Chapter 169: Assaulting the Stronghold

The surrounding female soldiers swarmed forward.

They surrounded the earth puppet and stabbed at it wildly with their spears.

The female craftsmen also closed in, slashing furiously with their iron blades.

Sparks appeared on the earth puppet's head.

"Ugh… ugh!!"

The earth puppet slammed out heavy fists in fury.

Boom! Boom!

Its two arms actually detached from its body.

They shot out like cannonballs, but their trajectories were bizarre, swaying crookedly and unpredictably.

In the end, they slammed into two female craftsmen.

"Aiya!"

"Ugh…"

"Take your medicine, quick!"

After the stone arms hit the women, they quickly returned to the earth puppet's body.

But soon, the two arms shot out again.

Tang Ruan shouted a warning: "Everyone be careful, this earth element arm is very agile, it can leave the body for short distances and attack from strange angles—ah!"

Tang Ruan was shouting loudly when a fist struck her left waist.

It hurt a lot, but the leather armor absorbed the blow, so her health didn't drop by much.

This earth puppet's fist was like a hammer, with tremendous impact force.

It could hurt the flesh right through the armor.

"That hurts… break for me!"

Even the gentle Tang Ruan fought with fury, thrusting her iron spear viciously.

A few more sparks flew up.

At last, cracks appeared on the earth puppet's head, and the cracks grew larger and larger.

Crash!

The man-tall, broad earth puppet collapsed, stones scattering onto the ground and piling into a cairn, like a grave.

Tang Ruan exhaled in relief: "Good, there's a lone one over there, let's go!"

Zhao Chi already had his blade and shield and was moving up.

He didn't have the women's high agility, so he didn't dare lure the Stone Spike.

One careless slip and it would be all over for him.

Now that it was close combat, Zhao Chi had some confidence.

Chi already had coordinated with the female soldiers to kill 1.

But Zhao Chi hadn't expected these earth puppets' arms to be so agile, able to attack freely around the body.

Still, this was just a desperate last stand.

Without the Stone Spike Spiritual Technique, these earth puppets, though high in defense and HP, were far too slow. They were easily caught alone by the women, who ganged up and beat them to death.

Even if it hit a few women, its arms couldn't stray too far from the body and couldn't chase after them for follow-up strikes.

It could only watch helplessly as the women took medicine, or were healed back to full by Gu Qing.

In the end, over 20 minutes later, all the earth puppets had become piles of stone.

The battle was over.

As expected of earth puppets.

The female soldiers' iron spearheads were already blunt.

Several of the captured iron blades had rolled edges and chips.

Many female soldiers' leather boots' durability already was nearly spent; one more hit and the boots would be ruined.

The shields' durability was also running low.

Quite a few female soldiers had aching backs and sore waists, all hammered by them.

Luckily these women had decent constitutions, or they might have been punched to death.

But in the end, this level was cleared.

【Level 7 Cleared】

【Defeated】 70 Small Earth Puppets

【Time Used】 22 minutes 55 seconds

【Score】 77 points

【Total Score】 470 points

【Ranking】 10th

This level took a long time.

It took almost 23 minutes.

This time it might be because the time was too long, and there were no captives, so the score gained was a bit less than the previous level.

But the ranking jumped again—amazingly all the way up to 10th.

This was Zhao Chi's first time breaking into the top 10 of his year.

And this was a genuine, real-combat top 10.

The female soldiers were panting heavily.

This time, not only the female craftsmen and female soldiers, but even Gu Qing and Tang Ruan, whose stamina was extraordinary, were starting to feel tired.

Although their stamina recovered the fastest, it still took time.

It was like just having run an all-out 1000-meter final, and then having to compete in another 1000-meter final right after, but with only seven minutes of rest in between.

No one could stand that.

Insufficient stamina had a huge impact on combat.

Gu Qing approached with a slight smile, breathing a little heavily.