He immediately clapped his hands and shouted.
"All farmers, stop working and return to the small courtyard to avoid injury. All soldiers, disperse and surround the buildings."
"Prepare to handle the territory expansion mission!"
The Lord himself had spoken.
None of the farmers dared to be slow. They dropped the resources in their hands and trotted back into the territory with their tools.
All the soldiers were mobilized.
The three Wolf Riders, the Night Huntress, and the Druid of the Claw all began to patrol near the newly constructed buildings in the vicinity.
Tasia and Favid, the two mages, chose to stand behind Zong Shen.
Mapel and Madeline, the ranger sisters, nimbly leaped onto the roofs of two nearby Tier 2 dwellings.
Drawing an arrow with a silver-white tip, they gently nocked it onto their longbows, their sharp eyes scanning the land illuminated by the sunset like hawks.
Zong Shen nodded with satisfaction.
He then opened the [Territory] function.
[Territory: None]
[Lord's Manor: Level 1]
[Current Expandable Range: 1000 meters in radius. Complete the land expansion mission to successfully expand.]
[Click to start expansion]
"Expand!"
Zong Shen clicked to expand immediately.
[Territory expansion mission started]
[Remaining hostile targets: 10]
It had begun! But it seemed nothing had changed!
Suddenly, the top of the Elemental Arrow Tower in the courtyard behind him lit up abruptly.
This indicated that a hostile target had appeared within the 500-meter alert radius.
"Boom!"
"Swish!"
Following a powerful sound, a long arrow wreathed in flames shot out from the top of the arrow tower, directly hitting a patch of knee-high grass hundreds of meters away.
This range far exceeded that of the Dragon-born Rangers' longbows.
[-30]
[-10]
Zong Shen could see two damage values pop up.
"Awoo~"
A melodious wolf howl drifted over.
The sound was significantly louder than the wolf pup he had killed on his first day of landing.
The patch of grass rippled, as if something was moving through it rapidly.
Three seconds later, the Elemental Arrow Tower fired another arrow. This time, it was not imbued with elemental damage.
"Boom!"
The long arrow shot out once more.
[-32]
It only dealt standard piercing damage.
The Elemental Arrow Tower's piercing damage reached 60–69, but after hitting, it only dealt 32 points of damage, which meant the intruder's armor value was as high as 30 or more!
Combined with that wolf howl, it seemed that what had been attracted by the expansion mission was a genuine Prairie Dire Wolf.
It was the same breed as the dire wolves ridden by the Wolf Riders.
Finally, Zong Shen saw silver-gray figures passing through the grass, running toward the territory.
They were all Prairie Dire Wolves, each over three meters long and about 1.2 meters tall at the shoulder—proper dire wolves.
In terms of numbers, there were exactly ten.
The leading dire wolf was exceptionally large, with two long arrows stuck in its body, swaying in the wind.
"Boom!"
Another arrow was fired!
The arrow tower attacked again; its attacks possessed the advantage of ultra-long range and were extremely precise and stable.
[-33]
The leading dire wolf let out a cry of pain.
However, its pace did not stop.
Leading the pack behind it, they howled and charged forward!
Zong Shen narrowed his eyes slightly.
These dire wolves began to enter the detection range.
[Adult Prairie Wolf Leader Lv10 (Green)]
[Level: Lv10]
[Race: Beast]
[Bite Damage: 45–51]
[Health: 435]
[Armor: 35]
[Speed: 5]
[Skills: Bite (deals an additional instance of bite damage), Bleed (causes the opponent to enter a bleeding state for 3 seconds after a bite, dealing damage per second equal to one-tenth of the bite damage)]
...
[Adult Prairie Wolf Lv10]
[Level: Lv10]
[Race: Beast]
[Bite Damage: 35–41]
[Health: 335]
[Armor: 25]
[Speed: 5]
[Skills: Bite (deals an additional instance of bite damage), Pounce (the Prairie Wolf leaps up, covering a distance of several meters to pounce on the target, suppressing them for 0.1s–3s depending on size)]
The adult Prairie Wolves were not small.
Especially the Prairie Wolf Leader; its attributes were on par with the Wolf Riders' dire wolves.
The wolf pack charged; although there were only ten, they had a certain momentum.
The alpha wolf had taken three arrows from the tower in succession and still had 330 health left. Having originally wanted to lead the charge, it finally learned to be smart.
It slowed down a bit and blended into the pack.
Finally, the wolf pack approached the attack range of the Dragon-born Rangers.
The two ranger ladies pulled their longbows to the full and began to shoot methodically.
[-45]
[-45]
Two damage numbers appeared above the heads of different wolves.
Almost without pause, they began their second round of shooting.
Their attack speed was fast, averaging one arrow every two seconds.
"Swish! Swish!"
[-45]
[-45]
The tension of the longbow limbs was quite high, and it required significant strength to draw them easily.
This was especially true during continuous shooting.
Each Dragon-born Ranger was equipped with a quiver of 40 arrows, which needed to be replenished after being consumed.
The same went for the Wolf Riders' short spears.
They were all non-renewable consumables.
Of course, if Zong Shen were willing to spend the money to equip them with high-quality short spears and arrows, he could likewise enhance their lethality.
Because soldiers could also change equipment, they were currently using the standard-issue gear for their respective classes, which fell between white and green quality.
With the wear and tear of battle and injuries, the equipment would degrade, at which point Zong Shen would need to provide replacements.
With few soldiers now, he could follow the elite squad route, but once Zong Shen established a mature and stable recruitment system, the training and arming of soldiers would be a very complex issue.
Unfortunately, Zong Shen only had two ranger ladies and could not form a large-scale arrow rain.
Otherwise, with an arrow rain covering them, these wolves would have been wiped out in less than two rounds.
At this moment, the Wolf Riders, the Huntress, and the Druid of the Claw were hovering within a range of about twenty meters around the territory.
They formed an armed buffer zone on the perimeter of the buildings.
The wolf pack pushed forward against the fire of the arrow tower and the two Dragon-born Rangers.
Finally, they arrived within a hundred-meter range.
Zong Shen stood with his hands behind his back, unmoved.
This kind of battle did not yet require him, the Lord, to take action personally.
If they couldn't handle one elite wolf and nine common wolves, they wouldn't need to bother hanging around here.
The two mages stepped forward in unison, raised their staves, and began to chant.
A palm-sized fireball and two pitch-black necrotic arrows shot out simultaneously.
Facing such scattered enemies, Favid wisely chose the short, flat, and fast small fireball.
These wolves had no magic resistance attributes, so magic attacks could deal full damage.
[-58]
[-75]
[-75]
Three damage values flashed out one after another.
The wolf pack struggled to push into the 50-meter range.
At this point, the wolf pack was in a sorry state.
Almost every one of them was wounded.
If it weren't for that inexplicable summoning, these wolves would likely never have had the guts to attack Zong Shen's territory!