"Surround the Enemy on Three Sides" is a tactical doctrine pioneered by Sun Tzu.
Sun Tzu was a Chinese philosopher and strategist who codified the principles of military victory. One of his core tenets was the idea that a besieged army must be given a way out.
When encircling an enemy, one must always leave a single path of escape open. If every avenue is blocked, the cornered foe will resolve to fight to the death with a frantic, desperate energy. It is the psychological equivalent of a cornered rat biting a cat.
By intentionally providing a route for retreat, the commander instills a seed of doubt in the enemy's mind. They begin to think that they can simply flee if the situation turns dire, leading them to abandon the resolve to fight with everything they have.
"Guooooooooh!"
"Uho! Uho!"
The plains were a sea of fire.
The crimson flames lunged forward like living predators, cornering the giant apes that dwelled within the territory. Panicked, the creatures scrambled from their nests, fleeing toward the one direction where the wall of fire seemed weakest.
Several of their kin had already been consumed by the inferno, but the survivors had no time to mourn.
"Ooooooooooooh!"
"Uhooooooooo!"
The apes—the Crazy Apes—understood that these flames were unnatural. They were intelligent, cunning monsters that possessed an understanding of humans and their magic.
They knew this was magical fire. They knew humans were attacking them. Yet, instead of turning to fight, they fled in a blind scramble. Though they realized their enemies were likely waiting beyond the fire, the sheer scale of the disaster made the prospect of combat unthinkable.
"Ooooooooooooh!"
Just a little further.
If they could just push through, they could escape the heat and survive.
An intense, primal craving for life surged through them. They were starving. They wanted to eat—it didn't matter what. Plants, animals, monsters, or humans; their instincts screamed at them to devour and destroy everything in their path.
"Uho! Uhoo!"
Once they escaped this trap, they would feast on human flesh. They had hunted and eaten humans before. While the two-legged creatures were often lean and lacked substantial fat, the apes relished the thought of slaughtering every last one of them as revenge for this assault. Driven by an uncontrollable appetite, they intended to storm the human settlements.
Clinging to their obsession with survival and their bottomless hunger, the Crazy Apes sprinted toward the gap in the flames.
"That's far enough."
"Uho...!?"
The ground suddenly vanished beneath them.
Without warning, the earth collapsed, forming a massive pit that swallowed the charging apes whole. As they tumbled into the dark, sharp stakes waiting at the bottom impaled their heavy bodies. The pit was filled with hundreds of these jagged, lethal points.
"I appreciate you moving exactly where we wanted. Now, be a man-eater and just die."
"..."
One Crazy Ape, its torso skewered by a stake, looked up from the bottom of the pit. A human stood at the edge—a young man. He was slender, looking like a meager meal at best. The creature felt a surge of disbelief that such a weak-looking human could have orchestrated this.
"Uho!"
The apes following behind tried to leap across the gap. They intended to pounce on the human and tear him apart, but another figure intercepted them, kicking them back into the hole mid-air.
"Not a chance!"
This newcomer was a woman, even more slender than the man. Despite her slight frame, she delivered a whip-like kick that carried enough force to hurl a Crazy Ape—a creature three times her weight—straight down into the pit.
"Thunder Bolt."
Lightning arced from the man’s hand, piercing a Crazy Ape that had skidded to a halt just before the edge.
The rest of the pack, driven by the momentum of their flight from the fire, continued to pour into the trap. Those that managed to stop or attempted to jump were systematically picked off by the woman's devastating kicks or the man's precision magic.
"He... lp..."
"Hmm?"
"He... lp me..."
From the bottom of the pit, an ape impaled on the stakes wheezed out a desperate plea. It looked up at the humans with a look of feigned agony, begging for mercy in a voice that sounded chillingly familiar.
"Help me... help me..."
"Human words?" The man’s eyes grew even colder. He stared down at the monster with the gaze one reserved for a mortal enemy. "How did you learn that language? You picked it up from the people you killed and ate, didn't you? You listened to them beg for their lives while you tore them apart."
"He... lp..."
"Enough. You’re disgusting."
A blade of wind shot from the man’s hand. The invisible edge sliced through the neck of the surviving ape at the bottom of the pit, ending its life instantly.