Chương 126: 126：Attacked from Both Sides

This sudden, apocalyptic barrage from their rear completely shattered the Bloodaxe Battalion. They couldn't defend both fronts. The once-impenetrable shield wall instantly disintegrated. Orcs scrambled like headless flies amidst the sea of fire and the torrential rain of armor-piercing bolts, plunging into utter panic and chaos.

"Hold the line! Hold the damn line!!" Standing at the frontal vanguard, Commander Garrosh felt like he was losing his damn mind. He violently whipped his head around, only to see his rear echelon reduced to a literal mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. And standing atop a jagged rock, gripping a cyan longbow and staring down at him... was a human, wearing the cold, mocking smirk of the Grim Reaper.

"Soren! How in the seven hells did he get up here?!" Garrosh's eye sockets nearly split open. A suffocating mix of humiliation, fury, and sheer terror drove him to unleash a feral, beastly roar:"TURN AROUND! Vanguard, pivot! Shields to the rear!"

"There's only a few dozen of them! Push them off the cliff! Grind them into paste!" Driven to the absolute brink, the desperately cornered Orcs instinctively obeyed their supreme commander. They abandoned their choke-point guarding the frontal mountain path. Turning their massive, sluggish formation around, they stepped over the corpses of their own brothers, raised their heavy tower shields, and, with bloodshot eyes, launched a suicidal counter-charge toward Soren's sixty-three men at the rear. However.

By making this irrational, rage-fueled pivot, Garrosh had just personally dismantled the most impregnable section of his own defense. The frontal line was now completely, utterly defenseless. Base of Lone Cliff, edge of the dense fog. Master Archer Ein knelt on one knee atop a slick, mossy bluestone. His ears twitched slightly. The [Calm] talent allowed his razor-sharp senses to catch the minute shift in the echoes riding the mountain wind.

The previously unified, arrogant war cries directed toward the southern slope had suddenly devolved into terrified, agonizing screams facing the northern rear. Ein opened his eyes, his gaze locking dead onto the now-unguarded, winding goat-path.

"The Lord's blade has pierced the enemy's heart."

"Now, we strike." Ein stood up sharply, smoothly drawing the [Imperial Military Longbow] from his back.

"Longbow Battalion! On your feet! Maximum advance!" Fifty elite longbowmen surged out from behind cover like a pack of sleek, forest panthers, stepping directly onto the frontal path. No rolling boulders. No flying axes. Not even a single Orcish curse could be heard. Ein led his Longbow Battalion up the steep incline with absolutely zero resistance. In less than the time it takes an incense stick to burn, they seamlessly reached a wide, open plateau halfway up the mountain.

Looking up from this vantage point, they were treated to a beautiful sight: the massive, broad backs of the Orcs. The beasts had their shields raised high, desperately and frantically pushing toward the rear cliff. The heavily muscled backs of the Bloodaxe Orcs were completely, entirely exposed to the lethal sights of fifty Imperial longbows.

"Mark targets! Full draw!" Ein's furious roar echoed in the mountain wind. Fifty human soldiers tensed, their corded muscles bulging as the bowstrings groaned, pulled to their absolute limits.

"For the Lord! Free-fire volley! LOOSE!" THWAAANG! The dense, unified thrum of the bowstrings became the final straw that broke the camel's back. Leveraging the elevation difference from the mid-mountain plateau, this was a flawless, parabolic suppressive fire-net. Fifty heavy bodkin arrows crested the edge of the high ground, tracing lethal, arcing trajectories in the sky. Then, like an inverted rainstorm, they plummeted mercilessly into the completely unshielded backs and skulls of the Orcs! SQUELCH! SQUELCH!

SQUELCH! The Orcs, who were madly squeezing forward to push Soren's men off the cliff, suddenly felt an icy chill bite into the backs of their necks. Armor-piercing arrows punched cleanly through their spinal columns and nailed their calves to the stone! A perfect pincer attack! From the front: sixty-three terrifying [Geared Heavy Repeating Crossbows] advancing like a meat grinder. From the rear: fifty [Imperial Military Longbows] raining absolute devastation from above.

The Bloodaxe Battalion was completely, hopelessly trapped, being systematically sliced and slaughtered within this overlapping kill-zone. No path forward. No path back. No escape to the heavens, and no door to hell! At this exact moment. Standing on a dirt mound miles away at the base of the slope, watching the battlefield unfold... Galahad and Gabriel, the two supreme commanders of Ironwood Fortress, had been turned into literal stone statues.

The mountain wind wildly whipped Galahad's greying hair, yet he didn't even dare to blink. He understood now. He finally, truly understood why Soren had flatly rejected his offer to use nine hundred heavy infantry as sacrificial meat-shields. And he fully grasped the true, terrifying genius behind sending a man to hurl insults at the front line!

"Gods above..." Galahad's voice violently trembled as he pointed at the peak.

"Using insults to bait the enemy into rigidly defending the frontal choke point... then utilizing a Mage's fireballs and siege trebuchets to deliver an asymmetrical, apocalyptic bombardment, creating a zone of total chaos! All to cover an elite squad scaling a suicidal, negative-angle cliff face to reach the summit!" The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Then, launching a point-blank decapitation strike from the rear, violently forcing the enemy to pivot their defenses and expose their backs to the frontal cliff!"

"And finally, exploiting the now-empty frontal path to march in Longbowmen, forming an inescapable, double-layered pincer of absolute firepower!" This old-guard veteran, a man who had spent his entire life defending Ironwood Fortress and was accustomed to grinding, meat-grinder positional warfare, was profoundly, utterly brought to his knees by this masterclass in chained, flawless tactical synergy. Beside him, the arrogant noble general Gabriel swallowed hard, his throat bobbing heavily.

The palm gripping his rapier was entirely slick with cold sweat. He muttered blankly to himself:"It's divine. Utterly flawless."

"He took five hundred Blackiron-armored beasts and herded them like a flock of pathetic ducks on a narrow plateau, molding them and crushing them however he pleased."

"This... this isn't just a battle. This is Soren displaying a supreme feast of military command to the entire Misty Swamp!" Up on the high ground, the final sliver of survival space for the Orcs was being mercilessly squeezed dry. Under the crushing pressure of this double-layered ranged slaughter, fewer and fewer Orcs remained standing. But a cornered beast is the most dangerous.

Watching their flanks be torn to ribbons, several dozen Orcs, driven to absolute despair with blood weeping from their eyes, let out agonizing roars. Forcing their way through the storm of crossbow bolts, they forcefully crossed that final thirty-pace death zone, throwing themselves like rabid dogs into Soren's crossbow line! No matter how dense a fire-net is, there are always gaps during reloads. Close-quarters, brutal melee was imminent.

But Soren's ironclad military doctrine was absolute: "As long as you have a single bolt left, you never draw your sword to indulge in meaningless, hot-blooded brawling." Therefore, even as the Orc battleaxes were raised directly over their heads, these sixty-three frontline elites remained terrifyingly calm. By a bluestone outcropping on the left flank. A two-meter-tall Orc, half his face charred black, roared as he swung his massive axe directly at the head of the intelligence and trap specialist, Gary.

"Die! Human rat!" The Orc's spittle sprayed across Gary's face. Click. Gary's heavy crossbow let out the hollow snap of an empty chamber. Yet, Gary's grey-brown eyes remained horribly calm. The [Guerrilla Mastery] talent activated. In a split-second micro-adjustment, his left foot slid exactly half an inch to the side. WHOOSH! The colossal battleaxe cleaved down mere millimeters from the tip of his nose, smashing into the rock and sending shrapnel slicing across his cheek.

In the exact microsecond the Orc's body locked up from the sheer over-commitment of the missed strike... Gary's empty right hand flashed to the small of his back. A streak of cold light struck out like a viper's fang. A close-quarters combat stiletto! Gary leaned in, pressing his body close. Slipping the blade perfectly into the narrow gap between the Orc's helmet and neck collar, he violently, ruthlessly drove the dagger straight through the beast's throat! SQUELCH! Blood erupted like a geyser.

Gary didn't even waste a single glance on the collapsing corpse. The instant he yanked the blade free, he ducked back behind the rock cover, planted his left foot into the stirrup, and gripped the winch with both hands, forcefully cranking back the bowstring.

"Squad Three, Number Three. Reload complete. Resuming fire!" Meanwhile, on the right flank. Battle Monk Renn was weathering the most brutal frontal collision. Three elite Orcs, eyes entirely glazed over from berserker rage potions, were converging on him in a triangular pincer, wielding massive logs wrapped in iron spikes. Renn was completely bare-chested, his skin still dusted with dirt from the cliff climb. Any normal man would have retreated from such overwhelming force. But Renn?

He violently dropped into a horse stance. Instead of backing away, he lunged forward, throwing his entire body into a devastating lateral smash against an incoming club! BANG! The spiked log slammed heavily into Renn's left shoulder tendon, letting out a dull, sickening thud like a hammer striking thick bull-hide. Between his [Hardened Skin] talent granting 70% physical damage mitigation, and the absolute bio-enhancement of the Troll Serum...

a blow that should have shattered a human spine only caused his body to sway slightly.

"Is that all the force you've got? And you call yourselves beasts?!" Renn let out a feral, bloodthirsty sneer. Under the utterly terrified, disbelieving eyes of the Orcs, his [Unarmed Master] talent detonated in full force! CRACK! A cannon-punch tore through the air, violently pulverizing the left Orc's nasal bridge and driving the bone shards straight up into its brain! Seamlessly, Renn flattened his hand into a spear-hand strike, executing a viciously low sweep that completely bypassed the middle Orc's guard.

His fingers punched straight into the beast's unprotected soft ribs, literally tearing its spleen to shreds! Finally, using the rotational momentum, he launched a devastating, tornado-like spinning hook kick! His heel slammed brutally into the final Orc's temple. The impact was so catastrophic that the Orc's eyeball ruptured and popped clean out of its socket, sending the massive, two-hundred-pound body flying off the edge of the cliff like a torn burlap sack!