Chương 312: 312：The Empire's Naive Scraps

What met their eyes was not a formation of terrified human soldiers bracing for an attack. Over half a mile ahead, just outside the forward defensive line, massive numbers of Greywater Village logistics personnel, clad in thick [Padded Cotton Armor], were bustling back and forth through the mud, pushing wheelbarrows caked in blood and filth. And piled high at their feet were the gargantuan corpses of the five hundred Centaur vanguards who had just died in battle!

"Strip the meat clean! Don't waste the sinew on the bones! Chop it into blocks and throw it in the barrels!" The gruff, booming voice of Kyle, the Chief of Logistics, echoed jarringly across the desolate battlefield. Several nimble goblins were using iron tongs to brutally rip the heavy crossbow bolts out of the Centaur corpses. Meanwhile, human women and grizzled veterans wielded razor-sharp boning knives, mercilessly carving up the flesh and blood of the Centaurs' kin—right in front of a ten-thousand-strong army!

Beside these logisticians, over a hundred massive Direwolves were being held on leashes by the Wolf Cavalry. The beasts snapped their blood-soaked maws, viciously tearing into the corpses of the Centaur elites, emitting deep, satisfied rumbles from their throats. From time to time, the wolves would viciously fight over Centaur entrails or a mangled, severed head, dragging the gory prizes far across the mud!

A violent wave of sheer horror and agonizing humiliation erupted across the ten-thousand-strong Centaur formation. On the cruel continent of Aeresia, dying on the battlefield was a warrior's destiny. But to have their corpses publicly butchered like livestock—and even fed to wolves—was the ultimate, absolute desecration of Orcish dignity! It was a brilliantly ruthless psychological shock tactic!

It delivered one crystal-clear message to every single Centaur present: In the eyes of Greywater Village, you are not a terrifying alien army. You are nothing but fresh meat, delivered right to our doorstep to feed our pets!

"ROAR!" The blood rushed to Chieftain Heka's head. His chest heaved violently, the thick veins bulging so prominently on his neck they looked ready to burst. He was instantly consumed by blind, irrational fury!

"Soren! You despicable human beast! How dare you insult the great Centaur race!" Raising his spiked flail high into the air, Heka pointed it furiously at the Greywater Village defensive line and unleashed an earth-shattering roar:"Warriors of the Centaur tribe! Look at the massacre of your kin! This is a blood feud that taints our entire race!"

"I, Heka, swear to the Beast God! The moment we shatter that godforsaken line, I will butcher every single human male in Greywater Village! We will chain their women behind our horses and enslave them for generations to appease the souls of Urgar and our five hundred warriors!"

"KILL! KILL! KILL!" Provoked by this apocalyptic insult, the prior terror gripping the ten thousand Centaur warriors instantly ignited into a raging inferno of wrath. They thrust their heavy bows and javelins high into the air, erupting into deafening roars. The very earth trembled faintly beneath their bloodthirsty battle cries. However, in stark contrast to the explosive wrath of Heka and the rest of the tribe...

Vice-Chieftain Luke, holding his reins tight on the flank of the formation, didn't feel a shred of anger. Instead, he felt the blood in his veins turn entirely to ice. Cold sweat drenched his back as he stared at the heavy siege ballistas faintly visible atop the distant high ground, and the humans coldly executing their butchery in front of the trenches. Luke wasn't stupid. He understood all too well. A scene with such visceral, horrifying visual impact was undeniably orchestrated by the human commander!

It was a glaring, unmistakable provocation! Soren was purposely using this brutal method to enrage the Centaurs, baiting them into losing their rationality, forcing them to abandon any thought of flanking maneuvers, and goading them into a blind, suicidal frontal charge straight into a defensive line armed with endless poison spike-traps, repeating heavy crossbows, and siege engines!

"It's an open scheme... a death trap designed specifically to massacre us in droves..." Luke gripped his reins tightly, his heart consumed by dread. He had a sickening premonition. Heka's seemingly correct tactic of saturation bombardment might inflict some initial casualties, but this battle would absolutely not end easily. This gentle slope was destined to become an apocalyptic meat grinder, a dead zone where both sides would suffer catastrophic losses!

This battle would devolve into a brutal war of attrition—one so devastating it could completely bleed the entire Centaur race dry in this very mud! Meanwhile, within the Holy Halycon Empire. At the Northern Defensive Line Command Headquarters: Megalith Fortress. At the highest point of this citadel of war, howling winds drove massive snowflakes violently against the sturdy window frames of the watchtower. Alaric, the Commander of the Royal Griffon Regiment, stood with a deeply furrowed brow.

His gleaming plate armor, etched with the royal crest, still bore the mottled scars of battle—scars left behind when he fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Soren inside the Abysswater Keep City Lord's Manor, jointly repelling the Orc Alliance's elites. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Deploying ten thousand Centaur warriors, abandoning infantry and supply wagons, to execute a long-range blitzkrieg..." Alaric stared at the depression on the strategic map representing the Misty Swamp, his face fraught with anxiety. As an elite commander of the Empire, Alaric possessed razor-sharp tactical acumen.

"This completely violates the Orc Alliance's conventional military doctrine of slow, steady advancement." Alaric took a deep breath, sighing as he spoke to the several Griffon Knight officers beside him.

"The Centaurs are undeniably fast, but executing a multi-day blitzkrieg without logistics through a freezing winter swamp... even if they manage to reach the battlefield, their stamina will be completely overdrawn! Warchief Blackstone is a seasoned, cunning tactician; he absolutely knows this fatal flaw!"

"Yet he still did it! That only proves one thing..." Alaric raised his head, his thoughts drifting to the foreign friend he had shared a life-and-death struggle with.

"The battle at Abysswater Keep severed the Orcs' primary logistical lifeline. It forced Warchief Blackstone into a desperate corner! Soren's terrifying unconventional tactics and staggering rate of growth have genuinely terrified the Orc high command."

"Soren has become a target that Warchief Blackstone must absolutely obliterate, even if it means sacrificing an entire Centaur tribe to do so!" Fully grasping the catastrophic peril of the situation, Alaric was consumed by agonizing anxiety and profound camaraderie. He couldn't just stand by and watch the brother he had fought back-to-back with fall alone in the freezing mud of the Misty Swamp!

Just half an hour ago, he hadn't even bothered to don his helmet before charging into the command center of his father, Grand Duke Valentine. Dropping to one knee, he had begged the Grand Duke for authorization to personally lead the Royal Griffon Regiment and five thousand heavy cavalry into the Misty Swamp to rescue Greywater Village! However, the cold, calculating weight of national interest brutally crushed his impulse to save his friend.

"Alaric, put away your naive knightly romanticism!" his father, the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Northern Frontier, Grand Duke Valentine, had reprimanded him sternly.

"Do you think that is an imperial plain? That is the Misty Swamp—a death trap filled with miasma, venomous insects, and highly acidic rot-mud! It is the dead of winter! The moment our grand army abandons the main roads and enters that mire, the heavy cavalry will be completely bogged down, and our supply lines will fracture!"

Pointing a finger at him, the Grand Duke had laid bare his ruthless political calculation:"I have already ordered General Marr to dispatch fifty elite knights equipped with High-Tier Teleportation Scrolls to remain on standby."

"The absolute moment Greywater Village is trampled flat, when Soren is driven into an inescapable dead end, they will appear, save his life, and force him to swear absolute loyalty to the Empire!"

"That is the choice that aligns with the Empire's interests. But if you expect me to throw tens of thousands of the Empire's finest sons into that godforsaken mud to be buried alongside a foreign village? Impossible!" The fiery argument between father and son ended with Alaric being strictly confined to the fortress. In the present, Alaric could only rub his temples in agony. Fifty elites to pick up the scraps? Alaric felt a bitter, mocking irony swell in his chest. His father didn't understand Soren at all.

A man who implemented an absolute safety net for disabled veterans, a man who valued the lives of ordinary soldiers and commoners far more than those of nobles... how could such a man ever abandon his people while his territory was being slaughtered, just to selfishly step onto a teleportation array?

"Soren will not leave. He will draw that refined steel longsword of his, stand before the barricades of Greywater Village, and fight until he bleeds out every last drop of his blood." Alaric picked up the cup of strong rum on the table and downed it in a single gulp. The burning liquid seared his throat, but it could not dispel the absolute, freezing chill settling into his heart. In the eyes of an orthodox military commander like Alaric, the impending clash in the Misty Swamp couldn't even be called a war.

It would be a one-sided massacre with a predetermined outcome. He understood the apocalyptic power of a Centaur charge. Ten thousand Centaurs... it would only take one dense volley of arrows and a single mass collision, and a Greywater Village completely devoid of stone walls would be annihilated in a matter of minutes. And what did Soren have in his hand? Just over two thousand ragtag troops! The vast majority of them were newly recruited steppe barbarians and women assigned to logistics!

Two thousand against ten thousand Centaurs. How do you fight that? There was absolutely zero chance of winning!