Chương 173: 173：Blood, Mud, and Honor

Listening to Leona unearth this blood-soaked, bitter history, Elena didn't show a hint of anger. Instead, she stepped forward, her pale, slender hands gently clasping Leona's trembling wrists.

"I know of that battle. It is an unforgettable pain in the hearts of every one of us," Elena said, her voice soft and soothing.

"But, Leona, over the past three years, the Ironpeak Duchy has leaned increasingly toward the Holy Halycon Empire politically. This has led to numerous small-scale border skirmishes with our Silvermoon Kingdom.

"The current Crimson Moon Knights are nothing but sacrificial pawns, thoroughly abandoned by the Silvermoon Kingdom. The situation for our two thousand six hundred members is incredibly precarious. The slightest misstep, and we will be plunged into eternal ruin.

"Cedric represents a sovereign state. If you let old grudges dictate your actions and shut him out, or violently humiliate him and drive him away, the Ironpeak Duchy will inevitably embellish the incident in front of the Holy Halycon Empire. When that happens, we will be branded as traitors who sabotaged the human coalition's greater war against the Orcs!

"At that point, those grand nobles back in the Silvermoon Kingdom won't protect us. They'll use us as scapegoats to take the fall and eradicate us entirely!" Elena's hyper-realistic, pragmatic argument quickly doused the majority of the raging fire in Leona's heart. Even though Leona usually acted in a brash and unrestrained manner—always the first to charge headlong onto the battlefield—she was no brainless fool.

"Damned political calculations..." Leona sighed in frustration. She furiously slammed the ledger onto the table and kicked a loose pebble across the floor to vent.

"Let's go! Let's go meet this bastard!" Outside the camp, the cold, driving rain had gradually softened into a fine, misty drizzle. Commander Cedric wore a heavy, silver-gray suit of full plate armor. The polished surface was splattered with the black, acidic mud of the swamp. His extraordinarily burly frame cast an imposing, oppressive silhouette as he stood in the rain, hand resting on the hilt of his sword, waiting in utter silence.

The camp's heavy gates, constructed from thick, interlocking logs, were pulled open. Leona strode out with long, aggressive steps. Wearing high leather boots, every footfall sent muddy water splashing into the air. Right behind her was Elena, holding an umbrella, her demeanor gentle and serene.

"Oh, look who it is. If it isn't Commander Cedric of the Ironpeak Duchy." Before any formal greetings could be exchanged, Leona's hostile, mocking voice smashed right into his face. She rested one hand on her hip, lifting her chin haughtily. Her crimson eyes swept coldly over Cedric's resplendent armor.

"What's the matter? Bundled up so tightly... afraid the backwater filth of our Crimson Moon Knights might soil the noble soles of your Duchy's boots?

"Or is it that your heavy infantry has grown so accustomed to hiding under the Holy Halycon Empire's umbrella that, now that you're in our Misty Swamp where lives are on the line every second, you don't even know how to walk without a tin can protecting you?" The moment these provocative words dropped, the thirty heavily armored knights behind Cedric let out a collective, furious roar. Their hands instinctively reached for the battleaxes at their waists, instantly plunging the atmosphere into hair-trigger tension.

Cedric was known for his fierce, unyielding temper. Faced with such naked humiliation, he would normally fire back with equal venom, or even draw his sword to defend his honor. Leona's hand was already gripping the hilt of the greatsword strapped to her back. If the other side dared to make the first move, she was determined to make them leave in body bags! However. The anticipated explosion of rage never came. Cedric raised a hand backward, instantly halting the restless aggression of his subordinates.

To everyone's shock, not only did the iron-blooded general not lose his temper, but he actually bowed his head slightly, his face revealing profound admiration.

"Commander of the Crimson Moon Knights. Military Priestess. Good day." Cedric unclasped his helmet, tucking it neatly under his arm, and offered the two women a solemn, textbook military salute. Then, he sighed.

"Commander Leona, if you wish to vent your anger, you may hurl whatever insults you like at me, and I will accept them. After all... you currently possess every right to look down upon the rest of us." He raised his head, his brown eyes filled with a complex mixture of sheer shock and deep reverence.

"Completely annihilating a Black Iron Orc battalion of the Bloodaxe! Seizing treacherous high ground without letting a single enemy break out of the encirclement, and most terrifying of all... ending the battle in under an hour! What kind of divine miracle is this!

"I just reviewed the Lone Cliff campaign at the relay station. At the risk of your mockery, I must admit that my pride and joy—the heavy infantry of the Ironpeak Duchy—look incredibly clumsy and impotent in the face of Vice-Commander Soren's ferocious and lightning-fast tactics!" The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. This sudden deluge of praise completely blindsided Leona.

The string of curses she had queued up got firmly wedged in her throat, unable to go up or down. Just how utterly absurd Soren's victory had been was probably clear to anyone under the sky by now. But Leona never expected that the highest-ranking military officer of a hostile nation would publicly and so thoroughly cast aside his own dignity to validate that battle! Who was Soren? Although Soren was, in reality, a Warlord developing his own independent territory, the outside world didn't know that!

On the Silvermoon Kingdom's official military roster, Soren was the Vice-Commander of the Crimson Moon Knights! He was Leona's subordinate! Being gazed upon with such worship and reverence by her sworn rival instantly flooded Leona's heart with an unprecedented sense of satisfaction.

"Ahem... what... what do you know!" Leona released her grip on her sword hilt, awkwardly tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear to cover her fluster, though the smugness on her face was already overflowing. The volatile smell of gunpowder in the air dissipated in an instant. Leona lifted her chin again, her expression turning exceedingly triumphant.

"Soren is, after all, my man... A mere few hundred Orcs is just his standard procedure for troop training.

"That kid has merely inherited a fraction of our Crimson Moon Knights' knack for charging enemy lines." Standing beside her, Elena watched her commander spew utter nonsense, forcibly taking the credit while looking incredibly pleased with herself. Elena helplessly raised a hand to her smooth forehead, letting out a long, silent sigh in her heart. This woman... the moment someone strokes her ego with a few sweet words, she can't hide a single ounce of cunning.

Cedric paid no mind to Leona's slightly exaggerated gloating. He took a step forward and very earnestly pulled the sketch of the Lone Cliff highlands from his coat. Unfurling it with both hands, he looked like a student thirsting for knowledge.

"I've studied the elevation angles of the terrain, as well as that single, steep northern pass.

"The counterattack of Black Iron Orcs from there would be enough to tear through a line of solid steel!

"If it were me, to conquer that high ground, my only option would be to throw the Duchy's most elite heavy infantry battalion into a grueling battle of attrition! With the relentless bombardment of high-tier military mages, we could undoubtedly take it." He let out a long sigh.

"But it would be absolutely impossible for me to end the battle in an hour! Most importantly, if I were the one commanding, I would have left at least three hundred of my soldiers' corpses scattered across that slope!

"Therefore..." Cedric's eyes were full of self-deprecation.

"How did Vice-Commander Soren achieve such negligible casualties? Is he truly human? Or did he borrow the power of a Demon God?" Watching the opposing general spiral into deep self-doubt, Elena, a priestess of the Church of the Bright Moon, stepped forward. The gentle aura radiating from her dissolved the last lingering traces of tension like a warm spring breeze.

"Commander Cedric, please do not belittle yourself so much," Elena consoled him, her pale golden eyes shimmering with a lucid wisdom. Her voice was crisp and melodic.

"The application of tactics is constrained by the terrain and the specific traits of the soldiers. Even the ace regular army of our Silvermoon Kingdom, or the Royal Griffin Knights who rule the skies under the Grand Duke of the Holy Halycon Empire—if faced with Orcs launching a desperate, cornered counterattack—none of them could produce a combat record as bizarrely devastating as Vice-Commander Soren's." Elena looked with deep compassion toward the distant rain and mist.

"In this cruel, dark era, all the human nations are struggling just to hold on.

"Soren possesses the blade to shred his enemies, while your heavy infantry possesses the unyielding tenacity to grind down the Orcs in brutal siege defense.

"We all have our own methods of defense. Ultimately, no matter how much the upper echelons scheme against one another, the goal of us humans struggling at the bottom will always remain the same: to stand against the Orc coalition that wishes to devour us all." Hearing Elena's summary, Cedric's face filled with profound respect. Though this priestess appeared delicate, her breadth of mind and foresight far surpassed those of the politicians singing and dancing in the comfort of their capital cities.

"Yes, Priestess, you are absolutely correct. But it is precisely for this reason that I must go and make a pilgrimage to a true strongman." Cedric placed his helmet back on his head and tucked away the sketch. With a face of utmost solemnity, he presented his final request:"Your Excellencies, may I ask you to lead the way immediately?

"I urgently wish to head to Greywater Village, where Vice-Commander Soren is stationed. Even if it is just to catch a distant glimpse of how that invincible army trains, it would serve as an immense revelation for the martial path of my Ironpeak Duchy!"