Chương 160: 160：The Half-Elf Ambush

An absolutely flawless upper-echelon officer's accent! An arrogant, tyrannical aura! And the primal, crushing pressure of a Titan looking down from the cargo cart! This layered, seamless disguise completely shattered the collaborator captain's psyche.

"Ugh!" The captain's arrogant swagger vanished in an instant, as if all the blood had been violently drained from his face. Deathly pale, his knees completely gave out. Thud! He dropped straight down, his knees sinking deep into the freezing mud. Cold sweat poured down his back! Normally, his men only bullied the weak and cowered before the strong. But this... this accent, this overwhelming presence. This was absolutely the trusted aide of some explosive-tempered warlord from Bloodfang Fortress!

And the fully encased, heavy-armored guards marching silently behind the wagons only cemented this completely untouchable identity.

"M-My Lord, mercy! Grandfather, appease your anger! My Lord, appease your anger!" The captain frantically slammed his forehead into the mud like a pile driver. Offending a high-ranking boss like this? The guy could chop his head off just for being in a bad mood, and not a single soul in the Horde would dare utter a word of protest! He didn't even dare to look up at Soren's terrifying visage.

Scrambling on his hands and knees, he roared at his stunned subordinates behind him:"What are you idiots standing around for?! Are you fucking blind?! Move the barricades! Now!"

"Hurry, hurry! Get those torches out of the way, don't spook the Lord's Kodos! Get out of the damn way!" The dozens of spineless slave-soldiers were frightened out of their wits. Scrambling frantically, they dragged the jagged wooden barricades aside, opening a massive gap in the road. Exhibiting the ultimate display of cowardice, they actually retreated straight into the filthy drainage ditches on both sides of the road, bowing their heads deeply to make way.

"Hmph." A cold, deeply contemptuous snort rumbled from Soren's chest.

"Piss off." CRACK! Soren snapped the heavy leather whip viciously through the air. The colossal Kodos stepped forward. Accompanied by the groaning, grinding sound of heavy wooden wheels bearing tens of thousands of pounds of raw Black Iron Ore, the convoy swaggered openly right through the wide-open gates of the human collaborator checkpoint. The rope-bound human laborers holding their breath felt their hearts hammering violently in their chests.

Watching these traitors—who normally swaggered around torturing their own countrymen—now kneeling so pathetically and submissively in the mud... it felt like watching a literal myth unfold! It wasn't until the convoy was nearly a hundred meters away, the heavy rain completely blurring the silhouettes of the final halberd-wielding elites, that the mud-caked collaborator captain finally dared to pull his trembling, sweat-slicked hands from the muck. His soldiers hurriedly dragged him to his feet.

"B-Boss... that guy, that guy was radiating so much killing intent. He didn't even look at us like we were living things. I nearly pissed myself," a soldier who had pushed the barricade stammered, his teeth audibly chattering.

"Ptui!" Staring at the deep, muddy wheel ruts in the distance, the captain viciously spat a mouthful of bloody saliva to the side. His eyes burned with unresolvable bitterness and sheer helplessness.

"Motherfucking gods, why do we have to swallow this kind of humiliating bullshit?!" He violently ripped off the cracked, oversized orc helmet and slammed it into the mud, letting out a tragically pathetic curse:"The human regular armies across the border call us scum and running dogs! The second they step into this swamp, they try to flay us alive!"

"And over here?! Even though we kneel in the dirt for those green-skins, the orcs still treat us like low-tier, disposable trash they can butcher on a whim!" The captain dropped his ass right back into the puddles, miserably slapping his thigh.

"Suffocating on both sides, and we can't afford to offend either! When the hell is this cursed life going to end?!" The weather in the Misty Swamp never cleared. A fine, freezing rain blew horizontally across the sky, while greyish-white frost drifted silently down from the heavy clouds. The rain hissed as it struck the ancient, acidic sludge, churning up white foam and filling the air with a suffocating, putrid stench. Looming ahead lay a jagged, treacherous topographical nightmare: Broken Tooth Canyon.

Flanking both sides were sheer, black-rock cliffs rising at punishing seventy-degree angles. The walls were choked with thick, barbed blood-vines. Down below, a muddy, gravel-strewn path barely thirty meters wide wound its way through the chokepoint.

"Stay alert! Step exactly in the ruts of the cart ahead of you! Don't let the Kodos drift into the side-bogs!" Down in the canyon, Soren—still flawlessly disguised as a half-orc slavemaster—sat high atop the cargo of the lead Kodo wagon. He deliberately kept his Titan bloodline active, the suffocating, bloodthirsty aura radiating from him enough to shatter a man's courage. The freezing rain washed over his war-painted cheeks, dripping steadily onto his spiked leather armor.

Behind him, the four massive Kodo flatbeds, groaning under the weight of tens of thousands of pounds of raw Black Iron Ore, rumbled forward. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Gary, Meyer, and the others—draped in foul-smelling cloaks over their black iron armor—gripped their halberds tightly.

Using thick hemp ropes, they corralled and drove the one hundred and fifty-six newly integrated human laborers securely within the center of the convoy. Their disguise was absolutely seamless. These laborers, having just been rescued from the darkest pits of a mine, were naturally emaciated and completely panic-stricken. Stumbling through the freezing rain, they played the role of desperate, broken slaves to absolute perfection.

Combined with Soren occasionally cracking his leather whip through the air, it formed a textbook, flawless picture of an orc logistical convoy.... The exact moment they set foot into the maw of Broken Tooth Canyon. High up on the cliffs, perfectly camouflaged among the dark rocks and dead brush, microscopic shifts in movement occurred. Two hundred meters away, near the midpoint of the canyon, perched atop the sheer cliffs.

Lying flat within the dense clusters of toxic briars were over a hundred silhouettes, completely holding their breath. If a veteran scout were standing here, their jaw would hit the floor in sheer disbelief. This group of people was actually able to completely mask their breathing and lower their core body temperatures while hiding inside highly toxic briar patches! They were one of the continent of Aeresia's most unique, yet deeply tragic demographics: Half-Elves. Half-Elves were considered a deformed mistake.

To the human nobility, they were nothing more than lowly "knife-eared mongrels," living symbols of humanity's lustful depravity. And in the lofty heights of the Elven Court, those arrogant, self-proclaimed "flawless" pure-bloods treated them even worse. They viewed these descendants—who possessed less than half an elf's lifespan and had impure, red human blood flowing through their veins—as absolute stains that defiled the sacred lineage of the World Tree.

This race of geniuses simultaneously inherited humanity's extreme survival adaptability, alongside the flawless kinetic vision and natural elemental affinity of the elves. Yet, in this vast, sprawling world, there was not a single place for them to call home. To avoid being burned at the stake as heretics by humans, and to escape the brutal bloodline purges of the Elven Rangers, they were forcefully driven into the ultimate death zone: the Misty Swamp.

Here, they nested alongside venomous vipers, fought Two-Headed Swamp Crocodiles for scraps of meat, and huddled together just to survive.

"Leader, do you hear that? The footsteps of Kodos. An orc convoy has entered the canyon." A half-elf girl, barely sixteen or seventeen years old with lips turned purple from the cold, quietly turned her head beneath the dead grass. Her pointed ears twitched slightly in the rain as she reported in a hushed whisper to the figure beside her.

"I hear it, El. Steady your breathing. Do not let your heartbeat expose our position." The woman's voice was cold and impossibly steady. The texture of someone who had weathered countless tragedies resonated clearly through the wind and rain. This was the absolute pillar of this half-elf band. The female leader whose mere name struck fear into the hearts of swamp scavengers: Ilya. Ilya was draped in a leather coat tanned from the hide of a Demon Lizard.

She possessed breathtaking, bright silver hair that flowed down her back. Drenched by the rain, a few strands clung tightly to the sides of her high, elegant nose. Her features held the soul-stirring, delicate perfection of a pure-blooded elf, yet when her gaze shifted, her eyes radiated a fierce, untamed wildness forged by crawling through the human mud. But what truly shattered this flawless beauty was a glaring, dark-red scar branded directly onto her pale left cheek.

It was a crescent-moon and chain symbol, violently seared into her flesh by a red-hot iron brand. It was a mark of absolute humiliation, signifying one thing: [Slave]. Ilya's entire life was a bloody, tragic epic of being repeatedly abandoned by both of her parent races. She closed her vibrant green eyes—eyes that possessed the elves' terrifying far-sight—as the nightmarish past she desperately wanted to forget bubbled up from the depths of her mind.

Thirty years ago, a young Ilya possessed an incredibly rare affinity for Nature Magic. Through her pure-blooded elven mother's desperate, life-risking guarantees, she had briefly been permitted to step foot into the majestic, yet utterly heartless Elven Court. She had been the absolute top prodigy of the Elven Magical Academy. Her archery was so flawless she could pierce a leaf from a hundred paces blindfolded, and Nature Magic flowed from her fingertips as easily as breathing.

That was, until her mother suffered a fatal wound in a brutal battle against demonic beasts. The exact day her mother drew her final breath, the Court offered absolutely no mourning. Instead, what arrived was a chilling, ruthless banishment decree from the Grand Elder.

"Take your nauseating human bloodline, and get the hell out of the Holy City." Forced into exile within the human territories of the Silvermoon Kingdom, Ilya, desperate just to survive, concealed her pointed ears and joined the absolute lowest-tier human Border Ranger battalions.