Chương 174: 174：Secrets of the Crater

Leona and Elena exchanged a glance. Go to Greywater Village? In truth, an agonizing curiosity had been clawing at the hearts of both women for a while now. When the victory report from Lone Cliff had arrived, they had been so shocked they lost sleep for nights on end. They wanted to rush to Greywater Village more than anyone else, to see exactly where Soren had pulled these tactics from and how he had forged that place into an impregnable fortress.

But the Crimson Moon Knights had too many messes to clean up in the swamp. Leona and her officers were buried under the daily grind of managing over two thousand six hundred personnel—digging trenches, clearing out monstrous insects, running patrols. They were run ragged, with absolutely no time to spare for an inspection tour. But now? General Rodman had personally handed them a secret mandate.

"Hmph! Since a grand, high-ranking general of the Ironpeak Duchy is begging so shamelessly to see my subordinate..." Leona's face flushed with irrepressible smugness. She slapped Cedric's armored shoulder hard, producing a dull thud.

"Then as his Commander, I suppose I can reluctantly accompany you on this trip! Let's go! Time to broaden your horizons!" The weather in the Misty Swamp was notoriously foul and capricious. By noon, the pale sun had only just managed to tear through a few strands of the grayish miasma, leaving a suffocating, damp blanket draped heavily over Greywater Village.

Inside the lord's wooden cabin at the highest point of the village, Soren was staring down at a tactical map of the swamp defense sector, which was heavily marked with charcoal. Suddenly, the shadows in the corner twisted violently. Meyer, the Intelligence Captain, deactivated his [Chameleon] camouflage and dropped silently to one knee.

"My Lord, our hidden sentries have relayed two pieces of highest-priority military intelligence."

"First, Commander Leona and Military Priestess Elena of the Silvermoon Kingdom's Crimson Moon Knights, accompanied by Commander Cedric of the Ironpeak Duchy and his entourage, are less than five miles from the outer perimeter of our concealment array." A knowing, cold sneer touched Soren's lips.

"That scheming old fox, Rodman. He finally couldn't resist probing my depths." Soren understood perfectly. Annihilating five hundred Black Iron Orcs at Lone Cliff was too monstrous a feat. The high commands of both the Silvermoon Kingdom and the Ironpeak Duchy would never sit idly by while a mere border captain wielded such bizarre, terrifying combat power.

"The Ironpeak Duchy is sticking its nose in as well. It seems our little ripples in this swamp have alerted the human coalition. What's the second piece of intel?" Meyer's expression turned exceedingly grim. He pulled a small bamboo tube sealed with wax from his coat.

"The second report is highly anomalous.

"The Goblin scouts we scattered deep in the Misty Swamp discovered that the Blackstone Warband—which had been roaming everywhere hunting for our tracks—pulled back their entire line at dawn today!"

"Pulled back?" The intuition granted by his [Military Command Mastery] made Soren instantly smell the coppery scent of extreme danger.

"Yes," Meyer swallowed hard.

"They didn't just halt their patrols; they even withdrew the Goblin slaves from their forward watchtowers.

"Black smoke is billowing into the sky from the direction of Bloodfang Fortress, where Warchief Blackstone resides. Orc messengers have been weaving through the swamp all night. The Goblins overheard that the Warchief has issued a death mandate to clear the main roads, as if... as if they are preparing to welcome certain VIPs from the Orcish Alliance High Command." Soren abruptly stood up.

"A large-scale war is coming," he muttered, his gaze turning as sharp as a blade.

"Relay my orders to the entire army! Enter Condition Two Combat Readiness! Also, notify Victor to peel back a corner of the array. Follow me to the main gates!" 2: 00 PM. In the muddy outskirts of the Misty Swamp, Leona was irritably hacking away at obstructing poison vines with her slab-like greatsword.

"Dammit! Rodman's coordinates clearly point to this exact spot. Why is there nothing here but mud and miasma? Did that brat Soren lead his army into the dirt to eat mud?" Her red hair, plastered to her cheeks by the rain, matched the deep impatience in her crimson eyes. Beside her, Commander Cedric was also frowning deeply. As the Ironpeak Duchy's finest heavy infantry commander, his tactical literacy was exceptionally high.

He surveyed this patch of rotting sludge, teeming with lethal bloodsucking leeches and bubbling with toxic gas, and felt a growing dread creeping up his spine.

"Commander Leona, this terrain makes it impossible to deploy even a single squad of heavy armor," Cedric said slowly.

"Is Soren's unit truly stationed in this death trap?" Only Elena, shrouded in her pure white clerical robes, kept her eyes quietly closed. Suddenly, her pale golden eyes snapped open as she acutely detected the turbulent flow of mana in the air. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

"Patience. Something... is being unveiled," Elena said softly. Before her words even faded, the tangibly thick, toxic-green miasma directly in front of them violently split apart! Low-frequency bursts of arcane humming vibrated through the air. The [Concealment Array] deployed by the Silver-tier Mage, Victor, slowly parted, revealing the magnificent war fortress hidden atop the dormant volcanic crater. With just one glance, Cedric's face filled with horror, and he involuntarily drew in a sharp breath of cold air.

"What... what kind of fortifications are these?" Laid out before them was a spine-chilling corridor of death. At the entrance, double-layered chevaux de frise—spiked barricades as tall as a man's chest—formed a perfectly overlapping defensive line. A faint, eerie blue glow shimmered on the tip of every spike; the unmistakable signature of the swamp's lethal toxins. In front of this barricade, the seemingly flat mud was, in reality, a meticulously camouflaged minefield of consecutive pit traps.

With his wealth of experience, Cedric instantly saw through the thin veneer hiding the drops. If a heavily armored soldier took a single wrong step, they would plummet into a venomous pit lined with barbed spikes. Leona's mouth fell open in disbelief as her gaze slowly traveled upward. At the high ground on both flanks of the defense line, eight incredibly sturdy wooden watchtowers stood tall.

The pitch-black firing slits along their battlements stared down ominously, treating these uninvited guests like fish in a barrel.

"Gods... How many resources did Soren burn through, how much blood and sweat did he pour out, to construct a fortress that not even a bird could fly over?" Leona's earlier arrogance vanished without a trace, replaced by a tingling numbness across her scalp. Elena took a deep breath, her usually serene voice taking on a rare severity:"Unbelievable depth, overlapping fields of crossfire...

Commander Cedric, if your heavy infantry were to launch a frontal assault here without heavy fire support, how many meters could they advance?" Cedric shook his head bitterly, his hand sweating against his sword hilt.

"Twenty meters. Not an inch more than twenty meters before my warriors would be riddled with holes. The interception capability of this defensive line is nothing short of monstrous."

"Welcome to Greywater Village, everyone." A powerful male voice cut through the defensive array. Soren, projecting an aura of unyielding resolve, slowly walked out from behind the spiked barricades. Behind him, Lyra gripped her silver throwing knives, melting into the shadows with a face as cold as frost. On his left, the heavily scarred Renn stood tall and imposing, radiating an overwhelming deterrent force.

After exchanging brief military salutes, Soren openly guided the visibly shell-shocked visitors through the North Gate. Yet, the moment they stepped into the heart of Greywater Village, Leona's eyes bulged in pure disbelief. She had assumed that an outpost isolated in enemy territory would be a ghost town—its soldiers starving and emaciated, the air thick with the stench of decay and despair. What met her eyes completely shattered her reality. Warm drafts of air carried the rich, savory scent of cooking food.

Along both sides of the main thoroughfare, damp-proof, stilted wooden cabins were arranged in neat, orderly rows. Hundreds of human civilians were busy drying purple roots—Swamp Tubers—in the sun. Even more jaw-dropping was the fact that mingled within this crowd were not just green-skinned Goblins, but also Half-Elves with their distinctive pointed ears!

"Good day, Lord Soren!" an elderly human man pushing a wheelbarrow called out. He showed no fear toward this military dictator; instead, his face was flushed with vitality as he doffed his hat in greeting.

"Big boss Lord!" A few Goblin toddlers actually had the audacity to run up and try to touch the pommel of Soren's sword, only to be quickly pulled back by their scolding mothers. Even the notoriously aloof Half-Elf maidens—who typically viewed humans as sworn enemies—paused as Soren walked past. Their cheeks flushing slightly, they pressed their right hands to their chests, offering him nature's highest gesture of respect. There was no oppression. No whips cracking.

No infighting or bloodshed among the different races. The settlement was thriving, its populace coexisting in shocking harmony.

"Soren, are you insane?!" Leona finally couldn't hold it in. She grabbed Soren's arm, pulling him close to roar in a hushed, furious whisper.

"Not only do you have filthy Goblins here, but are those Half-Elves?

"If the Silvermoon Kingdom's inquisitors come down here, the charge of harboring alien races alone would be enough to send the Crimson Moon Knights to the stake ten thousand times over!

"And what's even more absurd is... how are they getting along with you so well?! What kind of dark sorcery did you use to brainwash them?"