235：King of the Swamp
Soren took his knife and carved a deep, intersecting line on the map, tightly connecting Greywater Village, the Crimson Moon Main Camp, Ironwood Fortress, and Gabriel's new camp at Broken Horn Ridge.
"Commander Galahad, your Ironwood Fortress houses the regular army. You possess massive troop strength; your responsibility is to draw the absolute attention of the Orc main force on the frontal battlefield."
"General Gabriel, your new camp will act as our forward fulcrum, tasked with physically choking off the critical riverways the Orcs use to transport grain and supplies."
"Commander Leona, the Crimson Moon Main Camp will act as our mobile rearguard, responsible for reinforcing weak points and purging any small squads of marauders that manage to infiltrate our lines."
Finally, Soren violently stabbed the tip of his knife directly into the black dot representing 'Greywater Village'.
"And my Greywater Village! We shall serve as the absolute core hub, possessing the strongest intelligence network and the [Black Steel Forge]!"
Soren's eyes burned with unwavering authority as he laid out his terms:
"I guarantee that Greywater Village's Chief Intelligence Officer, Meyer, will regularly share all intercepted Orc Alliance troop movements with your three factions!"
"Furthermore, regarding General Gabriel's desperate need for chevaux de frise, heavy ballista anti-air components, and even specialized armor-piercing arrows for his new camp... as long as you can provide the raw materials, Greywater Village's subterranean arsenal will be entirely open to supply you!"
Shared Intelligence! Joint Military Production! Synchronized Defense!
The moment this comprehensive mechanism was laid out, Galahad and Gabriel's eyes lit up with an intense, ravenous light.
They knew all too well the absolutely terrifying intelligence and military-industrial capabilities of Greywater Village! Securing this kind of deep-rooted cooperation would exponentially skyrocket their odds of survival in this brutal meat-grinder of a war!
"I agree!" Galahad violently slammed his palm onto the table. "The defensive sectors of Ironwood Fortress will coordinate with Greywater Village’s operations at any time!"
"I also agree! I will dispatch runners to deliver the shift-rotation passwords for my new camp to Commander Soren the very second they are established!" Gabriel stated without a microsecond of hesitation.
Watching the man standing before the map, radiating an absolute, suffocating aura of leadership, Leona felt her heart swell with so much pride it practically burst from her chest.
This was her Vice Commander of the Crimson Moon Knights!
Before they even realized it, during this supreme war council meant to divide defensive authority, an invisible shift had occurred.
Whether it was the veteran general commanding five thousand regular troops, the highly arrogant noble, or even the official Commander of the Crimson Moon Knights...
None of them realized that while formulating their strategic direction against the Orc Alliance horde, they had all unconsciously held their breath, completely deferring to and obeying Soren’s tactical deployments!
And just like that, amidst the clinking of ale mugs and heart-to-heart exchanges, the comprehensive intelligence and logistical communication mechanism for the Four-Party Defensive Alliance of the Misty Swamp was fundamentally orchestrated and finalized by Soren.
By the time the massive, fine-iron gates of Ironwood Fortress slowly groaned open once more, the sky was approaching dusk.
A biting, freezing wind whipped up a violent flurry of snow, blasting directly against their faces.
Soren vaulted into his saddle. Behind him, the seventy vanguard elites clad in heavy Black Steel plate formed their ranks in absolute, solemn silence amidst the blizzard, devoid of a single trace of unnecessary noise.
"Move out."
Soren pulled his reins. Dispensing with any excessive farewells, he led his terrifyingly oppressive, heavy-armored unit out, vanishing entirely into the dense fog.
However, after this Black Steel detachment completely left the visual range of Ironwood Fortress, they did not turn their horses south to return to the toxic, miasma-filled territory of Greywater Village.
Instead, at a major crossroad, Soren decisively cracked his whip, pointing straight toward the northeast.
"My Lord, this doesn't look like the path back to the swamp!"
Monk Renn rubbed his freezing, flushed bald head, exhaling a plume of white steam as he spurred his horse to ride alongside Soren.
"Who said we were going back?"
Soren stared into the violent blizzard, his gaze locked onto a treacherous, towering mountain range dozens of kilometers away, its jagged peaks piercing the clouds.
"The entire unit, execute a forced march! Destination: The border between the Ironpeak Duchy and the Orc Blood Province—the Broken Blade Mountains!"
Renn's heart skipped a beat, but relying on his absolute military obedience, he immediately signaled for the column to accelerate.
Sitting tall in the saddle, Soren let the freezing wind whip his black cape behind him. His mind, however, was rapidly processing a highly classified piece of intelligence transmitted back by his Chief Intelligence Officer, Meyer.
Previously, to guard against Cullen—the adjutant to Commander Cedric of the Ironpeak Duchy—Soren had covertly ordered Meyer to investigate Cullen's background for any evidence of mutiny or colluding with the Orcs.
But executing that mission had encountered an unexpectedly massive obstacle.
Meyer's network of over two hundred goblin scouts were absolute masters in the muddy, treacherous environment of the Misty Swamp; their movements there were virtually untraceable.
But the moment they stepped out of the swamp and entered the regular human defensive zones of the Ironpeak Duchy, the situation entirely inverted.
The human principalities harbored a deeply entrenched, historic prejudice and utter disdain for non-human races.
Let alone infiltrating military camps to gather intel, the second a pack of goblins dared to show their faces outside the walls of the Ironpeak Duchy, they would be immediately classified as magical beasts and mercilessly pincushioned by the city's heavy ballistas! They couldn't even get close to the gates!
Left with absolutely no alternative, Meyer—possessing the dual talents of [Chameleon] and [Vocal Mimicry]—was forced to disguise himself as a human refugee and infiltrate the Ironpeak Duchy's defensive lines entirely alone.
Solo operations were excruciatingly inefficient. After lurking within the Duchy for several days, Meyer had yet to uncover any concrete evidence of Cullen's treason. However, during a chance border patrol observation, he had brought back another piece of intelligence that made Soren’s heart race!
According to Meyer’s report, stationed at the absolute most active frontline of the Ironpeak Duchy—deep within the Broken Blade Mountains, where the Orc assaults were the most ferocious—was a highly peculiar military unit.
The primary reason the Ironpeak Duchy had managed to avoid total annihilation by the Orc Alliance's heavy infantry over the years wasn't solely due to Cedric's heavy legions. It was, to a massive extent, because of this exact group of death-sworn soldiers who held that mountain pass with their lives!
And those death-sworn soldiers were absolutely not natives of the Ironpeak Duchy. They were a tribe of Barbarians from the distant northern steppes!
Late into the night, two days later.
The temperature plummeted to the point where dripping water instantly froze into ice.
The Broken Blade Mountains. On a leeward slope overlooking the main mountain pass.
Fierce winds howled through the dark, abyssal canyon, emitting a shrill, haunting wail.
The narrow, exceptionally steep pass below was the absolute mandatory chokepoint if the Orcs of the Blood Province wished to bypass the frontal walls and launch a surprise raid deep into the human heartland.
Soren lay flat against the freezing rock, layers of accumulated snow entirely covering his dark cape.
He waited with the absolute patience of an apex predator, quietly observing the outrageously dilapidated frontline camp below.
"[Eagle-Eye Perception], active."
Soren triggered his talent. A microscopic, spectral glow gathered in his pupils, and the violent blizzard of the entire world instantaneously slowed to a crawl within his vision.
His apex dynamic vision, synchronized with ultra-long-range lock-on capabilities, forcefully pierced through the obstruction of the night, allowing him to clearly observe every single microscopic detail of the mountain pass below.
He saw the human soldiers tasked with guarding the chokepoint.
On the outside, they were indeed wearing the standard-issue grey cloaks stamped with the crossed-swords crest of the Ironpeak Duchy, indicating they officially belonged to the Duchy's combat sequence.
But when Soren’s vision penetrated those loose, oversized cloaks and clearly registered the attire underneath, even with his rock-solid mental fortitude as a former modern special forces operator, he was profoundly shocked.
It was utterly tragic.
High up in these bitterly freezing mountains, these soldiers were dressed in absolute rags. Many were merely wrapped in uncured, raw animal hides. They didn't even possess basic padded cotton coats!
Their armaments were a chaotic, dilapidated mess:
Some gripped heavily rusted, chipped iron swords. Others wielded massive bone clubs, clearly ripped from the carcass of some unknown magical beast. As for defensive gear?
Aside from a few rotting wooden shields stretched with hardened ox-hide, there was barely a single piece of decent iron armor to be seen!
Yet, it was this exact unit of incredibly poorly equipped soldiers who were currently standing unflinchingly in the howling, freezing wind.
Soren clearly saw a sentry with tribal totems tattooed across his cheeks, his lips entirely purple from the cold. He was using a strip of coarse cloth to firmly bind the hilt of a chipped iron sword directly to his right hand.
This was to prevent his weapon from slipping from his frozen fingers during a brutal, close-quarters meat-grinder!
The flickering light of the torches illuminated the sentry's face, revealing an expression of absolute, ravenous hunger mixed with the ferocious, unyielding resolve of a man who would gladly die before taking a single step back!
"My Lord, is... is that the frontline vanguard the Ironpeak Duchy is so incredibly proud of?"
Beside him, Monk Renn was also peering down. Relying on the enhanced eyesight of a martial artist, he clearly saw the tragic state of the soldiers. He shook his head repeatedly in absolute shock:
"Those absolutely aren't General Cedric’s regular heavy infantry! Cedric’s men have iron-plated war-boots! These people... they look entirely like savage Barbarians!"
"You aren't mistaken, Renn. They absolutely do not belong to the Ironpeak Duchy."
Soren slowly deactivated his [Eagle-Eye Perception], sliding his body backward into the cover of the rocks. In the darkness, a deeply ambitious, fiercely calculated look surfaced on his face:
"They are the Steppe Barbarian tribe Meyer mentioned in his intelligence report."
Soren patted Renn’s broad shoulders. Here, on this howling, blizzard-swept cliff, he lowered his voice and revealed the absolute, true intent behind executing a forced march over a hundred kilometers without holding anything back:
"Renn, did you clearly see those men gritting their teeth and holding the line in the blizzard?"
"Me leaving Ironwood Fortress wasn't some coincidental detour for a border inspection."
"I am going to completely and utterly absorb this Barbarian unit guarding the pass into our Greywater Village!"
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