Chương 301: 301：Only One Frontline

Soren's longsword tapped the left, right, and bottom edges of the map.

"Look closely at the layout of our territory. To the east, we are bordered by perpetually boiling flats of high-heat sulfuric mud. The temperatures there are intense enough to boil the flesh off any living creature that falls in, leaving nothing but bare bone."

"To the west lies the highly toxic swamp. And to our rear stands a dense, towering forest that is absolutely impossible for cavalry to traverse. These three natural barriers have completely eliminated any possibility of the Orcs executing a flanking maneuver to surround us."

"Therefore!" With a sharp clang, Soren drove the tip of his longsword directly into the glaring red dot marking the northernmost edge of the map.

"The gentle slope directly north of the village entrance... is the only front we need to defend!" Every eye in the room instantly locked onto that slope. Gary, the Trap Captain, took a deep breath. Stepping forward, he reported with fierce pride:"My Lord, fellow commanders. That northern slope has already been thoroughly excavated by my engineering corps!"

"We have laid down a continuous, interconnected network of trapdoor spike-pits spanning a full five hundred meters across the frontline."

"The bottom of these trenches is densely packed with thick, reinforced wooden stakes. Every single tip has been heavily coated with the lethal toxin of Swamp Poison Frogs. Above them, we've installed finely calibrated trapdoors concealed beneath a layer of camouflaged topsoil." Gary gestured animatedly with his hands.

"The load-bearing threshold of these trapdoors has been calculated with absolute precision. A human soldier can run across them without a single issue. But the moment a Centaur weighing over six hundred pounds steps on them... I guarantee you, it will inflict catastrophic casualties upon the Orc vanguard." A flicker of genuine hope finally ignited within the commanders. A geographical choke point that was easy to defend and agonizingly difficult to breach meant this wasn't destined to be a one-sided slaughter.

However, Soren refused to allow this sudden wave of optimism to take root. His expression grew deathly serious as he delivered his final strategic mobilization:"Gentlemen, even with our absolute terrain advantage and Gary's death traps, you are absolutely forbidden from underestimating the enemy!"

"The enemy vanguard consists of ten thousand elites! The sheer mass of a Centaur's body, combined with their terrifying mobility, grants them a staggering, apocalyptic charging momentum."

"They will undoubtedly leverage this kinetic force, concentrating every last one of their troops to launch a suicidal, hyper-violent frontal assault straight into our northern defensive line!" Soren's voice cracked like a whip, issuing an uncompromising command.

"I am ordering every single combat unit to be fully deployed and combat-ready behind the barricades by dawn the day after tomorrow. I do not care if the Centaur corpses pile up into mountains before you—until the retreat horn sounds, if anyone dares to take a single step backward, they will be executed on the spot for military desertion!"

"Understood, My Lord! We will not yield a single inch of ground!" Talon, Ein, and the other frontline commanders slammed their fists over their hearts in perfect unison, their voices roaring with unshakeable resolve. In that single moment, Soren had distilled what seemed like an impossibly complex, utterly hopeless defensive war into one crystal-clear, absolute death mandate. Abandon all illusions of outside rescue.

Rely entirely on the defenses they had built with their own hands and the lethal geographical choke point. Right here, on this northern slope, they would grind those ten thousand Centaurs down to the very last drop of blood!

"However..." Just as the bloodlust in the room reached a fever pitch, Soren abruptly sheathed his longsword. He leaned forward, planting both hands firmly on the tactical table, exuding the aura of a supreme tactician who held the entire war within his palm.

"Have any of you considered why Warchief Blackstone isn't waiting to consolidate his forces? Why is he in such a frantic rush that he's throwing his fastest, highly mobile units at us ahead of schedule as a vanguard?" Soren posed a question that instantly stunned the entire room. Soren didn't wait for an answer. He coldly and rationally dissected the strategic reality:"Because of our decapitation strike at Abysswater Keep!"

"I blew City Lord Nak's head off with a single arrow and slaughtered the entire upper echelon of the keep's logistics center."

"Gentlemen, that operation completely paralyzed their supply chains! The Orc Alliance currently massing at Bloodfang Fortress is staring down the barrel of a catastrophic food shortage!"

"Warchief Blackstone is panicking! He absolutely does not have the time—nor does he have the astronomical amount of grain required—to sit back and wait for his lumbering main force of thirty thousand Pigmen and Tauren to fully assemble before launching a coordinated offensive." Soren let out a cold, mocking sneer.

"That arrogant Warchief is looking down on us. He believes our troop numbers are pathetically small."

"Blinded by his own pride, he's resorted to the most rudimentary piecemeal tactics. He plans to use the sheer mass of these ten thousand Centaurs as cannon fodder—bleeding our traps dry and exhausting our crossbow bolt reserves—believing they alone are enough to completely steamroll Greywater Village!" A wave of profound realization washed over the commanders. So that was it!

Behind this seemingly unstoppable, apocalyptic blitzkrieg lay a desperate, forced maneuver dictated by the Orc high command's paralyzing fear of starvation and severed supply lines!

"Brilliant, My Lord! Absolutely brilliant!" Chief Mage Victor couldn't help but exclaim in pure awe. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Yet, Soren's expression remained stone-cold. Turning to Fina, who was currently flipping through the population ledgers, he bluntly exposed the critical vulnerability currently plaguing Greywater Village.

"Fina. Brief the commanders on our internal complications." Fina bit her lower lip. Opening the heavy parchment ledger, she spoke with visible difficulty.

"Fellow commanders, it is true that the total registered population of Greywater Village has skyrocketed to exactly 2, 384."

"However... of that number, exactly three hundred and sixty-two are raw recruits who only passed their screening and joined the territory yesterday." Fina looked up, her eyes laced with heavy concern.

"These three hundred and sixty-two men... yesterday, they were wandering sellswords and bankrupt dirt-farmers."

"They haven't been formally integrated into squads, they don't know our tactical formations, and half of them don't even know how to pull the trigger on our repeating heavy crossbows."

"And the day after tomorrow, they are supposed to stand directly in the path of a vastly superior force—a tidal wave of ten thousand frenzied Centaurs..." A deathly, suffocating silence descended upon the command post once again. On a battlefield, a hundred highly disciplined men could exert the combat effectiveness of three hundred. But conversely, the panicked flight of a single coward could trigger a chain reaction that would cause a fortified defensive line of a thousand men to completely collapse.

Staring down an apocalyptic cavalry charge of that magnitude, these three hundred and sixty-two unruly recruits were a double-edged sword. They were a precious injection of fresh manpower, yes, but they were also the most volatile variable—the fatal weak point that could shatter the northern defensive line from the inside out. Every gaze in the room converged upon Soren.

They waited for their Lord—the man who had forged miracles from mud and blood—to issue the ultimate military directive that would dictate the survival of all 2, 384 souls in the territory. Soren's calm gaze swept past Fina's worried expression, finally settling upon the fallen noble knight standing nearby, whose fists were clenched white with tension. Felix.

"These three hundred and sixty-two recruits we absorbed yesterday..." Soren declared with absolute finality.

"Not a single one of them will see frontline combat! Transfer every last one of them to the rear echelon!" The moment the words left his mouth, a quiet ripple of shock and dismay swept through the commanders. One hundred Black-Steel Elites backed by two thousand second-line regulars against a tidal wave of ten thousand Centaurs! Their numbers were already disastrously disproportionate, and now their Lord was benching over three hundred prime, able-bodied men?!

"My Lord?" Talon, Commander of the Macedonian Phalanx, couldn't help but step forward, his voice laced with urgency.

"Even if we just hand them wooden pitchforks and stick them in the third rank as window dressing, it would at least bolster our numbers and visual momentum!"

"War is not a tavern brawl where victory goes to whoever brings the most warm bodies!" Soren straightened his posture, coldly carving the harsh reality of warfare into their minds.

"These recruits have not undergone our brutal disciplinary drills. They have never felt the absolute, life-saving security provided by our [Dark Silver Armor]."

"When ten thousand Centaurs charge at full tilt—when the very earth is shuddering beneath their boots, when they see the man next to them get skewered by a heavy lance—their fragile psychological defenses will shatter instantly!" Soren swept a stern gaze over his officers, deliberately slowing his cadence to let the weight of his words sink in.

"On the battlefield, a vastly superior enemy force is terrifying... but a sudden, chaotic rout from within your own ranks is absolutely fatal!"

"It only takes ten panicked recruits throwing down their weapons and fleeing to ignite a mass hysteria! That terror will spread like a plague! They will trample our own phalanx lines in their desperation to escape, freely exposing our undefended backs to the enemy's butchery."

"Therefore, I absolutely refuse to allow such an unstable, catastrophic hazard anywhere near my frontline!" However, there was a far deeper, more sinister reason—one Soren chose not to voice out loud. Honed through countless life-and-death crucibles as an elite special forces operative on Earth, his tactical instincts were currently screaming warnings in the back of his mind. Out of those three hundred and sixty-two fresh faces... who could guarantee that Orc-sympathizing spies hadn't slipped through the cracks?

Confining them to the rear wasn't just to protect the integrity of the frontline—it was to corral them into a single, tightly controlled zone for mass surveillance.

"Felix," Soren called out sharply.

"Here, My Lord!" Felix snapped to attention, taking a crisp step forward, his spine straight as a ramrod.

"You understand the unyielding honor of a knight, but you also know how to manage the common folk. I am handing all three hundred and sixty-two of these men over to your command! Issue them wheelbarrows and supply baskets. Give them no weapons! They have exactly one job: to act as the logistical lifeline between our underground storage tunnels and the frontline trenches, ferrying crossbow bolts and [Swamp Tubers]." Soren's eyes narrowed as he ruthlessly issued a standing execution order.

"You will monitor them personally as their Overseer. Once the battle begins, if any man attempts to flee, if anyone spreads cowardly, defeatist rhetoric, or if anyone makes suspicious moves to sabotage our supplies... you do not need to report it to me. You are to behead them on the spot! Can you do that, Knight Felix?"