Chương 81: 81：The Night Raid and the Frontal Assault

"We can't wait." Soren abruptly straightened his back, jabbing a finger onto the far side of the map.

"If Alaric's army flattens Withered Bone Heights first, Gul's head will end up as nothing more than a trophy dangling from the neck of his horse."

"I absolutely refuse to let someone else avenge Old Tom and little Jack!"

"Furthermore, Alaric's smuggled contraband is worth a fortune. That's a lucrative prize we have to claim for ourselves!" Soren shifted his gaze from the heavily guarded, treacherous mountain pass at the front, his eyes settling on a large, blank expanse at the rear of the map. There were no roads there. Meyer had deliberately marked the area with tight, wavy lines.

"Meyer, what kind of terrain is at the rear of the heights?" Soren asked, his voice low.

"My Lord! The back of the mountain is a near-ninety-degree vertical cliff! It is completely barren—nothing but heavily weathered shale, towering a full hundred meters high!" Meyer shook his head.

"Even an ape couldn't climb it. Gul and his orcs are so confident in that natural defense that they haven't posted a single guard. Whether it's an orc or a human, anyone trying to scale that wall in full armor would give out from sheer exhaustion before they even reached five meters. They'd fall and be smashed to a pulp."

"That only applies to ordinary men." A chilling smile slowly crept onto Soren's lips.

"As long as it's unguarded, it's the perfect infiltration point for a special operations strike!" Soren suddenly spun around, drawing his fine steel longsword in one smooth motion, pointing the blade straight out the door.

"Relay my orders!"

"Assemble sixty-four of our elite frontline heavy infantry!"

"Have them strip off all metal leg armor. They are to wear only their Black Iron half-plate to protect their vitals."

"Bring hemp ropes, poison-coated daggers, and short spears!"

"We are not waiting for tomorrow. Tonight, under the cover of the rain and mist..." Soren swept his gaze across the room, a palpable, suffocating pressure enveloping the entire command post.

"We are going to scale that ninety-degree cliff. Every single one of us!" Carrying dozens of pounds of armor and weaponry, free-climbing a hundred-meter, ninety-degree cliff blind in the middle of a stormy night? What an absolutely insane tactic! But Soren knew better. These sixty-four frontline soldiers had all been altered by the Basic Troll Serum. Combined with the modern rock-climbing and muscle-utilization techniques he had taught them, this seemingly impossible death trap was nothing short of an open highway!

"Once we breach the heights, we take no prisoners. We ask no questions."

"Kill every single one you see!"

"For our frontline vanguard, this battle will be an absolute slaughter. We will crush those greenskin bandits with overwhelming force."

"I want Gul's pig head placed squarely on the sacrificial altar of Greywater Village!" Meanwhile. A hundred miles away from the Mist Swamp, inside a border fortress of the Holy Halycon Empire. In stark contrast to the crude, damp environment of Greywater Village, this place was brilliantly illuminated. Inside a spacious hall draped with heavy red velvet carpets, several arm-thick whale oil candles burned steadily, emitting a faint, soothing scent of agarwood.

Behind a long table adorned with purple-gold reliefs sat a handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed young noble. It was the Commander of the Royal Griffon Knights and son of a Duke—Alaric. Wearing a perfectly tailored, gold-trimmed silk tunic, he idly twirled an agate goblet filled with a scarlet vintage. Standing below him was an elderly man draped in a purple, star-patterned robe. The Grand Mage of the Holy Halycon Empire, Valeriu.

"That mysterious unit causing such an uproar in the swamp—have we uncovered their background yet?" Alaric took a light sip of his wine.

"To answer you, Lord Commander," Valeriu bowed slightly, his bark-like, wrinkled face lined with solemnity.

"We intercepted and interrogated the orcs who luckily managed to escape the swamp. They faced a unit of humans clad in Black Iron heavy armor. The humans were swift, agile, and employed utterly unconventional tactics."

"They even breached the Blood Arena!"

"All signs indicate that the leader of this mysterious force is no ordinary man. This old servant believes..."

"Enough, Valeriu." Alaric impatiently cut off the Grand Mage's analysis with a cold sneer.

"Whether they are some nowhere-born bandits or the lingering, dying remnants of the Silvermoon Kingdom's defeated army... they killed a few low-born Black Iron orcs who only know brute force, and suddenly they're being rumored as gods."

"In the face of the crushing might of my Griffon Cavalry, these little tactics of playing in mud pits are nothing but a joke. By the way, where is my shipment?" Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Those are military arms intended to cross the checkpoint and be sold at a premium on the border black market. As long as I get my hands on that gold, my position in the Imperial Council will be..." Bang! The heavy oak doors were suddenly thrown open with tremendous force. A Royal Guard covered in blood stumbled and rolled into the hall, dragging a bloody trail across the expensive carpet.

"Lord Commander! A disaster!" The atmosphere in the hall plummeted to a freezing point. The guard lay sprawled on the floor, his body twitching.

"The... the smuggling convoy was ambushed... at the edge of Withered Bone Heights! Captain Beard is dead! The sixty accompanying elites were entirely wiped out!" Clang! The agate goblet in Alaric's hand smashed against the marble floor.

"Ambushed? On the edge of my territory?"

"Who was it?! The main orc host? Or the Silvermoon Kingdom's border guard?!"

"It... it was a band of bandit orcs entrenched in Withered Bone Heights! Their leader is named Gul! They not only hijacked the convoy... they also ate the bodies of our brothers..." Alaric's eyes widened to the point of tearing, his entire body trembling with rage.

"Gul? A bunch of filthy greenskin bandits who aren't even fit to be the Empire's watchdogs?!"

"Where is my shipment?! That was twelve whole carts of brand-new military longbows prepared for resale, and thirty large crates containing over ten thousand standard-issue arrows!" At these words, the usually composed Grand Mage Valeriu paled drastically. Those military longbows! Each one was crafted from the Empire's finest hornbeam wood, having undergone rigorous lamination processes. Paired with standard-issue arrows, they were lethal weapons capable of directly piercing scale armor from two hundred paces away!

If such a massive cache of armaments fell into the hands of even a disorganized band of orcs, it would instantly turn them into a terrifying retaliatory force.

"Lawless! Absolutely lawless!" Alaric drew his royal sword from his waist in a single, furious motion.

"Relay my orders! Immediately assemble two thousand heavy cavalrymen! Mobilize three Griffon squads!"

"I will personally lead the army to flatten Withered Bone Heights at the break of dawn tomorrow! I am going to rip out the intestines of that pig named Gul and wrap them inch by inch around his neck!" Valeriu hastily stepped forward, desperately blocking Alaric.

"You cannot, Lord Commander! Please appease your anger!"

"My Lord! Withered Bone Heights is a death trap! It only has a single, winding mountain path as narrow as a sheep's intestine! Our heavy cavalry won't be able to deploy their charging formations there!"

"Those cunning orcs hold the high ground, and now they possess the military longbows and piles of armor-piercing arrows you just lost!"

"If you order a frontal assault up the mountain, our soldiers will just become living meat shields for target practice!" Alaric violently shook off Valeriu's withered hand, the murderous intent in his eyes completely uncontainable.

"Does a proper knight of the Holy Halycon Empire fear a few hundred greenskins just because they can draw a bow?"

"So what if the terrain is difficult to climb? Then we pile bodies! Even if a thousand infantrymen have to die to pave the road, I will make those goods and these bandits disappear from this world!"

"My will shall be tomorrow's judgment! Go sound the assembly horn!" A layer of cold sweat broke out on Valeriu's back. He could clearly foresee that tomorrow, on the frontal assault of Withered Bone Heights, Alaric's brute-force tactics would inevitably pave the ground with a thick layer of knights' corpses... Withered Bone Heights. The rain did not extinguish the revelry inside the mountain stronghold. Instead, it allowed the stench of blood to ferment and grow even stronger throughout the summit camp.

Several partially devoured human heads had been skewered on sharpened wooden stakes by the orc bandits, tossed casually to the side. In the clearing at the very center of the stronghold sat the twelve heavy carriages they had plundered. Crash! Riiiip! Accompanied by the crisp sound of splintering wood, the orc leader, Gul, forcefully tore a thickened pine crate lid in half with his bare hands. Under the flickering, shifting light of the bonfire...

Rows of impeccably maintained military longbows lay quietly at the bottom of the crate. Beside it, in several other wide-open wooden crates, lay bundle after bundle of carefully wrapped, standard-issue armor-piercing arrows. The diamond-shaped arrowheads, forged through countless temperings, were so agonizingly sharp that just looking at them seemed to make one's eyes sting.