Chương 124: 124：The Symphony of Alchemy and Magic

The moment those words echoed out, absolute silence fell over the base of Lone Cliff and the towering high ground. Even the human soldiers who couldn't understand a single syllable of Orcish could feel the sickening, venomous malice dripping from that tone. And up on Eagle Beak Ridge? The five hundred Blackiron Orcs—already teetering on the absolute edge of starvation and manic agitation—reacted like rabid wolves whose tails had just been violently stomped.

Their eyes instantly erupted into a sea of blazing crimson!

"ROOAARR!"

"Slaughter him! Hack the head off that insignificant human maggot!" A frenzied, bloodthirsty roar exploded from the Orc ranks. Weapons were swung in blind rage, battleaxes violently striking the bedrock and sending showers of sparks into the air. In Orcish culture—a society built entirely on the absolute worship of raw strength, bloodline, and the sacred honor of the duel—this level of insult was infinitely harder to endure than having their flesh carved off with a dull knife.

Garrosh, Commander of the Bloodaxe Battalion, swelled with absolute fury. His muscles expanded, and veins violently throbbed on his forehead like a nest of writhing vipers. He abruptly shot up, crossing the distance to the very edge of the cliff in a few massive strides. His bloodshot eyes locked onto the human figure spouting arrogance at the bottom of the slope. Rage burned his lungs so fiercely it physically hurt.

He desperately wanted to leap straight off the cliff and cleave this human named Soren perfectly in half! CLACK! Garrosh violently unhooked a refined-steel throwing axe from his waist. Channeling the entirety of his terrifying, monstrous arm strength, he hurled it brutally toward the bottom of the slope! SWISH! The short axe tore through the sky like a falling meteor, smashing violently into the mud just dozens of meters in front of Meyer's feet.

Half the axe-head embedded itself deeply into solid bedrock, exploding a geyser of acidic mud into the air. This was the formal acceptance of the duel. But... Garrosh did not charge down the mountain. He stood at the edge of the cliff, his massive chest heaving violently. In his mind, the terrifying visage of Warchief Blackstone and the absolute military orders he had been given forcibly doused the flames of his fury.

"Cunning human maggots!" Garrosh glared down at the slope. Even though he couldn't see the human's face clearly, his intuition told him he had completely seen through this so-called "trick." You think you can enrage me? You want me to abandon this absolute, dominant high ground? Garrosh threw his head back and unleashed a heaven-shaking, mocking laugh toward the basin below:"HAHAHAHA! Human! Your pathetic, clumsy attempts at provocation could only fool a three-year-old child!"

"I hold five hundred elites! With your measly force of barely a hundred men, if you dare attempt an uphill assault, I will personally guarantee you choke on our rolling boulders!" Garrosh aggressively spun around, roaring orders at his adjutants:"Pass my command! Every single warrior—ignore the barking of that dog down there! Lock the shield wall dead-tight right at the edge of the cliff facing the mountain path! Push the rolling logs to the absolute front of the formation!"

"The fact that these humans are resorting to such low-tier tactics to trick us down perfectly proves they are completely powerless to launch a frontal assault!"

"For the next few days, as long as we hold this sheer slope, the moment the Great Warchief's encirclement closes... I am going to personally rip the heart out of that man named Soren and eat it raw!" To a man, five hundred pairs of hate-filled eyes locked dead onto the single, winding goat-path at the front of the mountain. If even a bird dared to fly up that frontal approach, they would instantly shred it into a thousand pieces. However. Garrosh would never, ever know.

At the exact moment he was feeling like a tactical genius for securing his frontal defense... At the exact moment Meyer was still at the bottom of the slope, energetically inventing new and creative ways to curse his ancestors... On the rear face of the Lone Cliff high ground. Directly beneath that smooth, negative-angle, utterly treacherous cliff face... A phantom-like assault squad had already pressed themselves against the rock. A hundred-meter sheer cliff.

Smooth, damp, and completely choked with resilient, highly toxic iron-vines. For ordinary infantry to even attempt this climb was nothing short of a suicidal fever dream. But standing at the base of this cliff was Soren. And directly behind him were sixty-three frontline elites. Stripped of their heavy plate, wearing only lightweight half-cuirasses, and carrying two-and-a-half-meter armor-piercing halberds and [Geared Heavy Repeating Crossbows] strapped tightly to their backs.

Every single man here had assimilated the [Basic Troll Serum]!

"Absolute silence," Soren commanded, his voice a barely audible whisper.

"Use the free-climbing techniques I drilled into you. If your fingers can't find purchase in a crack, drive your dagger straight into the rock."

"Move out." Battle Monk Renn took the absolute vanguard. His talents—[Hardened Skin] and [Unarmed Master]—were pushed to their absolute limits. He didn't even use a rope. His hands, wrapped in coarse cloth, curled into iron hooks. Relying purely on explosive muscle power, his fingers literally crushed and dug into the moss-covered rock face! Muscles bulging, he moved like a massive gecko, rapidly scaling the sheer wall. Right behind him was Soren, his movements light, agile, and packed with explosive power.

Below them, sixty-three elites bit down on the cliff face, spreading upward like a rising tide. Jagged, razor-sharp shale sliced their fingertips open. Blood seeped from their hands. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. But the terrifying regenerative factor granted by the [Basic Troll Serum] caused those superficial wounds to scab over in the time it took to take a single breath. Despite the agonizing burn in their muscles, not a single man uttered a sound.

Even their breathing was suppressed to the absolute minimum. Thirty minutes. Under the cover of the endless, echoing insults bouncing off the frontal battlefield, thirty grueling, excruciating minutes quietly slipped away. Smack. A blood-stained hand gently gripped the rear edge of the high ground plateau. Renn was the first to vault silently over the highest ridge, immediately followed by Soren.

Then, one by one, every single elite warrior crested the natural barrier that the Orcs had arrogantly deemed 'absolutely safe'. Soren crouched in a dense patch of thorny brush, slowly parting the weeds. Through the gaps in the foliage, he could see them with crystal clarity. Barely fifty meters away! The sprawling, heavily armored backs of the Bloodaxe Battalion's rearguard! All five hundred Orcs had their backs completely exposed.

Every ounce of their attention, every single tower shield, was locked entirely onto the frontal slope to the south! Renn clenched his fists, his eyes burning as he looked at Soren. Soren gave a slight shake of his head. He raised a flat palm, holding it suspended in the air. Not yet. He was waiting. Waiting for Hobgoblin Luger to launch the opening salvo. The time had come. Down at the artillery positions at the base of the slope. A cruel, malicious grin stretched across Luger's ugly, wrinkled face.

"Boys! Let those green-skinned bastards know that the feast has begun!"

"FIRE!" BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Six synchronized, ear-shattering mechanical snaps detonated from the artillery emplacements. The massive torsion arms and trebuchet beams swung upward with such apocalyptic force they literally tore the air apart, generating a miniature vortex of wind within the forest clearing!

"Great Elements! Heed my call!" Standing off to the side, Chief Magical Advisor Victor wasn't idle either. Suspended in mid-air, his eyes ignited with a blinding, searing crimson light. He pointed his staff straight at the heavens. Supported by [Omni-Element Mastery], he completely bypassed any tedious incantations. Six high-tier [Burst Fireballs]—each packing enough thermal energy to melt solid steel—condensed out of the void like a string of blazing pearls.

They locked onto the extreme-angle trajectory of the launched boulders, accelerating upward in hot pursuit! High above, a terrifying, unnatural screech began to tear through the clouds. Standing on the frontline of Eagle Beak Ridge, Garrosh furrowed his brow, wondering why the human at the bottom of the slope hadn't stopped barking yet. Suddenly, he noticed the gloomy, fog-choked sky above the plateau inexplicably light up. He instinctively tilted his head back.

With just one glance, the blood in Garrosh's veins instantly, utterly froze. From the dense, grey clouds directly above them, massive, pitch-black silhouettes were plummeting down from an extreme, near-vertical angle—a trajectory they had absolutely zero defense against. They carried the deafening shriek of a sonic boom. And trailing right behind them? Six blinding, meteor-like spheres of apocalyptic fire!

"What in the..." An Orc adjutant holding a tower shield didn't even have the time to finish his sentence. CRASH! The first clay payload, packed to the brim with Alchemical Fire-Oil, smashed directly into the bedrock in the center of their formation. The payload detonated, instantly spraying a dense, torrential rain of highly viscous, pitch-black liquid over the Orcs. Milliseconds later, the [Burst Fireballs] plunged directly into that storm of oil. KABOOOOM! A world-ending explosion!

In a single fraction of a second, it was as if a miniature volcano had violently erupted directly on top of the high ground! A blinding tsunami of thousand-degree crimson flames expanded horizontally, sweeping across the surface of Eagle Beak Ridge like a wave of pure annihilation!

"AGGGHHHHH!!!" The dozen Blackiron heavy infantrymen closest to ground zero weren't even crushed—they were instantly blasted into the air by the raw concussive shockwave. The viscous Alchemical Fire-Oil clung tightly to their fiercely proud Blackiron plate, igniting violently. The thousand-degree flames instantly transformed their heavy armor into skin-tight branding irons! Screams of absolute, inhuman agony tore through the clouds.

Their immensely strong, muscular bodies were literally roasted alive inside their own metal shells. The horrifying sizzle of cooking flesh, mixed with the nauseating stench of charred gore, instantly choked the entire plateau. And then, the true kinetic payloads arrived. Massive, hundred-pound granite boulders slammed into the earth. BANG! CRACK! It didn't matter how impenetrable their famed Blackiron armor was. In the face of hundred-pound boulders falling from terminal velocity, they were as fragile as eggshells.

An entire row of Orcs holding heavy tower shields was violently plowed through. Shield-bearing arms, along with the ribcages behind them, instantly collapsed. Crushed meat and pulverized internal organs erupted from the seams of their armor, spraying outward like squeezed tomato paste. In a single, devastating volley. The invincible Bloodaxe Battalion—who just moments ago believed their defense was an impregnable fortress—had their densely packed wedge formation violently erased.

The plateau was instantly plunged into hell. Burning "fire-men" sprinted wildly in all directions, rolling desperately on the stone floor, only for the friction to fan the Alchemical Fire-Oil and make it burn even hotter.