How powerless are ordinary, Tier 0 Professionals when facing an Epic Professional of the same Tier?
The answer, demonstrated on the bloody road to Xiwa City, was absolute and total powerlessness!
This was not a battle; it was a devastatingly efficient slaughter, an execution designed to send a message. A casual, well-placed normal attack from either Vincent or Thalia was more than sufficient to eliminate a Centaur Clan Professional of the same rank, and often even those two or three levels higher who possessed slightly augmented vitality.
The Centaurs did attempt to resist. After the initial wave of shock and panic, the surviving warriors desperately tried to form a defensive line and retaliate. However, their desperate attacks were futile. Their spears, arrows, and elemental spells never even came close to grazing the two assassins.
Vincent and Thalia were moving at a speed that defied the sensory capabilities of a Tier 0 fighter. Their completely overpowered Agility attribute not only granted them devastating damage, critical strike chance, and unparalleled movement speed, but most crucially, extreme reaction speed.
To the Epic Assassins, the movements of the forty Centaurs were slowed to a clumsy crawl. Every frantic defensive maneuver and every hurried counterattack was telegraphed, predictable, and simple to bypass. For Epic Professionals, only sophisticated lock-on skills could pose a threat, but no Tier 0 Professional possessed such high-tier abilities.
In the face of this overwhelming, unblockable speed, the Centaurs had no defense. Their pitiful vitality pools were instantly depleted by the assassins' damage. In the presence of Epic Professionals, the concept of a "tank" dissolved; every single target was a fragile, squishy casualty waiting to happen.
Even Thalia, the slightly less offensively focused of the pair, landed hits dealing between two and three thousand damage. An ordinary Centaur collapsed instantly. Even an Elite-level Centaur Clan Professional could, at most, withstand a single blow before the second strike cleared their health bar completely.
Vincent, wielding his superior damage coefficients, was far more terrifying, his casual attacks hitting for five to six thousand damage.
In less than a minute, the group of over forty Centaur Clan Professionals was reduced to forty bloodied corpses. The slaughter was complete.
Only four Centaur Professionals remained, their faces utterly pale, their thick, muscular legs trembling so violently that they looked moments away from collapsing.
"You... you can't! Are you truly tearing up the armistice agreement?" one Centaur stammered, raw panic making his voice crack. "You will start a global war between our two races!"
Facing the absolute terror of impending death, these arrogant Centaur Clan members finally remembered the existence of peace treaties.
Vincent paused, his mask giving him an expressionless superiority. "How fascinating. Is this the standard Centaur protocol? When hunting and killing others, the armistice agreement is meaningless. When cornered and facing death, you immediately produce the agreement, hoping it will save your lives."
He gave a quiet, disbelieving laugh. "Even as a lesser race, you shouldn't be so profoundly hypocritical, should you?"
"But we didn't kill anyone!" another Centaur screamed, desperately grasping at any sliver of hope. "We had nothing to do with what happened at Iron Fang City!"
Vincent casually tilted his head, his eyes focusing on the Centaur. He recognized this one instantly—the one who had just lamented that he wasn't high enough rank to kill more humans on the battlefield.
"You didn't say that a few minutes ago," Vincent said, his voice flat and mocking.
The Centaur's face drained of color, his head reeling as he realized his boasts had sealed his fate.
"Enough chatter," Vincent finished, losing patience. "Gentlemen, please be on your way. If your race believes in reincarnation, perhaps next time you will choose a less aggressive species."
He charged forward, his dagger a blur.
"No!!!" the Centaurs roared in a unified cry of despair and futile resistance.
A few seconds later, the sickening thud of the last body hitting the dirt signaled the end.
Across the small stretch of wilderness, over forty Centaur bodies were scattered in grotesque, unnatural positions. Blood flowed from them, creating dark, spreading pools that stained the earth red, a scene of carnage. Every face was frozen in an expression of intense, agonizing fear.
Luminous white loot orbs dotted the ground.
If this were a human massacre, Vincent and Thalia would have felt a profound sense of horror and sickness. But these were the corpses of the Centaur Clan—the enemies of humanity. The sight was less a tragedy and more like the aftermath of an exceptionally brutal but necessary slaughterhouse operation.
Thalia was already moving among the bodies, collecting the light orbs without the slightest hint of revulsion. Her focus was purely utilitarian. In a racial war, empathy for the alien enemy was a fatal flaw. Slaughtering the Centaur Clan was no different than eradicating a dangerous pest.
"Brother, we managed to pull around four hundred gold and a pile of low-grade gear," Thalia reported, a note of disappointment in her voice as she quickly processed the haul. "It's all white-grade, though. Even Tier 0 Centaur Professionals are cheapskates." She wasn't a "money grubber" so much as a pragmatist; better loot meant better growth for the team.
"Little pragmatist," Vincent corrected with a soft chuckle. "Are you satisfied with that opening statement?"
"Satisfied," Thalia affirmed, her eyes bright with renewed intensity. "But that was only the appetizer. Let's send a clearer message."
The two assassins, still in stealth, immediately moved past the carnage and continued their advance toward Xiwa City.
They had not gone far before the landscape ahead filled with movement. The two assassins stopped immediately, their senses picking up the synchronized hoofbeats of a powerful, rapidly approaching force.
A massive contingent of Centaur Clan Professionals, numbering over a hundred, was charging aggressively across the wilderness. Their momentum was grand, fueled by a singular, intense purpose.
Vincent allowed a cold, satisfied smile to cross his lips beneath his mask. "They came quickly. Much faster than expected."
"Brother?" Thalia asked, her hand tightening on her dagger.
"Bypass them. Let them pass," Vincent commanded.
The enemy force was clearly not Tier 0. Judging by their powerful auras and disciplined formation, most were Tier 2 or Tier 3 Professionals. Their obvious target was the Gloomy Jungle, believing Boss and Hill were still waiting to emerge.
Vincent was an Assassin; confrontation against a superior force was the definition of recklessness. The true art of the assassin was to strike hard, vanish completely, and live to strike again. His current job was strategic harassment, not suicidal heroics.
Both assassins remained perfectly cloaked in stealth, watching as the vast Centaur force thundered past, their bloodlust so intense it was almost palpable. None of the higher-tier Centaurs so much as glanced at the space where the two stood.
Vincent grimly anticipated the explosive reaction when this Centaur force discovered the pile of forty dead Tier 0s just a few hundred meters down the road.
"I truly hope the Combat Affairs Department has already followed my instructions and withdrawn," Vincent mused internally. If the human officials were still holding the line, this Centaur army's arrival—already enraged by the ambush—would turn the Gloomy Jungle town into a fierce battlefield.
The Centaur Clan's deep-seated arrogance and domineering nature were their greatest weakness. The day before, they had threatened war over a proportional loss. Now, they were about to discover a true, unprovoked massacre. They would not, could not, swallow this anger.
Yet, Vincent knew there was no alternative. He would not allow the Centaur Clan to dictate the terms of engagement or to unilaterally bully humanity into submission.
He remembered the wisdom of his Great Teacher: "Peace through struggle leads to peace, while peace through compromise leads to the demise of peace." The fragile three-race armistice existed only because of a decade of human struggle. It was time to draw the sword again to preserve that peace through force.
"Let's go," Vincent said, resolving his internal debate. "We continue the counter-harassment."
Thalia nodded, and the two watched the Centaur army charge toward the site of the first massacre, while they themselves pressed on toward Xiwa City in search of more vulnerable Centaur Professionals.
The massive Centaur pursuit team, nearly a hundred strong, was led by Krell, the Tier 3 Knight and Centaur war leader. He rode bare-chested, his powerful muscles gleaming, his focus fixed entirely on the reward.
"A human Epic Professional?" Krell sneered in his heart. "A pity he is such a naive fool, announcing his presence for the world to see. He is doing nothing but delivering a mountain of Merit directly to my hooves."
Epic Professionals were national treasures, and the clan would bestow immense, generous rewards for eliminating them. Krell's eyes glinted with avarice. "Killing them will secure the materials I need to finally break through to Tier 4."
Just as he was consumed by these ambitious fantasies...
"Sir Krell! Look ahead!"
A Centaur Scout next to him suddenly froze, his face cycling from aggressive confidence to utter horror in an instant.
Krell, annoyed by the interruption, began to bark, "What in the hell is—"
His voice died instantly in his throat. He looked up and saw the road ahead. It was no longer a road, but a desolate, bloody scene—an absolute Asura Field.
"STOP!!!" he bellowed, a primal roar of command and rage.
The hundred Centaur Clan warriors skidded to a halt, confused. Their confusion lasted only a moment before they saw the extent of the carnage.
"This is..."
"The corpses of our clan's young?! What atrocity is this?"
Every single Centaur Professional's eyes instantly turned blood-red. The sight of their slaughtered comrades triggered an uncontrolled, frenzied uproar of rage and disbelief.