Chương 104: 104：A Weapon in Every Hand

"Luger. A while back, we captured two heavy siege catapults." Soren pointed toward the darkness outside the door.

"As of now, they are fully under your command."

"I want their torsion arms and winches fully restored as fast as possible. They aren't going to just sit there as lawn ornaments. They are going to crush every single green-skinned bastard that dares to step near Greywater Village's walls!" Luger's head snapped up. For someone with the [Master Artisan] talent, these behemoths of war were the ultimate, irresistible temptation.

"I will stake my life on it! Give me three days, enough lumber, and enough grease, and I guarantee those catapults will be able to drop a boulder straight down a Swamp Croc's throat from two hundred paces away!" Soren nodded in satisfaction. His gaze then shifted to the brothers in charge of intelligence and scouting, Meyer and Gary.

"Next, organizational restructuring."

"Aside from assisting Luger at the forge, all one hundred and twenty-three newly sworn Lone Cliff goblins will be fully integrated into Greywater Village's Third-Line Scout Troop!"

"With this, our scout forces will swell to an unprecedented total of two hundred and eight combatants!"

"And the weapons currently in your hands are to be completely phased out."

"Those blowdarts coated in paralyzing venom are fine for hunting swamp birds and beasts, but against an orc clad in Blacksteel armor, they aren't even fit to scratch an itch." Soren reached beneath the table, hoisted up a compact, exquisitely crafted repeating hand-crossbow, and slapped it onto the wood. It was one of the goblin crossbows brought back from the Lone Cliff armory.

"A complete arsenal upgrade! All two hundred and eight scouts must be equipped with one of these mechanical repeating crossbows!" The core officers stared at the hand-crossbow gleaming with cold intent, instantly grasping Soren's tactical vision. Blowdarts relied heavily on lung capacity, were severely affected by headwinds, and fundamentally lacked stopping power. But a repeating crossbow? Just pull the trigger, and it possessed genuine armor-piercing lethality within several dozen paces.

This would fundamentally evolve the 3rd-line scouts' combat effectiveness. But Soren wasn't done. He locked eyes with Luger.

"Luger, not only are we equipping the scouts, but I need you to forge another two hundred of these hand-crossbows!"

"These newly forged, lightweight crossbows will be distributed entirely to Greywater Village's Fourth-Line Logistics Reservists!" A collective gasp echoed through the command post. Logistics Quartermaster Kyle was stunned.

"My Lord... the Fourth-Line Reservists... they are all the elderly, the women sewing clothes, and children barely thirteen or fourteen years old."

"So what?" Soren swept a cold, piercing glare over Kyle.

"Right now, they are holding one-meter wooden spears. If the day comes when the orcs breach our walls, expecting them to engage in melee combat with two-meter-tall monsters using wooden sticks is sending them to die." Soren tapped his knuckles hard on the table.

"But crossbows change the equation. They don't require brute muscle. You use a lever to draw the string, line up the sights, and fire."

"Even an old man or a young girl can hide behind the murder holes of a cabin and plant a bolt straight through the eye slit of a Blacksteel Orc."

"Total mobilization. If any enemy thinks they can swallow Greywater Village, I want them to bleed for every single step they take, even if they're just trying to cross the threshold of an old woman's door." Soren's logic was brutally straightforward: transform two hundred and sixteen logistical liabilities into two hundred lethal shooters. Sitting around the long table, the officers felt the chilling, unyielding weight of true total warfare radiating from his remarkably calm voice. Soren issued his next command.

"Ein!"

"Here, My Lord!"

"Every day, outside of your regular drills, carve out one hour to instruct the Fourth-Line Reservists in point-blank crossbow shooting."

"I don't expect them to hit a fly at a hundred paces. I just demand that at a distance of ten paces, pulling that trigger becomes absolute, unflinching muscle memory!"

"Understood!" Soren's gaze shifted to the trap specialist.

"Gary, and Luger."

"The two of you will form our new Engineering & Trapping Unit."

"The battle at Lone Cliff showed me the terrifying potential of goblin mechanics. Luger, take those dozens of barrels of interlocking mechanisms we hauled back and deploy them at the village entrance."

"Under the sloped paths, beneath the double-layered cheval-de-frise barricades, and all around our existing venom-spike pits."

"Take our static, rigid traps and link them into an interlocking, cascading kill-zone!"

"If any orc thinks they can rely on their thick hides to just brute-force their way through, I want it so that the second they snap a barricade, subterranean acid geysers, swinging logs, and throat-slitting tripwires detonate on them simultaneously!" Gary's eyes lit up with malicious glee. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. He was a veteran outlaw who had survived precisely by laying dirty, underhanded traps.

Now, backed by the precision mechanics of a [Master Artisan] like Luger, Greywater Village's outer perimeter was going to turn into an absolute meat grinder! The military and internal affairs were being methodically locked into place. Yet, every core officer present knew that the crown jewel of today's haul had yet to be addressed.

"Luger. One final, non-negotiable military production order." Soren said slowly, "In the territory's armory, there are currently one hundred heavily oiled [Geared Heavy Repeating Crossbows] sitting in storage."

"Those things pack terrifying kinetic force, but they've been gathering dust because they require highly standardized, precision-polished iron bolts."

"Now that you're here—can you mass-produce that ammunition?" Luger answered with absolute certainty:"If you want them hand-hammered, impossible. But I will use the geothermal blast furnace to forge standardized casting molds! As long as Old Cook pumps those bellows properly, casting a hundred iron bolts every three days will be child's play!" Soren stood up.

"Excellent!" This was, without a doubt, a strategic trump card of unparalleled weight! The sixty-three men of the 1st-Line Elite Troop, honed through day-and-night drilling, had all consumed the [Basic Troll Serum]. These heavily muscled brutes, clad in full-plate Blacksteel armor, possessed monstrous physical strength. Previously, their only ranged option was hurling short spears—a crude method that exhausted immense stamina and severely lacked range.

But if this squad of superhuman shock troops was equipped with [Geared Heavy Repeating Crossbows]—weapons they could crank and cock with a single arm—the battlefield dynamics would shatter. Imagine sixty-three heavily armored titans forming a line, unleashing wave after wave of armor-piercing, heavy-caliber bolts in a matter of seconds. The sheer suppressive fire and penetrative force would absolutely shred any organized phalanx of axe-wielding orcs into ribbons.

Next, Soren shifted to the logistical lifeblood of the village:"Fresh water has been a noose around our necks for too long."

"Luger, set up the Lone Cliff swamp filtration system behind the village."

"Victor, you will assist him using your magical reagents and detoxifying runes." Victor nodded. When it came to the magical breakdown of miasma and toxins, the old mage's experience was unmatched.

"Finally, Meyer." Soren looked at the spymaster.

"You possess the [Vocal Mimicry] talent. Those hundred-plus goblins have been isolated on Lone Cliff for years. Even if their ancestors served humans and they know a few words, for joint combat operations, our communication must be flawless."

"I'm putting you in charge of their daily integration. Teach them human military terminology and tactical commands."

"They must understand the orders, and execute them without hesitation."

"Yes, My Lord! Those little guys farming the fields and working the blast furnaces learn shockingly fast! You can already hear them cursing in broken human dialects out in the dirt," Meyer replied with a playful smirk. His casual joke finally eased some of the iron-clad tension in the room.

"Excellent." A fleeting, rare smile crossed Soren's cold, stoic face. With all combat restructuring, promotions, and logistical tasks assigned, the grand military expansion council officially drew to a close.

"Everyone except Victor is dismissed. Go do your jobs." Clatter. The officers stood, delivered crisp military salutes, and filed out of the room. The heavy wooden door creaked shut. Only Soren and his Chief Magical Advisor, Victor, remained. The pine logs in the brazier crackled softly. Standing by the table in his greyish-white mage robes, Victor knew with absolute certainty that Soren keeping him behind meant something massive was about to drop. Soren didn't waste breath on pleasantries.

He reached into his personal pouch and hauled out a heavily wrapped lead box. With one hand, he flicked the copper latch and flipped open the heavy lid. In an instant, a pulse of dark purple magical energy—beating like a living heart—rippled outward, filling the small wooden cabin.

"[A Spatial Storage Ring]!" Even with all his vast experience, Victor's breath hitched the second he laid eyes on the artifact. As the formerly illustrious Silver-tier Mage Commander of the Silvermoon Kingdom, he knew that an artifact of this magnitude was extremely rare even in the hands of Dukes or Kings. Yet here it was, casually tossed onto a crude wooden table in a backwater swamp village. Soren pointed at the faint, rippling glow emanating from the ring.

"Warchief Blackstone's [Tracking Mark]."

"A day ago, it was precisely this uninterrupted magical beacon that drew a vanguard of a hundred Blacksteel Orc elites, accompanied by a Shaman, across the swamp to slaughter the Lone Cliff goblins."

"If I hadn't laid an ambush at Severed Head Valley, those goblins would have already been ground into the mud by Blacksteel boots."