**Chapter 98: Intelligence**
Jie Ming signaled, and Amy and Victor quickly hid in the bushes on either side, poised to strike.
Their task was to deal with any stragglers who might escape, while Jie Ming, naturally, was the main attacker.
Jie Ming took a deep breath, crouching slightly like a leopard ready to pounce.
“Begin!”
The ten runic witch artifacts on his wrist activated instantly, blooming like a flower.
In the next mont, a torrent of energy bolts surged forth!
The continuous stream of energy orbs sliced through the air like the scythe of death, leaving blurred afterimages.
The beastman elites snapped their heads up, their combat instincts alerting them to danger just before the energy bolts struck.
One warrior looked up in shock, opening his mouth to sound an alarm, but before the sound could leave his throat, an energy bolt pierced it with deadly precision.
*Thud! Thud! Thud!*
The energy bolts struck joints, throats, and chests with pinpoint accuracy.
They tore through the beastn’s leather armor and their vaunted tough flesh as easily as paper.
In the blink of an eye, the battle was over.
Amy and Victor stood dumbfounded. They had braced for a fierce fight, but the battle ended before they could act.
At least they weren’t entirely deprived of action.
As Jie Ming’s assault concluded, two battered beastman elites suddenly sprang up, attempting to flee into the forest depths.
Despite their bodies being riddled like sieves, their terrifying vitality kept them moving.
Even Jie Ming couldn’t help but marvel at their resilience.
But Amy and Victor reacted swiftly.
The instant the beastn turned to flee, Amy raised her hand, sending several fireballs that hod in on their targets with precision.
To minimize noise, the fireballs didn’t explode but instead burrowed into the beastn as tendrils of fla, incinerating their internal organs in an instant.
Victor was more direct, unleashing razor-sharp wind blades that sliced through a beastman’s neck like an invisible knife, sending a massive head soaring into the air.
Amy and Victor swiftly dispatched the stragglers, ensuring no survivors.
As the energy bolts’ aftershocks faded, the scene before the shrine had transford.
Except for the near-dead shaman Jie Ming had deliberately spared, all the beastman elites lay lifeless, their bodies riddled with small but fatal holes.
The green crystal atop the shrine dimd, as if shaken by the loss of its faith source.
Jie Ming walked past the dying shaman without a glance.
The shaman’s eyes were filled with fear and confusion, unable to comprehend how he and his elite warriors had been slaughtered by these sudden “demons” without a chance to resist.
Jie Ming ignored him, quickly inscribing several special runes onto the shrine.
The runes burrowed into the shrine’s core like bloodsucking tendrils, frantically draining its energy.
Soon, the last flicker of light in the crystal atop the shrine extinguished, leaving it an ordinary stone.
*Boom…*
With its energy depleted, the shrine let out a muffled wail and began to collapse.
“We did it!” Victor whispered excitedly, keeping his voice low.
Amy’s eyes sparkled with joy, but she didn’t waste ti. She hurried to the dying shaman, pulling out her witch artifact.
…
…
Deep in the forest, Jie Ming, Amy, and Victor darted through the dense trees like three shadows.
Their steps were light and agile, leaving only fleeting afterimages on the dappled forest floor.
Unlike their earlier frantic and aimless escape, their movents now carried purpose.
“Your pronunciation’s off. It’s ‘Grommash,’ with a heavier guttural sound,” Jie Ming’s voice echoed through the trees, but he spoke not in any wizard civilization tongue but in the rough, powerful beastman language.
“Grommash… ugh, it’s too hard!” Amy grumbled while running, struggling to mimic the sound but tripping over her tongue, frustrated. “The common tongue is so much easier.”
“You’ll get it with practice,” Victor replied in the common tongue, his pronunciation far more accurate, clearly the result of effort. “Based on that shaman’s mories, if we want to operate in this region, we need to master both the human common tongue and the beastman language.”
They practiced the world’s languages through their conversation.
This knowledge ca from the captured beastman shaman.
After Amy precisely extracted the needed intelligence with her witch artifact, she ended the shaman’s suffering without hesitation.
In the days since, the trio had used every spare mont to mimic and practice the language from those mories.
It was both to adapt and to better disguise themselves and gather intelligence in future adventures.
“So, the shaman’s mories said the oracle was like this?” Amy’s voice, tinged with an exotic accent, echoed through the forest in the common tongue. “‘Demons from beyond the heavens invade. Hunt them, expel the filth…’ That doesn’t sound friendly at all.”
“Exactly, Amy, your pronunciation’s improving,” Victor said approvingly, his common tongue also carrying a strange accent. “Unfriendly is expected. We didn’t co here to make friends.”
“The shaman’s mories show this forest is co-managed by beastn and elves. Beastn control the east and south, while elves hold the west and north. Both sides have powerhouses equivalent to second-level beings,” Jie Ming continued, his common tongue fluent and nearly flawless. “Their military distribution is clear, so we can roughly deduce their patrol routes and key defense zones.”
Amy grimaced, adjusting her tone. “The shaman’s mories said the main wizard landing point is likely south of this region, so…”
“We head northeast,” Jie Ming said, a glint in his eyes. “The commotion we caused at the shrine is enough to trigger a large-scale beastman hunt. If we keep going like this, we might draw out enemies we can’t handle. We need to throw them off.”
Victor caught on imdiately. “They’ll likely guess our identity. The south is probably crawling with troops by now… No wonder you had us run—to leave tracks, right?”
Amy nodded thoughtfully. “So, next, we head toward the northeast, where beastman patrols are fewer and weaker?”
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