Chương 271: 271：The Victory that Shook the Continent

The Silvermoon Kingdom, the Royal Capital. A freezing, snow-swept morning. The sky was an oppressive, sickly grey, with heavy clouds hanging suffocatingly low over the spires of the city. The biting winter wind carried the sharp, acrid scent of cheap, half-burnt coal through the streets and alleys. In every corner, piles of rotting refuse were a common sight.

Ever since the Human Alliance and the Orc Alliance had devolved into a grueling, meat-grinding defensive stalemate, the only news filtering back from the front lines were horrific reports of which fortress had fallen, or which battalion had been entirely swallowed by the bogs. Years of continuous defeats and endless casualty lists had cast a thick, suffocating shadow over the hearts of the commoners.

It left the streets of the Royal Capital perpetually drowned in an atmosphere of utter numbness and profound pessimism. However, on this particular morning, the oppressive silence that had choked the city for decades was brutally, violently torn apart by a chorus of hoarse, screaming voices!

"Extra! Extra! Monumental news across the continent!"

"Miracle in the Misty Swamp! An Exclusive Interview by Battlefield Scholar Lucia!"

"Soren, Lord of Greywater Village, leading a force of mere hundreds, utterly annihilated over two thousand elite Orcs in an ambush at Soul-Severing Gorge! Mogg, the direct nephew of the Blood Province Governor, has been decapitated! An Orc Oracle slain in combat!" Over a dozen young newsboys, shivering in their thin, tattered tunics, wildly waved the freshly printed parchment gazettes in the air.

Like agile fish, they darted through the Central Avenue and into the bustling morning markets, completely shattering the capital's gloomy peace. Clatter! The tightly shut wooden shutters of a bakery were violently slammed open. The fat owner didn't even bother to wipe the flour from his hands before he leaned halfway out the window, screaming:"Kid! What the hell did you just say?! Annihilated elite Orcs?! Killed thousands?!"

"Quick! Give me a copy! No, give me ten copies!" At a street corner, several homeless, crippled veterans who had been huddled out of the wind, shivering from the cold, violently threw aside their broken begging bowls. Tripping over themselves in a wretched scramble, they lunged at a newsboy, trading their absolute last copper coins for a gazette. Every street, every alleyway, every tavern and plaza was instantly packed with surging crowds.

Illiterate commoners tightly grabbed hold of literate schoolteachers or destitute nobles, frantically urging them to read every single word aloud. When the people truly heard the vivid, blood-soaked details—"Over two thousand fully armored Orcs ambushed and slaughtered," "The Governor's nephew pierced by the Windwhisper Bow," "The head of a high-and-mighty Oracle severed"—the city plunged into a brief, stunned silence. Then...

the crowd erupted into a deafening, earth-shaking roar of jubilation that had been suppressed for centuries!

"We won! We actually swallowed their main force alive in a head-on clash!"

"Fuck their invincibility! They bleed just like us, and they can be slaughtered!" For these human civilians, trapped in an era of grueling defense and starved of any major victories, the monumental battle record of Soren and Greywater Village acted as a massive shot of adrenaline, dramatically revitalizing the entire race's fighting spirit against the Orc Alliance.

Yet, amidst the boiling cheers outside, the atmosphere inside the infamous 'Broken Sword Tavern' in the lower city took an entirely different, intensely emotional turn. This tavern was a haven for large numbers of exiled, crippled veterans, blood-soaked mercenaries, and hot-blooded youths desperate to serve their country but with nowhere to go.

Standing dead center on a round table, illuminated by the dim, flickering glow of whale-oil lamps, a one-eyed veteran with a horrific scar across his face was reading the latter half of Lucia's interview, his voice trembling uncontrollably:"... This commander, whose name is now known across the world, did not claim the glory for his own personal valor. In the interview, Lord Soren bluntly stated: 'Victory belongs to every single soldier bleeding in the muck.'"" He forged armor that ignores standard slashes...

He fostered an unshakable brotherhood that transcends class and rank within his army..." The scarred veteran took a massive, shuddering breath. Tears spilled freely from his solitary eye as he roared the most earth-shattering paragraph of the article, his voice cracking with raw emotion:"In Greywater Village, no crippled soldier will ever be abandoned! Lord Soren has sworn an oath: Those who fall in battle shall be brought home and buried with absolute honor!

Those who are crippled shall be provided a lifelong pension and safety net by the territory! Those thirty-seven veterans who lost their limbs are, at this very moment, living in warm, high-stilt wooden cabins, eating meat stew, and living out their remaining years in peace!" BOOM! The entire tavern exploded into absolute pandemonium! This article didn't just cement Soren as a world-renowned hero of the resistance.

His supreme demeanor as a commander—refusing to grow arrogant with merit, and placing the lives of his grunts above all else—struck the souls of these bottom-tier warriors with the force of a sledgehammer. A mercenary missing his left arm downed the remainder of his cheap liquor in a single gulp and broke down into loud, ugly sobs:"Years ago, I bled for this nation on the borders! I lost an arm, and what did the high-and-mighty nobles say?! They said I 'lost my combat value' and literally kicked me out of the camp!

I didn't even get a single copper coin of severance!" If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"I was left to fight wild dogs in the streets for scraps of food... If I had followed Lord Soren back then, would I be rotting in this hellhole today?!"

"Fuck the Royal Capital Defense Force! I'm done swallowing the insults of those arrogant noble officers!" In the corner, a wandering young knight, carrying a heavy broadsword on his back and a heart full of burning ambition, suddenly shot up from his seat. He stepped over the clutter on the floor, his eyes completely ablaze with yearning.

"Dark-silver armor! Highly efficient tactical training! And a supreme commander willing to care for you until the day you die! That is a place worthy of a real man's blood!" He violently ripped the mercenary guild badge from his chest and threw it to the floor:"So what if the Misty Swamp is filled with toxic gas and two-headed crocodiles?! There is dignity there! There is true glory! I am going north to pledge my sword to Lord Soren!"

"Count me in!"

"I'm coming too! These old bones can still draw a heavy bow!" This was the terrifying charisma of a true general! With a single exclusive interview, secretly steered by Soren from behind the scenes, a glorious military victory had been flawlessly transmuted into the most alluring, continent-wide recruitment poster in human history. Countless exiled eccentrics, wandering masters, and brilliant tacticians from impoverished backgrounds who had been ruthlessly suppressed by the nobility...

They all began packing their bags, setting their sights firmly on the fog-shrouded swamps of the north.... However, amidst the boiling praises sweeping the city, voices of rationality—or rather, deep skepticism—began to fester in various corners of the capital. In front of the notice board in the Central Plaza, commoners and scholars were packed three layers deep.

"Utter nonsense! This is nothing but a fairy tale designed to fool three-year-olds!" A well-dressed, aristocratic scholar waved his civilized cane vigorously, pointing at the gazette and scoffing loudly.

"A force of a few hundred human soldiers completely wiping out thousands of elite Orcs?! And doing so when the enemy possessed heavy armored defenses and an Oracle?! How could that possibly be true?!" The scholar turned, projecting his voice loudly to the hesitant commoners surrounding him:"Ladies and gentlemen, have you forgotten the absolute physiological gap between humans and Orcs?! An adult Black Iron Orc stands over two meters tall!

Their monstrous strength can effortlessly tear our heavy infantry phalanxes to pieces!"

"In every past war, we have had to sacrifice the lives of three to five heavy infantrymen just to kill a single Orc!"

"This is undoubtedly fake propaganda jointly fabricated by the Holy Halycon Empire and these so-called 'battlefield scholars'! It is nothing more than the frontline high command covering up their incompetence in this stalemate! They are using grandiose lies to trick us into happily paying higher war taxes!" His argument was highly persuasive, and it acted like a bucket of ice water, rapidly cooling the surging excitement of many civilians.

After all, the ingrained belief that human combat power was inherently weak, and that they had to rely solely on rigid heavy infantry squares and knight charges just to passively endure beatings, was incredibly difficult to shatter. Such a wildly disproportionate, outnumbered victory completely transcended the comprehension of ordinary people, and even the vast majority of conventional military officers.

"You're full of shit! You spineless, wine-sipping aristocrat, hiding in the rear!" Just then, a travel-worn border merchant, covered head-to-toe in road dust, aggressively pushed his way to the front of the crowd. His face and ears were flushed red with indignation as he pointed squarely at the scholar's nose and roared his rebuttal:"I spend my life traveling the trading routes between the Ironpeak Duchy and the Blood Province!"

The merchant swallowed hard, throwing down an ironclad piece of eyewitness testimony that violently crushed the scholar's doubts:"You think this battle record is fabricated?! Then explain this to me! Why is it that, just a few days ago, every single Orc tribe stationed on the outer fringes of the Sunset Hills suddenly hung up white mourning cloths?!" The merchant's booming voice echoed across the plaza, striking the crowd so hard they held their breath:"I saw it with my own two eyes!

The absolute trump card of the Orc Alliance—the [Bloodbone Legion]—broke camp and marched south like a frenzied herd of wild bulls!"

"If Young Master Mogg didn't die... If those two thousand elites hadn't been entirely erased from existence at Soul-Severing Gorge... why would the Orc High Command be in such an apocalyptic rage?! Why would they mobilize their absolute finest vanguard in such a frantic panic?!"

"Lord Soren's battle record is an ironclad truth, built entirely upon a mountain of Orc corpses!" The merchant's furious rebuttal was perfectly logical and backed by undeniable evidence. By utilizing the enemy's extreme reaction as proof, he instantly and completely suppressed the arrogant scholar. The plaza fell silent for a heartbeat, before erupting into a cheer a hundred times more explosive than before! He was right! If Soren hadn't beaten the Orcs to the point of genuine, agonizing pain...

If he hadn't instilled pure terror into their hearts... why would a race of aliens who believed themselves completely invincible react with such catastrophic desperation?!