Twenty thousand troops of the Evil Army's Evil Soldier Division let out a thunderous battle cry, raising their longswords overhead as they charged across the earth.
The Evil Soldier Division served as Pawns, composed of the lowest-ranking fodder within the Evil Army. However, that low status was purely relative to the rest of their demonic host. In the mortal world, each soldier possessed the strength to effortlessly slaughter even members of the Dragon Species—the mightiest individual beasts in existence. Now, twenty thousand of these monstrous powerhouses charged at breakneck speed, shaking the ground beneath them with immense, crushing pressure.
Facing the incoming horde without the slightest change in expression, the lion-faced monster held out his right palm.
"All forces, charge!" he commanded.
" " " " "Gigi! (Yeah!)" " " " "
Unleashing a roar that shook the very air, the grasshopper men broke into a sprint. Their speed was incomparable to that of the evil soldiers, their movements stripped of any waste.
The vast gulf in power between the two sides immediately manifested in brutal reality.
"Huh?"
One of the evil soldiers at the vanguard let out a bewildered squeak. It was only natural—the grasshopper men, who had been far off in the distance just moments before, were suddenly right in front of him.
The next instant, the grasshopper men whipped their hand-blades through the air, sending hundreds of evil soldiers' heads flying into the sky.
From there, like ants beneath the heels of colossal beasts, the evil soldiers were pulverized into mangled flesh and blood.
—A headband-wearing grasshopper man slipped inside an evil soldier's guard with bizarre, fluid footwork.
"Eek?!"
As the evil soldier shrieked, the grasshopper man drove his right palm heel into the soldier's abdomen, piercing straight through his solar plexus. It seemed like a single, simple strike, yet the shockwave rippled out from the point of impact through the soldier's entire body. A split second later, the evil soldier's frame was torn to ribbons.
—In the chaotic fray, four heavily muscled evil soldiers, each easily three times the size of a grasshopper man, surrounded one of the insectoid warriors.
"Kyeh!"
From behind, one of the soldiers raised an iron club and brought it crashing down toward the crown of the grasshopper man's head.
Without even looking back, the grasshopper man shifted his weight and parried the blow with his left hand.
"Whoa?!"
Deflected by the parry, the club's momentum carried it straight into the adjacent evil soldier's head, snapping his neck with a sickening crunch.
"What?!"
Before the club-wielding soldier could recover from his shock, the grasshopper man's right backfist slammed into his skull. The evil soldier was launched straight back, crashing into his comrades and reducing them all to a mangled heap of gore.
"Huh?"
In the span of a few blinks, three of their brethren had been wiped out. Paralyzed with disbelief, the remaining evil soldiers stood wide-eyed and motionless until the grasshopper man drove his hand-blade into their throats, snuffing out their lives in an instant.
—A pack of grasshopper men sprinted across the terrain at blinding speed. Their swiftness was extraordinary even among their kind, darting across the battlefield like streaks of lightning.
"What the—"
To the evil soldiers, they were nothing more than blurred rays of green light.
"Gah?!"
Before they could even twitch a finger, the evil soldiers were sliced apart into scattered chunks of meat.
—A squad of massive grasshopper men, each towering over three mels tall, slammed bodily into a dense cluster of evil soldiers.
"Gah! Stay back, you monsters!"
Such desperate pleas meant nothing to the grasshopper men. The sheer force of their tackle launched the evil soldiers high into the air. Then, the lead grasshopper man drove his chiseled, rock-like fist into the fallen pack, unleashing a massive shockwave. Blood sprayed like rain, and where the soldiers had stood, nothing remained but a colossal crater.
With an agility that defied his massive bulk, the grasshopper man bounded across the battlefield once more, eagerly hunting for his next target.