Chương 118: 118：The Warchief's Counter-Encirclement

At that exact moment. Thousands of miles away, deep within the terrifying core of the Misty Swamp stood Bloodfang Fortress. Desiccated, wind-chapped heads of human knights dangled like grisly ornaments from its towering, pitch-black walls. Inside the gloomy, oppressively vast command hall, the air itself seemed to freeze. Warchief Blackstone—the supreme Orc Overlord who commanded a vanguard of a hundred thousand troops—had just been tearing the room apart in a blind rage over his lost [Spatial Storage Ring].

Just this morning, his tracking mark had completely and utterly vanished from his perception! Suddenly, the sacrificial altar in the center of the hall began to violently boil. A blinding, blood-red magical array erupted from the stone. A High Priest immediately prostrated himself on the floor, screaming his report:"Great Warchief! It is a distress signal from Garrosh!"

"The Bloodaxe Heavy Battalion reached Lone Cliff, but they discovered the human garrison was already fully prepared! The surprise attack failed, and their supply lines are completely severed!"

"They have been forced to retreat and bunker down on the high ground of Eagle Beak Ridge, just outside the basin. They are desperately requesting logistical support and immediate reinforcements!"

"Utter trash!" Warchief Blackstone laughed, a sound dripping with extreme, murderous malice.

"He couldn't even breach a pathetic human supply town, and he actually has the sheer nerve to beg for rescue?!" However, as the supreme commander whose very name sent tremors through the Silvermoon Kingdom, Blackstone forcibly suppressed his rage. His single, massive eye—the size of a brass bell—slowly turned toward the sprawling tactical map nailed to the stone wall. He locked onto the geographic coordinates of Lone Cliff and Eagle Beak Ridge. He looked at it once. And then he looked at it again.

Suddenly, a twisted, profoundly cruel smile stretched across the Warchief's scarred face.

"No... Garrosh, that muscle-brained fool who only knows how to swing an axe. He has absolutely no idea that his pathetic blunder just landed him on a priceless strategic goldmine!" The Warchief violently stood up, his voice booming like rolling thunder through the grand hall: "Open your eyes and look closely!"

"Across the entire Misty Swamp frontline, humanity's greatest lifeline is the handful of supply hubs they've built in the mud."

"And Lone Cliff is the absolute, most critical logistical artery for Ironwood Fortress!"

"Those five hundred Bloodaxe elites are currently occupying Eagle Beak Ridge! They are a venomous thorn violently jammed straight into the throat of the human army!"

"Those arrogant, armored knights of the Silvermoon Kingdom, and every single armed human faction in the vicinity, will absolutely never tolerate that thorn hanging over Lone Cliff."

"They will swarm like starving hyenas smelling fresh blood! They will desperately pour in from all directions, attempting to encircle and annihilate those five hundred men!"

"And that high ground is virtually impenetrable. It is more than enough for the Bloodaxes to hold out for days!" Warchief Blackstone violently slammed his fist onto the map table!

"Wait until the human main forces are entirely drawn in by this bait, forming an encirclement at the base of Eagle Beak Ridge... That is when the massive army I am about to dispatch will follow the precise coordinates provided by this Blood Sacrifice!"

"We will execute a massive counter-encirclement from the absolute outer perimeter! We will close the jaws of the trap and utterly annihilate the human main forces!"

"The humans will besiege the Bloodaxes, but we... we will besiege the humans!" This grand strategic vision instantly sent the blood of every Orc general in the hall to a boil. They threw their heads back and unleashed a synchronized, deafening roar. Warchief Blackstone didn't hesitate for a microsecond as he issued the ultimate mobilization order:"Pass down my command! Order every single roaming warband and Orc soldier within a fifty-mile radius of Lone Cliff to immediately cease all standard raiding operations!"

"Converge on the outer perimeter of Lone Cliff at absolute maximum speed! Whatever the cost, we execute the pincer strike!" As the command echoed out, deep within the Misty Swamp, a dense, suffocating tide of black steel and green flesh began to violently churn through the toxic mud. Like a massive swarm of locusts, they all surged toward a single coordinate: Lone Cliff. Five kilometers outside the Lone Cliff basin.

Along a dense forest trail, the only movement was the panicked fluttering of swamp birds scattering into the mist. Soren marched point, leading the vanguard. Right behind him were the sixty-three 1st-Line Elites. Having entirely assimilated the [Basic Troll Serum], these juggernauts gripped two-and-a-half-meter-long armor-piercing halberds as they maintained a grueling forced-march pace.

Despite hauling nearly a hundred pounds of Blackiron plate, and even having [Geared Heavy Repeating Crossbows] slung across their broad backs, the breathing of these monstrous humans remained terrifyingly even and steady. Trailing just behind them was Archery Captain Ein, leading the fifty-man Longbow Battalion. Their leather boots stepped lightly over dead branches, moving like phantoms without making a single extraneous sound. Suddenly!

Soren's right fist shot into the air, flattening into a rigid, tactical halt signal. Whoosh. Over a hundred heavily armed soldiers froze in place instantly. Not a single clink of armor. Absolute, dead silence. Soren slowly closed his eyes. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. The wind carried more than just the stench of acidic mud.

Interwoven in the breeze was the faint, distant clashing of metal, the splintering of timber, and a nearly imperceptible ripple of magical feedback in the high atmosphere.

"They've engaged." Soren's eyes snapped open, a freezing, murderous light exploding from his pupils. Analyzing the frequency of the echoes, his tactical mind instantly painted the picture: the exchange of fire wasn't a desperate, all-out siege. It was a tactical stalemate following a failed probing assault.

"We're close. The Orcs absolutely hit a brick wall." With a sharp metallic ring, Soren drew his longsword, pointing the cold steel dead ahead into the gloomy mist.

"All units, maximum acceleration!"

"Heavy Infantry, shift into combat-sprint cadence! Longbowmen, spread into a loose skirmisher line on the flanks for cover!"

"Within twenty minutes, I want us driven like a nail right into the outer perimeter of Lone Cliff!"

"YES, MY LORD!" The marching tempo of the entire army violently shifted gears, exploding into a terrifying, synchronized sprint. Barely twenty minutes later. Soren's forces deployed in perfect formation at the base of Eagle Beak Ridge, holding the safe zone just outside Lone Cliff's main defensive line. Not far away, the exhausted human garrison defending the barricades looked up.

When they saw this hyper-disciplined, murderously intense army—flying the banner of the Crimson Moon Knights—descend upon the battlefield, they nearly erupted into tearful cheers. But Soren didn't spare a single glance for their passionate, grateful stares. Standing in the muddy basin, he placed one black-iron boot onto a fallen boulder and swept his razor-sharp gaze upward. Looming before them was [Eagle Beak Ridge].

True to its name, it jutted out like the vicious beak of a colossal raptor, piercing into the clouds at an impossibly steep, seventy-degree incline. A single, treacherous goat-path barely half a pace wide wound its way up the sheer face, littered with loose shale. At the very apex, the blood-red banner of the Bloodaxe Battalion flapped aggressively in the freezing wind.

Faintly, rows of heavily armored Orcs could be seen locking into dense shield walls, poised to unleash a devastating avalanche of boulders down the choke point. Beside Soren, fine beads of cold sweat began to form on Archery Captain Ein's forehead. Possessing the [Natural Hunter] talent, his intuition for terrain lethality vastly eclipsed that of ordinary men. He stared dead at that winding, suicidal choke point, stepping quickly to Soren's side and lowering his voice:"My Lord... the situational geometry is bad."

"These Orcs were forced back up onto the ridge." Ein pointed rapidly at several critical choke points along the slope, instantly analyzing the threat:"If our infantry phalanx attempts a direct frontal assault up that incline, the Orcs won't even need to engage us in melee."

"They only need to wedge a few heavy axe-throwers into those crevices, or simply push rolling logs and boulders down that narrow path..."

"Even with the Troll Serum in their veins, our proud halberdiers would be swept right off the cliff, men and shields tumbling into the abyss. It would be a one-sided slaughter from the high ground." Hearing this, Soren calmly reached out and clapped Ein on the shoulder. In Soren's eyes, the so-called 'frontal hill-charge' was the absolute most brain-dead tactic a commander could ever deploy in the era of cold weapons.

"Ein, memorize this. As a commander..." Soren turned around. His piercing gaze swept over the battle-hardened faces of every single soldier standing behind him.

"... Any charge that cannot offset a massive terrain disadvantage through overwhelming suppressive fire is not tactics. It is pure, unadulterated murder."

"And I will absolutely never issue an order that uses the lives of my brothers as meat-shields to fill a trench." In this brutal, dark fantasy world—where the lives of common soldiers were treated as nothing more than cheap fodder to be thrown mindlessly against defensive lines—Soren's casually spoken words struck like a physical thunderbolt. Behind him, the sixty-three heavily armored juggernauts felt the breath hitch in their throats.

The massive hands gripping their Blackiron halberds tightened so fiercely their knuckles turned white. Their blood surged with overwhelming emotion. This was the absolute, unyielding military creed belonging only to Lord Soren. He valued his men above all!

"Since these green-skinned bastards want to sit up there and enjoy the freezing wind, we'll gladly oblige them," Soren sneered.

"A bunch of barbarians hauling around hundreds of pounds of Blackiron plate? Starve them for two days, and they won't even have the stamina left to stand up and take a piss." Soren slowly raised his head, his eyes flashing with an icy, merciless glint as he delivered his final verdict:"All forces, hear my command! Dig trenches right where you stand! Deploy tripwires and set up the chevaux-de-frise!"

"I want three overlapping layers of blockade lines constructed right at the base of this path! Do not let a single damn fly off that mountain!"

"All combat units, hold position and rotate rest cycles! Send a messenger back to Greywater Village. Tell Luger to immediately mobilize the [Heavy Siege Trebuchets] and drag them to the front lines!" Soren stared coldly at the tiny, armored silhouettes trapped on the peak of Eagle Beak Ridge.

"Since the high ground is too costly to assault with manpower, we simply won't use manpower."

"Once the siege engines arrive... we are going to smash those bastards, and the entire damn mountain they're standing on, into a bloody paste over the rocks!"