Chương 18: 18：Fight or Cower

Kyle bit his lower lip so hard that his teeth sank into the flesh, drawing a thin line of blood. He stared at the young human officer standing before him as if looking at an absolute madman. Soren didn't waste his breath. His cold gaze swept over Kyle and Torn's faces.

"When the red light flashes in the sky, that's your signal."

"Break the door down and grab whatever you can from the ground—poles, rocks, anything."

"Whether you charge out and hack at the enemy, or stay cowering in the rotting hay to wait for death—that's your choice." With that, Soren turned around. He hooked his fingers into a crack in the rammed-earth wall and pushed off with his toes. Clinging to the surface like a gecko, he slipped seamlessly out through the gap in the roof tiles he had entered from. A deathly silence reclaimed the mud storehouse. Torn covered his face with mud-caked hands, his shoulders trembling.

"He only brought thirteen men to take on fifty armored greenskins? And he expects us to follow him to our deaths?" Kyle didn't answer. He looked at the puddle where the sharp stone had fallen moments before. Sinking his five fingers deep into the muck, he gripped the stone and pulled it back into his palm. The rawhide collar tightly bound around his neck made it impossible to take a deep breath.

"Anyone who doesn't want to die, go pull out the hardwood sticks hidden under the hay, " Kyle squeezed the words through gritted teeth. Outside the mud storehouse. Soren retraced his steps, keeping his back pressed flat against the log wall. He stopped by a muddy puddle, scooped up a handful of cold water, and washed the camouflage dirt from his face. Straightening up, he brushed the loose grass off his boots. Then, stepping out of cover, he strode boldly toward the stronghold's main gate with an arrogant swagger.

Up in the watchtower, two yawning orc guards suddenly snapped their heads around. Two heavy wooden javelins immediately swung downward, their lethal tips locking onto Soren below. Just as the orcs cocked their arms to throw, Soren spoke. Pure Blackstone Clan dialect rolled from his throat. It was a harsh, guttural sound that required deep chest resonance and heavy trilling, even carrying the distinct rolled-tongue accent typical of the Northern Alpine tribes.

"Put down those twigs, you stupid pigs!" Halting thirty paces from the wooden gate, Soren pointed a finger at the watchtower and bellowed:"I am the messenger of Viscount Orson Blake! I bring intelligence from the royal capital for your Centurion!" The two guards froze mid-motion. They exchanged a confused glance, confirming that they had indeed just heard their mother tongue. The name 'Viscount Blake' was no stranger to the upper echelons of the Blackstone Clan.

He was the human traitor who provided them with maps and facilitated their human trafficking operations. One of the guards lowered his javelin, slid down the wooden ladder, and unlatched the crossbar of the side door. As the hinges creaked, the orc guard eyed Soren's empty hands before glancing at the longsword belted at his waist.

"Alone?" the guard grunted, exhaling a foul-smelling puff of white vapor.

"The guide fell into quicksand and died." Soren's tone dripped with supreme impatience as he boldly stepped over the threshold.

"Delay the transaction between the Viscount and the Warchief, and I'll have you thrown into a boiling pot for your fat. Lead the way." The commanding presence of his native tongue, combined with a painfully familiar style of threats, completely shattered the guard's suspicion. The guard snorted, turned around, and led Soren toward the largest stilted wooden cabin in the center of the logging camp.

Along the way, four orcs sharpening their axes glanced up, but upon seeing one of their own leading the human, they quickly returned to their work. Three strings of air-dried human skulls hung from the doorframe of the stilted cabin. The guard pushed the door open, gesturing for Soren to enter, before retreating to his post. The interior of the cabin was choked with the acrid smoke of burning pine resin. Charcoal burned brightly in a central bronze brazier, where half an animal leg was roasting on a spit.

Fat dripped onto the glowing coals with a sharp hiss. An extraordinarily massive Orc Centurion leaned back in a large chair draped with a direwolf pelt. He wore no helmet, revealing a face crisscrossed with brutal knife scars. Gripping a massive bone in his hand, his teeth tore at the tough meat attached to it. Hearing the footsteps, the Centurion lifted his single, good eye, his gaze sweeping over Soren.

"What is Blake's dog doing running into a mud pit like this?" The Centurion spat out a shard of bone and arrogantly wiped a smear of blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Speak. What message has that cowardly Blake sent us this time?" Soren took two steps forward. The tip of his boot casually kicked aside a piece of broken firewood. Only five paces separated him from the Orc Centurion. Soren's tone was entirely flat, as if he were discussing the weather:"The message is... someone is going to slaughter all of you here today."

"And mount every single one of your heads on that front gate." The Centurion's chewing abruptly stopped. He tossed the bone aside, his lips curling up to bare two rows of jagged fangs in a sneer.

"Who? Those tin-can knights from your Kingdom who don't even have the balls to step into the swamps?"

"Me." The instant that word left his mouth... [Military Swordsmanship - Grandmaster Level] erupted. Soren's body blurred into an afterimage. The explosive power granted by his Titan's Blood erased the five-pace gap in the blink of an eye. The mockery hadn't even faded from the Centurion's face. All his single eye registered was a flash of silver leaping from Soren's waist. He instinctively reached his right hand back to grab the double-bitted battleaxe resting against his chair. Too slow.

The secondary edge of the fine steel longsword ground against its scabbard, letting out a sharp, metallic ring. The blade slashed diagonally upward. It bypassed the black-iron scale mail on the Centurion's chest and slid with terrifying precision into a finger-wide gap in the leather armor just below his right collarbone. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Schlick.

Tough beast-hide, subcutaneous fat, and the gaps between the ribs—under the piercing force of Grandmaster swordsmanship, they were as flimsy as paper. Four inches of cold steel punched cleanly through the Centurion's right lung. Soren twisted his wrist. The blade ground half a circle deep inside the lung, wedging itself tightly between two ribs. The furious roar building in the Centurion's throat was violently snuffed out. His chest cavity rapidly collapsed.

A massive surge of air, mixed with blood, bubbled up from the punctured lung into his windpipe. He opened his mouth wide, but could only produce a ghastly, gurgling rattle, like a man drowning on dry land. In a final, desperate act, the Centurion swung his left hand toward Soren's head. Soren ripped his sword free, executing a sliding sidestep that placed him perfectly behind and to the side of the chair.

He wrapped his left arm around the Orc's thick neck, pinning half of the massive body in a vice grip against the wolf-skin chair. The blood-dripping longsword glided up, resting flush against the bulging, blue jugular vein on the Centurion's neck. Half an inch deeper, and his blood supply would be severed completely. Blood spewed from the Centurion's right chest, staining the edge of the brazier crimson.

His gigantic frame convulsed in the chair, the horrifying hiss of his punctured lung overpowering the crackle of the charcoal. Soren didn't sever the head just yet. He still needed intel from the Centurion. Soren's chest expanded. He tightened his vocal cords, channeling the [Orcish Mastery] skill to perfectly mimic the Centurion's raspy voice:"Listen up, you stupid pigs out there!" An impossibly gruff and hoarse roar boomed from the cabin, cutting right through the howling wind around the logging camp.

"That dog Blake just sent us three wagons of frozen beef and five barrels of strong liquor!"

"They're rolling them out to the mud patch by the main gate right now!" Soren pressed the Centurion's head fiercely against the backrest and continued bellowing:"Strip off that damn armor! Drop your axes!"

"Gather empty-handed by the wooden posts! First come, first served—what you can grab is yours to keep!" Outside the cabin. Fifty heavily armored orcs—who had been patrolling, sharpening weapons, and stacking stones—froze in unison. They heard their commander's familiar, grating voice. But more importantly, they heard frozen beef and strong liquor. The extreme hunger for food etched deep into their orcish bones instantly shattered whatever meager military discipline they had.

Furthermore, the order had come straight from their highest-ranking officer.

"Meat!!!" A Decurion was the first to toss aside his heavy battleaxe. He frantically yanked at the straps on his shoulders. The buckles snapped open, and with a heavy splash, forty pounds of black iron chainmail crashed into the muddy water. It was like knocking over a line of dominoes. Dozens of orcs scrambled madly to shed their heavy plate cuirasses, cast off their spiked bracers, and kick away their combat boots. They abandoned their axes, spears, and javelins where they stood.

Stripped down to their undergarments and completely barefoot, they shoved and trampled each other in gleeful chaos, surging toward the clearing in the center of the camp.

"Stop shoving! The beef is mine!"

"Piss off, I'm taking a whole barrel of liquor!" In under three minutes, a massive mob of defenseless, unarmed greenskins had swarmed the wooden posts. Craning their necks toward the closed gates, hot drool steadily dripped from their maws. Inside the stilted cabin. Soren peered through the gaps in the boarded window, taking in the sea of green skin below. The smile that crept onto his lips was freezing cold. He released his chokehold, brought his right leg up, and delivered a vicious kick to the Centurion's flank.

The Centurion crashed into the corner of the room, chair and all. Coughing up thick globs of pink, frothy blood, he was completely incapacitated. Soren sheathed his sword. Reaching behind his back, he dug into his pack. The Elven Longbow, [Windwhisper], appeared in his grasp. He pulled a specialized signaling arrow—its shaft packed with red powder—from the bottom of his quiver and nocked it against the bowstring. Kicking the wooden door open, Soren stepped out to the edge of the landing.

He tilted his head back, raised his left arm toward the sky, and drew the bowstring to its absolute limit. He let go. Swoosh— The arrow tore through the heavy, ashen fog, soaring a hundred meters into the sky. BANG! A blinding blossom of red pyrotechnics exploded in the heavens. The piercing whistle of the burning fuse carried all the way to the reed marshes over six hundred meters away. Soren lowered [Windwhisper]. Slinging the bow back over his shoulder, he once again drew his fine steel longsword.

With his reconstructed Titan physique and Grandmaster swordsmanship, slaughtering fifty unarmored orcs wouldn't take him more than half an hour. He had once carved through eleven fully armed Blackstone elites single-handedly. If he were acting alone, this battle would already be over. But he needed the village militia Ein had brought to witness the sky raining with blood. He needed them to feel the resistance of a blade slicing through a living collarbone.

More importantly, he needed to test the thirty slaves back in the mud storehouse. If, even when handed an opportunity, they chose to cower and shiver in the hay like rats, then such trash wasn't worth wasting the Crimson Moon Knights' rations on. Soren's boots cleared the last two steps of the wooden stairs. Riding his momentum, he launched himself forward like a stone cannonball rocketing from a barrel, crashing straight toward the bewildered, bare-chested orcs staring up at the red sky in the center of the camp.

"First one." The closest orc had just lowered his head, only to see a pitch-black shadow bearing down on him. The fine steel blade swept out in a vicious horizontal arc. Squelch. Unimpeded by iron armor, the sword bit seamlessly into the orc's neck, severing the cervical spine and lopping off more than half his head. A massive geyser of foul, thick blood erupted from the terrifyingly smooth stump, painting the bare chests of the three orcs standing right beside him.