Chương 120: 120：Fatal Underestimation and Arrogance

Alaric stood off to the side, listening to his father's unreserved, absolute praise. He puffed out his chest, his desire to forge a rock-solid alliance with Soren burning hotter than ever. But as the shock of the revelation subsided, Grand Duke Valentine's exhilarated smile slowly vanished. The suffocating majesty of an Imperial Supreme Commander descended upon him once more. Only this time, the anxiety in his eyes was completely gone. It was replaced by the freezing, merciless glare of an apex predator.

"Since Lone Cliff holds, the fundamental nature of this chessboard has flipped." The Grand Duke sneered.

"Five hundred Bloodaxe heavy infantry. To achieve stealth on their forced march, they abandoned their entire supply train. Starve them for two days, and they'll be too weak to lift their own axes."

"Five hundred Blackiron heavy infantry, blindly diving deep into my territory. They failed to secure rations. Right now, they are absolutely trapped on the outer perimeter of Lone Cliff, staring blankly at the walls with empty stomachs!" The Grand Duke spun around, marching toward the massive parchment map hung on the wall. He violently yanked out a marker javelin and slammed it brutally into the coordinates for Lone Cliff.

"Since they dared to step across my borders, I'll chop their damn legs off at the root! Coming and going as they please? Do they think the sovereign territory of the Human Empire is their backyard?!" The Grand Duke issued his supreme directive, his voice dripping with absolute tyranny:"Annihilation! Do not leave a single one alive! Bring me all five hundred of their heads!" The Grand Duke immediately stepped back to the communication array, slamming both hands onto the stone pedestal.

The mercury hissed and boiled, rapidly shifting to lock onto a new coordinate.

"Connect me to old General Rodman! Now!" Moments later, the face of a white-haired, white-bearded veteran clad in ornate chainmail materialized in the mercury. It was the veteran Supreme Commander of the Silvermoon Kingdom: Rodman.

"Old friend. I'll skip the pleasantries," Grand Duke Valentine growled, his eyes burning like torches.

"Invoking the Supreme Clause of the Twelve-Point Joint Defense Treaty between our two nations: I need you to mobilize the strongest forces you have on hand. Immediately."

"Send the order to Ironwood Fortress. Have Galahad and that noble brat, Gabriel, move out!"

"A five-hundred-man heavy Bloodaxe Battalion is currently trapped on the high ground outside Lone Cliff! No food, no water!"

"This is a god-given opportunity! Pass my absolute command to those two boys: they are to devour this enemy force at all costs!"

"If even a single Orc escapes that mountain, tell them to bring me their own heads instead!" The Grand Duke violently severed the connection. The mercury array fell back into dead silence. Twenty kilometers away from Lone Cliff. Ironwood Fortress. Center of the martial training grounds. The two commanders who had just received General Rodman's emergency transmission stood amidst the howling wind. On the left stood Galahad.

Clad in incredibly thick, full-plate armor, he gripped a massive warhammer in his right hand and wore a heavy kite shield on his left arm. He was an old-guard commander, steady and unyielding as iron. Right now, a burning desire for vengeance flickered in his eyes—he was desperate to wash away the blood and humiliation of past defeats. On the right stood Gabriel, radiating the textbook arrogance of the new aristocracy. Even stationed in this miserable swamp, he kept himself immaculately clean.

He wore a fitted suit of lightweight Mithril armor, and at his waist hung an exquisite rapier etched with lightning-attribute magic runes. He sneered at the concept of heavy, sluggish defense, preferring the lightning-fast, tearing sensation of slicing his enemies to ribbons.

"Five hundred starving Bloodaxe Orcs trapped at Lone Cliff. Truly, an absolute gift from the gods." An exceedingly arrogant smirk stretched across Gabriel's face. He casually used a snow-white silk handkerchief to polish the hilt of his rapier.

"These muscle-brained beasts have no idea what happens when a stealth operation fails. To execute a deep strike without a supply train... they've dug their own graves."

"Do not underestimate them," Galahad warned, violently slamming down his heavy visor. His mind replayed the tactical analysis General Rodman had emphasized:"The Bloodaxe Battalion's Blackiron armor is exceptionally tough. Furthermore, an Orc's berserker rage when backed into a corner is terrifying."

"If they charge down from the high ground in a desperate, suicidal bid to survive, their destructive power will be catastrophic." Galahad abruptly thrust his warhammer into the air, roaring:"All Heavy Shield-Pikemen! Fall in!!" BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! On the training grounds, three full battalions—nine hundred heavy infantrymen armed with massive tower shields and two-and-a-half-meter-long pikes—stepped forward in perfect, earth-shaking unison.

The sheer momentum of a literal wall of steel advancing was enough to strike terror into any heart. This phalanx would be the main anvil used to withstand the Orcs' brute force.

"Too damn slow, old friend," Gabriel mocked as he smoothly vaulted onto a magnificent, pure-white warhorse—an unimaginable luxury in the acidic mud of the Misty Swamp. He raised his rapier, faint blue arcs of electricity violently crackling at the tip of the blade. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Light Crossbow Scout Cavalry! Mount up!" Neeeigh! Accompanied by the rapid tearing of the wind, over a hundred highly mobile cavalrymen swarmed into formation. Clad in lightweight leather armor and armed with refined steel repeating crossbows, they rode swift, agile steeds. Their extreme mobility made them the ultimate weapon for flanking, severing enemy lines, and running down routed stragglers.

"My cavalry will act as the vanguard, securing the flanks and intercepting any stragglers trying to break the encirclement," Gabriel dictated his highly confident, coordinated battle plan.

"Once your heavy shield wall completely locks them down, my crossbowmen will circle the perimeter and harvest their miserable lives!"

"All forces! Maximum speed! March on the Lone Cliff high ground!" Galahad roared. With a deafening screech of gears, the massive iron portcullis of the fortress was hauled open. Illuminated by a sea of crimson torches, this massive, elite regular army plunged into the fog, practically vibrating with murderous intent, ready to crush everything in its path. Eagle Beak Ridge. The freezing wind cut like razor blades, unleashing a mournful, shrill howl as it whipped through the sheer cliffs.

This was a place of treacherous, deadly geography. It was a plateau surrounded on three sides by near-vertical drops. On the barren, dark-brown rock, not even the most resilient thorny vine could take root. Its only connection to the Lone Cliff basin below was a single, winding goat-path of a trail, barely three feet wide. Yet at this moment, this desolate peak was occupied by a horde of towering behemoths.

Garrosh, the Commander of the Bloodaxe Battalion, sat with his legs splayed wide atop a weathered, jutting boulder. He had stripped off his Blackiron shoulder guards, exposing thick, ash-grey arms. Bulging, knotted muscles rippled beneath a roadmap of gruesome, ancient battle scars. High above, several vultures circled relentlessly. They could clearly smell the impending slaughter, yet were too terrified by Garrosh's suffocating aura to descend, only daring to let out hoarse, ugly squawks from the clouds.

"Commander!" A heavily armored Orc adjutant scrambled up from a blind spot below, using both hands and feet to climb the rugged rock face.

"Down below, right at the edge of the tree line near the path! We spotted the shadows of a human army!" A flash of genuine surprise crossed Garrosh's blood-red eyes. He looked up, the thick flesh on his face violently twitching:"A human army? Already? Even if the heavy legions of the Silvermoon Kingdom sprouted damn wings, there is no physical way they could have reached the base of our mountain in just a few hours!"

"Unless... they were already ambushing us?" Garrosh abruptly stood up.

"How many? Is it the heavy infantry battalions from Ironwood Fortress?" The Orc adjutant's face contorted into a deeply bizarre expression. He split his massive, fang-filled maw and reported in a gruff voice:"Commander... it's only about a hundred men."

"A hundred?!" Garrosh completely froze. After a moment of stunned silence, the battle-hardened Orc Commander suddenly threw his head back and erupted into wild, maniacal laughter:"HAHAHAHA! A hundred puny, skin-and-bones human infantrymen?!" The booming laughter instantly echoed across the entire ridge. The hundreds of heavy Bloodaxe soldiers—who had been sitting around starving, their bellies empty and their hearts full of pent-up rage—immediately stood up.

They burst into a chorus of raucous, insulting mockery, hurling foul curses into the wind.

"Did these brainless human maggots lose their way in the fog? Or did they come up here to deliver themselves as our rations?!" Garrosh violently shoved his adjutant aside and strode right up to the edge of the cliff, glaring down with absolute superiority at the fog-choked basin below. In his brutal military experience, a mere hundred standard human infantrymen couldn't even survive a single, half-assed charge from his Orcs on an open plain! And right now? The humans would be forced to attack uphill!

"A hundred measly flies, actually daring to show their faces at the base of Eagle Beak Ridge!" Garrosh sneered with unrestrained contempt. He turned around, pointing at the massive warriors behind him, his voice dripping with arrogance:"Open your eyes and look at who we are! We are the ultimate trump card of the Orc Alliance! We are the Bloodaxes!" He brutally pounded his fist against the inch-thick Blackiron plate on his chest.

It was armor so dense that a standard steel greatsword would only leave a faint white scratch.

"Adjutant, use your thick skull and think for a second. We are occupying the absolute high ground, sitting atop a seventy-degree incline."

"We wouldn't even need to draw our axes! All we have to do is push a few boulders over the edge, and we'll crush their entire formation into a paste of blood and bone!"

"Not to mention, we brought a hundred elite axe-throwers and an accompanying High Shaman!"

"Once the Shaman drops a [Bloodlust Array], even if a hundred Twin-Headed Swamp Crocs crawled up that path, I'd chop them all into pieces and eat them with my wine!" Brimming with absolute, cocky confidence, he heavily patted his adjutant's shoulder, making his own completely misguided tactical deduction:"Calm down. This is just a pathetic probing stone tossed out by some cowardly human commander."

"A force this small isn't even enough to fill the gaps in our teeth. They just want to test our strength and see if we flinch."