Chương 154: 154：Vengeance and Intelligence

Darion took a massive bite of the tough, sinewy dried meat. The coarse salt melted into the savory juices, exploding across his tastebuds. As he wolfed down the food like a starving beast, scalding tears rolled down his dirt-stained cheeks, plopping heavily into his bowl of tuber mash. Before coming to Greywater Village, the absolute highest luxury this squad of refugees had ever dared to hope for was a named wooden marker after they were inevitably bitten to death by toxic bugs.

Never in their wildest dreams could they have imagined that joining this army meant sleeping in bone-dry, warm cabins—and eating their fill of actual meat at every single meal until their bellies were bursting! But after their bellies were full, what awaited them was Quartermaster Kyle's ruthlessly strict training for the [Macedonian Phalanx].

"First rank! Raise shields! Plant your footing into the dirt! Root yourselves like damn trees!" Out on the broad, sloping training grounds, Kyle paced back and forth through the hundred-man formation, a disciplinary riding crop in his hand. Darion gripped his three-meter-long [Black Iron Spear] with both hands, the heavy [Black Iron Half-Plate] resting securely against his chest. The heavy breathing of a hundred brothers-in-arms blended into a single, unified rhythm.

Large iron shields locked together flawlessly, forming a seamless, impenetrable wall. In the past, whenever these refugees encountered orcs, they relied purely on suicidal, disorganized mob tactics. They would swarm forward with no formation, only for an orc to cleave them—and their flimsy weapons—clean in half with a single swing of a battleaxe. But here? Every single trace of disorganized, mercenary-like habits was mercilessly beaten out of them.

"THRUST!" At Kyle's thunderous roar, one hundred and four razor-sharp black iron spears violently erupted through the narrow gaps in the shield wall! The unified, vicious thrust was so perfectly synchronized it tore through the air with a literal shriek! Feeling the suffocatingly tight, impenetrable forest of iron spears forged by his brothers, an unprecedented surge of confidence swelled in Darion's chest. If we had known this tactic just half a month ago...

those dozens of brothers wouldn't have been mashed into paste by orcish maces. But what truly made Darion and his men prostrate themselves in absolute awe was the supreme inner circle leading this village. Just yesterday evening, he had seen it with his own two eyes. A human man draped in silk robes—the legendary Chief Mage, Victor—had simply pointed a single finger, unleashing a beam of magma radiating a terrifying, incinerating heat. He had also seen a creature named Luger. A green-skinned Hobgoblin.

The diminutive being stood high up on a wooden scaffold, wildly waving blueprints and screaming curses at a group of burly, muscular human blacksmiths. Yet, instead of getting angry, those usually haughty blacksmiths bowed and nodded with the utmost respect! Human swordsmen, a mysterious mage, and even a master-engineer Hobgoblin... all of them were completely, utterly devoted to Lord Soren. This unfathomable level of tolerance and charisma made Darion and his fifty-two hardened survivors feel incredibly blessed.

Their decision to join Greywater Village had birthed a fanatical, die-hard loyalty within their souls. Midday. Inside the Lord's wooden cabin. Spread across the broad oak table was a massive map of the Misty Swamp, painstakingly stitched together from animal hides. Soren pinched a piece of charred charcoal between his fingers, his gaze locked onto Darion standing across from him.

"Take your time, Darion. Do not miss a single detail." Soren pushed a cup of hot tea toward the gaunt man.

"Your squad crossed over a hundred kilometers of the swamp's deepest interior to reach our lines. Every single hidden path capable of supporting a march, every single dangerous orc encampment you can pinpoint... to me, that intelligence is worth more than a hundred sets of black iron armor." Feeling the heavy weight of his Lord's trust, Darion was deeply moved. He cupped the hot tea with both hands, took a sip, and immediately began violently excavating his own terrifying, traumatic memories of their escape.

He pointed heavily at the southern edge of the map.

"My Lord, this is the Acid Pool. If you follow this pool north for about seven kilometers, you'll hit a row of massive, lightning-scorched Cannibal Willows. Just to the right of those willows is a shallow mud-trail that only surfaces during the winter..." Soren's charcoal pencil scratched rapidly across the hide. He translated Darion's verbal descriptions of the terrain, water sources, and the blind spots in the orc patrol routes directly into contour lines and tactical symbols.

With every piece of intel, the previously pitch-black southern expanse of Soren's tactical map was slowly being illuminated. The debriefing lasted for over an hour.

"Alright. Aside from these dangerous patrol routes..." Soren stopped writing and looked directly into Darion's eyes, cutting straight to the core.

"Across the hundred kilometers you traversed, did you spot any signs of extraction? Large-scale logging camps, for example? Or unique stone formations? Ore veins?" Hearing the words ore veins, Darion furrowed his brow, biting his lip hard. Desperate to repay Soren's grace, he wracked his brain to its absolute limits. Suddenly— If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"I remember! My Lord!" Darion violently slapped his thigh.

"About ten days ago, to avoid a frenzied Two-Headed Swamp Crocodile, we were forced to take a massive detour. We slipped into a sector known as the Blackrock Stone Forest. Deep within that stone forest, beneath a sheer cliff, we were laying completely flat in the mud, too terrified to even breathe..." Recalling the horrific sight of his fellow humans, a lingering terror flashed in Darion's eyes.

"I saw over a hundred green-skinned Black Iron Orcs! They were cracking heavy bone whips over the backs of at least several hundred human slaves! The slaves were chained together, acting as beasts of burden!"

"They were pushing heavy wheelbarrows, hauling rocks out of a massive cave system!" Panting heavily, Darion used his hands to gesture the size.

"I saw it clearly, my Lord. The stones were jagged and rough, but whenever the torchlight hit them, they gave off a deep, bluish-black metallic gleam! Just a few dozen of those rocks were heavy enough to make the wooden wheelbarrows groan and splinter!" A bluish-black gleam? Incredibly heavy raw ore? Heavily guarded by an elite orc garrison? Soren's spirit jolted. There is absolutely no mistake! That is high-purity Black Iron Ore! Soren's heart began to hammer in his chest.

He had the Hobgoblin Master Engineer, Luger. His absolute greatest developmental bottleneck right now was not technology—it was a severe shortage of raw materials! The weapons and armor currently equipping Greywater Village's soldiers were all reliant entirely on capturing enemy gear and tossing it into the blast furnaces for reforging. But if he wanted to forge an invincible, large-scale heavy infantry phalanx, he desperately needed a stable, continuous pipeline of raw ore!

That mine in the Blackrock Stone Forest was the exact, critical puzzle piece Greywater Village was missing!

"Summon the core combat commanders! Order the frontline elites to assemble immediately!" Soren forcefully pushed his wooden chair back, reaching out to grab the [Windwhisper Bow] resting against it without a single second of hesitation. Barely half an hour later. The atmosphere inside Greywater Village underwent a drastic, violent shift. A suffocating aura of slaughter rocketed into the sky.

Led by the Reconnaissance Captains Gary and Meyer, alongside core commanders like the Throwing Knife Assassin Lyra and the Unarmed Monk Renn, a force of exactly sixty-three [Frontline Heavy Elites] stood in absolute, deathly silence upon the training grounds. The freezing wind swept past them, yet there was not a single clink or rattle of armor to be heard. These sixty-three heavy elites were terrifyingly massive. Underneath their plating, they wore the resilient, shock-absorbing [Cotton Armor].

Over that, they were fully encased in terrifying, full-body [Black Iron Heavy Armor] that radiated a chilling aura of death. Gripping armor-piercing heavy halberds over two and a half meters long, they exuded a blood-curdling, oppressive presence. Standing at the rear of the formation to act as their guide, Darion looked up at these heavy-armored juggernauts armed to the teeth. The absolute reverence he held for Lord Soren shattered its previous ceiling all over again.

"Move out. Target: Blackrock Stone Forest." At Soren's command, this fiercely elite strike force melted silently into the thick, swirling miasma. Throughout the long, grueling march, the fog overhead grew increasingly dense and stagnant, the foul stench of the miasma threatening to choke the breath from their lungs. As the squad passed through the ruined remnants of a human village—slaughtered and abandoned by orcs years ago—Soren scanned the fire-blackened totem poles and piles of bleached white bones.

He stopped, looking back at his heavily armed soldiers.

"Do you know why the Orcish Horde establishes massive black iron mines right on the very borders of our human territories?" Soren's deep voice pierced the fog. Gary and the others, their faces twisting with profound hatred, listened in absolute silence. Soren pointed at the lifeless, bone-littered ruins around them.

"A boundless army of a hundred thousand orcs requires an endless, bottomless supply of armaments to feed its war machine."

"The wastelands north of the Misty Swamp are completely devoid of premium ore veins. So those greedy Warchiefs violently tore open the Misty Swamp defensive lines. They forcefully strip-mine the precious resources from the very lands where humanity has lived and breathed for generations!"

"They enslave our people, working them into the dirt as miners until every last drop of blood is squeezed from their bodies, before tossing their corpses into the wilderness like trash."

"And then? They take the ore dug from our land, and they forge it into the heavy battleaxes used to sever the necks of our wives and children!"

"That is their ruthless, parasitic cycle of war!" Soren took a deep breath, his tone ringing with absolute, unbreakable resolve.

"Today, we are going to violently snap a link in that chain. That black iron mine... it belonged to us in the first place!" This razor-sharp, blood-pumping declaration functioned like pouring boiling oil directly onto the fires of vengeance burning within his men's hearts! The fighting spirit of the sixty-three heavy elites rocketed to the heavens. Even through the thick slits of their iron visors, one could physically feel the terrifying, boiling killing intent radiating from their eyes.