Chapter 192: Taking the Initiative

"I feel they are not in a hurry!" After interrupting the Vampire Captain's spellcasting, Sinuoli could not feel happy; he felt the enemy did not seem to be showing the desperate determination of burning their bridges.

Logically, following the Vampire Coast's abandonment of their ships to land, the ships of Bordeleaux had already blockaded the harbor; if the castle could not be taken, perhaps the best outcome for Salazar would be to rely on his own strength to escape with his life.

"Indeed, why are these fellows not charging the walls with all their might instead of engaging us in a tug-of-war?" Sitelinge also sensed something was wrong; during the recent exchanges, the Dwarf troops had fought quite comfortably, but this was clearly contrary to reason, as Salazar had not committed his elite troops.

"We must take the initiative to attack!" Sinuoli slapped the armrest of his seat and made his decision.

"You cannot fight! Maintaining our current state allows us to advance or retreat at will; once we truly start fighting and get bogged down in a melee, it will be difficult to pull away!" Sitelinge's advisor spoke up to offer counsel.

Half of this unit came from Karake-Zifulin. The Dwarf race had always lacked population; if they suffered heavy losses for the Humans of Bretonnia, it would be a net loss for Weifengbao.

"Your Highness, why don't we continue to wear them down from a distance..." the Coast Guard Captain was also saying; if there was a choice, who would want to face that giant beast?

"Sigh!" Sinuoli sighed toward the sky upon hearing this; he finally personally experienced how difficult it was for those famous generals in the history of his past life. Could it be that the Dwarf advisor before him and the Human were not speaking sense?

There is no such thing as something completely devoid of reason in this world; even the Chaos Gods have their own relatively positive aspects of power!

Sinuoli knew that as his troop size expanded in the future, there might be more differing suggestions. From different angles and levels, they might all be correct, but how to choose ultimately still relied on the judgment of him, the commander of the troops.

"We must fight; we cannot follow the enemy's ideas, otherwise there will be unexpected trouble!" Sinuoli repeated once more. The Dwarf advisor bowed and stepped back; he closed his mouth, picked up his Battle Axe, and went to faithfully fulfill his duty.

Sinuoli's order was carried out; there were no Dwarfs, at least not in this army, who would refuse the command of him who was imbued with multiple auras.

"Click!" The gate of the low wall was opened, and a large group of Dwarf melee troops filed out. The shooting troops still on the wall reloaded at the fastest speed to buy time for their brethren to form ranks.

Seeing this, Salazar was also stunned for a moment; how could these shirtless Dwarfs also abandon their geographical advantage and rush out?

"Heh! Heh! Little ones, are you, just like that, eager to embrace eternity?" Heart-palpitating words emerged from the Captain's wind-leaking mouth; he stood on the carapace of the Leviathan, looking down from above, his might even more intense.

"Follow me, crush these water-ghouls who desecrate the dead!" Sinuoli did not waste words; he pointed his Warhammer and charged straight toward the Leviathan.

"Overestimating, yourselves!" Before Salazar could finish his slow-spoken harsh words, the Dwarf troops had directly broken through the front line of the Zombie sailors. Their rusted blades and the inaccurate shooting from the archers behind were like scratching an itch through a boot.

"Pop! Pop-pop!" Salazar condensed a beam of dark magic and released it from his eyes, heading straight for Sinuoli, who was sitting on the Doom Anvil.

This was the Vampire spell known as "Nagashi-Ningzhi"; in this battlefield where the Winds of Magic were attracted by the Doom Anvil, Salazar had chosen this lower-consumption spell in his haste to attack Sinuoli.

However, Sinuoli had long been prepared; from the day he saw the Doom Anvil, he had begun planning for this. Before setting out, he had purchased a rare-quality Tashun prepared for Human customers from Master Haleke's treasury.

This shield, engraved with the Rune of Steel and the Rune of Fortitude, was taller and wider than Sinuoli himself; besides protecting Sinuoli's entire body from the front, it could even be held at an angle to block projectiles.

Those two energy beams were further weakened as they approached the Doom Anvil and were easily blocked by the shield.

"Pitter-patter! Pitter-patter!" Before Sinuoli could be happy, he was met with another hail of bullets. The Zombie shooters greeted Sinuoli, the salient point on the battlefield, with all kinds of long guns and short cannons, presenting a scene of "large and small pearls falling onto a jade plate."

This situation of being passively beaten finally improved as the two sides approached. Sinuoli knew this was because of his poor grasp of positioning during his first time riding the Doom Anvil into battle. Under normal circumstances, he should have stayed with the ranged troops to provide support for the clansmen in front.

The second layer consisted of those giant corpse-monsters, which brought some trouble to the Dwarfs. Compared to when they were alive, their originally somewhat clumsy movements were now even slower, but their lethality had also become stronger.

The massive bodies of the Ogres fused with ship parts and the bodies of terrifying sea monsters; the weight of crab claws, anchors, and the like, combined with the tireless, frantic striking of the Undead creatures, made it difficult for the clansmen to get close for a time.

The heavy armor on the Dwarfs could effectively resist the hacking of sharp weapons and the stabbing of pointed weapons, but the attacks of heavy blunt weapons could still cause them massive damage.

Some conventional tactics for dealing with large units were ineffective when dealing with Undead Ogres that did not tire and felt no pain. But after using the Iron-drake cannons and paying a certain price, the Dwarfs still broke through their interception.

"Those with Rune Weapons, charge with me! Those with two-handed weapons, close in too!" The war cry of the Manticore Slayer Rogov resounded throughout the battlefield; he vowed to either change his title to Leviathan Butcher or find his death.

The bravery of the Slayers further inspired the participating Dwarf Warriors; the fearless God of War Grimnir was perhaps watching from here, and every clansman wanted to prove their courage to the ancestral god.

Sinuoli did not need to say anything more; he once again struck the Speed Rune to let the clansmen approach the giant beast faster, and they could also be more flexible when dodging those giant feet and pincers as thick as pillars.

Rogov's two-handed Battle Axe chopped off a section of the giant crab's leg with one strike, and then he rolled on the spot to the underside of the Leviathan to find a weak point and hack wildly.

This Undead giant beast had become much more fragile after the previous Divine Art devastation and artillery bombardment; many gaps appeared on its carapace, and the Dwarfs thrust their long weapons directly in to stir them around.

Salazar was also stunned; having roamed the seas, he had not expected that there would be enemies who were both so brave and possessed such combat skills.

It was not that he had not seen those who did not fear death; the enslaved Dark Elves, the Norsca-Lueduozhe who believed in the Chaos Gods, and his peers who were also Undead, all did not know what death was. But those fellows relied on instinct to hack and kill wildly, and they could not compare to the Dwarfs before him.