Chương 211: 211：The Apocalyptic Harvest

Scalding tears finally carved paths down Ilya's dirt-streaked cheeks. The grievance of having her desperate, life-risking efforts met with such vicious scolding was overwhelming. Yet, buried deep beneath that grievance sprouted a profound warmth and a sense of belonging she had never once experienced in her entire life. This was the Warlord she had sworn her life to. A man who, even when standing before an apocalyptic mountain of wealth, cared infinitely more about whether his "lowly" Half-Elves bled.

"Ilya... understands!" She stood up abruptly, roughly wiping her tears away with the bloodstained back of her hand. Her right fist slammed violently against her breastplate, producing a crisp, ringing chime of steel.

"Your will, above all else!" Across the courtyard, every single soldier of Greywater Village—no matter how battered, bleeding, or utterly exhausted they were—felt their battle lust soar to the heavens upon hearing those words. A warrior dies for the one who truly values them. Under the banner of a Warlord like this, even if the road ahead was paved with Hellfire, they would charge forward to conquer it without a microsecond of hesitation!

Standing a short distance away, Leona watched this man seamlessly transition from rallying his troops to methodically issuing reorganization commands. In her mind, she began to stitch together the scattered, fragmented battle reports from the various detachments, finally constructing the complete, panoramic view of the grand tactical board.

"The Bloodhorn Fortress garrison of over five hundred, utterly wiped out. The inspection delegation's four hundred Royal Guards, annihilated. An eight-hundred-strong amphibious Lizardman battalion, butchered. Three hundred Black Iron heavy infantry and four [Ironclad Ground Dragons], eradicated... all culminating in the utter routing of the Shadow Priest's decapitation squad..." A reality so terrifying it sent shivers down her spine slowly surfaced from her mental simulations.

Leona felt a tingling numbness spread across her scalp. Clenching her fists, her lips trembled slightly as she turned to Commander Cedric beside her:"Soren... he mobilized a total force of less than six hundred men."

"Breaking the whole into parts, launching multi-point surgical strikes, relentless kiting and flanking..."

"With an infinitesimally negligible casualty rate, deep within the absolute heart of the Misty Swamp, he completely and utterly exterminated over two thousand apex Orc elites!" This was no longer just a series of brilliant ambushes. The notoriously arrogant Leona, a Goddess of War who firmly believed she could trade blows with the continent's finest grandmasters, was completely humbled by these bloody statistics. It transcended mere acknowledgment; it was an absolute, unadulterated reverence.

Two thousand enemy corpses didn't just represent towering military merits; they formed the absolute, material foundation that would skyrocket Greywater Village's development.

"Hurry up! Move those hands!" Meyer roared, leading his Goblin squads as they sprinted frantically in and out of the fortress. They forcefully harnessed the Kodo Beasts originally penned in Bloodhorn Fortress, converting the massive beasts into beasts of burden. Crate after crate of military supplies was relentlessly hauled out, stacking into literal mountains across the central courtyard.

"Nearly one thousand two hundred sets of standard black iron armor and weapons! If we haul these back to be melted down or resized, it's enough to outfit an entire heavy infantry regiment!"

"And what's even more terrifying... we stripped exactly one hundred suits of [Black Steel Heavy Armor] off those Royal Guards! This stuff is so tough that even magical wind blades struggle to scratch it!"

"Over twenty tons of highly purified, premium black iron ingots! They completely bypass the material loss of primary smelting!"

"Hundreds of flasks of [Minor Health Potions]!"

"Six fully intact heavy anti-siege ballistae, eight hundred beast-snaring nets..." But it was the rich, intoxicating aroma of cured fats and fine rum that made Meyer swallow hard.

"The sheer volume of this meat, grain, and produce... it's enough to let the thousand-plus mouths of Greywater Village eat until they burst for two solid years!" The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. While the rank-and-file immersed themselves in the ecstatic joy of this apocalyptic harvest, deep within the central keep of Bloodhorn Fortress, two dim magical fluorite lamps illuminated the ravenously curious face of Chief Mage Victor.

Resting squarely on the stone table before him was a purple agate slate.

"Absolutely incredible." Using a pure silver engraving knife, Victor delicately scraped the surface of the slate, deconstructing its internal mana circuitry.

"The Orcish Shamans are squandering heavenly treasures. To think they utilized such ancient, hyper-stable Leyline Elemental Stones for crude, unencrypted voice transmissions that are so easily intercepted."

"I just attempted to fuse its properties with the Silvermoon Kingdom's arcane resonance theory..."

"If we anchor this main slate back at Greywater Village, the other Orcish slate we previously captured can be fractured and refined into several small pendants!" Victor's eyes burned with arcane fervor.

"I can reverse-engineer the mana resonance! My Lord, this will become an encrypted, long-range magical communication network exclusively belonging to you!" In this miasma-choked, peril-filled wasteland, securing instantaneous magical communication would elevate the tactical coordination of Soren's forces to an entirely different dimension. Soren patted Victor's shoulder in supreme satisfaction.

"Excellent work. Begin live testing the absolute second we return."

"The speed at which intelligence flows is the razor edge that will dictate our next lethal strike." At that moment, the Military Priestess Elena gracefully lifted the hem of her white clerical robes—now stained with swamp mud—and slowly walked into the room. Her pale golden eyes swept over the meticulously tallied loot manifests scattered across the table, before settling on Soren, who had remained as calm and immovable as a mountain from start to finish.

This exceptionally dignified and perpetually serene Priestess could no longer suppress her overwhelming awe. Letting out a soft sigh steeped in absolute disbelief, she stared deeply at the Warlord who had orchestrated these miracles, speaking with uncharacteristic bluntness:"Lord Soren. Vice-Commander."

"Do you truly comprehend the magnitude of what this means?"

"Through a single, apocalyptic raid of plundering war to feed war... you have completely revived a dead board."

"The standing logistical reserves and armory of Greywater Village right now..." She shook her head, feeling as though the very words leaving her mouth were absurd.

"The foundation you possess right now... it is vastly wealthier than the estates of minor nobility within our Silvermoon Kingdom!" Deep into the winter night of the Misty Swamp, the relentless rain mutated into jagged sleet, whipping against faces and triggering bursts of agonizing pain. Through this desolate, nightmare-inducing no-man's-land, a colossal convoy was currently executing a grueling forced march through knee-deep sludge.

"HEAVE! Put your backs into it! Lift the wheels!" Kyle's exceptionally burly, towering frame was submerged waist-deep in the rancid, acidic muck. The veins on his forehead bulged like steel cables. Pushing his [Brute Force] talent past its limits, he physically hauled a massive, panic-stricken Kodo Beast that had sunk halfway into the quagmire out by its harness.

The sickening slop of churning mud, the suction of leather boots being forcefully yanked from the mire, and an endless chorus of ragged panting filled the air. Even with Soren's explosive [Minor Blood of Titan], Kyle's monstrous strength, and the preternatural aquatic navigation of Darion breaking the trail ahead, the journey to haul this apocalyptic mountain of spoils back home was unimaginably brutal. The treacherous quagmires of the Misty Swamp fundamentally rejected heavy machinery.

The dozens of tons of black iron ingots, the literal mountains of premium sorghum and rum, and the four colossal carcasses of the [Ironclad Ground Dragons] nearly snapped the axles of the captured Kodo Beast wagons. Absolutely refusing to abandon a single ounce of supplies, the frontline and second-line troops stripped off their cloaks, tying them into crude rucksacks. Whether it was the notoriously aloof Half-Elf Magic Rangers, the fiercely proud Leona, or even the veteran Grandmaster Cedric...

every single person silently hoisted over a hundred pounds of logistics onto their backs, trudging through the hellish terrain on foot. They marched until the freezing moon dipped toward the horizon, the final traces of twilight entirely devoured by the swamp's miasma.

It was only when the familiar, sulfur-laced warm drafts from the dormant volcanic crater finally brushed against their freezing cheeks that the silhouette of Greywater Village—securely hidden beneath its concealment array—slowly materialized in their vision.

"The Lord has returned! The army has returned!" The night watchman stationed atop the watchtower blew the bone horn. In an instant, the entirety of Greywater Village erupted with light as hundreds of grease-fueled torches were ignited. The women, children, the elderly, and the Goblin laborers poured out of their stilted wooden cabins. When they laid eyes on the endless, sprawling convoy of supply wagons...

when they saw the mountains of premium Orcish armor and the absolute surplus of meat capable of feeding the entire settlement for two years... Greywater Village detonated into an earth-shattering, deafening roar of absolute ecstasy! The people danced and wept in joy. Some elderly human refugees even dropped to their knees in the mud, fervently kissing the very footprints Soren left behind.

In an era where human lives were treated as worthless weeds, a glorious triumph of this magnitude and such an apocalyptic bounty of logistics were the ultimate declaration: they had finally reclaimed their fundamental human dignity. However, as the troops collapsed exhaustedly around the roaring bonfires, and while the villagers reveled in their ecstasy, not a single trace of joy surfaced on Soren's face. He abruptly turned around. His piercing gaze cut straight through the celebrating soldiers.

Raising a hand, he beckoned Fina Hawthorne, who was responsible for internal administration, and Kyle, acting as the head of medical and logistics. Soren's voice was as heavy as iron, piercing straight to the soul:"Fina. Kyle. You will drop everything and immediately verify the roster of every single detachment that marched into battle!"

"I demand an exact, verified count of our casualties. I want the names of the fallen, and the exact medical status and location of every single wounded brother and sister!" This gruff, draconian mandate radiated an overwhelming, immeasurable warmth. It caused the eyes of every single blood-soaked soldier returning from hell to burn with unshed tears. In the eyes of Lord Soren, there was no glittering Black Steel. There were no priceless magical ballistae. The absolute first priority...

would forever be the lives of his soldiers!