Chương 86: 86：A Massive Windfall

Soren stared at the gleaming arrowhead, his voice growing increasingly cold.

"From a hundred paces away, this type of arrowhead can pierce right through a charging orc—skin, bone, and all—pinning them to the ground as easily as punching through wet paper!" Listening to Soren's breakdown and imagining hundreds of these heavy arrows raining down to tear apart an orc formation, a thrill ran down the soldiers' spines, quickly followed by a surge of wild ecstasy. The glaring weakness that had always plagued Greywater Village—a lack of ranged units—was perfectly remedied in this very moment!

This was the overwhelming firepower and range advantage they so desperately needed! However, the surprises were far from over. As Soren ventured into the deepest recesses of the cellar, he caught sight of a modest-sized chest made of ironwood, secured by six or seven heavy cast-iron padlocks. It was undoubtedly Gul's private stash. Soren raised a brow. Drawing his longsword, he brought the heavy pommel crashing down! Clang! The cast-iron lock cores shattered upon impact. He violently threw the heavy lid open.

A sudden, dazzling luster cut through the gloom of the dark cellar. Hiss! Sharp intakes of breath echoed from the soldiers around him. The large chest was packed to the brim. Inside sat neatly categorized sacks bulging with standard currency issued by the Silvermoon Kingdom. Tens of thousands of silver coins stamped with the crescent moon emblem spilled out, shimmering like a river of silver stars within the chest.

And right in the center of this radiant silver sea sat several pouches filled with pale-gold Silvermoon coins! This was the universally recognized hard currency across the entire continent! Currently, Greywater Village's economy relied entirely on a primitive barter system.

Whether it was replenishing the dwindling iron ore at Old Cook's forge, amassing the grain reserves necessary to take in refugees and expand their population, or even greasing the palms of corrupt Silvermoon Kingdom bureaucrats like Viscount Blake in the future—Soren had constantly been plagued by a sheer lack of starting capital. But now, a massive windfall sat right in front of him!

The immense fortune Gul had hoarded over the years by slaughtering smugglers and raiding border caravans had just fallen right into Soren's lap. With this staggering amount of gold and silver safely transported back to Greywater Village, Soren would finally have the capital to open up trade! Soren let out a hearty laugh as he slammed the chest shut. He turned and barked an order to the awestruck Gary.

"Gary!"

"Here, My Lord!"

"Return to the Greywater Village territory at once!"

"Fetch Cavalry Captain Buck! Tell him to pull all ninety-three direwolves out of the fields immediately and hitch them to our largest hauling carts! They are to ride through the night to Drybone Heights!"

"I'm going to strip this place down to the last feather and haul it all back to Greywater!"

"Yes, My Lord!" Gary snapped a crisp military salute before shooting off into the rainy night like a loosed arrow. A few hundred meters away from the sheer cliffs behind Drybone Heights lay a dense birch forest. Although the torrential rain had washed away the toxic miasma clinging to the swamp's surface, the black, humus-rich mud still gave off a foul, acidic stench.

Deep within this festering mire—a place even wild beasts refused to tread—a pair of cloudy eyes hovered just above the muck, locked onto the distant precipice of Drybone Heights. It was a scrawny, hunched goblin. He was slathered head to toe in a viscous slime to ward off venomous insects, with more than half of his body submerged beneath the highly acidic muck—sludge potent enough to burn straight through human skin.

But the goblin remained unharmed, protected by his species' innate racial trait: immunity to acidic swamps. At this moment, the goblin's sharp teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Clack-clack-clack. Even as foul mud seeped into his nostrils, he didn't dare breathe out too heavily. Because for the past hour, lying perfectly still and relying on his race's superior night vision, he had borne witness to a massacre straight out of a horror story!

This goblin belonged to another faction hiding deep within the Misty Swamp. He had originally been dispatched by his chieftain to spy on Gul's bandit crew after hearing rumors of their sudden wealth, hoping to find an opportunity to skim some of the fat for his own gang. But what had he just witnessed? A mere sixty human infantrymen—lacking even heavy warhorses—had scaled a hundred-meter vertical cliff that would make a monkey shudder.

And they had done it bare-handed, hauling heavy steel weapons, looking as casual as if they were taking a stroll in the park! Then came their relentless, shield-wall advance. The sickening, muffled thuds of halberds puncturing lungs. Short spears turning massive, muscular orcs into mere meat targets, pinning them in bloody rows directly into the mud. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

But what truly shattered the goblin's courage was the man leading them—the dark-haired human. He had watched that man give a single, unblinking command, ordering his heavy infantry to butcher the kneeling, pleading orc bandits as easily as slaughtering pigs! In the end, even the notoriously brutal bandit leader, Gul, had his head cleanly lopped off by that human—a man half his size. His blood had painted the dirt.

The goblin buried the lower half of his face deeper into the mud, his heart hammering against his ribs like a war drum. His terror was so absolute that his body reacted violently; even his sphincter spasmed in fright. Out of those sixty-odd humans, not a single one broke formation from taking an injury! he thought frantically. Too terrifying! Where the hell did this monstrous private army come from? Following the initial shock and dread, a profound sense of relief washed over the goblin.

Gul's vile crew of orc bandits had always relied on their numbers to bully, backstab, and rob other gangs in the Misty Swamp. Even his own crew had suffered heavily under Gul's hands. Seeing these rampaging greenskin brutes permanently wiped off the swamp's map was incredibly satisfying! Don't move... I absolutely cannot move! he warned himself. When that dark-haired human swept his gaze down the mountain just now, his eyes were as sharp as an eagle's. If he spots me...

The scrawny goblin held his breath, waiting until the terrifying, black-armored troops atop the precipice began systematically clearing the battlefield. Only then did he begin to inch backward, retreating as carefully as a startled groundhog. It wasn't until he had backed away several hundred paces, completely enveloped by the deep shadows of the birch forest, that the goblin finally shot up to his feet. Pumping his short, stubby legs, he sprinted madly through the muddy swamp into the rainy night.

"The power balance is shifting! Drybone Heights has been uprooted! I have to get back and report this to the Chieftain immediately!" The agonizingly long, rainy night finally came to an end. Early the next morning, a pale sun struggled to pierce through the thick, perennial white fog blanketing the land. The earth began to tremble slightly, sending violent ripples through the muddy puddles. Hoofbeats rumbled like approaching thunder, accompanied by the sharp clanking of heavy armor.

Alaric, Commander of the Royal Griffon Knights, emerged with a massive, imposing army onto the plains just below Drybone Heights. Alaric's pageantry was nothing short of terrifying. A full two thousand heavily armed, heavily armored cavalrymen rode together, their sheer momentum aggressively dispersing the poisonous fog in their path. In the skies directly above the vanguard, over a dozen massive Royal Griffons circled and shrieked.

Their feathered wings gleamed like burnished brass, and their razor-sharp talons glinted with a deadly, frigid light. Alaric sat atop a towering, purebred warhorse. He was clad in a magnificent suit of Griffon plate armor, masterfully forged from gilded mithril, radiating majesty. As the son of a Duke, he wore an expression of innate, untouchable arrogance. Yet at this moment, his deep blue eyes burned with a suppressed, volcanic fury.

Just yesterday afternoon, a massive shipment of military longbows and armor-piercing arrows he had been secretly smuggling was hijacked by Gul and his band of filthy orc raiders as it passed through this territory! For a man as proud as Alaric, having to swallow such an insult was an absolute humiliation! This wasn't just a loss of gold coins; it was having his prestige as a noble commander dragged through the sewers and stomped on.

Sure, the original purpose of those weapons was to supply other human factions to bolster their defenses against the orcs—while heavily lining his own pockets in the process. But rules were rules. Anyone who dared touch what belonged to Alaric would pay with their lives, a thousand cuts at a time.

"Army, form ranks! Prepare to siege!" Alaric drew the cruciform longsword from his waist, leveling its tip directly at the silhouette of Drybone Heights looming within the thick fog.

"Pass down the order! I want these orc bandits butchered to the last man! Use the entrails of that fat pig, Gul, to tie up the stolen armaments and drag them back to me!" At their commander's decree, the two thousand heavy cavalrymen unleashed a deafening, earth-shaking war cry. In Alaric's mind, faced with an encirclement by two thousand elite regular troops, the dim-witted orcs up on Drybone Heights would be panicking.

They'd be cowering behind their rolling logs and abatis, putting up a desperate final stand, their camp gates undoubtedly swarming with greenskins nocking arrows in terror. However... A full fifteen minutes passed. Drybone Heights, which should have been a buzzing hornets' nest of heavy defenses, remained dead silent.