Chương 65: 65：The Magic-Class Talent

"Got guts. Everyone, form up behind the heavy armor elites. Don't fall behind." Soren drew the longsword at his waist, angling the blade due east.

"All troops, listen up! Our target is the skirmish zone due east. Maintain strict silence. Double time, march!" The mixed force of over a hundred men slithered forward like a massive, pitch-black python, rushing silently toward the flames of war. … One kilometer away, at Sun-Baked Gully. It was a rare stretch of dry, low-lying terrain within the Misty Swamps.

Flanked by steep dirt banks overgrown with carnivorous plants and slick moss, its center was a ravine of dark brown, hardened earth that rarely saw standing water. It was shaped like a massive pocket. Soren kept low. Like a panther lurking in the shadows, he crawled soundlessly to the edge of the western cliff overlooking the gully. Behind him, the sixty-four heavy armor elites, Renn, Buck, and the others lay flat in a patch of waist-high toxic ferns, not daring to breathe. The ground trembled faintly.

Peering over the cliff edge, Soren activated [Eagle Eye Perception], taking in the entire battlefield layout below. The scene that filled his vision immediately made him furrow his brow. Along the rock-strewn dirt path of the gully, roughly two hundred fully armed Black Iron Orcs were advancing with heavy, methodical steps. Their vanguard consisted of heavily armored guards wielding studded iron shields, followed by a dense formation of assault troops leveling refined steel spears.

Unlike their usual mindless, bloodthirsty charges, these two hundred orcs maintained a tight, disciplined V-formation, steadily pressing deeper into the ravine like a closing noose. Their prey, however, was woefully mismatched. It was a small squad of barely twenty people. These humans were emaciated, clad in a patchwork of ragged furs. Their weapons were a mismatched assortment of sharpened sticks, rusted woodchoppers, and crude, homemade shortbows.

Right now, this ragged band was being relentlessly herded by the orc heavy infantry, fleeing desperately toward the dead end of the gully. Whenever exhaustion caused a straggler to slow down even a half-step, an iron spear hurled from the orc rear guard would mercilessly impale them through the chest. They would scream and collapse into a pool of their own blood. This is way too abnormal. Soren recognized who the fugitives below were.

These ragged individuals were part of the human guerrilla bands unique to the Misty Swamps. They were originally border refugees—survivors who had lost their families and homes to the orcs' devastating raids. Driven by the sheer will to survive and a thirst for vengeance, they had banded together. Normally, these guerrillas only dared to operate in the shadows—digging pitfalls or tossing feces and toxic weeds into the supply carts of the orc caravans.

The mighty Orc Alliance had always scoffed at these ragged militias who lacked even proper weapons, at most dispatching a few dozen-man Gnoll warbands to clear them out. But now? Two hundred elite, heavy-infantry Black Iron Orc regulars had been deployed, utilizing strict military formations just to hunt down twenty beggar-soldiers? The cost-to-benefit ratio made absolutely no sense! This isn't a routine sweep. It's a highly targeted hunt. Soren instantly grasped the crux of the situation.

It meant there was a massive catch hiding within this battered group of refugees! This had to be the "Magic-Class Talent" the Warlord System had detected! Beside him, Gary gripped his dagger tightly. Watching his fellow humans being slaughtered below, his eyes practically spat fire. He threw rapid tactical hand signals at Soren, asking for permission to flank and engage immediately. Soren gave a cold, decisive shake of his head.

At this distance, charging infantry straight down the steep slope would only end with them being skewered like meat on a spit by two hundred highly trained orc pikemen. Soren's hands flashed through the air, issuing a series of crisp hand signals. The silent orders rippled down the line. In unison, the sixty-four black-armored elites unslung the ash-grey javelins strapped to their backs. Maintain concealment. Use the vegetation and the reverse slope to break your silhouettes.

No one moves or stands without my direct command. Let them draw closer. We draw them into the choke point below before we strike. … At the center of the battlefield, despair smothered the guerilla squad like the suffocating miasma of the swamp.

"Hold formation! Do not give your backs to the pikemen! Crisscross your movements and fall back behind the boulder cluster on the left!" Amidst the falling refugees, a hoarse roar desperately directed the remaining thirteen or fourteen survivors. The voice belonged to a man. He wore a tattered robe, its hem thoroughly soaked in mud and dried blood. Yet, one could still faintly make out the silver arcane runes once embroidered into the fabric.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. His pale fingers gripped a walnut staff, the focusing crystal at its tip riddled with spiderweb cracks. This was the guerrilla captain, Victor.

"Sluggish Mire!" Victor abruptly halted and spun around. Biting his lip until it bled, he spat the blood onto his left hand—the hand gripping his staff—and rapidly chanted three harsh syllables. The cracked crystal atop his staff flared with a sickly, dim yellow light. Instantly, the solid earth beneath the charging vanguard of orcs liquefied, transforming into a massive, thigh-deep patch of viscous muck. Caught entirely off guard, five or six of the most aggressive heavy-armored orcs plunged heavily into the mire.

Their flawless formation tore open for a brief second.

"Go! Move, now!" Wringing out the very last drops of his mana, Victor bought his companions a precious ten meters of breathing room. Victor gasped for air, his tattered robe whipping in the wind. His gaze shot past the mire, pinning itself to the rear of the orc formation. Sitting astride a massive, plate-armored Direwolf was an orc officer. He wore a blood-red cape, and a terrifying, deep scar was carved diagonally across his right cheek. The Blackstone Vanguard Commander, Karl!

The very instant Victor laid eyes on that hideous visage, a blazing inferno of hatred threatened to completely incinerate his sanity. Victor was never meant to be a refugee. He had been the youngest and most extraordinarily talented Silver-rank Mage Commander assigned to the Silvermoon Kingdom's Third Defensive Line. His mentor, a highly revered Royal Grand Magus, had been escorting a group of the Kingdom's refugees when they blundered into the range of an Orcish Anti-Magic Totem.

To save the civilians, the Grand Magus had forcibly activated a spatial scroll, completely draining his mana reserves in the process. And that was when this piece of orcish filth, Karl, led his troops to intercept them. The elderly mage had been dragged behind a wolf until he died, his head sadistically severed as a trophy. Blinded by his fury, the young and hot-blooded Victor had defied direct military orders.

He had taken his elite mage battalion and charged headlong into the Misty Swamps, intent on hunting Karl down. But it was nothing more than a venomous trap set by Karl. In the ambush at Soul-Severing Valley, a torrential rain of rolling logs and poisoned arrows coated in anti-magic serum slaughtered dozens of the most gifted young mages under his command. Only Victor managed to escape, his life bought by the desperate, sacrificial rearguard action of his subordinates.

Upon his return, he was stripped of his rank and honor. Branded with the crime of "Incompetent Command and Squandering the Kingdom's Future," he was exiled, reduced to the status of an unforgivable refugee. That battle had shattered Victor's pride, but it had also forged his current, ironclad endurance. I cannot let my impulses take over again. I won't be the reason these people die too. Victor's fingernails dug into his staff until they bled.

He forcibly swallowed the insane urge to charge forward and drag Karl down to hell with him. Shielding the remnants of his refugee band—people he had relied on for survival for the past six months—he threw out weak, rudimentary wind blades to delay the enemy as they scrambled backward. Finally, they threw themselves behind a cluster of massive boulders at the very bottom of Sun-Baked Gully—directly into the kill zone Soren was observing from above. Their retreat was entirely cut off.

It was a dead end shaped like a horseshoe, backed by a cliff face tens of meters high. Twelve blood-soaked refugees collapsed helplessly behind the massive rocks.

"Captain..." One of the refugees, shivering, reached into the quiver on his back. His fingers scraped uselessly against the bottom. His face went chalk-white.

"I'm out of arrows. I don't have a single one left." And it wasn't just arrows. Victor squeezed his eyes shut. His walnut staff let out a mournful crack, and the low-grade mana crystal at its tip crumbled into a pile of fine ash. His internal mana pool was as barren as a century-old dry well. He couldn't wring out enough mana to sustain even a basic illumination spell. Just ahead, the metallic grinding of heavy armor drew closer with every step. The two hundred Black Iron Orcs halted a hundred meters away.

A forest of spears sealed off the boulder cluster's only exit. Not even a fly could slip through.

"Victor! I have searched for you for a very long time!" Over the snarling of the Direwolves, the orc commander, Karl, goaded his mount to the front of the ranks. A cruel, mocking grin twisted his hideous face—the look of a cat playing with a cornered mouse. Karl purposefully slowed his movements. From a pouch draped over his saddle, he casually withdrew an object. It was a bone ornament, dangling from a mithril chain. Victor's pupils dilated to their absolute limits!