Chương 127: 127：The Grandmaster's One-Hit Throat Slit

Yet, amidst this corpse-strewn battlefield, the most terrifying sight of all was Soren, standing dead-center in the formation. He hadn't even taken more than a few steps. Like an aristocrat taking a leisurely stroll through his private gardens, his hands blurred as he casually drew the [Windwhisper Bow] over and over. Three towering Orcs—clearly absolute brutes from their overseer squad—roared as they charged him simultaneously, attempting to use their massive bulk to crush him. Ten paces. Point-blank range!

Soren's eyes remained as cold and emotionless as glacial ice. He didn't even bother to aim. THWIP! The first arrow punched cleanly through the right eye socket of the Orc on the left, exploding out the back of his skull in a shower of red and white. Eight paces! Soren's hand reached over his shoulder. Nock, draw, level. THWIP! The second arrow drove straight into the gaping, roaring maw of the middle Orc. The bodkin head erupted from the back of his neck, carrying a severed chunk of the beast's tongue with it.

Five paces! Only the largest, most heavily muscled Orc remained. He was so close his furious spittle practically splattered onto Soren's boots. He raised his massive battleaxe high, genuinely believing he was finally about to rip this demonic human commander in half. Soren didn't even fully draw the string. He executed a flawless, short-draw snap-shot. THWACK! At a distance of barely three meters, the wind-rune amplified kinetic force was absolute.

The heavy iron arrow violently shattered the Orc's chest-plate, blasting a fist-sized crater straight through his sternum. The Orc's overhead swing abruptly froze. His massive body crashed heavily to its knees, landing squarely at Soren's feet. His eyes bulged in pure disbelief as he choked on his final, unwilling breath. This display of cold, mechanical, and hyper-efficient slaughter utterly annihilated the Orcs' fiercely held delusion of being invincible in close-quarters combat.

"Devils... they are devils wearing human skin..."

"The Great Warchief has abandoned us..." The Bloodaxe Battalion—once a terrifying, arrogant trump card of the Orc Alliance—finally suffered a total, catastrophic collapse. Under the sheer crushing weight of superior troop quality and the overlapping crossfire of heavy ballistas and military longbows, their minds completely broke. The remaining few dozen Orcs lost all will to fight. Stripped of their pride, they dropped their battleaxes.

Like deflated balloons, they slumped into the blood and gore-soaked mud, letting out low, pathetic whimpers like beaten dogs. Stepping through the viscous, pooling blood, the sixty-three 1st-Line Elites moved with terrifying, synchronized precision. Not a single man relaxed his guard in the face of impending victory. For every man leveling a two-and-a-half-meter armor-piercing halberd in the front, two more flanked him, their [Geared Heavy Repeating Crossbows] leveled and ready.

This suffocating, airtight military pressure plunged the surviving Bloodaxe Orcs into bottomless despair.

"Hack... get back!" In the absolute center of the encirclement. Garrosh, the Commander of the Bloodaxe Battalion, leaned heavily on a chipped, battered steel battleaxe, gasping violently for air. His helmet had been blown clean off during the alchemical fire-oil bombardment. Half of his ash-grey face was roasted, the flesh split and weeping. His left eye was severely swollen and bloodshot, his vision blurring.

The fiercely proud Blackiron plate that encased his massive frame was now riddled with horrifying, jagged puncture wounds from armor-piercing bolts. Had he been human, the sheer volume of blood loss would have turned him into a corpse long ago. Garrosh looked around.

The Bloodaxe warriors who had once followed him to tear human cavalry apart with their bare hands were now either piles of pulverized meat smeared across the rock, or kneeling in the blood, dropping their prized axes and weeping with their hands over their heads. It was over. Completely over. From the sky raining apocalyptic fire, to the deadly pincer attack of longbows and heavy crossbows, to the total disintegration of his defensive line... Garrosh felt as if he was trapped in a highly absurd, waking nightmare.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Heavy boots crushed a piece of charred bone. At the front of the encirclement, the heavy infantry parted like the sea. Soren slowly strolled into the clearing. He had already slung the [Windwhisper Bow] back over his shoulder. His right hand hung casually at his side, his short black hair fluttering gently in the mountain wind.

Watching this human youth approach with such a relaxed, unbothered stride, Garrosh's single functioning eye burned with such intense rage and hatred it looked ready to bleed.

"You... you are Soren." Soren didn't answer. His profound, bottomless black eyes simply stared calmly at the cornered beast. That kind of condescending, absolute dismissal violently stung the deepest roots of Garrosh's pride.

"Cunning maggot! Relying on siege engines for a sneak attack! Relying on a despicable pincer strike! What kind of warrior are you?!" This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Garrosh suddenly roared. He brutally gripped the heavy bolt embedded deep in his left shoulder and violently ripped it out bare-handed. Along with a spray of green blood, he slammed the bolt furiously onto the ground.

Gripping his impossibly heavy steel battleaxe with both hands, he drew upon the absolute last dregs of strength in his chest, threw his head back, and unleashed a harrowing war cry.

"I am the rabid hound beneath the War God's throne! I am the Alpha of the Bloodaxes!" Glaring dead at Soren, he invoked the most ancient, sacred tradition of the Orc Alliance, issuing his ultimate challenge:"Soren! If you do not wish to be spat upon! If you are not a coward!"

"Draw your sword! Mak'gora! A Blood Duel! You and me! One on one to the death!" Hearing this, the previously defeated, whimpering Orc survivors actually raised their heads. In their primitive, barbaric worldview, if a human refused a duel, they were nothing but a spineless coward. And if he accepted? With Commander Garrosh's terrifying, gate-shattering strength, even if he died, he could absolutely drag this demonic human leader to hell with him! Faced with this pathetic attempt at moral kidnapping...

Off to the side, Battle Monk Renn let out a harsh sneer. Cracking his rock-hard knuckles, he prepared to step forward and shatter the Orc's jaw with a single punch. Gary was even more direct. He leveled his heavy repeating crossbow, placing the crosshairs squarely on Garrosh's forehead. He was just waiting for a single hand signal from the Lord to turn this idiot into mush. However, Soren slightly raised his left hand, instantly halting his subordinates' movements.

"A one-on-one death duel?"

"Fine. I accept." With absolute calm, he drew the refined steel longsword from his waist. It was just a standard-issue military longsword. Letting the blade hang at a casual angle by his side, Soren slightly parted his feet, adopting a stance that looked utterly unremarkable, yet possessed absolutely zero flaws.

"You will pay for your arrogance..." Seeing that Soren actually dared to fight him without a shield, without a heavy weapon, wielding only a thin, flimsy longsword, a flash of maniacal, bloodthirsty glee erupted in Garrosh's eyes.

"DIE!" BOOM! Garrosh moved. This towering behemoth, his muscles rippling like granite, surged forward like a heavily armored siege ram that had completely lost its brakes! The wind howled! Raising the door-sized steel battleaxe high above his head, he brought it down toward the top of Soren's skull with the apocalyptic, mountain-splitting kinetic force of a landslide! The sheer velocity of the axe let out a piercing sonic boom.

Even if a fully armored Knight stood there with his warhorse, this strike would have cleaved them both perfectly in half. However... in Soren's vision. The chaotic sounds of the world faded into a low, muted hum. Garrosh's thunderous, apocalyptic charge slowed to a crawl, as if moving through deep water. Too many flaws. The massive, gaping opening across his chest and abdomen. The micro-second of lag in his right leg's pivot due to his prior injuries.

And the downward trajectory of the axe itself—raised far too high in pursuit of raw explosive power, completely and utterly abandoning all defense. [Military Swordsmanship: Grandmaster Level]! Right at the exact microsecond the terrifying axe blade was less than three inches from Soren's face—when the vicious wind-pressure had already severed a strand of hair on his forehead... Soren moved. Pushing off lightly with the tip of his boot, he slid exactly a half-step to the left.

The lethal axe blade missed him by a hair's breadth. Simultaneously, utilizing the rotational momentum of his sidestep, his right hand violently thrust the sword forward! SHING! A crisp, subtle hum of vibrating steel rang through the air. A blinding streak of silver threaded the needle. Slipping flawlessly into the gap left entirely exposed by Garrosh's raised arms—a sliver of space barely a finger wide between his jaw and his neck collar—the blade struck with venomous, viper-like precision!

Piercing bone, punching clean through the throat! SQUELCH! The sickening, muffled sound of a blade severing cartilage and trachea. The blood-soaked tip of the longsword violently erupted from the back of Garrosh's neck, the steel gleaming with a bone-chilling light in the sun. CRASH! The hundred-pound steel battleaxe slammed heavily into the empty stone where Soren had stood just a fraction of a second ago, violently splitting the granite. But the master wielding the axe had completely frozen.

Garrosh's colossal body felt as if every ounce of strength had been instantly drained from it. He remained locked in his downward chopping posture, his single eye bulging impossibly wide in sheer, unadulterated disbelief. In his mind, there was only world-ending shock and infinite, suffocating grievance! He had died without even seeing how that sword had been drawn.

"Urgh... gurgle..." Bloody foam surged frantically from his mouth and the gaping hole in his throat, utterly suffocating the final, unwilling roar he desperately wanted to unleash.