Several psionic energy beams grazed past the Thunder Wyvern's body, narrowly missing by mere millimeters.

  Just as it struggled to evade and was about to break free from the range of the psionic rays, the wyvern's flight path seemed to have been perfectly predicted. A dense barrage of attacks suddenly formed a firepower net right in its path.

  With no other choice, the Thunder Wyvern relied on its exceptional reflexes to execute an emergency climb, barely dodging the onslaught.

  However, this evasive maneuver caused it to fly directly into the path of another psionic ray. The attack struck the wyvern’s back with pinpoint accuracy.

  "Boom..."

  Upon impact, the psionic energy beam exploded, kicking up a cloud of dark green smoke that instantly obscured the Thunder Wyvern from view. The battlefield momentarily fell silent.

  Seeing that his attack had landed, Cedric immediately ordered the death lich to cease fire.

  What he wanted was the corpse of this draconic beast—preferably intact, with its soul not completely dissipated—rather than a pile of shattered remains.

  Just as the psionic assault ended, a figure flickering with lightning burst out from the smoke.

  The Thunder Wyvern’s body was once again enveloped in blue electric currents. It accelerated, breaking the sound barrier in an instant and escaping far beyond the range of the psionic rays.

  Watching the wyvern's retreating silhouette disappear into the horizon, Cedric’s lips curled into a cold smile as he muttered softly to himself:

  "You can't escape. As long as you're still in the arena, I will find you."

  Meanwhile, William observed the retreating undead army with a serious expression, silently analyzing the intelligence he had gathered.

  "Most of them are just skeletal cannon fodder. The primary ground combat units appear to be skeletal knights."

  "They have an organized flying unit—skeletal bats serving as their aerial force. Their combat capabilities are mediocre, but they can be easily countered with elite jumpers."

  "They also possess ranged magic units—undead death liches. Their numbers are unclear, and it's unknown whether they have additional hidden trump cards."

  At this thought, William shifted his gaze to assess the damage inflicted on the Thunder Wyvern’s back.

  The entire rear half of its back was already stripped of scales, leaving behind a gruesome mess of exposed flesh. The deeper wounds even revealed glimpses of its writhing internal organs.

  The psionic ray, upon striking the wyvern’s protective lightning armor, had failed to penetrate the shield completely.

  However, the explosion rapidly depleted the shield’s energy, instantly shattering it. The remaining force then blasted through the wyvern’s scales and dealt significant internal damage.

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  Despite maintaining its high-speed flight through sheer will, this was only possible due to the wyvern's engineered biological design as a killing machine, combined with the extreme overdrive of its adrenal glands.

  If it were any ordinary creature, sustaining such injuries would have left it writhing in agony, barely able to move.

  "Attack method: psionic ray—high velocity, long range, significant power, area damage, but sustained capability unknown."

  "Given the nature of undead minions, magic caster-type units typically also handle low-tier undead resurrection and control, high-tier undead rituals, and restoration functions."

  At this point, William suddenly froze, as if recalling something, and his expression darkened.

  "Low-tier undead can be rapidly reanimated..."

  "According to the rules of this tournament, this necromancer’s army will only grow larger as more opponents are eliminated!"

  "It looks like my current steady approach won’t work—I need to change strategies."

  With this realization, William immediately manipulated his divine faith link, issuing new orders to the three swarming legions that had been steadily advancing through the divine battlefield.

  Almost instantly, the three groups—originally two consisting of 300 million and one with over 700 million units—halted their movements.

  Following William’s latest command, they rapidly reorganized.

  Within a short span, the three massive swarms split into over forty smaller legions, each consisting of roughly 30 million units. These smaller groups then scattered in all directions to commence widespread hunting operations.

  At the same time, several elite flying squads composed entirely of jumpers took off toward the opposite half of the battlefield.

  William’s strategy was simple:

  One defining trait of undead warfare was that losing a battle resulted in heavy losses, but winning allowed rapid replenishment of forces.

  Combined with the inherent sluggish mobility of mass skeletal units, Cedric’s strategy would naturally lean toward overwhelming opponents with sheer numerical superiority through encirclement and attrition.

  However, due to the slow movement speed of the skeleton horde, such large-scale encirclements would only yield moderate hunting efficiency.

  William countered this by leveraging the superior mobility of his swarm to accelerate the elimination of other contestants on the battlefield, ensuring they were wiped out as quickly as possible.

  Additionally, he dispatched flying jumpers to clear battlefield remnants along the path of the undead army.

  Wherever the swarm passed, not a single corpse would be left behind for the necromancer to harvest.

  As long as his elimination speed was fast enough, Cedric would have no opportunity to amass an overwhelming undead force in this match.

  The tournament had started with 600 contestants. Based on the intelligence William had gathered, the majority were converging toward the central area.

  With increasing encounters between competitors, conflicts were inevitable.

  Since rankings were determined based on survival and kill count, most battles between similarly matched players ended in direct combat.

  With the battlefield now engulfed in widespread conflict, William estimated that at least half of the contestants would be eliminated purely through mutual combat.

  That would leave roughly 300 players remaining.

  If each contestant had entered the arena with 5 million minions, the total forces would amount to about 1.5 billion.

  The more William eliminated, the less room the undead forces had to grow.

  As William’s strategic shift took effect, the pace of the battle intensified dramatically. Flames of war erupted across the arena as conflicts escalated.

  One contestant after another found their armies crushed by the swarm.

  Jake was one of the competitors in the arena.

  At this moment, he was commanding his centaur minion army, galloping across the vast plains.

  Every warrior in his centaur army had bloodshot eyes, sunken cheeks, and visible signs of exhaustion.

  A large number of centaur scouts were spread far and wide around the main force, diligently gathering intelligence.

  Jake himself was positioned at the rear, closely monitoring the direction from which his army had traveled, ever vigilant.

  He had easily secured the city championship and expanded his divine domain to a vast 1,000,000 square kilometers.

  His minions had undergone tremendous enhancements, and he was brimming with confidence, riding high on his recent successes.