Chương 91: 91：Enemy of My Enemy

Looking at Galahad's solemn and resolute figure, Leona stepped up beside him. She reached out and clapped a heavy hand against the veteran's thick shoulder armor.

"I understand, Galahad!" she said.

"Though the Crimson Moon Knights are stationed dozens of miles away, if this is a counteroffensive against the orcs, and if you need forces to pin down their flanks, our five hundred heavy knights stand ready to support you at a moment's notice!" Gabriel, who had remained silent until now, quietly stood up. He rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, a blade that seemed to thrum with the latent power of thunder.

"General, the Royal Capital sent me here for one purpose: to carve a path for your blade," Gabriel said calmly.

"Wherever you point your sword, my enchanted swordsmanship will tear through the Greenskin defense lines." Galahad's eyes grew slightly red. He picked up the last half-bowl of ale from the table and raised it high.

"Good! With those words, this old man's heart is finally at ease!" Amidst the muddy encampment shrouded in the deep night, the three gathered around a parchment map, lowering their voices as they began to draft their upcoming battle plans against the orcs. Soren sat alone inside the stilted wooden command post. Though the rain had finally stopped, a lingering, pungent stench of rotting humus and mud permeated the room.

In the fire pit at the center of the room, a few lumps of charcoal glowed with a warm, fiery orange light, driving away the bone-chilling dampness. Soren leaned over a broad log desk, pinching a piece of charred charcoal between his fingers. His gaze was fixed on a parchment unrolled before him. It was a topographical map of the Misty Swamp, hand-drawn by Soren himself and constantly being updated. At this moment, he was calculating his gains and losses.

He moved his charcoal over the location marked "Drybone Heights" and struck a prominent 'X' through it.

"Taking out Gul completely filled the resource gap for the territory's development..." Soren muttered to himself. The yield from this operation had been staggering. Setting aside the batch of imperial military longbows and armor-piercing arrows—weapons that would make even an ace regular army envious—just the dozen or so clinking chests of gold and silver coins, along with the mountains of grain, had instantly multiplied Greywater Village's wealth several times over.

Wandering bandits were practically mobile treasure troves in this swamp! If he were to clash head-on with Orc Warlords like Karl or Zagar, even if he won a localized skirmish, the loot would be nothing more than a pile of black iron armor and weapons. But fighting bandits was different. These outlaws spent all year plundering trade routes and hoarding their extorted wealth in their lairs. Furthermore, their organization was chaotic, and they possessed zero tactical discipline.

It was an incredibly lucrative endeavor. With a stroke of his charcoal, Soren prepared to circle his next bandit target. By annihilating them, he could acquire more supplies while simultaneously eliminating all threats within a fifty-mile radius of Greywater Village. This would secure a safe environment for the commoners to cultivate the land on a large scale in the future. However, as his charcoal hovered over the map, it awkwardly paused. Soren's brow gradually furrowed.

"There's nothing left." Across the entire mapped periphery, aside from the recently obliterated Drybone Heights, he couldn't find a single sizable red dot representing bandits. He tossed the charcoal down and rubbed his temples. It wasn't that he didn't want to raid them; it was that the Misty Swamp simply lacked the environment to support a large number of bandits. Soren knew exactly what the core elements were for humans or orcs to establish long-term strongholds: Solid ground and clean water.

But in the Misty Swamp, such things were a luxury. Eighty percent of this region was a death zone, covered in highly acidic sludge and blinding miasma. Yet, the most lethal and despair-inducing factor was freshwater. In the swamp, puddles stretched as far as the eye could see, but they were teeming with countless venomous insect eggs and deadly bacteria. Just one sip would cause a person's intestines to rot and burst within half an hour.

Without a clean water source, any so-called bandit fortress would collapse from within in less than three days! The only reason Greywater Village could survive here was that they controlled a small, grayish stream. Even then, the stream water was mildly toxic. It had to be filtered through charcoal and boiled vigorously over a hearth fire before it was barely safe to drink.

Originally, a few dozen miles from Greywater Village, there had been Reed Bay—situated next to a large lake—and Little Stone Village, where the brothers Gary and Meyer hailed from. But those two locations had been utterly flattened, people and buildings alike, by the regular Orc army! Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Without water, the current population of 613 is the absolute limit of Greywater Village's carrying capacity," Soren thought.

"If I want to recruit more refugees and build an army of thousands, finding a water vein is a problem I must solve." Soren hated the feeling of his progress being choked out by natural conditions. Thump, thump, thump. Just as Soren was wracking his brain for a breakthrough, someone knocked heavily on the wooden door of the command post.

"Come in." Intelligence Captain Gary and Spymaster Meyer walked in. The two brothers looked absolutely miserable. Their tight-fitting leather armor was entirely caked in mud, acting almost like a hard shell, with withered, yellowing water weeds hanging from their shoulders. To find the next encampment to raid, they had led a squad of third-line goblin scouts and patrolled the treacherous outer perimeter of the swamp day and night for two straight days.

Meyer stepped forward, grabbed a clay jug off the desk, and gulped down nearly half a jug of filtered warm water in one breath before letting out a long sigh.

"My Lord!" Meyer wiped his mouth and said excitedly, "Deep within the stagnant pools sixty miles to the northwest, we found a hidden location!" Soren's gaze sharpened. He immediately pushed the map forward.

"Mark it." Gary pointed to a completely blank area on the parchment.

"Truth be told, it wasn't my brother and I who found it. It was the three goblin scouts who sniffed it out," Gary explained, swallowing hard.

"The area is choked with man-high toxic water vines. It's impossible for humans to sneak in, but goblins have an instinctive awareness of their own kind's excrement."

"Following several extremely hidden shallow pits and some specifically snapped bushes..." Gary looked up, meeting Soren's eyes.

"My Lord, inside a solitary peak as steep as if it were carved by a blade, there is a massive horde of goblins hiding! There are definitely no less than a hundred of them! They've even hollowed out the inside of the mountain and meticulously reinforced it!" Hearing this report, Soren narrowed his eyes. A steep, solitary peak. No surface water connection. Over a hundred goblins surviving long-term...

"Absurd."

"M-My Lord? Do you think the intelligence is flawed?" Meyer froze.

"No, the intelligence is fine. It's their state of survival that defies common sense." Soren stood up, walked over to the charcoal brazier, and warmed his hands over it.

"Over a hundred mouths to feed. Even if they were drinking piss, they would need a massive amount of water every single day. That solitary peak is surrounded on all sides by toxic swamps, without a single drop of drinkable surface water." He turned his head, the glow of the embers reflecting in his pupils. Reading the implication in his lord's eyes, Gary's own eyes slowly widened.

"My Lord! Are you saying those green-skinned rats from the underground possess some sort of technology to obtain large quantities of clean freshwater?!"

"It is the only logical explanation," Soren exhaled. Whether it was technology to drill hundreds of meters deep to extract pure underground spring water, or some ancient goblin water-distilling condenser... as long as this technology truly existed, it would be a priceless treasure to a Greywater Village currently shackled by its freshwater limits! At this moment, Spymaster Meyer suddenly recalled something and hastily added, "Right, My Lord, there is one more thing that is highly unusual."

"These goblins hide very deep, and their behavior could even be described as bizarre."

"We investigated the tracks around the area. We found that even when lost human refugees starved to death on the edge of their territory, they never attacked humans. However..." Meyer pulled out a charred, pitch-black iron axle bolt and placed it on the desk.

"We found this in a hidden gorge at the base of the peak. It's the wreckage of a standard supply cart used by the Orc logistics convoys."

"These seemingly feeble creatures not only dared to ambush a Greenskin transport line, but they struck with ruthless efficiency!" They didn't harm humans in the slightest, yet they dealt death blows to Orcs. Soren fell into deep thought. The enemy of an enemy—even if they were a non-human, alien race—held immense value as an ally in this chaotic world. These goblins didn't just have water; they had combat capabilities and intelligence value!

"Meyer, have Victor prepare a batch of high-grade alchemical herbs as a greeting gift."

"At dawn tomorrow, I will depart for that mountain to see exactly what cards they are holding."

"A wise plan, My Lord! I'll go inform Drillmaster Renn right away to assemble sixty-one heavy armors—" Gary's spirits lifted, and he turned to leave.

"No." Soren interrupted him in a deep voice.

"I was very clear. I will go. Just me alone."