Chương 139: 139：Forging a Military Soul

"I don't want your furs. I want every last ounce of cotton sitting in Lone Cliff's storehouses. All of it," Soren laid down his terms with absolute finality.

"Y-yes! Understood!" Seeing that Soren was dead serious, Thomas didn't bother trying to understand the bizarre request. Honestly, giving away cheap cotton instead of premium steel or gold saved him an absolute fortune. He immediately thumped his chest, adopting a picture of booming generosity.

"Set your mind at ease, my Lord! There are five massive wagon-loads of raw cotton in the warehouses, plus a fresh batch of spun linen from the mountain workshops."

"I'll head back right now and order them loaded! Within two or three days at most, I will personally escort the caravan straight to your Greywater Village!" With his logistical masterpiece secured, Soren finally let out a long, slow breath. Thomas left behind a few local guides and promised to have proper carriages prepared. The fat merchant then scrambled back up the steep mountain path as fast as his legs could carry him, eager to coordinate the supply run.

Barely a few moments after Thomas had departed, the thick fog at the southern edge of the basin began to part. The rhythmic thud of approaching hooves and the low, guttural growls of direwolves echoed from the mist.

"Hold your fire. It's our own people," Ein, the Sharpshooter Captain on lookout duty, called out, lowering his bow. The mist rolled back. The first thing to emerge was a blinding splash of dark crimson. It was over thirty battered sets of orc cavalry armor draped over the backs of direwolves—and strung up on a towering spear, swaying morbidly in the wind, were seven or eight severed orc heads! Riding at the very front was Buck, Commander of the Wolf Riders.

The grey-black fur of the massive beast beneath him was completely matted with dried blood. Following closely behind him was the second-line spearmen battalion. Their steps were heavy with exhaustion, but their phalanx formation remained terrifyingly tight and disciplined. Quartermaster Kyle dragged a heavy, iron-studded shield with one hand. The fifty-one Macedonian Spearmen marching behind him no longer carried smooth, wooden-hued pikes.

Every single three-meter shaft was now stained a horrifying, sickening shade of dark green. And rolling along at the rear of the column were several handcarts stacked high with dozens of sets of black iron scale armor, still reeking of charred flesh.

"Report!" The two commanders, who had been deployed to hold the intercept points at Rotwood Forest and Throat Valley respectively, spotted Soren and immediately marched forward to deliver their battle summaries.

"Reporting to the Lord! The Wolf Rider Battalion successfully intercepted a Black Iron Orc cavalry centuria in the northwest Rotwood Forest!"

"Your subordinate stepped forward and executed the enemy commander, Gruul, in single combat before the armies! We slaughtered over thirty orc wolf riders and routed the rest! Not a single greenskin made it to the main battlefield to reinforce! Spoils of war: thirty captured wargs and over thirty sets of iron armor!" Buck's voice was as thunderous as a ringing bell, his face radiating an unprecedented, unyielding pride.

The suffocating humiliation of being trampled by orcs—a burden he had carried his entire life—had been utterly shattered by this single, glorious victory.

"Reporting to the Lord!" Kyle chimed in, literally trembling with excitement.

"The Spearmen Battalion and the Goblin Engineering Company successfully ambushed the enemy at Throat Valley."

"After crippling the Berserkers with fire attacks and falling boulders, our Macedonian Phalanx locked down the valley exit, grinding the remaining melee orcs into meat paste!"

"Two hundred green-skinned bastards. Skewered to death before our phalanx to the very last man! Not a single one escaped! Spoils of war: over two hundred sets of black iron heavy armor and weaponry!" These two staggering battle reports—either of which would have been hailed as a military miracle by the Kingdom's War Ministry—were delivered with crisp, ringing clarity by two completely unknown, backwater officers.

Galahad and Gabriel, who had only just managed to recover their wits, were instantly petrified all over again. Wiping out the five hundred elite orcs at the Lone Cliff main battlefield was already beyond comprehension. But to find out that, prior to that, Soren had actually split off a portion of his seemingly ragtag forces into the wild, intercepted three hundred elite enemy reinforcements attempting a flanking maneuver, and utterly devoured them at two separate locations?! Galahad actually felt his knees go weak.

Only now did the veteran general finally realize the sheer, terrifying scope of the chessboard this young warlord had set up. The Bloodaxe Battalion on Eaglebeak Ridge wasn't the orcs' bait to trap humans. They were Soren's bait. He had deliberately used them to draw out the orc reinforcements, just so he could ambush and slaughter them in detail! Soren looked down at his two commanders, both radiating a thick, suffocating aura of blood and slaughter.

He wasn't particularly fixated on the raw numbers of the spoils they reported. While hundreds of sets of black iron armor might be priceless treasures to anyone else, to Soren, they were nothing more than raw materials destined for his blast furnaces. Looking past the two captains, Soren's gaze settled on the ranks of ordinary soldiers standing behind them. Just half a month ago, these men were terrified peasants whose legs would turn to jelly at the sight of a wild beast.

They were refugees who couldn't even thrust a spear forward without Kyle screaming at them to take a step. But now? These were the men of the [Second-Line Macedonian Phalanx] and the [Second-Line Wolf Riders]—men who had literally waded through a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. Their pauldrons were shattered. Some had blood-soaked linen bandages wrapped tightly around their heads. Others leaned heavily on the splintered shafts of broken pikes.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Yet, every single one of them stood as straight and rigid as towering pines. The aura radiating from these once-cowardly militiamen was now as freezing and predatory as a pack of direwolves. It was the cold indifference of men who had seen their enemies' intestines spill into the mud.

It was the absolute, profound metamorphosis that only came from personally driving a blade through the heart of a Black Iron Orc—monsters they had once believed to be invincible gods of death. They had faced their absolute worst nightmares. And they had successfully crushed them into the dirt. An army trained using modern special forces methodology has finally forged its own military soul. A deep, profound sense of gratification washed over Soren's heart.

"You did well." The moment Soren spoke, his voice carried with absolute clarity to the ears of every single soldier.

"Today, you used your strength to prove to me that nothing in this world is invincible."

"You have washed away your past as weaklings with the blood of your enemies. From this moment forward, no one will ever dare call you refugees or cannon fodder again!"

"The troops under my, Soren's, command, are wolves and tigers among men!"

"HURRAH! HURRAH! INVINCIBLE!" The dozens of newly blooded veterans, joining their voices with the sixty-three frontline elites, erupted into an earth-shattering, unified roar from the bottom of the slope. The sheer, boiling killing intent was so thick it actually forced back the freezing fog drifting around them. Soren raised both hands and pushed them down in a silent gesture. The entire army instantly fell dead silent.

"Thus!" Soren abruptly drew his longsword, pointing the steel blade high into the air.

"All objectives of our hunting operation at Lone Cliff have been completely achieved!"

"Count the dead. Strip all usable armaments." Soren then issued his final order of the day:"The entire army is to break camp immediately! Take all of your spoils of war. The rear guard will shift to the vanguard. We are evacuating the Lone Cliff basin and returning to our stronghold at Greywater Village!"

"BY YOUR COMMAND, MY LORD!" The rumble of wagons echoed across the terrain. The iron-blooded tide of over four hundred men, pushing handcarts loaded with mountains of black iron armor and leading their captured wargs, began their withdrawal toward Greywater Village with flawless, terrifying discipline. Witnessing this perfectly executed retreat, Galahad couldn't help but mentally carve another heavy mark of respect into his mind. This man's command... his military discipline is utterly impeccable.

By evening, the faint night breeze had finally carried the last remnants of the bloody stench away toward the distant mountains. It wasn't until his army had completely vanished into the mist that Soren made his own move. He had not marched back with his troops. On the secured path at the base of Lone Cliff, several black-wood carriages were already waiting—the guide team left behind by Thomas.

"Are all the arrangements secure?" Soren asked smoothly as he swung himself into the saddle of a premium warhorse provided by Lone Cliff.

"Our territory is cloaked by Mr. Victor's arcane arrays, and the perimeter fire-zones are being held by Lord Luger. Combined with the returning troops reinforcing the garrison, even an orc army thousands strong wouldn't be able to breach Greywater Village by half a step," Meyer, the officer in charge of intelligence, reported with utmost respect.

"Let's move, then."

"Time to meet this legendary Grand Duke Valentine." Hyah! With a crack of the riding crop, a squad of light cavalry tore through the dense fog, their rapid hoofbeats leaving nothing but dust in their wake. Meanwhile. The main headquarters of the Blackstone Warband, Bloodfang Fortress. Built directly into the sheer face of a jagged mountain, the towering ramparts of this dark fortress were densely decorated with thousands of air-dried human skulls, hung upside down.

Vicious flames danced eternally atop towering totem poles, the very air saturated with the suffocating stench of gore. At the dead center of the fortress lay a massive, funnel-shaped gladiatorial arena. At this exact moment, high up on the commander's viewing platform overlooking the pits, Warchief Blackstone slouched heavily into a massive chair carved entirely from white bone, his broad, scarred chest fully exposed.

"Tear him apart! Rip out his throat! You grass-eating coward!" Down in the stands, thousands of high-ranking orc officers were roaring themselves hoarse. In the center of the arena, upon sands stained a permanent, dark crimson, two half-naked orc prisoners of war from a subjugated vassal tribe were wielding rusty iron axes, engaging in a desperate, honorless deathmatch.

This was Warchief Blackstone's absolute favorite form of entertainment: watching those who had once dared to rebel against him butcher their own kin, simply to earn the right to live as slaves. The Warchief casually withdrew his gaze from the slaughter. He grabbed a massive wooden barrel resting beside him, tipped his head back, and chugged the ale down his throat before letting out a deeply satisfied, thunderous belch.

"Zagar, how does your new arm feel?" the Warchief asked without turning his head, viciously tearing off a chunk of half-raw, bloody meat from a roasted beast leg. Sitting in the shadows just to the Warchief's right, the Shadow Priest, Zagar, let out a low, raspy chuckle. Upon closer inspection, there was something intensely, horrifyingly wrong with Zagar's current body.

The edges of the upper half of his torso were subtly twisting and rippling in the air, much like the distorted heat waves radiating off an asphalt road at high noon in midsummer.