Chương 161: 161：The Ranger's Tragedy

There, she was exposed to something entirely different from the flashy, artistically graceful swordsmanship of the Elven Court. What she learned was the heavy infantry phalanx tactics and the grand military command doctrines forged by humanity through mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Ten years ago. The [Defense of Ironmoon Fortress]. That was the harrowing, meat-grinder of a battle that cemented the tragedy of her life.

A hundred-thousand-strong vanguard of the Orcish Horde had swarmed Ironmoon Fortress like a plague. Stationed in the high tower, Ilya had displayed the absolute brilliance of a peerless general. She flawlessly fused humanity's shield-wall defensive doctrines with the elves' lethal ranged tactics. She even weaponized her own Nature Magic—pre-catalyzing the subterranean root systems in front of the fortress to trigger massive, collapsing vine-traps right at the absolute climax of the orcs' heavy infantry charge!

Through sheer tactical genius, she single-handedly commanded the archery batteries and completely halted the frenzied, suicidal orc assaults for fifteen straight days. The corpses stacked beneath the walls grew so high that the orc reinforcements in the rear were literally using the bodies of their dead to scale the ramparts!

By all rights, as long as the thirty thousand heavy infantry reinforcements and the emergency grain promised by the Silvermoon Kingdom's rear echelon arrived, this would have been a glorious, world-shaking victory etched into the annals of history. But the reinforcements never came. Not only did the troops fail to arrive, but the fortress's remaining emergency grain reserves—their absolute last lifeline—vanished.

On a stormy night, the Viscount tasked with logistical defense, alongside his trusted cronies, secretly loaded every last sack of grain onto wagons and smuggled them out. To line his own pockets, he had sold the army's lifeblood on the black market. Three days later. Starving, exhausted, and having fired their very last arrows, the defending soldiers were swallowed by despair as the fortress was finally overrun.

Ilya fought like a demon to break out, leading a few hundred blood-soaked, crippled survivors on a desperate retreat back to Silvermoon City. But the laughable, rotting high command of the Silvermoon Kingdom offered no hero's welcome. To completely cover up the monstrous scandal of nobles selling military grain and causing the collapse of the frontline... those fat, bloated aristocrats united in the Royal Court to pin the blame squarely onto Ilya and the frontline grunts who had bled for them!

The charges: Cowardice in the face of the enemy. Severe command failure. Forfeiting a major fortress. The veteran infantry captains who had bled beside her on the walls were dragged to the public square and sadistically hanged.

"Why didn't you fight back... Leader? You could have fought your way out..." The pointed fingertips of the half-elf girl lying beside her trembled slightly. It was a horrific past she had heard many times before, yet it remained a bitter, unswallowable pill. Ilya slowly opened her eyes, her gaze completely desolate, reflecting a barren wasteland of the soul. Fight back? Back then, she genuinely believed her failure was a lack of loyalty to the Silvermoon Kingdom.

Watching countless human brothers die on the walls, she had blamed herself. If my magic had just been stronger, would we have held? Driven by a survivor's guilt that ordinary people could not even begin to fathom, and clinging to the absolute last, naive shred of loyalty she held for the human crown... she had accepted the trial. She didn't resist. She merely let them bind her to a thick stone pillar.

A red-hot branding iron—accompanied by the mocking, sadistic laughter of bloated nobles—was pressed viciously into her pride: her stunningly beautiful face. Sizzle... The sickening, unforgettable stench of burning flesh. However, the true breaking point came the night after the trial. Ilya was simply too beautiful. Even with a slave brand permanently scarring her face, that unique blend of wild half-elven allure and untouchable, cold majesty drove several of the high nobles who framed her mad with lust.

Deep in the damp, freezing dungeon, reeking of cheap alcohol, three Marquis heirs cornered her. Using a signed pardon as leverage, they grinned sadistically and unbuckled their belts, fully intending to use a female hero—a woman who had personally decapitated orc centurions—as a shared plaything. That was the final, devastating blow that utterly shattered her. The reward for her absolute loyalty... was defilement! Her heart turned completely to ash.

As the sound of her heavy iron chains hitting the floor echoed through the cell, Ilya completely erupted. She didn't use a single drop of magic. She simply used her bare hands to violently crush the throat of the first noble. She grabbed a splintered stool leg and drove it straight through the eye socket of the second, piercing his brain. The third noble, screaming as he tried to flee, had his spine shattered by a ruthless kick.

As he wailed in absolute agony on the floor, she stomped on his skull, crushing it inch by inch until he stopped moving. She slaughtered her way out of the dungeon. She slaughtered the pursuers sent after her. And without ever looking back, she fled straight south, vanishing into the lawless, death-filled expanse of the Misty Swamp. It wasn't until she arrived here that she found others like her. Fellow half-elves, equally bullied, abused, and forced to catch rats in the rotting mud just to survive.

Relying on her peerless military genius, over countless stormy, freezing nights, she took this group of half-elves who only knew how to huddle together and cry, and forged them into a terrifying, lethal armed force that gave every single faction in the swamp a massive headache. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. And today, Ilya was about to execute a critical supply raid she had been planning for weeks. They lacked resources too desperately.

Especially metal!

"Haaah..." Ilya's long, heavy sigh scattered in the freezing, damp wind of the canyon. She forcefully reeled in her traumatic memories. Her gaze instantly sharpened, turning absolutely focused and ruthless, radiating a chilling killing intent that cut through the storm.

"Distance: roughly one hundred and eighty paces." Ilya tilted her head slightly, peering over the jagged rocks. Hum! The unique [Eagle Eye] Talent inherent to the elven bloodline quietly activated. Her pupils flared with a faint, eerie emerald light. Her vision instantly pierced through the blinding rain and the chaotic, toxic miasma filling the valley below. She locked directly onto the convoy currently rumbling into the heart of the canyon.

The very first thing that crashed into her vision was the towering, massively built half-orc leader sitting high atop the Kodo's cargo! What an overwhelmingly intense bloodline pressure... Ilya's brow furrowed tightly. Through her enhanced vision, she could see the bulging, knotted muscles on Soren's exposed forearms. That suffocating aura of pure, tyrannical bloodlust was absolutely not something a low-tier orc grunt could possess. This is at least a high-ranking half-orc grand slaver empowered by Totem Magic.

Immediately after, her gaze swept horizontally, landing firmly on the four massive Kodo flatbeds, which were groaning under a terrifying amount of weight. Ilya's heart violently jolted. That isn't ordinary grain or provisions! That is a massive shipment of ultra-high-purity raw Black Iron Ore! This realization sent a rare thrill of excitement coursing through her veins. The majority of her half-elf warriors were currently forced to use weak wooden longbows and brittle bone arrows.

If they could hijack this black iron shipment, it would be enough to completely double her unit's combat lethality! Continuing her reconnaissance, Ilya's brilliant tactical mind began rapidly breaking down the enemy's troop distribution.

"One... two... thirty... sixty-three." She clearly counted every single armed guard escorting the convoy, all draped in filthy, foul-smelling beast-hide cloaks.

"Interesting." Ilya couldn't help but feel a deep, creeping sense of dread. Under her piercing [Eagle Eye], she noticed something terrifying. Even though these sixty-three guards wore ragged cloaks to obscure their heads, and even though they walked with their heads bowed... Their marching cadence was too perfect. As they stepped through the rotting, uneven mud, every single boot sank to the exact same depth. Furthermore, every single one of them was gripping a heavy, two-and-a-half-meter-long halberd!

That is textbook, veteran line-infantry footwork. Ilya was internally stunned. When did the Orcish Alliance ever train a legion with such terrifying, ironclad discipline? Without a single verbal command being shouted, those sixty-odd men are subconsciously maintaining a tight, interlocking circular defensive perimeter! A formation capable of instantly transitioning into a lethal counter-charge at a moment's notice! This is undeniably a top-tier, elite orc main-force unit!

Ironically, it was Soren's absolute, ruthless modern special forces discipline that was currently causing a massive, fatal identity misunderstanding in Ilya's mind! Who on earth would ever suspect that a unit possessing discipline rivaling the absolute finest Royal Infantry of the Holy Halycon Empire... was actually a squad of humans perfectly disguised as orc mercenaries? As for the one hundred and fifty-plus humans cordoned in the center of the convoy... Ilya merely gave them a passing glance.

Frail, emaciated human laborers. They don't even have a single weapon. In an ambush scenario, they can be immediately classified as zero-threat, burdensome meat shields. Conclusion drawn. This was a highly elite orc unit led by a high-ranking half-orc general, transporting a critical shipment of black iron war supplies. The only actual combat threats were those sixty-three heavy halberdiers! The advantage is ours.

"Everyone. Await my command." Ilya slowly raised her long wooden bow, its limbs tightly wrapped in green vines. As her right hand ascended... Rustle! Deep within the dense brush, along a sprawling, half-kilometer ambush line, the faint sound of shifting fabric echoed in the rain. Exactly one hundred and thirty specially trained half-elf warriors silently half-emerged from the toxic mud and thorny brambles.

Moving with terrifying, unified synchronization, they reached into their quivers and drew bone arrows thickly coated with lethal swamp neurotoxins. Clack. One hundred and thirty poisoned arrows were nocked onto taut bowstrings simultaneously. The limbs of the wooden bows groaned softly under the tension. Ilya reached over her shoulder, drawing one of her final three [Meteoric Iron Armor-Piercing Arrows]. It was a priceless, strategic-tier resource she had preserved from her glorious days as a Ranger General.

Her piercing gaze locked firmly onto the target one hundred and fifty meters below. She aimed dead-center at the heart of the arrogant half-orc commander sitting atop the Kodo beast—Soren! A wisp of emerald, wind-elemental mana began to rapidly spiral and compress around the meteoric iron arrowhead, emitting a deadly, high-pitched hum. Ilya's eyes narrowed into slits. All one hundred and thirty half-elf rangers completely stopped their breathing. With just a single, forceful downward swing of her hand...

A dense, inescapable rain of toxic arrows would instantly blanket the canyon, utterly annihilating this elite orc convoy and completely erasing its untouchable half-orc commander from the face of the earth.