Chương 190: 190：Grandmaster's Strike: The Instant Kill

Standing on the periphery, Leona and Cedric felt a gale-force shockwave smash against their faces, the color instantly draining from their cheeks. This drastically reinforced physical density, coupled with such terrifying speed... even a High Knight Commander like Leona would be cleaved perfectly in half if she made a single misstep!

"Look out!" Elena couldn't stop the cry from escaping her lips. CLANG! A deafening screech of colliding metal rang out, accompanied by a blinding shower of sparks. The onlookers stared in absolute horror. Standing in mud half a meter deep, Soren hadn't yielded a single inch. The enchanted warblade, carrying the kinetic force of a falling mountain, had been flawlessly blocked by the thin, refined steel blade of Soren's longsword! Under the sheer, crushing pressure, the longsword bent into a dangerously extreme arc.

The earth beneath Soren's boots instantly cratered, swallowing his legs straight past the knees! Yet, Soren's expression remained as calm as still water. He had forcefully anchored the apocalyptic strike. This wasn't merely the monstrous physical strength granted by his [Blood of the Titan]. More critically, it was an absolute, crushing disparity in pure technique. The Warlord System had bestowed upon him a max-level talent: [Military Swordsmanship: Grandmaster].

This talent far transcended the realm of mere martial skill. Within Soren's vision, his Grandmaster-tier perception thoroughly deconstructed the Oracle's swordsmanship into a purely mathematical theory of kinetic force transmission and pivot points. In the microsecond he raised his sword to parry, he perfectly angled his blade to alter the vector of the strike.

He acted as a conduit, flawlessly guiding the Oracle's multi-ton kinetic impact down the length of his sword, through his body, and dispersing it entirely into the deep mire beneath his feet.

"Is that the best the Beast God can do?" Soren let out a breathy, mocking chuckle.

"Impossible! I will carve you into pieces!" The berserk Oracle erupted into a guttural, beastly roar. He violently ripped his warblade back, his massive frame spinning into a blinding vortex of rapid, consecutive slashes. Discarding any semblance of defense, he relied entirely on raw, unadulterated brute force. Every single strike was a blur of lethal intent aimed squarely at Soren's vitals.

The gale-force wind generated by the blade violently tore the mud into the air, creating a localized hurricane of flying sludge. One strike. Two strikes. Three strikes... Faced with the suffocating, rapid-fire offensive, Soren maintained perfect equilibrium. He didn't launch a single counterattack. His face remained as placid as a frozen lake. Fully activating his [Eagle Eye Perception], he forcefully decelerated the blurring afterimages generated by the Oracle's frenzy. He was observing. He was recording.

Cowering on the periphery, the Governor-General's young nephew watched the Oracle wildly suppress the human commander. Thinking he had just spotted a sliver of salvation, his terror mutated into manic hope. He actually tore his throat screaming, "Kill him! Cleave him into pieces!" Until the fifth catastrophic overhead cleave came crashing down! Found it, Soren thought coldly. By the fifth exchange of blows, he had completely deciphered the enemy's fatal flaw.

No matter how drastically the advanced Shamanic rite forcibly hyper-inflated the Oracle's upper-body muscular strength and slashing speed, the instantaneous, massive surge in mass severely overloaded his lower body! His footwork was fundamentally incapable of keeping pace with the monstrous velocity of his upper-body strikes!

"This tedious performance is over." As the Oracle brought down his sixth apocalyptic cleave! This time, Soren did not raise his blade to anchor the crushing kinetic force. In the absolute microsecond before impact, he executed an exquisitely flawless slip-step. The crimson warblade shaved past the very tip of Soren's nose, crashing heavily into the bedrock beside him, violently shattering the stone into a shower of shrapnel. Riding the momentum of his pivot, Soren rotated his torso.

His wrist flicked with blinding speed. He unleashed an absolutely unavoidable, textbook military forward thrust! Squelch! The refined steel longsword lashed out like a striking viper. Finding absolutely no resistance, the razor-sharp tip flawlessly penetrated the Oracle's fully exposed throat! The blade punched dead-center through his larynx, sliding perfectly between the cervical vertebrae at the back of his neck, and erupting out the other side in a dazzling, gruesome geyser of blood!

The frantic motion of the battlefield violently halted. Dead silence fell over the ravine. The towering Orc Oracle, arms still locked in the follow-through of his missed cleave, felt his pupils rapidly dilate as his vision shattered. The monstrous strength surging through his veins evaporated in a fraction of a second. His overwhelming vitality gushed madly from the gaping hole in his throat. Deprived of all structural support, the colossal behemoth crashed heavily onto his knees. Thud.

He died before his face hit the mud. Standing over the corpse, Soren casually flicked the residual blood from his longsword. His face displayed not a shred of arrogant triumph; instead, analyzing those brief five exchanges had seeded a profound, underlying wariness in his heart. A mere low-tier berserker rite managed to forcibly mutate a frail caster's physique to the point where it required me five full exchanges to map his flaws... Soren's mind ran rapid tactical simulations.

The chaotic variables introduced by magic could easily nullify the orthodox tactical advantages of cold steel warfare. Even his heavily armored, wildly resilient Frontline Elite Battalion could suffer catastrophic, instant-wipes if they blindly charged into high-tier spells. When dealing with Orc Warlords and casters who wielded arcane or divine magic in the future, he absolutely could not allow an ounce of arrogance to take root.

His methods had to become even more insidious, and he had to stockpile highly specific, magical countermeasures! Clatter. The heavy warhammer slipped from the trembling fingers of the Governor-General's aristocratic nephew, splashing into a puddle. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Even the absolute apex [Province Oracle]—who had burned every trump card and literally sacrificed his life force to trigger an ultimate mutation—had been casually, effortlessly executed by a human who hadn't even broken a sweat! Driven utterly mad by sensory overload and sheer terror, a warm stream of foul, yellowish liquid ran down the inner thighs of the once high-and-mighty noble youth.

Under the suffocating, bloodthirsty glares of the surrounding heavy halberdiers, his psychological defenses shattered into dust. He broke down into a blubbering, hysterical wail, dropping to his knees in the filth and clutching his head in utter submission. The few remaining veteran Orc officers uniformly lowered their haughty heads. Deep within their marrow, there was room only for an abyssal dread toward the man named Soren. Just outside the combat ring.

Whether it was the orthodox veteran Commander Cedric, or Leona and Elena—who were far from strangers to gruesome battlefields—the three of them uniformly drew in sharp, shuddering breaths of cold air. The Soren standing before them was not just a grandmaster tactician wielding a terrifying strategic mind; he possessed the raw, overwhelming individual combat prowess of an apex predator!

Staring at Soren's immaculate, blood-free silhouette as he stood silently in the freezing rain processing his combat data, an unshakable premonition took root in their hearts: As long as this man is given enough time to spread his wings... not just this Misty Swamp, but the entire human defensive line across the northern frontier will be fundamentally rewritten. In the days to come, every single major faction on this continent would be forced to navigate the geopolitical board according to Soren's mood! Clang!

Soren sheathed his sword. That crisp, metallic ring was the ultimate toll of the death bell, violently severing the final, pathetic threads of hope clinging to the hearts of the surviving Orc officers. Soren didn't waste a single breath on grandstanding. He couldn't even be bothered to spare another glance at these sniveling, broken aristocrats. He simply raised his gauntlet and offered a casual, dismissive wave forward. CLACK!

A thunderous, perfectly synchronized shockwave of interlocking armor plates roared through the ravine. Acting in absolute unison, the seventy Frontline Elites leveled their two-and-a-half-meter armor-piercing heavy halberds. Thick, dark blood still dripped rhythmically from the razor-sharp spearheads. Moving with heavy, methodical steps, they ruthlessly constricted the encirclement. Cold steel tips pressed flush against the throats and broad chests of the remaining high-ranking Orc officers.

"No... NO! You can't kill me!" A shrill, hysterical shriek abruptly shattered the suffocating, deathly silence. The biological nephew of the Blood Province's Governor-General—the very same arrogant youth who had just been complaining about the swamp mud soiling his pristine boots—was now completely unspooled. Pampered since birth and endlessly orbited by legions of fanatical bodyguards, when had he ever stared directly into the abyss of his own mortality?

Watching a hundred impenetrable Black Steel Elites get flash-roasted alive, expertly hamstrung by throwing knives, and casually butchered by halberds had thoroughly evaporated whatever microscopic trace of Orcish bloodlust he possessed. Thump! Desperate for his life, he completely ignored the sneering, disdainful glares of the veteran Ten-Thousand-Man Commanders beside him.

Crawling forward through the muck on his hands and knees, he violently hugged the heavy wooden haft of the halberd aimed directly at his skull, clinging to it like it was his sole lifeline.

"I am the Governor-General's biological nephew! I am blood to the supreme ruler of the Blood Province!" Snot and tears streamed down his face, twisting his relatively handsome Orcish features into a pathetic mask. Relying on heavily accented, broken Human Common, he frantically began throwing out his bargaining chips.

"You humans pride yourselves on aristocratic etiquette and prisoner ransoms, right?!

"Don't kill me! Keep me alive! My uncle can deliver hundreds of chests overflowing with gold! Rare ores, beautiful slaves, fertile tracts of land—whatever you want, I swear he will satisfy your demands! My life holds immense value! Unimaginable value!" His hysterical pleading echoed through the ravine, prompting Commander Cedric and Leona to exchange a deeply startled glance.

According to the unspoken, universally accepted rules of engagement among the human nations, capturing an enemy aristocrat of this magnitude represented a geopolitical goldmine. It was an apocalyptic sum of wealth, or even the ultimate political leverage required to force a ceasefire in a grueling, decades-long border war. However, the man standing before this pathetic wretch was not some old-world noble plagued by the rot of political compromise.

He was Soren—a Warlord who thoroughly embodied the absolute, uncompromising ruthlessness of modern military doctrine. Soren stared down at the blubbering captive, a chilling, deeply mocking sneer etching itself across his face.

"Ransoms? Fiefdoms? Aristocratic immunity?" Soren repeated, his voice glacially slow.

"In that pathetic, performative game of nobles you play, your title might indeed be priceless. But under the laws of Greywater Village..." Soren slowly crouched down. His gauntlet shot out, viciously grabbing a handful of the Orc's coarse, braided hair and yanking his head back, forcing the trembling youth to stare directly into his eyes.

"Any Orc that dares to set foot on human soil to drain our blood is stripped of all titles. There are no nobles. There are no peasants. There are only parasites that must be thoroughly, systematically exterminated."

"As for your so-called 'political value'?" Soren locked onto the Orc's terrified eyes, enunciating his final, absolute decree.

"What could possibly broadcast my undying resolve better than hoisting the severed head of the Governor-General's nephew right in front of Warchief Blackstone's hundred-thousand-strong army?

"Make no mistake. Your corpse is infinitely more valuable to me than your miserable life!"