Chương 207: 207： A Melee to the Death

Gabriel let out a cold sneer. Instead of falling back, he spurred his warhorse violently. Man and steed shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, charging head-on toward the colossal Orc Commander. When the distance closed to less than ten meters, Gabriel's eyes widened with roaring fury. Both hands locked onto the hilt of his aristocratic longsword, its blade etched with high-tier arcane runes.

"Let the thunder judge your arrogance!" An astonishing wave of magical fluctuation violently erupted from Gabriel's core! A blinding cluster of blue-white lightning materialized out of thin air, rapidly snaking up his vambraces to tightly coil around the razor-sharp blade! [Lightning-Attribute Knight's Swordsmanship]! This was a transcendent magical martial art exclusively inherited by the highest echelon of nobility within the Silvermoon Kingdom!

"RAAAARGH!" Devoid of even a shred of fear, the Orc Commander swung his colossal broadaxe utilizing nothing but pure, apocalyptic brute force. The massive blade cleaved the air with a horrifying, shrieking gale, crashing downward to smash Gabriel and his warhorse into a bloody paste! The exact microsecond the axe edge threatened to split his face... Gabriel drew his sword. But he completely refused a clash of brute force. BZZZT! Blinding lightning shrieked!

At full gallop, Gabriel contorted his body, swinging himself entirely off the saddle to hang parallel against the flank of his sprinting warhorse! It was an unimaginably high-difficulty equestrian maneuver, flawlessly evading the catastrophic cleave that would have bisected him. Seizing that split-second window as they crossed paths, Gabriel's lightning-wreathed longsword slashed in a fluid, utterly unimpeded arc.

It cleanly bypassed the Orc Commander's raised axes, slicing perfectly across his completely exposed, unarmored throat! The extreme temperature of the lightning enchantment instantaneously flash-cauterized the severed blood vessels. Not a single drop of blood had the chance to spray. Gabriel and his steed were already meters behind enemy lines. In the center of the muddy battlefield, the once-invincible Orc Commander maintained his forward-cleaving posture, staggering two steps forward.

A second later, that massive head—its face frozen in a grotesque mask of shock and agony—slid smoothly from the charred stump of his neck, tumbling heavily into the bloody muck. THUD! The towering, headless corpse crashed into the marsh!

"The Commander is dead..."

"They killed the Chief!" Dozens of surrounding Orc personal guards, whose eyes had been bloodshot with berserker rage just moments prior, stared at the charred, severed head. Their entire will to fight completely evaporated. The Orc defensive line had only maintained its orderly withdrawal through the sheer, terrifying coercion of their high-ranking officers. Now, their supreme commander had been decapitated in a single, lightning-fast exchange by a human general!

Stripped of their leader, the Orc formation instantly plunged into headless chaos. They refused to obey the Centurions' orders for overlapping cover, dissolving into a massive, catastrophic rout. Some desperately attempted to force a breakthrough to the rear, while others panicked, swinging their weapons blindly at the empty mist. The exact microsecond this fatal vulnerability was exposed... Directly ahead, rising from the muddy water, Galahad stood tall. His face was entirely masked in thick, unyielding blood.

He hoisted his chipped, heavily damaged longsword high into the freezing rain.

"THE ENEMY IS BROKEN! THEIR COMMANDER IS SLAIN!" Galahad unleashed an earth-shattering roar that tore through the clouds:"DISCARD YOUR SHIELDS! THROW AWAY EVERY SHATTERED BUCKLER! ABANDON ALL DEFENSIVE FORMATIONS!"

"ENTIRE ARMY, HEAR MY COMMAND! ALL-OUT MELEE! TO THE DEATH!" The pikemen of Ironwood Fortress were already seeing red. Hearing this absolute, point-of-no-return mandate, they violently unbuckled the shattered, splintered oak bucklers that were doing nothing but dragging them down, hurling them into the sludge! Every single soldier locked both hands onto the hafts of their three-meter pikes! They transformed into hundreds of tireless, frenzied death squads!

This was the purest, most unadulterated meat-grinder of a melee. Discarding all defense. Forgetting all tactical retreats and formations. The two sides violently collided in an absolute, claustrophobic stranglehold where the only deciding factor was sheer, unbreakable willpower! An Orcish axe severed a brother's legs? A comrade would ruthlessly drive his pike straight through that Orc's heart! Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

The enemy snapped the ash-wood haft of a pike? The human soldier would lunge forward, drawing a trench dagger to rip open the beast's throat—and if he lost his dagger, he would literally tear the Orc's jugular out with his teeth! For over an hour, the gorge was subjected to a grueling, apocalyptic bloodbath! The gloomy light above the Wailing Valley slowly faded into twilight. The flooded floor of the marsh was entirely dyed a thick, impenetrable dark crimson from the horrific casualties.

Pikes lunging, severed limbs flying, agonizing shrieks, and the deafening screech of colliding steel echoed relentlessly through the clouds. This was a suicidal deadlock won entirely through the brutal, grinding attrition of human lives! The veteran general Galahad sustained seven or eight horrifying, bone-deep cleaves across his body. Yet, he did not retreat a single inch, continuously anchoring the vanguard and guiding his soldiers' charge. Time lost all meaning.

Eventually, the only sounds remaining in the valley were the sloshing of churning blood and the exhausted, weak hacking of human soldiers. Splash. The final, standing Black Iron Orc—his eyes bulging with absolute, unwilling fury—was violently pinned to the muddy marsh by three human soldiers. Though their own chests were mangled by axe blows, they burned their absolute final dregs of strength to drive their pikes through the beast's torso. The battlefield finally stilled. A freezing wind swept through the gorge.

Aside from a suffocating stench of blood that pierced the heavens, there was absolute silence. This elite, four-hundred-strong Black Iron Orc infantry battalion had been exterminated to the very last man! Scanning the muddy expanse, of the nine hundred human pikemen, less than half were still capable of standing. Every single man was bleeding! Factoring in the fallen warhorses and light cavalry, Ironwood Fortress had paid a catastrophic, one-to-one casualty ratio to win this fight! Yet...

this was a glorious, monumental victory! For the first time in the many years since Ironwood Fortress established its defensive line, they had secured an extraordinary victory: utterly annihilating a full Orc battalion in a head-on, open-field clash! No one wept or wailed over their fallen comrades. The survivors of this iron-blooded legion immediately steeled their minds. Stumbling yet moving with practiced efficiency, they began to sweep the mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

Working together, they expertly stripped the sturdy, intact black iron armor from the dead Orcs and wrenched free the terrifyingly heavy, highly durable black iron battleaxes. This massive haul of exceptional spoils would be enough to fully re-arm a vast number of reserve troops, drastically replenishing the catastrophic troop deficit caused by the [Sons of Titan] siege weeks prior!

"Hah... cough... HAHAHAHA!" Leaning heavily against a pile of mangled Orc corpses, Galahad slumped exhaustedly into a pool of blood. Large chunks of his breastplate had been completely shattered, and fresh blood steadily pulsed from his wounds. Coughing up bloody froth, the old general unleashed a hearty, wildly cathartic laugh! Those young lads who had been unjustly slaughtered beneath the walls of his fortress... today, utilizing the lives of four hundred Orcish scum, he had thoroughly avenged their heroic souls!

Gabriel, equally coated in blood and gore, trudged through the mud. His typically pale, aristocratic face was entirely blackened by soot and dried blood. Pulling a high-grade healing potion from his belt, he roughly shoved it into Galahad's mouth without a word of debate. Thoroughly drained of all stamina, the young noble general slumped to the side, lying shoulder-to-shoulder with the old veteran in front of the corpse pile.

"Haa... Haa... This time..." Gabriel gasped for air. Suffering extreme mana exhaustion from channeling high-tier lightning magic, his hands trembled uncontrollably.

"When we stand before those chattering, empty-headed politicians in the Royal Council... we can finally tilt our chins to the sky, right? Total annihilation of a fully-staffed main Orc battalion..." Thrilled, he weakly slapped the bloody water, celebrating this agonizingly hard-won victory. The two supreme commanders of Ironwood Fortress, having just waded through hell together, lay quietly in the muck as field medics frantically rushed over, applying tight tourniquets to their lacerations.

As the intoxicating adrenaline of victory finally began to subside, cold, hard logic returned. The two veteran generals immediately began to mentally review and deconstruct the entirety of the tactical board.

"How do you see it now, Gabriel?" Galahad asked, his murky eyes staring up at the gloomy, overcast sky.

"Hypothetically... if this four-hundred-man infantry battalion hadn't marched out, but instead remained fiercely entrenched within those border fortresses they had previously occupied..." Beside him, the lingering excitement in Gabriel's chest vanished, replaced instantly by a spine-tingling chill.

"If this had been a siege..." Gabriel swallowed hard, meticulously recalling the terrifying, suffocating physical pressure of the close-quarters meat-grinder they had just barely survived. His tone turned incredibly grave.

"If we had to manually uproot them from a fortress—even utilizing our entire nine-hundred-strong main infantry paired with my hundred light cavalry...

"Setting aside the fact that we completely lack heavy siege engines... As long as that Orc Commander stood atop the walls, laying down suppressing fire, or simply hurling boulders down from the battlements..."

"Then securing a one-to-one casualty ratio would be an absolute pipe dream," Galahad said, closing his eyes as he ruthlessly laid bare the reality of their situation.

"Forget just these thousand lives. Even if we hurled every single remaining asset in Ironwood Fortress at those walls, we wouldn't even dent their defensive line. We would suffer absolute, miserable annihilation." A profound, creeping dread enveloped the two commanders' hearts. They exchanged a long, silent glance. At that exact moment, a single, world-shaking name surfaced simultaneously in their minds. Soren!

On the surface, this beautiful, odds-defying victory was won entirely through their desperate leadership and the bloody sacrifice of their men. But if one were to truly deconstruct the tactical board? Why would a fully equipped, elite Orc battalion completely abandon the warmth and security of a fortified border stronghold? Why would they act like madmen, executing a collective forced march through the freezing depths of the Misty Swamp?

Late one night, prior to this exact movement, it was Soren who had dispatched a ghostly Goblin scout directly to their gates, delivering the exact marching route of these Orcs right into their hands! Galahad's bloodstained hands trembled violently.

"If Soren hadn't sent his operative to deliver that strategic intelligence... forget about celebrating a victory. We would still be cowering like turtles inside our fortress right now, cursing the heavens and wallowing in our own misery." Gabriel's gaze narrowed, his expression flooded with profound, unadulterated admiration.

"General, I have never respected outsiders. Those bloated, bureaucratic 'Grandmasters' the Royal Capital occasionally dispatches... I wouldn't spare them a second glance." The aristocratic young general sat up, straightening his back with absolute solemnity.

"But toward this Lord Soren... I am thoroughly, unequivocally convinced of his superiority."

"Once this combat sector is stabilized, and we have fully compensated the families of our fallen brothers," Galahad grunted, allowing his personal guards to haul him to his feet. The two iron-blooded generals cast their gazes across the vast, muddy expanse, now piled high with mountains of premium black iron armaments and logistical supplies.

"The moment this victory report is dispatched to the Royal Capital... even if we have to completely empty the vaults of Ironwood Fortress!" Galahad declared. Gabriel nodded in fierce agreement.

"We will personally carry the most precious gifts we can muster. We must stand face-to-face before Lord Soren, and offer him our most profound, solemn gratitude!"