Chương 157: 157：A Feast of Toxins

Soren popped the cork. Moving with practiced ease, he navigated perfectly through the blind spots around the three massive cauldrons. Completely soundlessly, the neurotoxin—enough to easily paralyze and kill a hundred elephants—was poured evenly into the boiling meat stew. The rolling water instantly dissolved the faint greyish-green sludge. Masked entirely by the heavy, savory scent of the meat, the broth transformed into a cauldron of absolute death.

His task complete, Soren used the visual blind spots to slip flawlessly back into the shadows.... Eight o'clock at night. BONG! The heavy bronze bell suspended in the center of the mining camp rang out. It was the signal for the shift change and mealtime.

"Grub time, warriors of Grom! Herd those two-legged sheep into the side-tunnels!" A wave of crude, boisterous cheering erupted across the mining pit. Over a hundred fully armed Black Iron Orc guards eagerly swarmed toward the wooden mess hall, leaving behind only a few dozen unlucky bastards stationed up in the watchtowers and deep inside the mines to continue overseeing the slaves. The red glare of the torches flickered wildly around the mess hall, but the darkness along the outer perimeter grew thicker, heavier.

This was it. The absolute, most vulnerable tactical vacuum.

"It's time, brothers." Crouched in a muddy corner, Gary—who had been meekly carrying rocks just a second prior—instantly shed his facade of cowardice. Cold, naked killing intent surfaced in his eyes. He casually tossed aside the chunk of ore in his hands. The operational command was passed silently between the disguised soldiers scattered perfectly throughout the camp. Beneath the wooden watchtowers. The four towers stood a full ten meters off the ground.

There were no stairs; the orcs relied entirely on a wooden bucket pulley system to ascend. But veteran scouts like Gary and Meyer didn't need buckets. Meyer activated his [Chameleon] Talent, his body melting seamlessly into the surrounding shadows. He and Gary clung flat against the thick support pillars. Digging their fingers and toes into the minute cracks in the wood, they scaled the structures completely soundlessly, yet at a terrifying speed.

Up in the crow's nest, two orc sentries were grumbling about missing out on the first bite of hot stew. A faint breeze brushed the back of their necks. Before the orcs could even turn their heads... Thwack! From the darkness, two massive, powerful hands violently clamped shut over their wide maws! Squelch! Two daggers, driven with absolute, impossible precision, slid smoothly right beneath the rims of their iron helmets, slicing cleanly through their carotid arteries!

Boiling green blood geysered outward, but not a single scream escaped. Gary and Meyer drove their knees firmly into the massive backs of the orcs, slowly and gently lowering the towering corpses onto the wooden decking without making a single sound. In less than twenty seconds, all four watchtowers were completely blinded and neutralized. Meanwhile, the slaughter taking place on the ground was nothing short of a silent, macabre art form. Darion was caked from head to toe in freezing mud from the deepest swamp.

His unparalleled aquatic stealth abilities made him an absolute apex predator in this filthy, flooded mining pit. He had submerged his entire body beneath the foul water of an abandoned slag pit. When an orc overseer, cursing and grumbling with a heavy cleaver resting on his shoulder, walked past the edge of the puddle... Splash! Darion erupted from the water with terrifying, explosive speed! The venom-coated shortsword in his hand thrust upward at a sheer angle.

It slipped flawlessly right through the gap in the orc's occipital bone at the base of the skull, completely severing the brain stem! Simultaneously, his left hand clamped like a vice around the orc's windpipe. The gargantuan body violently spasmed twice before going entirely limp, collapsing right into Darion's arms as it was silently dragged down into the muddy depths. And just inside the main gates. Lyra's short, silver-white hair fluttered gently in the night wind.

The Throwing Knife Master—the woman who had finally shattered her psychological shackles—moved her hands at a blinding, dizzying speed.

"Go." Four refined steel throwing knives, enveloped in a pale blue aura of mana, carved perfectly calculated arcs through the darkness. Absolute, zero-deviation precision! Four orc guards, casually leaning against the wooden barricades and chatting, suddenly felt a freezing wind. In the exact same fraction of a second, the thick Achilles tendons of all four orcs were brutally, cleanly severed!

"URGH!" With their ligaments completely destroyed, the massive brutes lost all structural support. Letting out muffled grunts of agony, all four collapsed heavily to their knees. Squelch! Squelch! Squelch! But before they even fully hit the dirt, before they could even draw breath to scream... Eight frontline elites flashed out from the shadows, moving in perfectly synchronized two-man teams.

One man violently clamped his hands over the orc's mouth and pinned the skull, while the other ruthlessly drove a dagger straight through the eye socket and deep into the brain! Having discarded their heavy armor and completely unlocked their terrifying mobility, these human soldiers operated like a pack of hunting wolves. The dozens of perimeter guards were completely eradicated before a single one could reach the bone-whistles hanging at their waists.

"My Lord, the perimeter is clear," Darion reported from the shadows, offering a slight nod toward Soren, who was concealed behind a stack of firewood. Soren's gaze pierced through the obstacles, locking directly onto the brightly lit mess hall. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. And right at that exact moment...

"Drink up this broth! Glory to the Warchief!" Inside the mess hall, over a hundred Black Iron Orcs had finished lining up for their rations. Holding massive bowls, they were greedily gulping down the spiked food.

"Why does this taste a bit..." The Orc Captain, who had just raised his bowl high into the air, didn't even get to finish his sentence. His singular, remaining eye violently bulged out of its socket. His originally dark-red face instantly turned a ghastly, sickening shade of blue.

"POISON!!!" Crash! Shatter! Coarse porcelain bowls slipped from weakening grips, shattering against the stone floor in a rapid-fire cascade. It was an absolutely horrifying, apocalyptic sight. Over a hundred Black Iron Orcs—monsters forged of iron and muscle who were boisterously drinking a second prior—were suddenly gripped by a violent, excruciating agony as the neurotoxin detonated within their systems. They instantly lost all muscle control, collapsing to the ground in massive, writhing waves.

What spewed from their mouths wasn't normal blood, but a foul-smelling, pitch-black sludge! Under the effects of the apex neurotoxin, their massive muscles convulsed so violently that some brutes literally snapped their own ribs from the sheer force of the spasms.

"Enemy attack... the horn! Blow the horn to warn the main camp..." An exceptionally massive Elite Orc Overseer, fighting through the agonizing, blood-vomiting threshold of death, forced his bloodshot eyes open. With a trembling hand, he desperately reached for the red warning bone-horn hanging at his waist. However.

"You're never blowing that horn again." Having lain in ambush outside the mess hall for several minutes, Gary and Meyer—radiating an absolutely freezing killing intent—led over sixty elites as they violently tore through the tent flaps! Wherever they spotted an orc whose constitution was strong enough to attempt a struggle against the poison, two daggers would cross and strike downward. Squelch! The blades flawlessly pierced cervical vertebrae and hearts.

Amidst geysers of toxic black blood, the soldiers ruthlessly and decisively strangled every single attempt to cry out for help. It took less than eight minutes. This hundred-man centuria of main-force orcs—a unit capable of sweeping across a plain and slaughtering thousands—was completely, utterly eradicated. Erased through a combination of apex toxins and flawless, silent assassinations, they died drowning in a mixture of green blood and spilled stew.

Not a single blast of a bone-whistle managed to escape the valley. A terrifying, absolute silence slowly reclaimed the Blackrock Stone Forest basin, leaving nothing but the howling of the wind. The entire massive defensive web of the mining camp had completely disintegrated. The only enemies left alive were ten high-ranking overseers deep within the lowest levels of the mine, completely oblivious as they casually cracked their whips. Soren casually flicked a drop of green blood from the back of his hand.

He jutted his chin toward the deep tunnels.

"Renn. That's your job. Try not to make a mess and terrify the slaves too much." The bald head of the Monk, Renn, reflected the cold light of the torches. He rolled his thick neck, letting out a terrifying cascade of popping joints.

"With absolute pleasure, my Lord." Lyra followed closely behind him as a shadow. At the very bottom of the mine, where groundwater seeped through the cracks. Hundreds of emaciated, skeletal humans were agonizingly pushing heavy ore carts. The ten incredibly massive, high-ranking overseers were gathered in a circle, casually dividing up pouches of cheap tobacco. Swish! Swish! Swish! An almost imperceptible sound of parting air.

In the cramped confines of the tunnel, Lyra's throwing knives moved so fast they left literal afterimages! Ten throwing knives. Twenty femoral ligaments completely, flawlessly severed in the blink of an eye.

"AGH!" The ten once-arrogant orc overseers instantly dropped in height as their legs gave out. The sudden, excruciating pain of snapped ligaments forced shouts of alarm from their throats. But rushing forward to answer those shouts were Renn's massive hands. The Monk's speed was completely untrackable to the naked eye. Shifting his footwork, he closed the distance instantly. His massive palms violently clamped onto the shocked jaws and the backs of the orcs' skulls. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Ten crisp, sickening snaps of breaking cervical vertebrae echoed rapidly through the cavern. The colossal bodies slumped heavily to the damp floor. Even as they died, their hands hadn't even managed to brush the hilts of the heavy cleavers at their waists. Surrounding them, the hundreds of utterly numb, despairing human slaves watched these two blood-soaked killers in sheer, unadulterated horror. They dropped their iron pickaxes, shivering and huddling together like frightened sheep.

They had absolutely no idea which layer of hell these two lethally efficient demons had crawled out of. The steady, powerful thud of leather boots echoed from the tunnel entrance. Soren had already washed away the mud and war-paint from his face. Striding through the deep, shadowy corridor, illuminated solely by the faint bluish-black glow of the raw Black Iron Ore, he walked straight toward his trembling, tragically broken countrymen.

Standing tall and rigid behind him were the sixty-three elite soldiers of Greywater Village, their daggers still dripping with dark green blood. Soren took a deep breath. In this dark, oppressive cavern, his words rang out with absolute, world-shaking power:"You do not have to dig anymore, my countrymen."

"The orcs are dead. And this Black Iron Mine—which belonged to humanity in the first place—""As of today, it is ours!"