Longma, Kirkcour Woods.

10:30 pm, 17th Banem 1092.

"What the hell?" Kashi muttered in shock as he looked upon the battle occurring at the Longma tribe from an overhanging cliff.

The Longma tribe was located at a small clearing within the forest, but unlike other tribes, they did not have any protective walls. Furthermore, their buildings comprised of simple large tents for each family. From the hill, it appeared very much like these tents were not placed in any determined order or formation.

Anyone with the slightest intelligence could imagine what would happen to a village with such weak defenses in the event of a monster invasion. Or at least, it should have been obvious.

At the moment, Kashi had begun to doubt his own intelligence.

Hundreds of corpses littered the field below, but Kashi's sharp eyes could see that over 99% of the bodies belonged to the monster army, while the remaining 1% belonged to the daunting Longma tribe.

Kashi swallowed hard and had to resist the urge to jump into battle when he saw the Longma tribespeople. The centaur generals' descriptions did not do the magnificent tribe justice.

The Longma tribe looked like a cross between a dragon and a regular centaur. In fact, given the promiscuous nature of dragons, Kashi would not be surprised if that was, in fact, their origin.

The horse portion of the Longma tribe centaurs was robust and sturdy, protected by hardened black scales grown strategically on their back, and the stifle. It was no surprise then that the Blights' wood-based attacks kept breaking against the Longma tribe's bodies as they ran through the monsters.

The Longma tribe retaliated by stabbing and slicing up monsters with scythe-like bone spurs that grew at the end of tails that resembled scaled reptilian snakes.

Kashi's eyes widened as a direwolf spat out a ki-blade at a Longma tribesman. The Longma tribesman did not falter. He continued his charge and the ki-blade shattered against the dense, interlocked muscles on his broad chest. He then grabbed the direwolf with clawed, demon-like hands with fingers that were longer than longer than Kashi's face. The Longma tribesman roared, and his massive, scaled arms bulged as he ripped the direwolf in half.

The Longma tribesman seemed to sense Kashi's gaze as he turned and looked up at the hill, giving the daeben a full view of his face.

Kashi finally understood why the other centaurs were not so accepting of this tribe. The Longma tribe indeed had more in common with monsters than they did humes. Humes were designed by Aethir to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. This rule applied to all races, whether it was the humans, elves, dwarves or beast-kin. Even the drakul, after their transformation, carried a sense of security in their features.

However, it seemed like Aethir had skipped over the Longma tribe. They could not look any more monstrous if they tried. Their facial features were sharp and angular, with bone-spurs jutting out of their chin and the sides of their heads to form massive horns. Their small eyes were sunken, and the bone structure of their skull made it look like they were always in a bad mood.

Couple all these traits with sharp teeth you would expect to see in monsters like tigers, and you had creatures that, without context, anyone would assume were monsters. Even worse, their fighting methods were both primitive and savage, involving tearing their opponents apart with their bare hands and tails.

The Longma tribesman could not make out Kashi's full form from so far away, so he gave up, snorted and returned to the battle at hand. He did not care about Kashi's status. If he was a friend, good. If Kashi turned out to be an enemy, it would only mean more invaders they had to kill.

Kashi looked down upon the scattered battlefield with a grave expression. The Longma tribesmen were scattered across the small clearing, fighting several monsters on separate fronts. He could not order the archers to fire for fear of hitting the Longma tribe nor could the cavalry charge into the crazy battlefield for fear of the same problem.

The battlefield was very small, confined to the little clearing, and as a result, the centaurs would be forced into melee battle. However, Kashi knew that the centaurs' strength lay in their speed and power. A melee battle would be disadvantageous for the centaurs as they had a much larger frame and thus would sustain much more attacks than they could defend.

Kashi would have considered sending the centaurs if they were fully decked out in plate armor, but as it stood, they were mostly naked. This was one of the primary reasons why none of the centaur tribes Kashi rescued ever considered leaving their town to engage in open melee.

Furthermore, Kashi did not want to lose too many soldiers to this insane meat grinder. Kashi's fingers clenched and unclenched as he realized the optimal solution to this problem. The daeben looked at the generals by his side, grinned and said, "Esteemed Generals, here's the plan..."

Fifteen minutes later, Casetes scratched his head and muttered as he watched Kashi and Darian charge down the slope. "How reckless."

"Indeed," Anatolia agreed, then frowned. "But I fear what this might mean for the future of our race."

"The future's still far," Balasius stated. "We can worry about that after we surpass this tribulation."

"I suppose you're right," Anatolia grudgingly replied and folded her arms across her chest as she watched Darian burst out from the neighboring trees and tear into the monster army with Kashi by his side.

BOOM!

Several monsters cried out in pain as Darian tore into the enclosure. The warrior, in anticipation of the close-range battle, had traded in his spear for a massive halberd. It was one of three weapons Kashi had crafted as a present for Hektor, but he decided to gift it to Darian instead. After all, who knew how long it would take until Hektor's return? This weapon might no longer be suitable by then.

Darian's initial charge did not last long before he was forced to stop by the solid cluster of monsters. After all, he did not have the added ki from his army. However, the centaur did not seem to care about this setback, and instead swung the halberd around him with wild abandon. The monsters cried as his ki tore them to pieces and an angry direwolf lunged at the centaur's exposed flank.

Thwack!

Crash!

An arrow tore through the direwolf's head, and it crashed to the earth. The last thing the beast saw was the grin of the woman who sat on Darian's back.

Larsial sat atop Darian's back and protected his flanks as the warrior charged out of the beast enclosure. The strange combination was something the daeben had thought of on the spot. The centaurs were mighty warriors whose greatest weakness were their long bodies. However, this issue was easily fixed by having an archer seated on the centaur's back to clear any attackers. By not needing reins, both hands of an archer on a centaur's back were free to wield a bow and shoot down any approaching threat.

A small smile played on Larsial's face as she shot down any monsters that dare to approach Darian's flanks. As expected of that scary daeben. To think of exploiting the centaurs like this after only seeing them once. The only downside to this formation was that it was had to cover both flanks and the back at the same time. However, even this issue had been considered by Kashi.

"Reloading."

Shadow's cold voice came from behind Larsial. The cold assassin was seated on Darian with his back to Larsial's, tasked with clearing out enemies at their rear. Shadow's 'reloading' referenced the brief moments it took to equip a new set of arrows. During those two or three seconds, Larsial had to increase her concentration to cover all angles. The same principle applied when she was close to running out of arrows. She would alert Shadow, who would then pull out some arrows to refill her ammunition.

While Darian wreaked havoc in the monster army, he could not help but look across the battlefield at a single figure who tore across the battlefield like he was in his background.

BOOM!

Drixlia's hardcore training showed dividends as the monstrous horse tore through the monster army with scary ease, allowing Kashi to freely shoot down the surrounding beasts. The Kashi-Drixlia combination was like an unstoppable bulldozer turret.

Nothing could stop Drixlia's charge. Its mighty hooves crushed traps laid by Blights while the ki-image around it blasted away any fools that dared to block its path. Worse yet were the hundreds of arrows that repeatedly shot out of the ki-image at speeds that surpassed human imagination.

However, none of these feats stunned the onlookers as much as the accuracy of the shots. It was one thing to launch a volley at an area. It was another for every hit to be a fatal headshot.

No one could understand how the daeben accomplished this except for the daeben himself. This was only possible because Kashi had combined the all-encompassing vision of [Mind's Eye] with the focus provided by [Keen Sense].

[Mind's Eye] was a high-level skill that provided Kashi with a 3-D view of everything around him for at least 30 meters. [Keen Sense], on the other hand, was a low-level skill used to focus on a target and thus reduce the chances of missing. The skill's major downside was that it required its user to be stationary. When combined, [Keen Sense] focused on the monsters found by [Mind's Eye], and because Kashi was seated atop Drixlia, he passed the stationary requirement. Following this, Kashi combined [Rapid Shot] and [Mult-Shot] to produce the phenomenon where it seemed like dozens of arrows were being fired every second.

Kashi had always maintained that there were no such things like useless skills, which was why he had never been in a rush to learn the next tier of Archery Skills even though he was overqualified. A hidden secret of King's Journey, and Live no Evil was that often times, the strongest were those who practiced the basics to the extreme and only sought out skills to compliment these basic techniques. If one were to just go looking for the next greatest skill, then they would be forever caught up in the trap of upgrading their skills without ever exploring their true potential.

This probably played into why the Dimensional Painter class, despite how OP it was, only had a couple of combat skills that were expected to last its owner until the end of time. There were no avenues to 'upgrade' these skills into something else. If one wanted to improve the skills, they could only do so after perfectly understanding them.

Kashi grinned as he emptied several quivers worth of arrows into the monster horde. This philosophy of 'Practice Makes Might' seemed to pervade all of L.N.E's leveling mechanics. The daeben could not help but wonder if the company was trying to instill this mentality into its players.

Kashi pondered some more, then shrugged. This was not the time to debate philosophies. His eyes lit up as he spotted a member of the Longma tribe nearby. "Drix," Kashi prompted.

Drixlia did not require further explanation. It snorted then increased the speed and force of its charge in the direction of that Longma tribeswoman.

The females of the Longma tribe bore a striking resemblance to their male counterparts, only differing in their slightly lither frames, and smoother facial features. Unlike the mares of the other centaur tribes, they did not grow breasts on their torso as it bore no functional purpose. In the case of other centaur tribes, the only evolutionary goal of the female breasts was to attract the eyes of potential mates.

The culture of the Longma tribe made this evolutionary trait inconsequential to them.

"[Gilgamesh!]"

BOOM!

The dreaded skill finally made an appearance.

The Longma tribeswoman looked around in confusion as a thousand arrows suddenly shot down from a mandala above her head and shot down every single monster around her.

"Catch!" Kashi called as he charged past her without so much as a word of greeting.

The Longma tribeswoman instinctively reached out her hand and caught a sword Kashi had tossed over with great effort. The 30cm thick and 170cm longsword was the weapon of choice for the Tulpar tribe, used in tandem with their shields to attack enemies.

Kashi had rounded up these powerful swords from the Tulpar army before setting off, with the intent of arming the Longma tribe. The Longma tribe was already so scary and powerful when fighting with their bare hands. What would it be like when such a force had a sword?

Boom!

That question was answered when the Longma tribeswoman sent dozens of monsters flying with the first, clumsy swing of the sword. The centaur revealed a sadistic grin when she saw the effects of using a sword. She let out a roar and actively charged into the monster army, swinging left and right with reckless abandon.

Kashi sighed as he watched the rampant devastation while Drixlia made a beeline for the next Longa tribesman. 'Now, this is a race that was created for war.'

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A/N: Been a few days since my last release. Sorry, I fell ill and didn't have the energy to write much. Still, in the recovery phase right now...

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