Chương 60: 60：Muddying the Waters

"Don't get bogged down! In a desperate melee against a phalanx of hundreds of heavily armored troops, staying on open ground is a death sentence!" Soren remained utterly calm. In an instant, he deduced the optimal strategy: muddy the waters and storm their most defenseless zone!

"To the stands!" Soren shot forward like a loosed arrow, skimming low across the ground. Facing two spiked maces swinging right at his face, he didn't even attempt to parry. Instead, his body contorted at an impossible angle. Like a slippery eel, his chipped blade slid smoothly through the gaps at the collars of the orcs' black-iron armor. Squelch! Squelch! Two geysers of blood erupted into the air. Renn followed closely behind.

With a brutal sweep of his hardened elbow, he struck an orc guard, warping the helmet and snapping the spine within. Pushing off with his right foot, Soren vaulted three meters into the air. The two blood-drenched figures, like a pair of ravenous wolves, crashed directly into the elevated, circular viewing galleries where the orc nobles were gathered! The orcs occupying these stands were all figures of status—heads of merchant conglomerates, shaman apprentices, or overseers on leave from the frontlines.

To flaunt their wealth and showcase their prestige, they wore exquisite silks, heavy furs, and thick golden necklaces. The one thing they weren't wearing was a single piece of heavy armor! Slash! With a single strike, Soren sheared off the top half of a fat-headed orc merchant's skull. Crimson blood, mixed with white brain matter, sprayed directly onto the face of the screaming female orc companion beside him.

Spinning around, Soren unleashed a vicious kick, sending a blazing brazier used for roasting meat flying through the air. Red-hot coals and sparks rained down upon the crowd of hedonistic orc nobles. In an instant, the stands turned into a fiery purgatory! The orc aristocrats were terrified out of their wits. Wailing and shrieking, they scrambled backward, shoving and trampling over one another. Severed limbs flew in all directions beneath Soren's precise and merciless sword strikes.

Soren was systematically manufacturing sheer terror. With this single move, the command structure of the arena's orc guards utterly collapsed. Down below, the five hundred heavy black-iron guards found themselves caught in a horrific dilemma.

"Stop! Do not cast the [Chain Lightning] scroll! You'll hit the Overseer!"

"Heavy javelin throwers, lower your weapons! You'll skewer Lord Budak like a kebab!" Bloodshot-eyed and desperate, the Guard Commander stood in the center of the sandy arena, roaring orders. With their primary military objective suddenly shifting to "ensure the survival of the nobles in the stands," these formidable black-iron guards were completely hamstrung. Their once-prized area-of-effect magic scrolls and heavy weapons capable of easily crushing human bones were now nothing but useless props.

Gripping their weapons, they were forced to pack themselves like sardines onto the already overcrowded stairways leading up to the stands, completely unable to form an effective defensive formation to corner the two humans. Now's the time! Soren weaved through the chaotic stands like a butterfly fluttering through a thicket. His eagle-like gaze had long since locked onto the two greatest military threats to their breakout. The [Magical Sentry Towers] standing atop the walls.

A high-orc shaman apprentice was frantically trying to activate the eerie green detection crystal at the pinnacle of the tower, attempting to lock onto Soren's movements. Soren let out a cold snort and hurled his chipped, broken sword with the vicious force of a javelin! Thwack! The broken blade pierced straight through the shaman apprentice's throat, pinning him to the tower's pillar.

Soren then sprinted up the wall, backhanded a burning torch from its sconce, and smashed it forcefully against the core wooden pillar supporting the tower's peak. The pillar splintered and snapped. As the precious magical detection crystal plummeted, Soren brought his boot down, flawlessly crushing it into fine powder. The eerie green light flickered and died. The arena's magical eye had been gouged out!

On the other side, under Soren's covering distraction, Renn tore into the heavy ballista array at the far end of the right-side stands like a raging whirlwind. The operator in charge of the winch hadn't even drawn his scimitar before Renn snapped his neck with a brutal sweeping kick. Renn grabbed the refined-steel ballista bolts, each as thick as a baby's arm. Instead of loading them, he shoved them horizontally directly into the gaps of the wooden mechanism's massive gears, using them as locking pins.

With a powerful wrench, the refined steel jammed the gear teeth. Crack! The transmission gears of the siege ballista shattered completely! In mere moments, the duo had utterly eradicated both the high-ground bombardment threat and the anti-stealth detection systems. Meanwhile, down in the human POW encampment.

The death row prisoners, previously numb and consumed by despair, had witnessed firsthand how that mud-caked human had beaten an arrogant orc centurion into a bloody pulp, and how he was now butchering those high-and-mighty orc nobles like worthless weeds. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Once a single, faint spark falls into a dead forest, it erupts into an unstoppable, blazing wildfire!

Even the lowest of slaves harbored a primal, wild instinct for survival in their bones.

"Those green-skinned swine are too scared to shoot! They're afraid of hitting the nobles!"

"This is our chance! Kill them!" A veteran prisoner, his body covered in whip scars, erupted with a ferocious, ghoul-like red glint in his eyes. He had no weapon. Using nothing but his bare shoulder, he ruthlessly slammed into the side of the leg of an orc overseer who was standing there dazed, unable to fire his bow. The two tumbled to the ground. The veteran completely abandoned all defense. Opening his mouth wide, revealing a row of yellowed teeth, he viciously bit down onto the tip of the orc overseer's nose!

He violently tore it off, ripping away skin and flesh! Dozens of prisoners threw themselves at the nearest orc wardens like rabid dogs. It didn't matter how vast the gap in strength was. It didn't matter if it took several men just to desperately pin down a single orc's leg, or using their fingernails to gouge out their eyeballs, or grabbing rocks from the sandy arena floor to smash into the orcs' groins. Blood, agonizing screams, savage biting... Even as the interior of the arena descended into absolute rioting...

Outside, amidst the thick fog of the [Mist Swamp]. Gary, who had long been hidden in the rocky crags a hundred meters away, possessed an innate intuition for traps. In his vision, details that were imperceptible to the naked eye—subtle disturbances in the soil, the faint scent of acidic dust lingering in the air—were crystal clear.

"Move out! Step exactly where I step!" Gary half-crouched as he navigated the terrain, like a lone wolf prowling through a viper's nest.

"Under the second dead tree to the front left—cut it!" Snip! The tripwire for a venomous vine buried in the mud was severed.

"Ten paces ahead, those three human bones are painted with [Wither Burst Runes]. Go around them, and don't touch the shadows!" This trap zone, laid by a high-level shaman, was full of glaring flaws in the eyes of a master scout like him. In a mere twenty seconds, an attack path leading straight to the arena's main gate was completely cleared of traps! After confirming the safe route, the sharpshooter Ein raised his longbow, his gaze piercing and cold.

"Lord Soren's orders: Ignite the fires, cut off their vision!"

"Load incendiaries! Loose!" The sixty-four elites lying in ambush sprang into action. They didn't charge out into melee combat. Instead, they lit dark-grey short spears wrapped in rags soaked with alchemical oil, and hurled them furiously toward the wooden watchtowers on the arena's perimeter, the hay stores used for feeding war beasts, and the sharpened palisades lining the outer walls. Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Over sixty long tongues of fire tore through the mist.

The flames, fueled by alchemical oil, landed on the swamp timber. Fwoosh! In an instant, a roaring blaze surged into the heavens, illuminating the entire darkened sky. The moment the fires ignited, billowing, acrid black smoke tumbled inward like an erupting volcano, flooding over the walls into the bloody arena! Deep within the arena, the Orc Guard Commander was just preparing to regroup his guards to slaughter the two men in the stands.

But as he turned his head and looked through the gap in the arena's dome, all he saw was a massive conflagration outside, staining the entire horizon a vicious red. A thick wave of black smoke hit him, causing him to cough violently. But worse than that, from within that heavy, dark smokescreen came the highly oppressive, perfectly synchronized marching of heavy infantry.

In reality, this was the echo intentionally produced by the sixty-four warriors—each possessing extreme physical prowess after drinking Troll Serum—stomping heavily outside.

"Damn it! The magical eye has been destroyed, and the outer trap perimeter didn't make a sound! Where the hell did these enemies come from?" Cold sweat instantly soaked through the Guard Commander's fur. In his mind, to silently dismantle a high-orc shaman's traps, combined with the towering inferno outside and the distinct sound of hundreds of armored troops marching... It could only mean one thing: the elite vanguard of the human regular army had arrived!

"All forces, fall back! Do not pursue! Abandon the outer perimeter! Withdraw to the stand corridors and hold the high ground to the death! Protect the Overseer!" This was the most terrifying aspect of Soren's intellect. He had forced the Orc Guard Commander's hand, compelling him to focus entirely on protecting the orc nobles, far too terrified to charge out and engage the enemy. At the exact moment the dense smoke poured into the arena floor.

Soren used the veil of the smog to vault effortlessly down from the stands.