Chương 155: 155：From Elites to Captives

After a grueling, day-long forced march, the fading twilight was completely swallowed by the pitch-black night.

"Hold position. Conceal yourselves." Crouching behind the crest of a muddy hill barely a kilometer from the Blackrock Stone Forest, Soren raised a single clenched fist, issuing the silent tactical signal to halt. Every single soldier instantly dropped into the mud, melting silently into the towering, thorny sawgrass. Below them lay a sprawling, naturally depressed basin. The once-dense stone forest had been violently clear-cut and aggressively strip-mined.

A crude orcish outpost sat right across the basin's only entrance, choking off the chokepoint entirely. Even from a kilometer away, the freezing night wind carried the sickening, crisp crack of heavy leather whips tearing through flesh, accompanied by the deep, rhythmic, muffled thuds of heavy smelting. Soren crouched at the absolute peak of the hill and slowly closed his eyes. Hum! The very next second, his eyes snapped open. [Eagle Eye] activated.

His field of vision instantly warped and rapidly magnified, slicing clean through the suffocating, pitch-black miasma of the night! Down inside the sprawling, open-pit mine, hundreds of torches and roaring braziers bathed the area in a chaotic, dancing crimson glow. The intelligence was absolutely flawless. This place was a massive vein of ultra-high-purity Black Iron Ore. Stationed along the outer perimeter and up in the inner wooden watchtowers were roughly over a hundred hulking, muscle-bound Black Iron Orcs.

They gripped massive battleaxes and wore top-tier defensive black iron scale armor. A few of the guards were even casually chugging from massive barrels of cheap, frothing ale. But what truly locked Soren's attention was the loading zone near the main arterial road. Tethered to heavy iron posts were four massive, towering herbivorous beasts of burden—Kodos. Yoked behind these four gargantuan creatures were four heavily reinforced, massive flatbed wagons. And sitting right there on three of those wagons...

were literal mountains of deep, bluish-black raw Black Iron Ore! If I can secure that shipment... that high-purity ore is enough to forge premium armaments for over a hundred men! Kill the guards! Hijack the wagons! Smuggle the ore back to Greywater Village under the cover of night! In that exact moment, an incredibly audacious, blood-pumping plan rapidly crystallized in Soren's mind. Soren slid quietly back down the muddy slope.

Just as he picked up a broken branch to sketch a rough tactical assault map into the dirt...

"My Lord, looking at their deployment... it's barely a hundred and fifty low-tier Black Iron Orcs." Meyer, the Intelligence Officer who had just slipped back from his forward recon, casually rubbed his chin, looking completely relaxed. Standing beside him, the Trapper Captain, Gary, cracked his knuckles with a cold, predatory sneer.

"He's right, my Lord. For this handful of green-skinned trash? I don't even need the Monk Renn's boys to back me up. Just give the word."

"With just the sixty-odd elites Meyer and I brought, I can lead a frontal charge and butcher every single one of those greenskin bastards into dog meat in under ten minutes!" The moment those words were spoken. Darion—who was pressed flat against the mud at the rear, acting as their guide—completely froze. He genuinely thought his ears were playing tricks on him. His jaw dropped so hard it nearly hit the dirt. What? What the hell did he just hear?! Sixty human infantrymen...

were openly planning to launch a frontal, uphill charge against over a hundred fully armored Black Iron Orcs? And they planned to completely annihilate them in under ten minutes?! And their tone... they sounded like they were discussing what to have for breakfast! In Darion's entire worldview, the towering physiques and suicidal, bloodthirsty nature of the orcs meant they could easily, effortlessly crush an equal number of human infantry in a pure melee meat-grinder.

Standard military doctrine stated it took a dense phalanx of five human veterans—paying the blood-price of two to three casualties—just to drag a single Black Iron Orc down into the mud with them! What kind of delusional, suicidal bullshit are these guys spewing?! Were these men just complete, untested rookies who had never seen real combat? In Darion's mind, this wasn't an assault plan. This was a literal, suicidal joke!

"C-Captain Gary... My Lord..." Darion broke out in a freezing cold sweat, his lips turning a panicked shade of blue.

"Please, do not listen to Captain Gary! To clash head-on across an open plain against that camp... the moment we get bogged down in a chaotic melee, we'll be—" Smack. Without even turning his head, Soren reached back and firmly clamped his hand over Darion's violently shaking fist. Soren cast a sharp glance at Gary, completely ignoring Darion's sheer terror. After all, Darion had never witnessed it with his own two eyes.

He had absolutely no idea what kind of apocalyptic, terrifying lethality these frontline elites—injected with [Basic Troll Serum] and clad head-to-toe in black iron—truly possessed. But that didn't matter right now. Tonight, Soren had absolutely zero intention of fighting a pitched battle. The tactical environment was simply too delicate.

"Reel in your bloodlust, Gary." Soren shook his head, pointing a finger out into the deep, impenetrable darkness resting behind the mine.

"Do you truly believe butchering a hundred trash mobs is the problem here? That isn't the core challenge of this operation at all!"

"The true threat is the noise. The absolute second a frontal melee breaks out, the roaring, the frantic blowing of bone-whistles from dying orcs, the deafening clash of heavy iron... in the dead of night, that cacophony will travel for miles!" A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Soren's brow furrowed tightly.

"Right next to a resource node of this magnitude, there is absolutely, undeniably a massive orc main encampment stationed nearby."

"Have you geniuses actually thought this through? Once we massacre this garrison, we are going to be dragging four massive, overwhelmingly heavy, and agonizingly slow Kodo wagons! Do you really think we can just stroll safely back to our lines before they react?" Soren's razor-sharp, clinical breakdown of the grand tactical board instantly acted like a bucket of ice water over Gary and Meyer's heads, utterly shattering their arrogant underestimation of the situation. He was right.

Butchering the orcs was the easy part. Hijacking tens of thousands of pounds of raw ore and escaping totally unscathed? That was the true nightmare. If they made too much noise and drew the aggro of a thousand-strong orc cavalry patrol from the main camp, their sixty-man squad would instantly be plunged into an inescapable death trap! If they wanted the ore and the wagons, this had to be absolutely, perfectly silent!

Having completely vetoed a frontal assault, Soren continued his flawless, omnidirectional surveillance via [Eagle Eye]. And immediately, he spotted a second, far more agonizing complication that made his chest tighten. Dead center in the mining pit, illuminated by the blinding glare of the torches... an orc overseer, wielding a heavy, barbed whip, let out a grating, sadistic cackle. The long whip screamed through the air! CRACK!

It lashed viciously across the back of a severely emaciated human slave who had collapsed from sheer exhaustion! The iron barbs instantly tore away a massive, gory strip of flesh and muscle. The frail, elderly human let out a pathetic, stifled whimper. He didn't even have the strength to writhe in agony. Before he could even draw another breath, he slumped headfirst into a bamboo ore basket, his life signs fading rapidly. Surrounding him were several hundred skeletal, emaciated human slaves.

Though their eyes burned with profound, suffocating hatred, they were utterly cowed into submission by the hundred-plus orc guards brandishing heavy, bloodstained cleavers. Even if they didn't charge, and instead opted for synchronized crossbow assassinations... the absolute second those psychotic Black Iron Orcs realized they were under attack, their berserker rage would take over.

They would instantly raise their blades, either using the defenseless human slaves as living meat shields or simply butchering them all on the spot to vent their fury! To successfully hijack the massive shipment of raw ore without triggering the main camp's alarms... and to flawlessly annihilate the enemy garrison while simultaneously rescuing hundreds of their fellow human countrymen... This was destined to be a wildly unconventional, high-stakes black operation!

Stepping up to the plate, Soren fully embraced the terrifying difficulty of the tactical board. He decisively stood up, his voice dropping to a harsh, commanding whisper as he issued the final operational directives.

"Darion. Get up here." Soren beckoned with two fingers.

"H-here, my Lord!" Darion scrambled frantically forward through the mud. Soren knew perfectly well that Darion wasn't just a survivor; he was an apex swamp veteran possessing the [Poison Resistance] Talent.

"Along the perimeter of this stone forest, the mud is heavily populated with Red-Cap Swamp Caps and paralytic Deadwood Bane... am I correct?" Darion blinked in surprise before nodding vigorously.

"Absolutely, my Lord!"

"I am giving you exactly thirty minutes. Take a few of our most agile men. I don't care what methods you have to use—mash them, squeeze them, extract the pure toxins! I want it as concentrated as possible. The kind of neurotoxin where a single drop will make a Two-Headed Swamp Crocodile roll over and die!" Hearing those ruthless, clinical instructions, Gary and the other veteran commanders finally grasped the terrifying depths of their Lord's plan. They couldn't help but swallow hard.

Before long, Darion slipped back into the brush, carefully cradling a clay pot filled with a viscous, greyish-green sludge. Just the faint fumes wafting from the rim were enough to make a grown man incredibly dizzy. Immediately after, following Soren's absolute command, the sixty-three heavy frontline elites began to violently strip their gear.

"Dump every single piece of black iron heavy armor into the trench! Bury it under the mud! Keep your movements completely silent!" Soren lowered his voice to a chilling, commanding hiss:"From this exact second forward, you are no longer elite heavy infantry who dominate the battlefield! You are the absolute lowest, most cowardly, pathetic prisoners at the bottom of the world! You are dying slaves who will be beaten to a bloody pulp for looking at a guard wrong!"

"Hunch your shoulders! Bend your spines! Snap into your new roles!" With the soft, synchronized rustle of shifting fabric, the soldiers not only discarded their impenetrable iron plating, but they also abandoned their heavy halberds and repeating crossbows. At this moment, they were clad in absolutely nothing but their inner protective layers: the newly minted [Cotton Armor]. Because of the high-density compression technique, the armor was incredibly lightweight and didn't appear the least bit bulky.

To the naked eye, it looked exactly like the filthy, heavily patched, and padded winter coats worn by common refugees. To perfect the disguise, they draped foul-smelling, rotting beast hides over their shoulders. Grabbing fistfuls of wood ash mixed with acidic swamp mud, they ruthlessly smeared the filth all over their faces, necks, and hair. Tightly strapped to the inner thigh of every single soldier, completely concealed from sight, was a single, razor-sharp refined steel dagger.

It was their one and only weapon for the impending slaughter.