103: Chapter 103 Boss, your great-uncle is about to die.

Amidst the chaotic battlefield, that cyan light was like an arched scythe swung by the Grim Reaper. Any prisoner in its path, whether trampled by hooves or grazed by that invisible blade of Battle Qi, exploded into a mist of blood like a ragdoll torn apart by immense force, without even time to scream.

Atop the arrow tower, the monocular in Levi's hand remained perfectly still, taking in every detail of this heart-pounding scene.

He could clearly see a visible, tangible cyan aura flowing over the surface of the Northern Army officer's armor, completely enveloping him and his warhorse to form an unstoppable cone.

This had already transcended the realm of mortal soldiers; this was a personal exhibition of this world's high-martial power.

It was the purest, most lethal destructive force a powerhouse driven to a corner could unleash.

“My Lord!” Evelyn’s voice rang out beside him, trembling with suppressed horror. “Lord Graham is in danger! According to the preliminary battlefield data model, Lord Graham’s combat rating is sixty-eight, while that enemy commander... the Battle Qi energy level erupting from him has an instantaneous peak exceeding eighty-five! Without any external intervention, the probability of Lord Graham’s death within thirty seconds is ninety-seven percent!”

Her voice was somewhat distorted by fear.

That was no ordinary soldier; that was the last general of the Byron Family, Levi's great-uncle by blood, and currently the top 'human asset' on Blackstone Territory's books.

A loss of this magnitude would be devastating for the newly established Blackstone Territory.

Levi did not turn around, nor did he even respond.

His brain was operating at high speed, that ninety-seven percent mortality rate flashing in his mind like a string of cold, red code.

The loss of an experienced battlefield commander and a high-tier Battle Qi martial artist would trigger a chain reaction far exceeding the sacrifice of hundreds of prisoners on the front lines.

The management layer would collapse, morale would disintegrate, and the subsequent work of counting spoils and incorporating captives would fall into chaos.

This was an absolute net-loss transaction.

He slowly lowered the monocular and turned to look at the brass speaking tube connected to the underground workshop. His tone lacked even a hint of emotion, as calm as if he were discussing next quarter's budget.

“Borin, how long will it take to reload ‘blackstone no. 1’?”

There was a moment of silence from the tube, followed by the panting roar of the Dwarf Chief Engineer, punctuated by the sound of metal clanging: “At least ten minutes, My Lord! Damn it! The center gear of that giant winch is about to snap! I swear it will be completely scrapped the next time it turns!”

Ten minutes? On the battlefield, ten seconds could decide life or death.

Levi’s gaze returned to that approaching cyan meteor; it was less than two hundred meters away from the command flag where Graham was positioned.

For a warhorse pushed to its limits by Battle Qi, this distance was only a dozen or so breaths away.

He was silent for a second.

In that second, Evelyn felt her heart nearly stop beating.

She saw no hesitation or struggle in Levi's pitch-black eyes, only a precision computer performing a final assessment of costs and risks.

Finally, Levi looked up and issued an order through the speaking tube that caught everyone off guard.

“Abandon No. 1. Immediately activate the ‘Blackstone No. 0’ prototype. Target: thirty meters in front of the enemy commander's charge path. Execute now.”

“No. 0?” Borin hesitated on the other end, seemingly trying to recall what that was. “You mean... that piece of junk in the corner used for testing angles? My Lord, that thing has no accuracy at all, even the counterweight was just whatever we could find...”

“Execute.”

Levi said only those two words before cutting off the communication.

His cold gaze swept over Evelyn, as if to say: I have provided the solution, now watch quietly.

Evelyn’s throat felt dry. She had no idea what “Blackstone No. 0” was, but Levi’s unquestionable attitude made her swallow all the advice she was about to blurt out.

Deep within the castle, in a corner of the underground workshop.

Chief Engineer Borin Ironbeard stared blankly at the speaking tube before letting out an angry curse.

“Dammit! The Lord has gone mad!” He threw the tube aside and rushed toward the most remote corner of the workshop, where a pile of discarded gears and timber lay.

Among the clutter sat a catapult device more than ten times smaller than “blackstone no. 1,” with a structure so crude it was almost laughable.

It had no precision winch or massive counterweight stone, only a simple lever and several thick, elastic torsion ropes.

From its inception, this thing was never meant for actual combat; it was merely a theoretical model Borin had slapped together with scraps to verify a new projectile angle, thrown here after only a few test fires.

“Move it, you idiots!” Borin roared at several bewildered dwarf apprentices. “Forget about the big guy! Over here! Pry this piece of junk up for me!”

The dwarf apprentices scrambled over, pulling desperately on the lever with crowbars and wrenches.

“The counterweight! Damn it, what’s the counterweight?” an apprentice asked in a panic.

“I don't give a damn what the counterweight is!” Borin’s eyes were bloodshot. He looked around, his gaze finally landing on an iron barrel in the corner filled with black waste lubricant used for cooling machine parts. “That! Put that on! Fast!”

The oily, pungent-smelling iron barrel was lifted by two dwarves working together and wedged crookedly into the groove of the throwing arm.

“Angle! Angle thirty-five! Pull it to the max!” Borin shouted at the top of his lungs, relying on his fuzzy memory of this crude device.

“Creak—”

The torsion ropes were stretched to their limit, letting out a tooth-aching groan.

“Fire!”

With Borin’s roar, the catch was slammed open.

“Thump!”

With a dull thud, the iron barrel filled with waste lubricant was launched by a force that wasn't particularly strong and was even slightly off-kilter. It traced a wobbly, ungraceful parabola through the air, flying into the night sky outside the castle.

On the hillside, Graham Byron felt the suffocating killing intent rushing toward him.

He watched the unstoppable cyan meteor, his knuckles turning white from the force of gripping his longsword.

He knew he couldn't dodge it, and he couldn't block it.

As a warrior, his only choice was to use his final strength to leave a scar belonging to the Byron Family on the opponent's iron armor before being crushed.

He was prepared for death.

However, just as the Northern Army vanguard was less than fifty meters away, a faint but strange whistling sound slanted across the sky above his head.

“Splat!”

A black iron barrel missed its “target”—the vanguard—by a wide margin, instead plummeting like a drunkard onto the ground about twenty meters ahead of his charge path.

The barrel's fragile shell shattered instantly, and a large amount of viscous, slippery, foul-smelling black lubricant splattered out like vomit, forming an irregular oil slick over five meters in diameter on the ground.

Rayton, the Northern Army vanguard charging at full speed, had his pupils shrink.

He saw the barrel falling from the sky, but he had no time to make any reaction.

The warhorse beneath him, a prize steed pushed to its limit by Battle Qi, was in the moment of having all four hooves off the ground, leaping forward.

The next second, its front hooves landed heavily on the ground, stepping right into that black oil slick that was as slippery as a marsh.

“Heeeee-haw—!!!”

An agonizingly shrill neigh rang across the battlefield.

The warhorse's iron hooves slipped violently on the viscous oil, instantly losing all balance.

Immense inertia caused its massive body to tumble forward at an extremely distorted angle, like a child tripped by a giant.

Rayton, a powerhouse with Battle Qi at the eighty-fifth rank, never dreamed that what would end his devastating charge wasn't a sword, magic, or some sturdy barrier, but an inconspicuous, disgusting patch of waste oil.

He was violently thrown from his horse by the irresistible inertia. The cyan Battle Qi light on his body flickered wildly due to this sudden turn of events and instantly dimmed.

Like a heavy tin can, he rolled on the ground a dozen times, knocking over several stunned prisoners before coming to a pathetic halt in a cloud of dust.

The entire battlefield seemed to have been hit with a pause button.

Everyone was stunned by this dramatic scene.

Graham Byron was also dazed, his heart, which had been ready for a heroic death, still pounding wildly in his chest.

He looked in bewilderment at the enemy general struggling to get up nearby, then at the warhorse lying on the ground with its front leg broken at a bizarre angle, neighing continuously.

An opportunity!

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

The veteran's physical instincts overrode all shock and doubt within a tenth of a second.

He did not rush toward the commander who had lost his momentum and was trying to stand.

Slaying a fallen knight wasn't particularly honorable, and the opponent's Battle Qi was still there; he might not necessarily gain the upper hand against a cornered beast.

His goal, from the beginning, was not a life.

“Roar!”

Graham let out a roar, pouring all his strength into his legs, and pounced forward like an arrow from a bow.

Without hesitation, his longsword bypassed the struggling enemy general and instead, with a shrill whistling sound, slashed down with all its might at the hind legs of the downed warhorse!

“Squelch!”

Scalding horse blood sprayed into the air.

Then, without even looking at the completely ruined warhorse, Graham stepped forward and, in the moment before the Northern Army officer could react after just pushing himself up, snatched the ornate sword symbolizing command that had fallen to the ground!

He held the sword high, its blade reflecting the piercing light of the fires.

Using all his strength, he let out a roar that echoed across the entire hillside:

“The enemy general is dead! Surrender and be spared!”

The soldiers of the Northern Army had witnessed their commander, the undefeated “Icefield Wolf Cub” in their hearts, fall from his horse in an almost comical fashion.

And now, the sword representing his authority was being held high by the enemy general.

Their final will to fight shattered like glass under a heavy hammer in the face of this unbelievable sight.

“The General is defeated!”

“Run!”

Panic spread like a plague, and the battle line that had been barely holding together disintegrated instantly.

Soldiers threw down their weapons and began to scramble toward the rear in a rout.

On the arrow tower, Levi slowly lowered the monocular.

There was no joy of victory on his face; he was as calm as if he were looking at a financial report whose results he already knew.

From using “performance” to leverage the prisoners' greed to using the “prototype” for risk hedging, everything in this war was within his calculations.

He turned to look at Evelyn, who was still in a state of massive shock, his tone as flat as if he had just finished an ordinary meeting.

“Inform my great-uncle to organize personnel to count the ‘spoils,’ with a focus on recovering that heavy armor. Additionally, give me a detailed input-output report for this battle, including the point expenditure for each prisoner, the estimated payment for casualty pensions, and the total cost of fulfilling free statuses and pioneering permits. I want to see it on my desk before dawn.”

Evelyn opened her mouth, looking at Levi’s young yet inhumanly cold face, and finally could only lower her head deeply, responding with a slightly trembling voice: “Yes, My Lord.”

Levi paid her no more mind, walking alone to the other side of the arrow tower, his back to the chaotic battlefield below that was gradually shifting from slaughter to looting.

The night wind blew at the hem of his clothes, sweeping away the cheers of victory and the wails of the defeated together, seemingly unable to leave any trace in his heart.