Chương 152: 152：The Swamp Commandos

"My Lord! Please, take us in! We can fight! We've killed orcs!" Darion pointed wildly at the ragged group of men behind him, spit flying from his lips as he desperately pitched his worth.

"Don't judge us by this miserable mud! We crawled all the way out from the absolute southernmost depths of the Misty Swamp—a hellhole known as the Carrion Abyss!"

"Even the green-skinned orc patrols refuse to take a single step into that cursed place! It rains acid all year round. The waters are completely infested with man-eating Two-Headed Swamp Crocodiles and Rot-Venom Spiders..." Darion swallowed a mouthful of muddy saliva, his eyes trembling with lingering terror at the memories.

"The fifty-something of us sitting here... we survived that inhuman nightmare! We ate rotten roots, gnawed on venomous bugs, and forced ourselves to stay alive until this very day!"

"Half a month ago, the gods finally smiled on us. We managed to capture two wandering goblin merchants."

"From their mouths, we heard of your world-shattering glory! The absolute annihilation of the Bloodaxe Battalion!"

"My brothers and I finally saw a single, razor-thin sliver of hope in the darkness! We gritted our teeth. We threw away every single ounce of dead weight. We crossed over a hundred kilometers of absolute death traps! Hiding from apex predators by day, fighting off the toxic miasma by night... we dragged ourselves for over a dozen days just to reach the outskirts of your Greywater Village!"

To definitively prove that his men weren't useless leeches just looking for a free meal, Darion suddenly did something absolutely horrifying. He reached into the rotting, woven fish-basket tied to his waist and violently yanked out a live, fist-sized swamp frog covered entirely in multi-colored, venomous pustules! Without so much as blinking, Darion shoved the thrashing, croaking swamp frog directly into his mouth! CRUNCH! Sickening, viscous internal fluids exploded past his lips.

He violently chewed the creature—skin, bones, and all—twice, before forcing it straight down his throat!

"You see?!" Darion wiped the mixture of dark blood and frog viscera from his chin. He viciously pounded his own skeletal chest, roaring his absolute guarantee:"My Lord! My brothers are not cowards! Every single one of us can hold our breath and lay completely submerged in the swamp water for a full half-hour! If there are no rations, we will chew raw, venomous frogs just to keep fighting!"

"Just give us a single mouthful of the cheapest, roughest grain! Give us a chipped iron sword! And we will happily throw ourselves into the deadliest enemy formations for you!" This raw, profoundly tragic display of desperation caused Fina, standing right beside Soren, to avert her eyes, her stomach violently churning in revulsion and pity. Up in the watchtowers, the hardened veterans of Greywater Village stared down, their eyes reflecting profound shock and deep respect.

In this brutal world, to simply stay alive, humanity had truly been pushed to the point where even the most basic dignity was discarded without a second thought. But while everyone else was stunned by the brutal display of eating the venomous frog... Soren's facial expression remained as cold and unreadable as carved granite. In his mind, however, his heart was pounding with absolute ecstasy! Lowering his eyelids slightly, he silently activated his [Appraisal] skill.

His gaze rapidly swept over Darion and the fifty-odd men kneeling in the acidic mud behind him. Hum! [Target: Darion] [Talents: Poison Resistance, Aquatic Mastery] The fifty men behind him possessed no Awakened Talents, but... Good god... Soren's heart practically skipped a beat. Originally, to solve his population crisis, he was fully prepared to accept any able-bodied refugee. But he never could have imagined that a literal, pre-conditioned special operations unit would simply drop right into his lap!

These fifty men had survived in the absolute most toxic, lethal center of the Misty Swamp for years. Their bodies had already undergone a brutal, Darwinian natural selection. They possessed an extreme, biological resistance to toxins and unparalleled underwater stealth capabilities! This was a squad of elite, amphibious commandos perfectly adapted to this exact biome! Right now, all they lacked was nutrition, proper armaments, and systematic military discipline.

The exact moment he draped them in his high-density cotton padded armor mixed with black iron plating, and equipped them with refined repeating crossbows... this unit could lie completely submerged beneath the murky waters of the Misty Swamp, unleashing devastating, lethal assassinations upon completely unsuspecting orc patrols! Soren forcefully suppressed the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, maintaining the absolute, imposing majesty of a supreme commander. He abruptly raised his right arm.

"Clear the barricades!" The moment the order left his lips, the mechanical gears connected to the terrifying, spiked pitfall traps at the northern entrance groaned to life. The false ground retracted, revealing a safe, solid dirt path into the village.

"Darion. Your sheer courage, and the unfathomable tenacity of the men standing behind you, have proven that you are no cowards." Soren announced clearly.

"On behalf of Greywater Village, I wholeheartedly welcome your band into our ranks!" Hearing that declaration, the fifty mud-caked survivors felt the crushing tension in their bodies instantly vanish. Shoulders slumped. Countless eyes turned red, many men biting their lips to stop themselves from openly sobbing.

"But do not celebrate just yet." Soren's tone abruptly hardened, his warning echoing through the air like a ringing bell.

"Do not for a second believe this is a peaceful sanctuary. This is the absolute bleeding edge of the frontline, standing directly in the path of a hundred-thousand-strong Orcish Horde!"

"To enter my army means absolute, unquestioning obedience!" Soren's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"The military discipline of Greywater Village is cold and ruthless. From this exact moment forward: He who disobeys a direct order, dies! He who flees from battle, dies!" Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Your men must completely abandon your disorganized, scavenger mentalities. Even if my command flag points you directly into an absolute, inescapable death trap, you will charge forward without a single second of hesitation. Can you do this?!"

"WE CAN! WE WILL!!" Hearing that they had officially been accepted, Darion was so overwhelmed with excitement he felt as if his very soul had been reborn. He slammed his head into the mud repeatedly, agreeing to every single condition. However. Just as Soren turned, fully intending to signal Quartermaster Kyle to escort the new recruits to the rear camp for processing... Darion took a long, deep breath of the freezing, miasma-laced air.

He had barely stood halfway up before he heavily, deliberately dropped back to his knees. He turned his head and locked eyes with the fifty-odd brothers standing behind him. There was absolutely no verbal communication. Splash! With terrifying, unified precision, fifty mud-caked, emaciated men violently slammed both their knees directly into the wet sludge! The heavy, collective thud actually overpowered the howling of the wind. Every single man kept his spine ramrod straight.

They threw their heads back, staring up at Soren with a gaze of absolute, unadulterated religious devotion. This sudden, bizarre action caused the guards of Greywater Village to instantly tighten their grips on their spears, while Fina gasped, her quill pausing mid-stroke over her ledger.

"My Lord..." Darion's eye sockets were completely bloodshot. Even his gaunt, hyper-aggressive features were now violently trembling. With tears pooling in his eyes, he presented the absolute singular, most vital condition his squad had for joining Greywater Village. An obsession that had absolutely nothing to do with silver coins that could buy bread. It had nothing to do with monthly military stipends. And it had absolutely nothing to do with rank, status, or battlefield glory.

"My Lord, I know perfectly well that our lives are incredibly cheap. We probably aren't even worth an extra mouthful of your grain..." Darion's voice cracked into a bleak, agonizing sob, unleashing years of repressed torment.

"For generations, we have been forced to hide like rats in the darkest, most wretched corners of this swamp. Down there, there is absolutely nothing but putrid, bone-rotting black water and acidic sludge that melts your very flesh." His hands dug viciously into the muck, tearing deep gouges into the earth, his fingernails ripping backward and bleeding from the sheer force.

"When we first fled our homes... there were hundreds of us..."

"We sat there and watched our families starve to death right in front of us. We watched our brothers catch the plague and rot alive. We watched our children get dragged under by Swamp Crocodiles, their bones chewed to splinters!" Darion violently thrust a trembling finger toward the deepest, darkest depths of the fog, screaming at the top of his lungs:"And when they died... we couldn't even find a single patch of earth to bury their bones!"

"Because the entire land is flooded with toxic water! We couldn't dig up a single shovel of dry dirt! We had absolutely no choice but to tie heavy rocks to the corpses of our loved ones and throw them into the stinking abyss to be eaten by bottom-feeders!"

"No whole corpses! No peace! Just rotting away for eternity in the excrement of mindless beasts!" Massive, heavy tears streamed down the face of a hardened survivor who, just moments ago, had chewed a live, venomous frog without blinking. Darion brought the back of his hand up, brutally scrubbing the tears from his eyes. He looked up at the towering, majestic figure of Soren and choked out the words:"My Lord! We risked our lives to cross a hundred kilometers of death to pledge ourselves to you.

Not because we expected to eat well or wear warm clothes... but purely because of a single rumor we heard from those goblin merchants..."

"They told us... that right here, in Greywater Village, you personally issued an absolute order. That every single shattered bone of your fallen soldiers was to be retrieved from the battlefield. Not a single piece was left behind!"

"They said you expended massive amounts of labor to dig deep graves in the dry, warm soil of this plateau! That you personally carved their names onto wooden markers so they would never be forgotten!" The moment those words echoed across the barricades, the hardened veterans of Greywater Village—who had been judging these refugees with cold scrutiny just seconds prior—instantly felt their eyes burn red.

The hands of countless frontline elites gripped the shafts of their halberds so tightly they began to violently shake. It was true. On the brutal continent of Aeresia, where human life was cheaper than rotting grass, what were commoners? They were nothing more than meaningless numbers in a noble lord's ledger. They were nothing more than minced meat beneath an orc's battleaxe. Who on earth gave a single damn if a commoner's corpse was given a proper burial?

"We have lived our entire lives without a single shred of dignity. Trampled by nobles. Slaughtered by orcs." Darion violently slammed his forehead against the base of the wooden barricade. Thud! Thud! Blood began to blossom outward in the muddy water.

"But when we die... we just want to die as human beings!"

"The fifty-three of us kneeling here beg only one single thing from you, my Lord. If the day comes when we die in battle for you... we beg you, please do not leave us to rot in that freezing, toxic water..."

"We beg you to drag our bones out of the mud! Bury us in even the smallest, narrowest patch of dry earth. Find a scrap of wood, carve our utterly insignificant names into it, and plant it before our graves."

"Just the promise of a proper burial... that is more than enough! For that alone, these cheap, worthless lives of ours are entirely yours to spend!"