The Era of Gods - Chapter 57

Chapter 57 Assault on Frogman Tribe

Translator: 549690339

During the wait, he took the Naga daily to the river delta isles nearby, where they hunted the Frog People fishing there or the marine predators, to enhance his subordinates’ power.

Unfortunately, the experience required to advance from Level 3 to Level 4 was too high. Even if he camped there slaughtering them daily like grinding monsters, only a third of the experience needed had been accumulated after a month; he was still far from reaching Level 4.

It wasn’t until tens of thousands of Fishmen, along with the Naga, moved their entire tribe over a month and a half later that his accumulated experience reached two-thirds plus another half, which is around 85 percent, close to advancing to the next level.

With the arrival of tens of thousands of Fishmen, his clan suddenly became a massive Fishman community, and Lin Xiao finally felt confident.

After spending a few days settling down, he couldn’t wait to start his campaign against the Frogman Tribe. According to the mission, he needed to exterminate five large Frog-man Tribe Groups, with killing over eighty percent of the Frog People counting as extermination. At this time, near the Black Water Swamp close to the sea outlet, there was a large Frogman Tribe and a Fishman tribe of a few thousand members.

These Frog People were clever; they had the strength to wipe out the Fishman tribe but chose not to and instead let them exist nearby. Whenever food was scarce, or young Frog People needed a rite of passage, they would harvest them, effectively keeping them as livestock.

In the past one or two months, Lin Xiao had already figured out the specifics of the Frogman Tribe. As soon as the main force arrived and settled down, he immediately gathered ninety percent of the Naga and tens of thousands of Fishmen in a grand march on the Frogman Tribe, leaving a few dozen female Naga and over two thousand Fishmen to guard their home. He was going for a direct assault.

There was no other way; in the past few months, the Naga who stayed in the Fishman Big Tribe had nothing to do and produced several Lesser Naga. Pregnant female Naga, of course, could not fight.

This was also a good thing. The Naga as a new species were quite powerful at the higher levels; the only problem was their small number. Being able to reproduce more was a positive development.

The attack was scheduled for noon when the sun was most intense. The Frog People were nocturnal by nature, usually resting or sleeping during the day and becoming active and hunting at dusk or night.

The Frog People they had seen during the day were young individuals looking for rites of passage prey. Other humanoid creatures from Other Races mostly appeared during the day, so the Frog People had to venture out then. Normally, Frog People come out at night or dusk, and sometimes during rainy weather.

Lin Xiao chose to attack at noon, when the sun was fiercest, which for the Frog People, was equivalent to the deepest part of the night for humans, when they usually slept most soundly.

He dispatched several squads, each led by a Level 3 Naga warrior, composed of a dozen Naga warriors, to set out earlier into the swamp to hunt down Frogman sentries.

Of course, at that time, the sentinels were mostly hiding under the aquatic plants or buried in the mud to evade the harsh midday sun, hard to locate without a careful search.

Luckily, there weren’t any large predators near this Frogman Tribe, and a squad composed of only a dozen Naga was not significant enough to trigger a strong reaction or a wide-spread alarm even if detected by the Frogman sentries.

The hunting squad advanced layer by layer, continuously eliminating the outer sentinels, while the immense following force slowly approached, wading through swamp water as dark as ink and swimming through over ten meters of silt, steadily nearing the Frogman Tribe.

Despite it being daytime, the Frogman Tribe was quiet. Occasionally, one could spot huge tadpole-shaped juveniles frolicking and darting about in the black mud water, but the sound of croaking was absent.

Some people think that frogs croak when they sleep; in reality, croaking occurs at night when frogs are most active. It’s just that humans sleep at night, so they have the illusion that frogs also croak in their sleep.

The massive Naga and Fishman troops slowly approached the perimeter of the Frogman Tribe, stopping at about twenty to thirty meters. Lin Xiao, with his large snake tail, raised his body three to four meters high to look over the Frogman Tribe. After a brief moment of thought, he raised his Short Spear and swung it fiercely. The Naga, taking the lead, swung their snake tails to break through the silt and Black Water as they charged toward the Frogman Tribe.

The Grey Mist Fish People under his direct command also plunged in behind them. However, the recently conquered Native Fishmen didn’t display such good discipline; they swarmed in a disorganized fashion, and couldn’t help but let out strange cries. With tens of thousands of Fishmen shouting at once, even if the noise wasn’t loud, the combined effect was quite exaggerated, and it immediately woke the Frog People sleeping near the edge of the tribe.

There was no helping it. To train these Natives to be as disciplined as the Familiar Fishmen was not an easy task. It would take a long time to train and also required extremely firm beliefs.

Most of the more than ten thousand Fishmen who had just been conquered were nominal believers—only shallow believers—and True Believers made up less than ten percent.

To transform them into True Believers like the Clan, it would take several years, and it would be best to wait for the birth of the next generation of Fishmen to implement such changes.

But he didn’t have that much time, and moreover, he intended to use these Fishmen as Cannon Fodder from the start; there was no time to cultivate them.

Lin Xiao’s plan was to use them as Cannon Fodder for now, and if any were still alive after he completed all his tasks and left, he could then take the survivors back to the Divine Realm.

An army of tens of thousands was boundless; even though Fishmen were smaller in stature compared to Humans, their sheer numbers were impressive. They flooded into the Frogman Tribe en masse, and from above, it looked as if a huge dark blot had engulfed a part of the Frogman Tribe in an instant.

The Frog People, who had just woken from their slumber, were barely out of their nests when a group of Fishmen pounced on them. With seven or eight Bone Spears and stone knives thrusting at them, even the stronger Frog People faltered under such a surprise attack.

In just a moment, almost all of the Frog People on the edge of the tribe were dead. But by then, the rest of the tribe had been aroused; emerging from their nests, they gathered at the call of a Frogman Leader, who was croaking loudly.

Lin Xiao narrowed his eyes slightly and took a Bone Spear from one of his subordinates. He aimed at the Frogman Leader, who was still croaking loudly, and hurled it with all his might.

The Bone Spear tore through the air, leaving an almost invisible trail as it flew like Lightning over a hundred meters to viciously strike the Frogman Leader. The tremendous force flung the body, along with a few Frog People behind it, into the sludge. Blood spurted everywhere, but it quickly blended into the Black Water.

However, this did not instill fear in the nearby Frog People. To be precise, once the Frog People realized their attackers were Fishmen, neither inheritance nor memory of their race’s domination over the Fishmen was enough to incite fear in them.

It’s like when someone is bitten in the dark by something painful while sleeping; at first, they will certainly be afraid. But upon waking and turning on the light to find that the culprit is a small creature like a mouse, fear disappears. Instead, they might laugh out of sheer frustration or become angry at their prior fear.

The Frog People’s mentality now was similar; as more and more realized what was happening, they didn’t need their Leader to boost their morale. They spontaneously picked up their weapons to retaliate.