Chương 74: 74：The Commander and the Priestess

"Thinks she can meddle with my army?" Leona sneered, holding up a hand to stop her Vice Commander, Sylvia, who was just about to offer her a washcloth and a basin of warm water.

"Leave the armor on. And don't bother with the water." A few minutes later, the tent flap was pushed aside. The moment Elena stepped into the command post... A stench so overpowering it could make a grown man vomit on the spot hit her like a physical blow! It was a nauseating cocktail of sour, rotting mud, the rancid green bodily fluids of Orcs, and the putrid stench of fermenting entrails.

The two squire knights trailing behind Elena immediately slapped their hands over their mouths and noses, gagging as they stumbled backward. Yet, Elena stood perfectly straight. The dim light from the braziers flickered erratically. There, slumped in the heavy commander's chair at the very center of the tent, sat Leona, her legs sprawled in a brazen, wide stance. Her steel plate armor was caked in a thick, wet layer of half-congealed Orc blood.

Wedged in the crevices of her breastplate was a furry, mangled chunk of flesh. Contrasting heavily with this macabre display was Leona's fiercely beautiful face—currently twisted into a mask of pure disdain. She didn't even bother to look Elena in the eye. Instead, she opened her mouth and crunched down hard on a rock-solid loaf of rye bread, which was visibly sporting patches of green mold. Smack, smack. She chewed loudly, letting crumbs tumble down her chin.

It was an unapologetic, blatant show of disrespect meant to establish dominance. Forcing down her revulsion at the stench, Elena adhered strictly to protocol and spoke up.

"Commander Leona, I am the newly appointed—""Shut it, Madam Priestess." Leona swallowed the throat-scratching lump of dry bread and raked her mocking gaze up and down Elena's immaculate, snow-white robes.

"This is the Misty Swamp. No one gives a damn about the red tape of your sanctuary. And we certainly don't need some useless piece of eye candy who spends her days chanting in a cathedral, only to hyperventilate the second she catches a whiff of blood." Leona stood up, deliberately bringing her aura of gore and death with her as she marched right up to Elena. The two women were nearly identical in height, stopping with their noses mere inches apart.

"You see those soldiers outside? They survived because they were willing to gnaw on grass roots in the mud with me."

"Does the Holy See actually think they can just toss some pretty woman our way to teach my men how to stay alive?" Leona raised a finger, jabbing it mercilessly toward Elena's collarbone.

"This place is built on slaughter. If you can't stomach the stench of Greenskin blood on my armor, the door is right behind you. Scurry back to your church before you get in the way of me fighting a war." Leona was actively bullying the seemingly fragile priestess, wielding her own repulsive state like a weapon to shatter the newcomer's psychological defenses. If Elena showed even a fraction of an ounce of disgust right now, she would never earn a shred of respect in this camp. However...

Leona's blood-caked finger came to an abrupt halt barely an inch away from Elena's pristine vestments. It wasn't because Leona held back. Rather, a sheer wall of silver light had manifested, blocking the intruding digit. There wasn't a single ripple of emotion in Elena's pale gold eyes. Not only did she refuse to take a single step back, but her eyelashes didn't even tremble. Her gaze, cold and unyielding, bored straight into Leona's provocative glare.

"It seems the Commander of the Crimson Moon Knights not only lacks respect for holy doctrine, but also suffers from a severe deficit in basic personal hygiene. Attempting to use such a cheap parlor trick to test a cleric's resolve... is frankly laughable." The moment the words left her lips, Elena slammed the base of her mithril staff heavily against the floor. VMM! Accompanied by a concussive pulse of mana, a blinding halo of silver-white light erupted outward, using her as the epicenter! [Purification]!

The raw, concentrated holy power swept through the entire tent. The pungent stench of blood and the nauseating odor of rotting flesh melted away like snow under a blazing sun. Within seconds, the foulness was entirely replaced by a crisp, cleansing breeze. But it didn't stop there. As the holy light washed over Leona's armor, the clumps of gore wedged in the crevices, the dried, blackened crusts of Orc blood, and even the green mold on her bread—all of it was subjected to the baptism of the Purifying Light.

The filth disintegrated into fine wisps of ash, cascading harmlessly to the ground! By the time the light faded, Leona's heavy plate armor had been polished to a brilliant, mirror-like shine. Ignoring Leona's stunned expression, Elena elegantly drew her staff back to her side.

"First, I am here on the direct orders of the Pope to provide divine support for these soldiers. I am no mere ornament."

"Second, I would ask the Commander not to mistake faith for weakness. Compared to the dark curses I face on a daily basis, your little intimidation tactic was less imposing than a child's tantrum." A muscle in Leona's cheek twitched. What an iron-willed Priestess of the Moon Goddess, she thought. She refuses to give an inch, taking me head-on without flinching! SLAM! Leona slammed her palms down on the desk, the explosive crack echoing in the tent. She let out a dark, furious laugh.

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"What? You think showing off your cute little purification spell proves anything? Congratulations, you can magically wash a suit of armor!"

"Can your holy doctrines kill? When an Orc's battleaxe is splitting open the skulls of your believers, are you going to kneel in the dirt and beg the Moon Goddess to spare them? Or are you going to take that glorified stick of yours and smash the Greenskin's brains in?"

"This is the military! Out here, the only thing that matters is how fast your blade can kill! We don't survive by reciting hypocritical prayers before bedtime!" She was relentless, determined to draw an absolute line in the sand between her military authority and the church's spiritual guidance right then and there. Elena narrowed her eyes, firing back without yielding an inch:"That is the narrow-minded perspective of a brute who knows nothing but mindless slaughter!

You've completely forgotten the fundamental reason why we take up the sword in the first place!"

"The Crimson Moon Knights exist to protect the thousands of innocent humans who still place their faith in the Moon Goddess, even in the most desperate of times!"

"They don't exist just so you can act like a rabid dog, drowning yourself in endless cycles of vengeance and butchery!"

"An army devoid of spiritual guidance—an army that fights solely to vent its rage and seek revenge—is no better than the tens of thousands of bloodthirsty Greenskins outside our gates who slaughter just to fill their bellies! Tell me, what makes you any different from them?" That struck a nerve. Leona's expression darkened drastically.

"Did you just compare us to those beasts?"

"It's easy for you to preach from your ivory tower! Have you ever seen the corpses of our raw recruits hoisted up on Orcish pikes?! In this damned swamp, if you don't kill, if you don't become a monster even crueler than the enemy, how do you expect to survive?!"

"It is precisely because the environment is so brutal that the salvation of the holy doctrines is necessary! It is the only thing keeping your souls from plummeting into the abyss!" Two exceptionally beautiful women, whose auras clashed as violently as fire and water, engaged in a venomous battle of words. Their conflicting ideologies struck against one another, sending metaphorical sparks flying.

Leona roared about the absolute ruthlessness of the battlefield, insisting that extreme violence was the only way to carve a bloody path through the surrounding forces of the Blackstone Warband. Meanwhile, Elena staunchly defended the teachings of the Church, arguing that slaughter without a moral baseline would ultimately lead to their own self-destruction. The ideological chasm between them was simply impossible to bridge at this point in time.

The very air in the tent grew scorching and tense under their relentless back-and-forth. In the end, neither could convince the other. Realizing that continuing this verbal spar would only deepen the rift between them, Elena's aggressive, unyielding aura suddenly receded like an outgoing tide.

"Debating this further is pointless, Commander. Time will prove me right. An exhausted army that has lost its reverence for the divine will not march much further." She smoothly reassumed her cool, ethereal poise, offering a slight, formal bow.

"Thank you for your...

'warm hospitality.' Now, if you'll excuse me, I will go unpack my baggage—which, as you say, is only fit for carrying scriptures." With that, Elena turned on her heel, leaving Leona with a view of her spotless, impeccably cold back as she exited the tent. CRASH! Leona punched the heavy oak desk, sending it flipping over. She glared daggers at the swaying tent flap, grinding her teeth.

"Stubborn zealot. She refuses to break." The dark crimson hues of dusk struggled to pierce through the perpetual fog of the Misty Swamp. Having quickly unpacked her belongings, Elena didn't hide away in her tent to chant scriptures, as Leona had cynically assumed she would. As the newly appointed army cleric, it was her duty to assess the true living conditions of this two-thousand-six-hundred-strong cavalry order on her very first day.

Trudging through the uneven, treacherous mud, she embarked on a solo inspection of the knight order's camp and defensive perimeter. When she had first arrived at the camp, the sudden spark of faith she had seen in the soldiers' eyes had brought her a fleeting sense of comfort. Now, however, as she calmly and meticulously evaluated their entire defensive array, shock and deep unease finally rippled across the tranquil surface of her eyes. Elena came to a halt beneath a watchtower at the edge of the encampment.

On the surface, the army's living conditions seemed barely passable. At the very least, they weren't dropping dead en masse from starvation or plague, as the higher-ups in the Royal Capital had predicted. On a stretch of sloped land that had been artificially leveled and packed down, two combat mages were panting heavily as they waved their staffs. They were repeatedly casting [Conjure Water], expending their mana to summon pure, fresh water just to irrigate the crops of Swamp Tubers buried in the soil.

A few heavy infantrymen had set up a campfire behind the barricades. They were currently trying to bake the moisture out of their armor over the flames, occasionally trading crude jokes and raucous laughter. It was undeniably true that Leona had managed to anchor her forces in this hostile environment through sheer force of will, demonstrating an incredible degree of tenacity. But to Elena's discerning eyes, all of this was nothing more than a superficial facade. They were merely delaying the inevitable!