Chương 239: 239：The Lucrative Bounty: Five Magic Scrolls

Ding! [Target Locked: High Intelligence Officer of the Ironpeak Duchy, Isabella.] [Battlefield Update: The target is carrying the Ironpeak Duchy's defensive perimeter maps and is currently being hunted by an Orc squadron. She is trapped in a fatal predicament.] [Mission Objective: Rescue Isabella.] [Mission Reward: High-Tier Magic Scroll x5.] Soren's marching footsteps came to a dead halt. He rapidly snapped his gaze forward.

"Five magic scrolls?" Soren sucked in a sharp breath of freezing air, his breathing involuntarily quickening. In this era, outside of the incredibly rare, top-tier mages like Victor, magical resources were scarce to a point that bordered on the absurd! A single scroll inscribed with a high-tier spell was a strategic deterrent capable of unleashing catastrophic destruction in a pivotal battle.

Whether used to instantaneously vaporize heavily fortified enemy bunkers or to carpet-bomb an entire battlefield, these five magic scrolls possessed the terrifying, apocalyptic value to completely reverse the tide of a losing war!

"I am absolutely taking this deal!" Soren abruptly raised his right hand, clenching it into a fist high in the air. Clank! The seventy Black Steel vanguard elites marching behind him halted simultaneously, their fine-steel boots stomping into the mud as they instantly formed an airtight defensive perimeter on the spot.

"My Lord?" Renn, wiping the freezing rain from his bald head, stepped forward with a look of confusion. Soren closed his eyes, intensely focusing his senses. Piercing through the howling wind and the torrential downpour, he picked up the faint, yet incredibly brutal sound of clashing blades originating from a low-lying valley about two kilometers to the southwest. Intermixed with the steel was the savage, bloodthirsty roaring of Orcs.

"Southwest. We have a situation." Soren's eyes snapped open. The fine-steel longsword hissed as it cleared its scabbard, the blade pointing dead into the storm-swept depths of the forest. He issued his cold, ruthlessly decisive military command:"All units! Crank your heavy repeating crossbows!"

"Target: the depression to the southwest! Full-speed forced march! Prepare to engage!" At that very moment, within the nameless depression to the southwest, a tragic, completely one-sided slaughter was unfolding. The muddy earth had long since been dyed a dark, sickening red.

"Hold the line! Get those shields up! Anyone who takes a single step back will be executed on the spot!" Carter, a Heavy Armor Commander of the Ironpeak Duchy, was roaring until his throat bled. His once-resolute face was entirely caked in mud and the shredded flesh of his comrades. The armor on his left arm was severely caved in, thick blood streaming down past his fingertips to rapidly patter into the muck.

Surrounding Carter, what was once a fully-manned, elite company of one hundred and twenty soldiers had been reduced to less than forty men. Backed against a steep, unscalable cliff face, they had locked their shattered, dented tower shields together to form a desperate, semi-circular defensive wall. And surging just outside that fragile shield-wall were over three hundred densely packed Black Iron Orcs!

"Hahaha! The bones of humanity are truly softer than the mud!" Standing at the rear of the Orc formation, an exceptionally massive Black Iron Orc Centurion was currently erupting into deafening, maniacal laughter. His name was Bloodskull. Dangling from his hundred-pound, double-bladed heavy axe was the severed lower intestine of a human soldier. His bald head was tattooed with a gruesome, blood-red skull—the sickening mark of glory he had earned for brutally butchering three human villages along the border.

"Commander! We can't hold them! The brute strength of these beasts is too much!" BANG! A sickening thud echoed over the rain. An Ironpeak soldier in the front row, shield and all, was violently kicked airborne by a towering Orc. The crisp, horrifying sound of his ribcage shattering was clearly audible over the storm. The soldier violently spewed blood mid-air, but before he even hit the ground, several thick throwing spears impaled him, instantly nailing his lifeless body deep into the mud. Love this story?

Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! Carter's eyes practically tore open in pure agony. He violently turned his head to look at the woman being protected in the absolute center of the shield array. It was the High Intelligence Officer of the Ironpeak Duchy, Isabella. She wore a tight-fitting leather armor soaked entirely through by the freezing rain, her golden blonde hair clinging wildly to her deathly pale cheeks.

Clutched tightly to her chest was a waterproof oilcloth cylinder. Sealed inside were the core strategic deployment maps charting the Ironpeak Duchy's entire defense against the southern Orc invasion!

"Commander Carter... I am the one who doomed you all," Isabella whispered, her beautiful eyes brimming with tears of pure anguish as she watched the young soldiers constantly falling into pools of blood to protect her. As an intelligence officer, she understood the brutal reality of their predicament better than anyone. The Orcs possessed an absolutely overwhelming, insurmountable advantage in stamina, monstrous strength, and sheer numbers.

The reason these three hundred Black Iron Orcs hadn't simply crushed their defense in a single overwhelming wave was that they were sadistically, mockingly compressing their survival space step by agonizing step. Bloodskull's true objective wasn't slaughter. He wanted to capture Isabella alive!

Once she was taken prisoner, under the agonizing, fate-worse-than-death soul-rending torture of the Orcish Shadow Priests, not only would the defensive maps fall into enemy hands, but every single highly classified troop deployment secret currently locked inside her head would be entirely ripped bare. If that happened, the border defenses the Ironpeak Duchy had spent a decade bleeding to construct would face catastrophic, apocalyptic ruin.

Hundreds of thousands of human civilians would instantly be reduced to Orcish rations!

"Lady Isabella! Do not say such things! Our absolute duty is to lay down our lives to ensure your safety!" Carter spat out a mouthful of bloody phlegm, his grip tightening around the hilt of his sword as he embraced his own impending death. He knew perfectly well that breaking out was utterly impossible; all avenues of retreat had been completely sealed off.

"Brothers!" Carter raised his shattered longsword, unleashing the final, most desperate roar of his entire life:"For the Duchy! For the families standing behind us! Break the turtle formation! All remaining men, switch to spears! Follow me and initiate a death charge! We will pave a path of blood to the east for Lady Isabella with our corpses!"

"KILL!" The surviving thirty-odd Ironpeak soldiers erupted into a chorus of heart-wrenching roars. Knowing with absolute certainty they were marching to their deaths, they still hoisted their shields and recklessly threw themselves against the impenetrable steel wall of the Orcs. Yet, the chasm in physical strength was exceptionally, agonizingly cruel.

"Stupid bugs! Chop their legs off! Take that woman alive!" Bloodskull sadistically licked his lips, issuing his brutal command. SQUELCH! CRACK! Within a mere thirty seconds of the collision, the final defensive line of the Ironpeak Duchy entirely collapsed. Heavy iron battleaxes pulverized the skulls of the vanguard soldiers. Carter was violently pinned face-down into the mud by two elite Orcs, his longsword snapping in half.

He could only watch in sheer, suffocating despair as several massive, green-furred hands reached directly for Isabella.

"NO!" Carter unleashed a hoarse, agonizing howl. Backed entirely into the dead corner of the cliff, Isabella stared at the rapidly approaching Orcs, the putrid stench of their breath assaulting her face. The fear in her heart entirely vanished. The hand gripping her sword became exceptionally, absolutely resolute.

"May the Holy Light protect the Ironpeak Duchy..." She murmured softly. Without a single microsecond of hesitation, she violently drew a fine-steel shortsword from her waist. Flicking her wrist, she ruthlessly pressed the razor-sharp edge directly against her own snow-white, slender neck. She knew she absolutely could not allow herself to fall into the hands of these beasts alive. Slitting her own throat was the final, ultimate display of loyalty and dignity she possessed as an intelligence officer!

The sharp blade broke her skin. A vibrant trickle of crimson blood slid down her pale neck. Just at that hair's-breadth moment—when the defense had entirely collapsed, and every single soul present believed it was an absolute, inescapable dead end!

"FIRE!" A majestic, thunderous roar suddenly detonated from the high ground overlooking the depression! Immediately following was the terrifying, scalp-numbing roar of mechanical gears. CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK! TWANG! Soren's elite detachment, hidden atop the slope, finally unleashed their devastating assault!

Under Soren's flawless tactical command, seventy fully cranked heavy repeating crossbows aimed directly into the densely packed, congested Orc formation below, unleashing an apocalyptic, overlapping crossfire of absolute destruction! SWOOSH-SWOOSH-SWOOSH-SWOOSH! Heavy, solid-steel crossbow bolts, as thick as a grown man's thumb, rode the terrifying kinetic momentum of a downward trajectory, instantly tearing the curtain of rain to shreds.

The Black Iron Orcs below, who were currently preparing to savor the sadistic thrill of their slaughter, didn't even have time to finish looking up before they slammed headfirst into an overwhelming, catastrophic strike! SQUELCH! SQUELCH! SQUELCH! The sickening sound of metal violently penetrating flesh erupted in a dense, continuous wave. The heavy crossbow bolts effortlessly punched straight through the Black Iron half-plate the Orcs were so incredibly proud of.

With its momentum entirely unabated, the steel shredded their internal organs, and in some cases, the terrifying kinetic force directly skewered two or three tightly packed Orcs together on a single shaft! Agonized, blood-curdling shrieks instantly drowned out the sound of the howling storm. In a single, fleeting microsecond of suppressive fire, the seemingly impenetrable, arrogant charging formation of the Black Iron Orcs was completely and utterly torn to bloody ribbons!

The entire outermost perimeter—forty to fifty heavily armored Orcs—was simultaneously mowed down, collapsing into pools of their own blood.

"Who's there?! Ambush! Shields up! Defend against the high ground!" Bloodskull, the Orc Centurion, was entirely paralyzed by this sudden, horrifyingly lethal strike. His courage shattered. He furiously hoisted his double-bladed giant axe, desperately attempting to rally his routed formation as his eyes locked dead onto the ridge above. And at that exact moment, upon the high ground. Soren's black windproof cape whipped violently in the storm.

Radiating an absolute, suffocating aura of oppression, he reached behind his back and drew that wondrous artifact pulsing with azure magical radiance: The [Windwhisper Bow]. Standing at the absolute vantage point, he coldly looked down at the manic Centurion below.

"Your head is an absolute eyesore," Soren muttered darkly in his heart. VMMM! The monstrous physical power granted by his [Faint Titan Bloodline] violently erupted. The incredibly resilient Elven longbow was smoothly drawn to a perfect, full moon. [Eagle-Eye Perception], activated! In that exact fraction of a second, every single plummeting raindrop within Soren's field of vision plunged into a sluggish, agonizingly slow crawl.

His eyes flawlessly locked onto the microscopic, fatal gap exposed between Bloodskull's heavy helmet and his neck armor as the beast tilted his head back to roar.