Chương 97: 97：The Greed of Orcs

Soren strode over to the metal box and slammed the lid shut. Clack! The crisp sound echoed in the room. He decisively rejected this seemingly rational plan. Soren locked eyes with Luger, every word sharp enough to draw blood.

"Throw the ring away? And you expect the orcs to just take it and leave?" Soren let out a string of cold sneers, ruthlessly tearing Luger's fantasies to shreds.

"Use your brain, Luger! That orc commander at the bottom of the mountain just lost twenty of his elites to the fire, and another thirty of his men were crushed into paste by boulders—all just trying to storm your peak!"

"He's the commander of Warchief Blackstone's personal guard! If he crawls back with such catastrophic losses and no justifiable excuse, he'll be strung up on the fortress walls and skinned alive!"

"Even if they get the ring back, they'll still need to vent their troops' fury. They have to erase the humiliating stain of an elite unit being crippled and made fools of by the likes of you!"

"They will absolutely have their accompanying Shaman cast a spell to wipe your entire camp off the map while they're at it!"

"As long as you hold the spatial ring, they might still hesitate, afraid of damaging the prize. But if you blindly retreat and throw away the only bargaining chip that holds them back, the only thing you'll get in return is swift, total annihilation!" This bloody, brutally honest analysis struck like a physical slap, violently waking up every goblin in the room. Luger felt a chill run down his spine. Cold sweat crawled down his back like insects. A deep sense of lingering dread washed over him.

If he had actually acted on his impulsive thought and thrown the ring down, it would have been the equivalent of removing the orcs' last restraint, giving them free rein to massacre everyone on Lone Cliff. Having completely abandoned his naive illusions of buying survival, the way Luger looked at Soren underwent an earth-shattering shift. Clatter. Luger pushed aside his makeshift chair, which was made of a giant shield. The 1.

9-meter-tall hobgoblin walked heavily over to Soren, crossed his arms over his broad chest, and bowed deeply.

"Thank you for your guidance, Lord Soren." The gratitude in his voice was utterly solemn. In just a brief fifteen-minute exchange, Soren's far-sighted strategic vision and his razor-sharp grasp of the enemy's psychology had completely won over the hobgoblin chieftain.

"But the situation remains a dead end," Luger said as he straightened up, his tone now carrying a pleading edge.

"Facing those forty to fifty resentful Blacksteel Orcs at the bottom of the mountain, plus the impending arrival of their Shaman... it's only a matter of time before they storm their way up. How do we break this stalemate?" Soren didn't answer immediately. His gaze fell upon the lead box. Got it.

"Since they're acting like rabid dogs, refusing to let go of a bone..."

"... then we'll play along and use their own tracking against them!" Luger froze, stunned by the words. Soren immediately began drawing a rough ambush map on the dust-covered stone table.

"To you, the unblockable, continuous tracking signal on this ring is the root of an impending disaster. But in my tactical playbook, it's what we call a perfect decoy beacon!"

"You goblins know a thing or two about traps, don't you? Then we'll pick the biggest trap available, willingly deliver the ring right into it, and set up a death zone that not even their Shaman can fly out of!" Luger sharply gasped. He stared at the man in front of him in sheer disbelief. Taking a spatial storage ring—a peerless treasure that even the King of the Silvermoon Kingdom would drool over—and using it as bait for an ambush?

This kind of audacity, this insane tactical concept that defied all common sense... it was downright terrifying! Yet, he had to admit, this move of diverting the disaster was exceedingly ruthless and incredibly precise!

"I understand, my Lord!" Enlightened by this modern tactical thinking, Luger immediately roared with excitement.

"If we want to use bait to set up a death trap, I know the perfect place!" Luger pointed at a goblin scout in the corner of the hall, whose muscles were as compact and tight as a monkey's.

"You! Step forward!" The scout quickly stepped up. Luger forcefully shoved the box containing the ring into his arms.

"Listen closely. Only our unique goblin skeletal structure can squeeze through that hidden rock fissure on the back of the mountain—it's not even half the width of a normal man's shoulders. That's your way down." Luger's gaze turned fierce as he dictated the route.

"Take this. The moment you are out of the mountain, dive straight into the toxic water-vine thickets. Take the glowing ring out of the box and place it in Severed Head Valley, two miles to the flank of Lone Cliff!"

"Once you drop it, do not look back! Crawl back up the dead tree trunks as fast as you can! Go!"

"Yes, Chief!" The scout strapped the box to his back. Like an agile gecko, he contorted himself into a hidden, narrow crevice and silently vanished. Soren nodded in satisfaction. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. From Luger's description, the terrain of Severed Head Valley was shaped like a pocket. It was a narrow dead end, surrounded on three sides by towering rock faces sixty to seventy meters high.

The bottom of this 'pocket' was entirely made of soft, treacherous mud, completely devoid of cover. Meanwhile, the towering upper edges of the U-shape were overgrown with dense, acid-resistant shrubs—perfect for concealing an ambush force. Once a concentrated barrage of boulders and crossbow bolts rained down from above, anyone at the bottom would be like turtles trapped in a jar, utterly defenseless. Outside a mudflat just a few hundred paces from the base of Lone Cliff.

Fierce winds whipped cold rain against the temporarily erected animal-hide tents. The Blacksteel Orc Commander ruthlessly buried his battleaxe into a rotting wooden stump. The sight of charred, chipped weapons and his mangled, groaning troops felt like repeated slaps to his face. The fury of having lost the internal path up the mountain was gnawing away at his remaining sanity. Whoosh! Accompanied by the howl of a sinister gust of wind, the already dim sky suddenly darkened.

The muddy water in the swamp parted to both sides of its own accord. Several twin-headed wargs, their fur coated in frost, dragged a bone palanquin crafted from mammoth skeletons into the defeated army's camp.

"The Great Shaman is here!" All the heavily armored orcs who had just been groaning in pain immediately scrambled up. Dragging their injured legs, they knelt in the freezing mud. Even the enraged Commander respectfully swallowed his hostility and stepped forward to greet the arrival. The drapes of the bone palanquin were pushed aside by a staff made of withered wood. An elderly orc shaman, his face painted with ghastly green war paint but radiating intense waves of spiritual energy, slowly stepped down.

"Commander. Warchief Blackstone is exceedingly displeased with your three days of dawdling." The orc commander gritted his teeth and lowered his head in a plea for forgiveness.

"It is my incompetence! But Your Grace, the goblins of Lone Cliff are incredibly cunning! They burned down the internal passage, and the outer cliff faces are slick with toxic slime!"

"I beg of you to cast a spell to locate the divine artifact, and then use your magic to shatter this blasted rock wall! Carve a stairway straight to the summit for our troops!" The Commander's single eye gleamed with a thirst for vengeance. The Great Shaman gave a cold snort. Ignoring the Commander's excuses, he directly raised his staff, its tip embedded with the skull of a wraith.

"First, we find the artifact. Spirit Perception—Expand!" The old Shaman chanted a hoarse incantation. A tangible, eerie green ring of magic exploded from the top of the staff, rapidly expanding to cover the surrounding terrain! The Shaman kept his eyes closed until his bark-like cheeks violently twitched, and his eyes suddenly snapped open!

"Something is wrong!" In a rare display of shock, the Shaman slammed his staff heavily into the muddy water.

"The direction of the mark has changed!"

"What?" The scar-faced Commander turned pale with shock. How could those rats have left Lone Cliff? At that moment, the old Shaman's finger pointed rigidly toward a fog-shrouded direction on the flank of the mountain.

"It's not in the mountain anymore! The continuous magical fluctuations emanating from the spatial ring have drastically shifted position. It is currently resting in a gorge to the side!" The Commander violently grabbed the beast-bone compass at his waist. To his astonishment, the trembling needle had actually rotated over a hundred degrees, locking onto a position to their rear flank! A flash of realization struck his mind like lightning! A light of wild ecstasy erupted in the scar-faced Commander's single eye.

"Hahahaha! I know what happened!" The Commander threw his head back and laughed aloud, even excitedly pounding his Blacksteel chestplate in his elation.

"Your Grace! Although those green-skinned rats repelled my assault earlier, they were so terrified that they actually did something as stupid as burning their own mountain pathway just to cut off their tails and survive! Imagine their fear!"

"They must have been completely paralyzed by the sight of our Blacksteel heavy armor! Knowing they couldn't hold onto the artifact, they dispatched a scout to smuggle the ring out and secretly discard it away from their base camp, all to save their miserable lives!"

"They definitely dumped the item in the wilderness!" Hearing that the ring had now left that trap-infested Lone Cliff and was sitting exposed in the open wilds... With no more layers of traps to block his path, he could just go out into the wilderness and pick it straight up? Overjoyed by this prospect, the Commander was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt. His boundless greed completely crushed whatever sliver of combat vigilance he had left.

If he could just effortlessly retrieve the spatial ring and report back, the crime of losing half his forces wouldn't just be forgiven—he might even receive a direct reward from the Warchief himself!