Chương 125: 125：The Onlooker's Blind Spot

"Scatter! Strip your armor! Ditch the heavy plate! Get out of the burning zone!" Garrosh, blood violently trickling from his ruptured eardrums, roared hoarsely through the thick, suffocating smoke. It was only now—amidst the agonizing, blinding pain of the concussive shockwaves—that the battle-hardened Orc Commander finally realized a terrifying, bone-chilling fact. He had severely, fatally underestimated the weapon loadout of the supposedly "pathetic hundred-man unit" at the bottom of the slope.

Within that measly hundred-man formation hid large-scale siege engines boasting apocalyptic destructive power, seamlessly linked with the high-tier elemental strikes of a master Mage!

"Damned humans! They're using us as live target practice!" This spectacular scene—like heavenly fire raining down to herald the apocalypse—was clearly reflected in the eyes of the two commanders at the observation point miles away. Gabriel and Galahad stood safely on a distant hill. Watching the blinding pillars of fire erupt into the sky, and listening to the faint, agonizing screams echoing from the high ground...

"Gods above..." Gabriel, the new-blood noble general who normally obsessed over elegance and etiquette, completely abandoned his aristocratic image. He violently pumped his fist into the air, his eyes shining with absolute, euphoric excitement as he clapped his hands:"Brilliant! Beautifully struck! Flawless fire-magic overlapping with a saturated alchemical oil bombardment! It's an absolute masterpiece!" But standing right beside him... what about Galahad?

The veteran general who, just moments ago, had been full of complaints, believing Soren was hopelessly arrogant? The old general was completely, utterly frozen in place. Horror? Awe? Crushing shame? A tidal wave of complex emotions slammed into him. As the supreme commander who had defended Ironwood Fortress for years, Galahad knew the absolute truth better than anyone. Even if he emptied Ironwood Fortress's entire artillery reserve...

He could absolutely never pull off a large-scale, long-range bombardment like this! To calculate the parabolic trajectories with such terrifying precision, to perfectly synchronize the mechanical payloads with magical fireballs to create a flawless, saturated blast zone... it was a logistical impossibility for his army. Just an hour ago, I thought his hundred-man unit was nothing but a pack of reckless, meat-headed grunts... Galahad felt as though an invisible hand had just slapped him violently across the face.

The sting was scorching. However, as the second volley of the bombardment began, the veteran's instincts finally kicked in. He violently shuddered, shaking off the awe of the suppressive fire. He squinted through the smoke and saw massive clusters of black dots stubbornly regrouping amidst the flames.

"This relentless carpet bombing is spectacular, yes, but it absolutely cannot end the battle!" Galahad's brow furrowed tightly. He pointed at the high ground, where the Orcs were roaring through the fire, desperately re-forming their shield walls:"The vitality of a Blackiron Orc is too monstrous. They are maniacs who will swing a battleaxe even with their intestines trailing on the ground!"

"Once they spread into a loose skirmisher line and evade the central blast zones..."

"The firing rate of those trebuchets is too slow. During the reload phase, those Orcs will find a moment to breathe."

"There are five hundred elites up there. If they can just endure three or four waves of this fire-rain, Soren's hundred men still entirely lack the manpower to sweep the battlefield and fully annihilate them!" Driven by the absolute necessity to prevent such a flawless tactical advantage from slipping away, Galahad didn't hesitate. He spun around and took massive strides toward the rear line, where Soren had left the Longbow Battalion to hold the perimeter.

Master Archer Ein was currently resting with his eyes closed. Even with the heavens exploding just ahead, he and his longbowmen hadn't stepped a single inch out of their designated cover.

"Commander Ein!" Galahad strode up, pointing urgently toward the dense phalanx of Ironwood Fortress pikemen waiting at the valley entrance behind them.

"The Bloodaxe front line has been blown to pieces! This is a god-given opportunity!"

"For the sake of absolute security! To guarantee total annihilation without a single survivor!"

"Please, allow my men to assist you in the final push!"

"My nine hundred fully-armored spearmen are ready to raise their shields and charge immediately! Let us act as the main vanguard for the cleanup!" Galahad genuinely believed he was offering the ultimate lifeline. This was a deal with absolutely zero downsides for Soren's forces. However. The Longbow Captain named Ein slowly opened his eyes. Ein cast a flat, entirely unimpressed glance at the boiling, eager heavy infantry in the distance.

Then, his gaze drifted upward, locking onto the rear of the high ground—that sheer, negative-angle cliff that was deemed utterly impassable. He knew exactly where his Lord was right now.

"General Galahad."

"Please take your heavy infantry and continue to hold your position at the valley entrance. Do not move."

"If you truly find yourselves with nothing to do, you can go help Lord Luger move some rocks off the ground." Galahad choked, his face flushing crimson with anger and embarrassment.

"You! Do you have any idea what you're saying?! If we don't use heavy infantry to bulldoze that line, simply dropping rocks from afar will absolutely never kill the remaining hundreds of Orcs on that plateau!"

"Step back, old General." Ein flatly closed his eyes again, entirely dismissing the veteran commander of the regular army. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Instead, he lowered his head, his voice taking on the tone of a zealot praying at an altar:"Please, do not ruin this perfect stage."

"Every drop of blood and every single soul on that high ground... only Lord Soren possesses the absolute right to harvest them." Thick, black smoke rolled across the sky, blotting out the sun. Eagle Beak Ridge had been transformed into a literal, apocalyptic hellscape.

"Hold the line! Press yourselves directly against the cliff edge! Raise shields!" Commander Garrosh roared through the sea of fire. Half of his face had been mangled by a piece of flying shrapnel, and his eardrums were still ringing with a maddening buzz from the concussive blasts. But his remaining shred of rationality desperately clung to a single tactical assumption. The enemy is using such luxurious firepower! The human infantry must already be charging up the frontal goat-path!

At this moment, the hundreds of surviving Blackiron Orcs dragged all their tower shields and heavy weapons to the absolute edge of the cliff facing the southern slope, locking them together into an airtight wall of steel. The axe-throwers were red in the face, their fingers gripping the edges of the rolling logs. They were simply waiting for the first human helmet to pierce the smoke below before unleashing a devastating avalanche.

Every single ounce of their attention, every drop of their killing intent, was completely, hopelessly glued to the frontal battlefield. Yet, directly behind them. At the edge of the negative-angle cliff that every Orc believed to be a physical impossibility for any wingless creature to scale. A gentle breeze swept past, momentarily parting a thick veil of smoke. Soren, crouching silently behind a scorched, blackened boulder at the absolute rear of the plateau, slowly stood up.

Behind him, sixty-three 1st-Line Elites rose like phantoms, standing in a perfectly straight, utterly silent row. They were less than forty paces away from the rear ranks of the Orcs, who currently had their asses stuck in the air, gripping their shields tightly against the frontal cliff. At this distance, they could literally see the greasy, matted hair on the backs of the Orcs' heads. The roaring chaos of the battlefield completely masked their arrival.

Soren's freezing, predatory gaze swept over the utterly defenseless backs of the Orc Battalion. He slowly raised his right hand, then violently clenched it into a fist. CLACK! CLACK! Sixty-three crisp, synchronized mechanical clicks cut abruptly through the crackle of the flames. The [Geared Heavy Repeating Crossbows], already cranked to their absolute maximum tension, were leveled flush against the men's shoulders. The thick, refined-iron bolts gleamed with a deadly, cold light amidst the fires.

"Fire." VWOOOOM! Within a point-blank range of thirty paces, the heavy repeating crossbows unleashed a level of kinetic force that was nothing short of terrifying. SQUELCH! SQUELCH! SQUELCH! A continuous, sickening chorus of metal violently puncturing flesh exploded across the plateau. The fiercely proud Blackiron plate armor of the Orcs—when subjected to the direct, point-blank fire of heavy dwarven-style crossbows—was as fragile as wet paper.

The massive bolts instantly punched clean through the spines of the outermost two ranks of Orcs. The catastrophic penetrative force was so great that the bolts—carrying a spray of pulverized bone and blood—erupted out of their chests and violently embedded themselves into the backs of the Orcs standing directly in front of them!

"AGGGHHHH!!!" Shrill, despairing screams instantly overpowered the crackling of the fire. Dozens of elite Orcs on the outermost edge didn't even catch a glimpse of their attackers before they were felled like timber, crashing heavily into pools of their own blood. This lethal, catastrophic strike originating directly from their rear completely and utterly shattered the Orcs' psychological defenses.

"Behind us! The enemy is behind us!"

"Gods, how did they get up here?!" Just as the Orc formation broke, descending into chaos like a beehive detonated from the inside... Soren moved. He reached over his shoulder and smoothly drew the [Windwhisper Bow], its frame pulsing with cyan wind-runes. [Eagle Eye Perception]! In Soren's vision, the swirling embers, the frantically running Orcs, and even the drifting dust in the air instantly slowed to a microscopic crawl.

His piercing gaze cut straight through the chaotic mass of bodies, instantly locking onto three Orc Centurions who were desperately trying to break from the ranks to blow their war-horns and rally the troops. THRUM! THRUM! THRUM! Soren's fingers blurred into a phantom-like afterimage across the bowstring. A triple-shot. Three arrows, wreathed in the cyan magic of wind-runes, tore three bone-white shockwaves through the air.

Skimming just millimeters over the scalps of the panicking Orcs, they struck from impossibly lethal angles. PUCHK! The first Centurion had just raised the horn to his lips. An arrow punched directly through his throat, tearing the horn from his grip as it fell to the earth, sputtering with bloody foam. The second Centurion was holding his axe high, roaring an order. The lethal arrow threaded the needle flawlessly through the eye-slit of his heavy helmet, violently blowing the entire back of his skull off.

The third Centurion barely managed to turn his head. A wind-rune arrow punched cleanly through his Blackiron chestplate, annihilating his heart. The sheer kinetic momentum carried his two-hundred-pound body backward, violently nailing him to a scorched boulder. In the span of three breaths, the Orc command structure was completely decapitated.