sounded, the old veteran instinctively raised his left arm, and a translucent energy shield instantly took shape, covering most of his body. Several crossbow bolts clanged against the shield, were deflected by the force field, and clattered to the ground.
In that same instant, the patrol leader had already reached to his belt and pulled out a crystal grenade. He swung his arm in a full arc and hurled it with all his might toward where the attackers were hidden, and behind him his soldiers did exactly the same—seven or eight ticking metal lumps tore through the air in arcing trajectories toward the distance. The whole process flowed like water, almost like pure reflex.
Just as the lord had instructed during training: if you truly cannot determine the enemy's situation, at the very least throwing a round of grenades is never wrong. Even if it does not kill, it disrupts the field—and afterward, whether attacking or retreating, it creates an opening.
Everything happened within a few short seconds. Compared with the Cecil combat soldiers, who completed their entire sequence of responses almost by reflex, the Typhon squad lurking along one side of the mountain path had been thrown into confusion from the very start.
It was not that they were not elite—it was that they had simply never seen anything like it.
Everything was different from what they had expected—different from every way of fighting they had ever heard of or witnessed!