Chương 52: 52：The Monster Named Soren

"My Lord, my family was hanged for treason by the kingdom's corrupt officials." Fina Hawthorne's face was pale, but her gaze was resolute.

"I, Fina Hawthorne, swear upon my life to dedicate all my knowledge unreservedly to you. I will obey your every command!"

"Excellent." Soren turned and tossed a few messily inscribed stone tablets in front of her.

"From now on, you are the Quartermaster of Greywater Village. Sort out this ledger of a mess for me." Hundreds of miles away, deep within the Misty Swamp, lay the forward command center of the Orc Alliance: Bloodfang Fortress. Built upon a circular cliffside, this massive military stronghold had its outer walls adorned with the hanging skulls of humans. At this moment, inside the central Warchief's Hall—a cavernous chamber capable of holding over a thousand people—the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense.

Warchief Blackstone sat imposingly upon his central throne. Thump! A heavy black-iron boot viciously caved in the chest of a green-skinned orc messenger. Crack! Amidst the sickening crunch of shattering ribs, the messenger violently spewed a mouthful of blood. He flew back over a dozen meters like a broken ragdoll, slamming into a stone pillar before sliding to the floor. He wasn't dead, but he wouldn't be getting up again.

"Say that again?!" Warchief Blackstone shot to his feet. His massive four-meter-tall frame unleashed a roar so ferocious it set the braziers hanging from the hall's ceiling swinging violently. Down below, several Orcish Legion Commanders in charge of overseeing the war effort dropped to one knee in terror, cold sweat pouring down their faces. Bracing himself, one of the commanders shakily repeated the disastrous news:"Warchief... Shatterbone Pass... has fallen."

"Of the five hundred Black-Iron elites stationed in the inner keep, over a hundred and sixty are dead. Every single officer, including the Battalion Commander, had their heads blown off. The rest panicked and routed into the night."

"The heavy Kodo supply caravan passing through the pass was completely wiped out. The two newly forged siege trebuchets and all our stockpiles of alchemical fire oil were hijacked..."

"And... the eighty-odd goblin blacksmiths working in the pass have all defected alongside them..." Warchief Blackstone's massive chest heaved violently. He gripped a decorative femur bone next to his throne so hard that the veins on the back of his hand bulged. Fury! Heartache! Humiliation! Five hundred elites! two siege trebuchets assembled at enormous cost! Those were strategic trump cards specifically prepared to raze the human fortresses to the ground next spring!

Not to mention the precious food supplies and the goblin craftsmen. All of it, just evaporated into thin air from their heavily guarded rear lines?! Warchief Blackstone roared, "Who did this?! Did the Royal Knights of the Silvermoon Kingdom drop from the sky? Or did the Mystics of the Holy Halycon Empire unleash a forbidden spell?!" Right at that moment. A layer of pale-gray frost suddenly condensed upon the marble floor outside the hall. The temperature plummeted.

A surge of pure dark magic rippled, distorting the air.

"Quell your anger, Great Warchief." A cold, hoarse voice echoed through the hall, sounding like a chilling wind blowing straight out of the depths of hell. Shadow Priest Zagar drifted through the grand doors in the form of a floating, purplish-black spectral mass. His physical body had been outsmarted by Soren at the Sunken Bone Shallows, his chest completely pierced through. Right now, he lacked even the mana to condense human facial features, only managing to barely maintain the blurry outline of a demonic skull.

Zagar floated to the foot of the throne. With a voice suppressing endless resentment and malice, he began to report his final findings to Warchief Blackstone—results traced back using the remnants of his soul.

"It was not the Royal Knights, nor was it a company of Mystics."

"I have investigated thoroughly. Everything was the work of a single man."

"The one who shot and wounded your arm is a Captain of the First Vanguard Battalion under the Silvermoon Kingdom's Crimson Moon Knights. His name is Soren." Soren. Warchief Blackstone narrowed his eyes, chewing over the name. He had never heard of it. A mere human Captain? Zagar's soul-fire flickered violently as he continued.

"That is not all, Warchief."

"The hundred-man heavy escort that was guarding the High Shaman previously? They were completely wiped out at Reed Cove by him using a combination of poison and ambushes."

"During the deathmatch at the Sunken Bone Shallows, he used the mud pits to kill two whole Sons of Titan, and my physical body was destroyed by his schemes."

"And the night raid on Shatterbone Pass last night... he was the mastermind behind it all!" Boom! These words exploded like thunder in the minds of Warchief Blackstone and every Orcish general in the hall. The Warchief, supreme commander of a hundred-thousand-strong Orcish army, completely lost his kingly composure. With one kick, he shattered the massive stone table in front of him. One man?

A human with the measly rank of Captain had orchestrated a string of staggering victories that would be etched into the Orcs' pillar of shame forever?! This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it He slaughtered a hundred of his Black-Steel Orcs! Butchered a High Priest! Massacred Sons of Titan! Eradicated a military pass in the dead of night! He even heavily wounded him—the commander of a hundred thousand troops—from a thousand meters away!

What was even more terrifying was Zagar's final revelation: following this Soren was a paltry squad of sixty-five ordinary soldiers who didn't even wear heavy armor! This was an earth-shattering mockery of the entire Orc Alliance!

"Zagar!" Warchief Blackstone, resembling an enraged lion, glared at the hovering shadow with bloodshot eyes and demanded on the spot:"You are my Chief Priest! Yet I find myself doubting your intelligence and assessments!"

"Tell me! What kind of monster is this Soren?!"

"Should I immediately deploy five thousand—no! I will deploy ten thousand elite frontline infantry from Bloodfang Fortress, mobilize all our siege engines, and flatten that wretched place called Greywater Village! I'll carve the meat off this Soren piece by piece to feed my direwolves!" The Warchief's furious roar reverberated through the hall. Zagar fell silent for a moment. He was incredibly arrogant by nature.

Possessing shadow magic and superior intellect, he had always viewed ordinary, magicless humans as inferior creatures. But right now, faced with this bloody string of intel, he was forced to take the man named Soren seriously. However, to save face over having his physical body destroyed, the prideful Zagar absolutely refused to admit that Soren's tactical prowess was operating on a completely untouchable dimension. Zagar's spectral voice forcibly sharpened as he argued, "Warchief!"

"No! That Soren is nothing to worry about!"

"I have already seen through his tricks. His troop numbers are pitifully small. While their combat discipline is strong, they rely entirely on the Misty Swamp's dense fog and impassable mud to execute sneak attacks!"

"They are like rats hiding in a gutter, only daring to bite from the shadows! At best, they are a localized tactical nuisance!"

"Drag them out into the sunlight, and with their lack of magical countermeasures, any random high-tier spell would crush them into meat paste!" Though Warchief Blackstone was furious, as the commander of a massive army, his rationality hadn't been entirely burned away by his rage. A hellish topographical map of the Misty Swamp instantly surfaced in his mind. Ten thousand Black-Iron Orc elites, each wearing over a hundred pounds of heavy armor.

If they were to march deep into the swamp to hunt down a few dozen ghost-like humans... It meant his massive army wouldn't be able to fan out into proper formations.

They would be forced into a single-file line along narrow, treacherous paths; It meant they would need at least sixty supply wagons a day just for rations, wagons that would inevitably be swallowed by the mud along the way; Worse still, during a half-month march, the highly toxic miasma, impossible-to-guard-against venomous insects, and two-headed demonic crocs would cause horrifying non-combat casualties!

Before they even caught a glimpse of Soren's shadow, two or three thousand of his ten-thousand-strong army could drop dead from dysentery and trench foot! Sacrificing the logistics of half his main army just to exterminate sixty men was a strategically idiotic move. Gritting his teeth, Warchief Blackstone sank back into his throne.

"Then tell me! Are we supposed to just sit and watch as these rats continue to run amok in my rear?!" Zagar keenly caught the Warchief's hesitation and struck while the iron was hot.

"Warchief, anger will blind you. We must temporarily set aside our personal vendetta against this Soren!" He drifted toward a map of the human border defenses hanging in the center of the hall.

"Look here. The Orc Alliance's true strategic objective right now is a full-scale invasion. It is the complete destruction of the human faction's command hubs!" A chilling light erupted from the eye sockets of Zagar's spectral form as he proposed his plan to the Warchief.

"Hand over the remaining eight Sons of Titan to me!"

"I will immediately use my soul-arts to temporarily possess a host and lead the squad personally. We will leave this damn muddy swamp altogether!"

"We will bypass the border guards entirely and execute decapitation strikes directly against the front-line military high command of the two nations bordering the Misty Swamp: the Silvermoon Kingdom and the Holy Halycon Empire!"

"Once those human commanders and legion generals die, their border defenses will instantly collapse into infighting and chaos!"

"This is the strategic priority that will determine the outcome of the entire war!" Zagar turned back to Warchief Blackstone, his tone laced with cruelty and disdain.

"As for that puny sixty-five-man squad playing farmer in Greywater Village?"

"Once the front lines collapse and your great army pushes forward to take complete control of the Storm Rift Fortress..."

"By then, our logistical pressures will be vastly relieved. You can effortlessly dispatch a ten-thousand-man legion and wipe Greywater Village off the map as an afterthought."