Battle at the Summit! Snitch versus Gotrik! Two Chapters Combined

The dwarf warriors around Gortrek, upon seeing their chief, immediately and without hesitation kept their distance. Among the dwarven clans, the Butcher's fearsome reputation was thunderously well known.

Losing a thousand enemies and suffering eight hundred losses oneself was considered entirely normal.

Twenty meters away, Snikch's cold gaze locked tightly onto the dwarf warrior with the outrageous hairstyle. This must have been one of the enemy commanders. He quickened his pace and lunged forward.

Gortrek naturally noticed Snikch coming toward him. With everyone else having already pulled away, the approaching skaven stood out all the more.

To a dwarf, all ratmen looked the same. To Gortrek, this was nothing more than a perfectly ordinary skaven warrior, bearing common weapons, sporting a common haircut, blind in one eye; the only notable thing was that the remaining eye seemed a little sharper.

As for himself, he wielded a wildly shaped broad-bladed axe, wore a long, wide mohawk, and at a glance was clearly no ordinary figure, a dragon among men.

"Seeking death," Gortrek muttered.

He hooked up one of the stone axes scattered at his feet with a kick, swung his broad-bladed great axe, and, in a motion like batting a baseball, hurled the axe toward Snikch.

Then he turned away with confidence, not bothering to look again.

The thrown axe spun violently through the air, streaking straight for Snikch.

Even as the flying axe came smashing at him, Snikch did not so much as blink. He shifted his body slightly and flawlessly avoided the axe blade's trajectory.

The force still undiminished, the axe Snikch had evaded went on to strike the back of a dwarf ten meters away, a dwarf who had just raised his hand axe.

....

Gortrek felt a little strange. He had not heard the sound of an axe biting into flesh from behind. He knew that sound well; it was ingrained in his very blood.

Yet he had heard nothing.

Turning around, he found that the one-eyed skaven seemed to be even closer now.

"Yo."

With a cold snort, Gortrek scooped up another stone axe from the ground and casually flung it at the one-eyed rat. The throw looked careless, yet the force behind it was ferocious.

The one-eyed skaven in front of him seemed not to take it seriously at all. He lifted an arm, raised the axe in his hand, and directly knocked the incoming axe away.

But the force transmitted through his arm truly startled Snikch. It was only a casual throw, yet it had already driven his wrist numb.

He quickly reached a conclusion: the disparity in strength was too great; he could not win by force alone.

Snikch was not the only one surprised. Seeing this ratman so deftly deflect his flying axe, Gortrek too went momentarily blank.

"Didn't expect it. Turns out you're a skilled one."

Gortrek shook his head and burst into loud laughter, then seized his broad axe and roared as he charged.

The man and the rat closed the distance rapidly. Seeing Gortrek come at him, Snikch immediately slowed his steps and began bobbing side to side, like a martial fighter shifting lightly on both feet.

In an instant, Gortrek was already upon him, swinging his great axe in a diagonal slash from lower right to upper left at the one-eyed rat.

The axe blade howled through the air, stirring cold gusts that brushed Snikch's hair, but the instant Gortrek lifted his arm, Snikch had already seen through his attack.

Gortrek clearly relied on strength, with little in the way of technique.

The very moment Gortrek struck, Snikch used the sway of his upper body, planted his right foot, and shifted left in a flash, nearly grazing the blade as he evaded its edge.

He stepped along the inner line of the parapet, spun his body swiftly, and with the stone axe reversed in his grip, drove it hard into Gortrek's back with the force of that rotation.

Blood sprayed at once. A cloud of gore burst from Gortrek's back, and fury surged through him.

He seized his great axe and kept hacking toward Snikch. The great blade whirled in his hands with great force, but every strike missed. What enraged Gortrek even more was that each swing seemed to pass just along the surface of Snikch's body. It always felt as though the next blow must surely kill the flea-like ratman before him, yet every time it came up short.

A textbook case of edge-hugging swordsmanship, nothing more.

It even felt as if the one-eyed skaven were mocking him, playing cat and mouse with him.

What Gortrek did not know was that Snikch was in no mood to mock him. He was fighting with every ounce of strength, staking his life on the outcome.

Each extreme dodge was a drain on stamina, and the cramped space atop the wall further restricted his movements.

His opponent could miss once, twice, again and again, but he himself had only one chance. That forced Snikch to be cautious at every turn.

The battle in the middle of the wall had entered a fever pitch. The dwarves and skaven were long past reason, killing with bloodshot eyes. The north and south sections were no better, and the entire wall was already carpeted with corpses.

While the fighting raged across the battlements, in an inconspicuous corner, Gimli and Muradin Copperhammer, leading Xue Hui's ace troops, the Hammer Brigade, also began to move.

Central section of the High Court wall

Gimli stood in the middle of the formation, holding high the cross banner of the war hammer, and led Xue Hui's most elite hammer legion straight toward the gate of the High Court wall.

The dwarf legendary hero, the Mountain King Muradin Copperhammer, level eighteen, held an axe in his left hand and the Storm Hammer in his right, charging at the very front to clear the way.

Seeing the two armies deadlocked in fierce combat upon the walls, Xue Hui threw out his final trump card.

His intention was clear: he was aiming to breach the city.

From Xue Hui's rich experience, even if the first gate were smashed open, there would certainly be another inner gatehouse waiting for him. So he directly ordered the Hammer Brigade to bring up a light battering ram and assault the left shoulder of the wall.

That was where the tower and the wall met, and also the weakest point in the entire stretch.

A group of dwarves from the Hammer Brigade pushed the battering ram toward the left shoulder. Its construction was simple: a little shed made of planks, with four rows of wheels beneath it, and inside, several dwarves pushed a massive wooden beam. It was a formidable tool for breaking gates.

....

Above the wall, Snikch and Gortrek were still locked in combat, the man and the rat both red-eyed with fury.

Snikch slipped past Gortrek's sweeping great axe. Seeing that the other man was beginning to tire, he immediately bobbed left and right to close the distance and soon entered Gortrek's attack range.

As expected, Gortrek, wielding his great axe, came with another rising slash from below.

Snikch's one eye was deep and cold, and he had already predicted Gortrek's movement. The very moment his right foot stepped into Gortrek's range, he pushed off and retreated in a flash.

A textbook-perfect evasive move.

After that push-off, he opened nearly two meters of distance, kept his balance with his tail, and drove both legs hard to launch himself like a cannonball at Gortrek.

By then, Gortrek had not yet managed to withdraw his axe, and Snikch's stone axe was already rushing toward his face.

Because Gortrek was wholly the type of warrior who depended on strength, his footwork was rigid, and he could only twist his waist to avoid the vital point of his head.

Bang.

A dull impact rang out.

Snikch's full-force strike landed squarely between Gortrek's left shoulder and neck. The force penetrated through, all of it driven into Gortrek's body by the stone axe.

The stone axe snapped cleanly, spinning away past Snikch's slender ear.

With a crack, Gortrek's right shoulder blade also fractured, and his right arm drooped limply.

The pain drove Gortrek into a savage frenzy. He reached out with his left hand and seized Snikch, who was trying to retreat again. Grinding his teeth, he put force into his waist and slammed a headbutt toward Snikch's nose bridge.

Thud.

The heavy collision sounded dull and deep.

What met Gortrek's ferocious headbutt was not Snikch's nose bridge, but the ratman's sturdy and powerful forearm elbow.

The instant Gortrek drove his waist forward, Snikch did the same, meeting him with an elbow strike.

Gortrek was briefly stunned by the blow to the elbow. Though dwarf skulls were hard, the opposing force between head and elbow made his footing begin to drift, sending him backward in staggered steps.

By now, Gortrek was full of openings in Snikch's eyes.

The one-eyed skaven seized the chance and thrust two fingers straight toward Gortrek's eyes.

Aaaaah!

Fingers sank into flesh. Gortrek's eyes were instantly torn into a bloody ruin. The eyes were one of the body's most sensitive parts, dense with sensory nerves, and that single thrust plunged Gortrek at once into an abyss of darkness.

A death struggle fought with one's life on the line, carrying the future of a race upon its back, knew nothing of honor!

At that moment Snikch clenched both fists, his fighting spirit cold and concentrated.

His fists rained down like a storm.

Wing Chun, continuous straight punches!

His fists struck out at blinding speed, leaving only trails of afterimages. Snikch bombarded Gortrek's body in a frenzy, hammering him with relentless force.

Blow after blow rained onto Gortrek, each one flesh-deep, each one a killing strike.

Anger, unwillingness, repression, irritation, viciousness: Snikch transformed every negative feeling in his heart into merciless iron fists and smashed them into Gortrek.

Now Gortrek was like a kite with its string cut, lurching helplessly as rib after rib shattered beneath Snikch's brutal onslaught.

Twin Dragons Leave the Sea!

Snikch roared and drove both fists, one high and one low, into Gortrek's throat and upper abdomen. Gortrek's body was hurled away by the surging force, crashing heavily to the ground from the inner side of the wall.

The one-eyed Snikch had used nothing but pure combat skill and rich battle experience to slaughter Gortrek, whose strength far surpassed his own.

And so,

the dwarf star general, the Butcher Gortrek,

fell at Horseshoe Mountain!

....

The battle in the middle of the wall had already reached its peak, and the fighting above, below, and all around showed no sign of letting up.