Chương 114: 114： Gary's Cascading Death Trap

"Dammit all! That kid Soren is swimming in absolute wealth inside a mud pit filled with lethal poison and demonic beasts!" Another high-ranking commander couldn't hold back a burst of incredulous laughter. Grand Duke Valentine's normally stoic, granite-like expression finally cracked. The generals were absolutely right. Heavy infantry and heavy cavalry? The Empire didn't care about those; they had them in spades. But Warg Cavalry? Heavy Siege Trebuchets? A Silver-tier Mage?

Any one of those was a luxurious military asset. To have all of them concentrated in a single, isolated battalion meant Soren was rocking a high-end loadout even by the absurdly wealthy standards of the Holy Halycon Empire!

"No wonder," the Grand Duke murmured, his eyes gleaming.

"Ironwood Fortress had to mobilize three full battalions of heavy infantry just to stall that elite squad of Sons of Titan!"

"Those archaic, old-guard generals only know how to order their soldiers to lock shields and brace for impact. The result? They were slaughtered, suffering over fifty percent casualties and breaking into a complete rout."

"Yet Soren... at Sunken Bone Shallows, he crushed that elite Son of Titan squad with zero casualties!" The Grand Duke mentally re-evaluated the terrifying, tide-turning combat power of Soren's unit. (Due to incomplete intelligence, the Grand Duke still had absolutely no idea that when Soren crushed those Titans, he didn't even have a single heavy infantryman under his command.) The atmosphere in the grand tent surged, the topic naturally shifting toward the broader, long-term strategic board.

"Gentlemen, do you all remember that madwoman Commander of the Crimson Moon Knights, Leona?" The Grand Duke picked up a cup of cold wine, his voice low and probing.

"Over two months ago, she signed a military pledge under penalty of death: to reclaim the lost territories of the Misty Swamp within a single year." Hearing this, the surrounding commanders shook their heads and sneered mockingly.

"According to our prior wargames, that was an absolutely impossible, dead-end trap! The Silvermoon Parliament intended to use that pledge to execute her and forcefully disband the Crimson Moon Knights once the year was up!" the Imperial Intelligence Officer scoffed. But now... everything was different. Under the flickering candlelight, Alaric's blue eyes radiated an intense, piercing light.

"But now, the anomaly known as Soren exists. With a subordinate of this terrifying caliber fighting for her, Leona preserving the Crimson Moon Knights' existence might not be an impossibility after all." A long, profound silence descended over the command center. Outside the stronghold, the neighs of the expeditionary warhorses echoed through the night sky. Grand Duke Valentine rested his chin on his crossed hands.

His eyes, capable of piercing through the fog of war, seemed to look across the continent, locking onto the young man named Soren. A man capable of forging such monumental achievements from absolute scratch undoubtedly possessed a bottomless intellect, ruthless pragmatism, peerless talent, and a razor-sharp strategic sense.

"Those bloated, wine-guzzling nobles of the Silvermoon Kingdom... they are a pack of blind fools who let a peerless treasure slip right through their fingers." The Grand Duke slowly stood up to his full, towering height. He suddenly slammed his hand onto the oak table!

"Alaric!"

"Sir!"

"I don't care what methods you use!" The Grand Duke's eyes burned with raging ambition; his curiosity regarding Soren had reached its absolute zenith.

"Find an opportunity. Tell this Soren that I, using my title as Grand Duke of the Empire, am personally summoning him for an audience!" Meanwhile. Tonight, Greywater Village was cloaked in silent, pulsing waves of magical energy. Deep inside a newly excavated subterranean basement, the air felt incredibly heavy, suffocating under the rapid drain of elemental mana. Soren stood with his arms crossed, his cold eyes watching the floor ahead.

Chief Magical Advisor Victor—the Silver-tier genius—was currently on his knees. His greyish-white mage robes were completely soaked through with sweat, clinging tightly to his spine. His fingertips were stained with a highly conductive array-ink made from high-tier beast blood mixed with powdered silver. Every single stroke he drew required an immense outpouring of spiritual energy to guide the mana pathways. VWOOM!

As the final mana node snapped shut, the entire basement erupted with a profound, dark blue-purple luminescence! Using the stone cabin as the epicenter, an invisible, colossal dome of magical energy expanded outward like an inverted iron bowl. It silently and flawlessly engulfed the entirety of Greywater Village. Prior to this, sitting in the center of the table was a heavy lead box. Inside rested the Warchief's [Spatial Storage Ring].

In Soren's magical perception, that ring had been constantly vomiting tracking ripples into the void, acting like a blinding flare in the dead of night. Warchief Blackstone's Shaman Priests were undoubtedly tracking that fluctuation like rabid dogs, desperately trying to lock onto its coordinates. But now! The instant the blue-purple magical dome snapped shut, it violently severed every single signal! The dark purple tracking ripples forcefully contracted, as if slamming into an impenetrable, invisible wall.

The signal was completely flattened, unable to leak a single microscopic trace of its aura to the outside world.

"Haaah... haaah..." The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Victor collapsed onto the stone floor, panting heavily as a massive weight lifted from his shoulders.

"My Lord... the [Concealment Ward]... successfully activated."

"From this exact second onward, whether it's the ring or Greywater Village itself, in the eyes of the Orc Alliance Shamans, this volcanic crater is nothing more than a barren, lifeless patch of dead earth." Soren stepped forward, unhooked his waterskin, and tossed it into Victor's lap.

"Beautifully done, Victor." Soren's gaze dropped to the ancient ring. He knew perfectly well that it contained a strategic foundation capable of making Warchief Blackstone go utterly insane. It is no longer a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. It is now a perfect, controllable bait that I can toss out to dictate the exact location of our next ambush, Soren calculated internally. The next morning. Before the swamp mist had fully burned away.

Soren, accompanied by Trap Master Gary and Hobgoblin Luger, began a comprehensive inspection of the territory's perimeter. To forge a flawless, impregnable military fortress, exploiting geographical advantages was paramount. Soren's boots came to a halt at the absolute southern edge of Greywater Village. Looking up, he faced a massive expanse of rugged, primeval forest that merged seamlessly into a near-vertical, seventy-degree cliff face. The pitch-black woods were choked with razor-sharp, thorny vines.

Forget heavily armored Orc armies—even wild beasts would find it agonizing to navigate through that tangled mess. It was a flawless, natural defense line. Rustle... Rustle... A remarkably soft sound of friction echoed from the dense canopy above. Soren didn't even look up; he simply gave a subtle hand signal. Instantly, dozens of green heads poked out from the foliage. It was the 3rd-Line Goblin Scouts under Luger's command.

Hanging upside-down from the branches with the agility of monkeys, they had their [Goblin Repeating Crossbows] leveled and ready. If even a blade of grass twitched unusually in the south, these hidden goblins would instantly turn the intruder into a pincushion. Even on this naturally fortified rear line, Soren maintained absolute, rigorous vigilance. Next, they turned east. The ambient temperature skyrocketed, and the pungent, stinging scent of sulfur made Gary wrinkle his nose.

Ahead lay the massive, dormant volcanic sulfur pools. Bloop... Bloop... Thick, yellow-brown mud boiled and popped. High-pressure steam hissed from cracks in the earth—steam hot enough to instantly blister human skin. Luger, the Hobgoblin, adjusted his protective goggles and pulled out a small ledger, delivering a precise report:"My Lord, I've measured the geothermal temperatures here."

"The average surface temperature exceeds sixty degrees Celsius. Near the edges of the active pools, it's approaching a hundred degrees." Soren picked up a large rock and casually tossed it forward. The rock didn't even roll. With a sickening schlorp, it immediately sank deep into the soft, boiling sulfurous mud. In the eyes of a military commander, this was the ultimate defensive barrier gifted by nature!

Whether it was the Holy Empire's heavy phalanxes or the Orc Alliance's human-wave charges, if they dared to attempt a massive flanking maneuver from the east... Greywater Village wouldn't need to fire a single arrow. The sheer weight of their iron armor would drag them straight down into the boiling mud, slow-cooking them alive! To the west, the terrain was even more terrifying. It was a hyper-toxic bog. An eerie, luminescent green sheen floated over pitch-black acidic puddles.

Fist-sized venomous mosquitoes swarmed in dark clouds over a completely bottomless, unstable quagmire. South, East, West. Three sides were absolute dead zones. Utterly impassable. This was Soren's strategic brilliance in nailing his headquarters to a volcanic crater: a natural fortress, immensely easy to defend and virtually impossible to assault. Finally, the trio's footsteps stopped at the true north of Greywater Village. This was the only route in or out of the settlement—a gently sloping dirt path.

In the outer zones leading up to the path, the acidic mud had been heavily conditioned and leveled. In the dim morning light, dozens of elderly folks and women in ragged clothes could be seen carefully pulling weeds along the ridges of the fields. Beneath their feet, the soil bulged heavily beneath thick, vibrant green vines. Those were the high-yield [Swamp Tubers]. But the moment one stepped from those peaceful fields into the narrow entrance of the path...

A suffocating aura of slaughter hit them right in the face.

"Over here! Yes! Sink that trigger mechanism another two inches!" Trap Expert Gary was currently sporting a look of absolute, fanatical obsession. Half his body was buried in a mud pit as he wildly directed several goblins to haul massive, iron-spiked logs into place. Originally, the northern entrance only had a basic, double-layered cheval-de-frise and a few crude pitfall traps filled with sharpened stakes. But right now? The northern entrance looked like it had been chewed to pieces by a rabid dog.

It was nearly impossible to find a single flat piece of dirt. This was the terrifying result of Gary's [Trap Intuition] violently colliding with Luger's [Master Artisan] mechanical skills. Slapping the acidic mud off his hands, Gary stood up, his eyes practically vibrating with excitement.

"Lord Soren! You absolutely have to come take a look at this!"