Chương 151: 151：Amphibious Recruits Delivered to the Doorstep

"I accept! I crave this opportunity to prove my strength to the high lords!" Zagar violently straightened his shriveled, twisted shadow-body, slamming his left fist brutally against his chest.

"I will make them see that the shadows and the [Sons of Titan] under my command are the very spear that will tear the human world apart!" Warchief Blackstone nodded in grim satisfaction before throwing out the next question.

"Then where do you plan to set up your next slaughterhouse? Whose head do you plan to sever as the perfect sacrifice for this hundred-man observation delegation?"

"Infiltrating some poorly defended border village or town won't even pique the interest of those arrogant bureaucrats." Where to pull off something massive? Zagar's mind raced, rapidly filtering through tactical options. The capital of the Silvermoon Kingdom? No, impossible. After his last assassination run, the humans had pulled massive troop concentrations back to defend it. Infiltrating now would mean stepping directly into a meat-grinder of ambushes and magical barriers.

Suddenly, a look of absolute, ruthless cruelty twisted Zagar's face. His finger hovered over the sprawling beast-hide map pinned to the back wall. His long nail traced across the Silvermoon Kingdom's defensive lines, eventually stabbing heavily down onto the outer perimeter of the Misty Swamp... onto the absolute core bastion of the Holy Halycon Empire. [Megalith Fortress]!

"This is my target!" Zagar roared, his voice hoarse. Megalith Fortress! The single strongest bulwark in humanity's Northern Defense Line.

"Now that is courage!" the Warchief bellowed in praise. Zagar bared his teeth in a grotesque grin, waves of shadow energy swirling violently around him.

"The trash of the Silvermoon Kingdom have already had their courage broken."

"But sitting right inside Megalith Fortress is the supreme commander of the entire Holy Halycon Empire's northern border. The man countless orcs view as an insurmountable mountain... Grand Duke Valentine!"

"Since I managed to escape completely unscathed from the heavily guarded rear of the Silvermoon Kingdom..." Zagar raised his chin arrogantly.

"... Then I am going to make that old bastard Valentine taste exactly what it feels like to be instantly slaughtered by the Sons of Titan, right inside his own impenetrable command bastion!" Only by severing the head of an apex human general like Valentine could he justify the unprecedented honor of a hundred high-ranking officials from the Blood Province coming to inspect him! He could already envision the exact moment.

Standing beneath the gaze of thousands, his head held high, casually tossing Valentine's shadow-corrupted skull right at the feet of the observation delegation. Seeing Zagar so fanatically driven, Warchief Blackstone felt his own blood boil. Valentine was his lifelong nemesis as well. If Valentine died, his grand strategy to march the horde south would face absolutely zero resistance! The Warchief immediately spun around, slamming his massive hand onto the replacement stone desk to issue the final directive.

"Excellent! A flawless plan!" The Warchief barked out his decision with ironclad authority.

"High Priest Zagar, hear my command! In the name of the Warchief of the Blackstone Warband, I officially authorize you to lead eight Sons of Titan to execute this strike!"

"The hundred-man observation delegation comprised of the Blood Province's highest echelon will arrive at the Misty Swamp outpost late into the night, exactly three days from now!" The Warchief's voice boomed like thunder.

"I want you to make your move on that third night! Using the Holy Halycon Empire's supreme fortress as your slaughterhouse, I want you to sever that old bastard Valentine's head!" The moment he received the final directive, the dark robes around Zagar's body whipped wildly in a storm of shadow energy. He swore a venomous oath in his heart. He would pour every last drop of his mana into this strike.

Even if he had to wring every ounce of potential from those eight monsters until they were bone-dry, he would cleanly and viciously rip Grand Duke Valentine's head from his shoulders. And with that unparalleled battle record, he would brand the name Zagar and his eternal glory directly into the hearts of every single high-ranking orc official in the Horde! Mornings in the Misty Swamp were never poetic.

A dense, grey miasma blocked out the sky entirely, while a damp, freezing wind carried the nauseating stench of sulfur and rotting mud, relentlessly assaulting this god-forsaken wasteland. Yet, within the elevated volcanic basin of Greywater Village, the atmosphere was one of boiling, vibrant vitality.

"One, two! Compress! Compress it again!" Accompanied by the heavy grinding of flat-bottomed stone rollers—hastily carved by the carpenters overnight—over a dozen peasant women pushed together with all their might. The water-soaked raw cotton let out loud, squelching sounds under the immense pressure.

After a full night of trial and error following Soren's "Repeated Water-Compression and Beating Method," the very first batch of incredibly resilient, highly dense, yet astonishingly lightweight cotton plating had successfully taken shape. Inside his stilted wooden cabin, Soren splashed cold water on his face to wash away his exhaustion. Even though he had stayed up late into the night discussing population plundering strategies with Fina, his eyes remained piercingly bright.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Splash, splash, splash. The brisk sound of buckskin boots stepping through puddles echoed outside his door. The Chief Financial Officer, Fina, entered with a deeply solemn expression. She didn't even have time to offer a proper noble's morning curtsy before hurriedly reporting in.

"My Lord, we have a situation at the outer perimeter."

"Gary's scouting squad intercepted a group of people just north of the village entrance, right in front of the spiked pitfall traps." Fina's brow furrowed tightly, as if recalling the unsettling sight she had just witnessed.

"It's a rogue band of survivors. Roughly fifty of them."

"They laid low at the edge of the mist for the entire night. It wasn't until the sun came up just now that they actively walked out of the swamp. They are vehemently demanding to see you, stating that they wish to surrender and completely integrate into our ranks."

"An armed refugee band actively coming to surrender?" Hearing this, Soren couldn't help but let out a dry laugh. Just last night, he had been agonizing over where to plunder population to expand his army, and this morning, a group was actively delivering themselves right to his doorstep. It perfectly solved his most burning crisis.

"Let's go take a look. Order the second-line spearmen phalanx to assume defensive positions, but no one fires a single arrow without my direct command." Soren grabbed his longbow, slung it over his shoulder, and marched outside with long, purposeful strides. Escorted by Fina, Soren walked up the gentle slope leading to the village's forward watchtowers. Despite having lived two lifetimes and having personally witnessed the absolute most brutal, harrowing war-zone refugee camps on Earth...

the exact moment he got a clear look at the group below, his heart still gave a violent jolt. You couldn't even call them an army. You could barely even call them human. These fifty-odd individuals looked exactly like the walking dead, having just dragged themselves out from the foulest depths of the rotting swamp. There wasn't a single complete piece of fabric on their bodies. Their so-called "clothing" consisted of nothing more than rotting dire-crocodile skins and dead vines, barely covering their vitals.

To fend off the deadly, venomous insects and toxic miasma of the swamp, this group had resorted to absolute extremes. Their faces, their torsos, and even the gaps between their teeth were caked thick with dark, anti-toxic bluish-black mud, radiating a suffocating, choking stench. The vile odor was so overpowering that even the hardened archers stationed up in the watchtowers couldn't help but cover their noses and mouths in disgust. And the weapons gripped tightly in their hands were a tragic, miserable sight.

Half-snapped, heavily rusted iron swords. Beast-bone spears ground to sharp points on rocks. The most horrifying of all were the men standing at the front of the pack—they were literally wielding the discarded skeletal remains of what green-skinned orcs had gnawed on, with rotting meat still wedged between the bone joints! Standing at the very front of this savage, utterly feral band was an incredibly gaunt, wiry man.

The thick mud coating his body couldn't hide the horrifying, bone-deep, old scars crisscrossing his flesh. He stood hunched over, radiating a feral, highly defensive hostility. His eyes were filled with an indescribable, desperate ruthlessness as he locked his gaze onto the heavily disciplined spearmen waiting above Greywater Village.

"I am the Lord and administrator of Greywater Village, Soren." Standing firmly behind the wooden barricades on the slope, Soren's calm voice shattered the hair-trigger tension in the air. Hearing that name, the gaunt man at the front violently jolted. He whipped his head up, his gaze slicing right past the dense forest of spearpoints, landing squarely onto Soren's face.

"Y-you... you are Lord Soren?" His eyes were wide with sheer disbelief. Too young! In their minds, a commander capable of storming the treacherous heights of Lone Cliff and utterly annihilating five hundred Bloodaxe elites in under an hour should have been a towering, nine-foot-tall behemoth with a scarred face, a veteran of countless bloodbaths. But the young man standing before them was strikingly handsome and stood tall and straight.

Aside from his deeply composed, grounded gaze, he looked even younger than the pampered noble brats back in the city. But that shock only lasted for half a second. When the man's gaze swept past Soren, landing on the towering, rock-steady second-line spearmen behind him, and the chillingly disciplined longbowmen up in the towers... An unfathomable, fanatical reverence and boiling excitement instantly exploded in his eyes—and in the eyes of the fifty-plus survivors behind him! It was true!

An army capable of establishing such an ironclad, impenetrable stronghold... the man standing before them could absolutely be none other than the legendary Lord Soren!

"My Lord! My name is Darion! We are exiles wandering the southern depths of the swamp!" Darion practically scrambled forward on his hands and knees, completely disregarding the fact that hidden spiked pitfall traps might be right under his feet. He threw his head back, his frantic voice dripping with profound humility and desperate pleading. He lowered his posture to the absolute dirt, utterly terrified that Soren would reject them based on their miserable, broken appearance.