Chương 264: 264：The Horn of Salvation

Rewind to half a day ago. Misty Swamp, Greywater Village Lord's Command Post. The fireplace burned expensive smokeless charcoal, thoroughly banishing the chill from the room. Thud, thud. The wooden door was pushed open, bringing in a gust of biting cold wind. Intelligence Captain Meyer strode rapidly into the room. Stripping away his usual disguise, Meyer revealed his true human face—gaunt, with razor-sharp eyes.

He had traveled a grueling distance, his posture heavy with profound exhaustion, yet his mental state was hyper-manic.

"My Lord! Confirmed emergency intelligence!" Meyer didn't even bother to drink the hot black tea prepared for him. He dropped to one knee, reporting at breakneck speed:"Cullen has dropped all pretenses! He reached a definitive agreement with the Orc Envoy from the Blood Province. Tomorrow morning, the exact moment the Orcs' [Bloodbone Legion] arrives at the Sunset Hills, he will open the corridor and completely defect!" Hearing this, a cold, lethal glint ignited in Soren's eyes.

All his deductions had been perfectly validated.

"Sunset Hills..." He rapidly assessed the tactical situation in his mind.

"Unlike the treacherous, jagged, and practically unscalable terrain of the Broken Blade Mountains, the Sunset Hills is exactly what the name implies—a flatland corridor situated exactly where the mountains meet the swamp!" Soren mentally calculated the distance and mobility, instantly grasping the absolute core of the upcoming battle:"Flat terrain, open sightlines, and no troublesome toxic miasma or mud pits to slow us down."

"At full forced-march speed, traveling from Greywater Village to the Sunset Hills will only take a single day!"

"Warfare is fundamentally about absolute speed. This isn't just a mission to suppress a rebellion; this is a Blitzkrieg to steal the time advantage right out from under the Bloodbone Legion!" Soren spun around, decisively issuing his supreme attack order: "Transmit my military decree!"

"Have Buck's Wolf Cavalry assemble immediately!" Soren displayed the audacious, unorthodox flair of modern special forces tactics:"Repurpose all ninety-three of those massive, muscular Wargs. They are now troop transports!"

"Load up my seventy frontline elites—fully equipped in all their heavy weaponry and armor! Form a Heavy Mechanized Infantry unit! Deploy immediately and thrust straight into the Sunset Hills!" Standing nearby, Isabella involuntarily sucked in a sharp breath of cold air. Having Wolf Cavalry carry elite heavy infantry clad in over a hundred pounds of Black Steel full-plate?! This utterly unorthodox, mind-bending strike tactic was completely unheard of in the entire military history of the continent! Yet...

it was undeniably the only method capable of plunging a strike force with overwhelming, absolute power directly into the enemy's throat within a single day!

"Furthermore!" Soren's commands continued, highly organized and completely unruffled:"Have Ein's hundred-man Longbow Battalion, alongside the hundred and thirty Magical Rangers commanded by Ilya, rapidly push forward as the second echelon to provide long-range artillery coverage!"

"As for the second-line Macedonian Phalanx and all other forces, they will remain to garrison Greywater Village. Continue reinforcing the anti-air trenches and maintain maximum quarantine lockdown against the Orcs' biological warfare."

"This battle is about absolute precision, not numbers!" With the orders issued, the massive war machine of Greywater Village sprang into highly efficient motion, launching itself like a steel arrow straight toward the Sunset Hills!...... Meanwhile. The sun slanted westward; the freezing wind was bone-chilling. The once-luxurious central command tent of the Sunset Hills camp was now riddled with holes, shredded by a dense barrage of heavy repeating crossbows.

The torn snow leopard rug was thoroughly soaked in blindingly dark crimson blood.

"For the glory of the Duchy! Fight to the death! No retreat!" Cedric unleashed a resounding, majestic roar. His fine steel plate armor already bore several deeply embedded armor-piercing bolts. The pauldron on his left shoulder had been completely shattered by violent cleaves, and fresh blood cascaded down his arm, dying his thick knight's broadsword a vicious red. Even trapped in the encirclement of over a hundred mutinous troops, the veteran Heavy Infantry Commander displayed a terrifying, transcendent courage!

CLANG! CRACK! Cedric viciously braced his towering shield with his left hand, forcefully absorbing the simultaneous halberd thrusts of three rebel soldiers. Exploiting the microsecond opening for a counterattack, his right hand swept his heavy broadsword in a brutal horizontal arc. SQUELCH! The massive blade cleanly bisected a rebel soldier—armor and all—straight through the waist! Viscera and hot blood splattered across a blazing brazier, sending up a sickening, scorching stench of charred flesh.

"Hold the line! Control your breathing!" Cedric panted heavily, calmly fending off enemies while steadying the formation of his personal guards. Even as the tent was violently torn apart by crossbow bolts from outside, even as half of his twenty loyal heavy cavalry guards had already fallen, leaving casualties mounting rapidly, his eyes still burned with an unyielding conviction. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Amidst the desperate slaughter, Cedric keenly perceived a critical detail! The heavy infantrymen swarming them with weapons raised were screaming loudly, but their eyes were filled with evasion and hesitation. Many soldiers raised their heavy crossbows, only to intentionally shoot wide, hitting the thick outer edges of the tower shields. They simply didn't want to strike a lethal blow.

Cedric instantly understood the psychological reality of the battlefield:"These rank-and-file soldiers don't want to betray humanity! They were deceived and coerced by their superiors!"

"As humans, who would willingly turn around to act as slaves for Orcs who drink fresh blood and eat raw meat? Who would willingly bear the eternal, unforgivable stigma of a traitor, condemning their families back home to suffer endless humiliation?!"

"I just need to kill Cullen! If I sever the head of the man who engineered this disaster, this entire mutiny will crumble to dust!" Having figured this out, Cedric's offensive became increasingly suicidal. He completely abandoned his own defense. Disregarding his own life, he stepped deep into the blood pools, forcefully pushing through the dense hail of crossbow bolts, inching step-by-step toward Cullen, who was cowering behind layers of bodyguards!......

Meanwhile, Cullen, who had already retreated outside and was hiding behind a massive supply wagon, felt his legs turn to jelly as he watched Cedric pushing forward like a demon of vengeance. Of course, he had noticed the soldiers' hesitance too! Out of the entire thousand-strong heavy battalion, the only ones truly risking their lives to attack Cedric were the twenty or thirty diehard officers he had been feeding with gold on a daily basis.

The vast majority of the regular soldiers were clearly burdened by immense psychological guilt. The hands gripping their swords trembled, unwilling to bear the infamy of defecting to the Orcs. This completely bankrupted Cullen's plan of instantly executing Cedric. A massive army was actually failing to wipe out a mere dozen men in a short timeframe!

"You worthless trash! What the hell are you hesitating for?! If Cedric doesn't die, we die!" Cullen screamed from behind the towering wooden crate, shouting until his voice cracked, desperately trying to erase the soldiers' remaining conscience. With trembling hands, he yanked a heavy deerskin pouch from his robes and violently smashed its contents onto the muddy snow. A massive pile of gold coins spilled out, the metallic clinking echoing with a crisp, seductive chime.

"Heavy bounty! Whoever chops off one of Cedric's arms gets fifty gold coins! Whoever brings me his head gets three hundred pieces of pure gold! Plus the rank of Deputy Commander!" To save his own skin, Cullen spared no expense in bribing the soldiers to launch a more ferocious close-quarters assault. Under the heavy bounty, a few desperate cutthroats finally lost their minds to greed.

Their eyes turning red, they let out hysterical war cries, swinging heavy axes as they launched a savage charge at Cedric's teetering, crumbling shield wall. The situation was on the absolute brink of becoming unsalvageable. Right at this critical, life-and-death juncture... AWWOOOOOOO! A desolate, drawn-out war horn violently erupted from the southern horizon of the Sunset Hills, brutally slicing through the chaotic din of the battlefield!

Immediately following the blast, the earth began to hum with a muffled, rhythmic tremor. It was the terrifying, ice-shattering footfalls of dozens of massive, monstrous Wargs!

"Report!" A rebel scout responsible for the perimeter stumbled wretchedly into the camp. He was so terrified he had even lost his helmet during his frantic sprint.

"Wolf... Wolf Cavalry! It's the Wolf Cavalry from Greywater Village! Soren... Lord Soren's elites are bearing down on us! They are less than a mile from the camp!" BOOM! The psychological impact of that news struck like a physical blow, instantly plunging Cullen and Deputy Gass into an icy abyss!

"Soren?! How is it Soren?! How could he have gotten the news so fast?!" The crimson flush that had colored Cullen's face while tossing the gold completely drained away, leaving him ghastly pale. He fell into an inescapable, paralyzing panic. He knew the weight of that name all too well!

Even though just hours ago he had arrogantly boasted to the Orc Envoy that his Mithril Plate was a hundred times better than Greywater Village's "pathetic Black Steel," that was nothing more than megalomaniacal bluster to mask his deep-seated fear. It was just a desperate attempt to inflate his own worth to the Orcs. But right now, the genuine, primal terror in Cullen's heart crushed him entirely, plunging his mind into absolute chaos.

"That Soren... he slaughtered two thousand elite Orcs and even decapitated an Oracle! His name is terrifying the entire continent!"

"The forces under his command are monsters capable of entirely annihilating Orc mainlines!"

"How could I possibly stop an enemy that terrifying?! I am absolutely no match for him!"

"My Lord! What do we do?! Their encirclement is about to close!" Deputy Gass's teeth chattered violently; he could barely keep a grip on his sword.

"What else can we do?! Run! Staying here is a literal death sentence!"