Chương 229: 229：Our Own Beast Knights

"At ease, gentlemen." Having finalized the defensive post-battle protocols, Soren looked at his still-tense commanding officers. His stern expression finally softened as he moved to calm their fraying nerves.

"Do not picture Warchief Blackstone as some omnipotent creator with an endless flock of Wyverns."

"Wyverns are inherently brutal, bloodthirsty creatures. Their domestication process begins from the egg. It requires at least a decade of specialized feeding and rigorous rider integration to make them combat-ready."

"Today, the Orcs lost six fully-grown Wyverns in a single breath over our skies. Right now, Warchief Blackstone is likely losing his mind in a fit of apocalyptic rage." Soren paused, his eyes gleaming with cold, calculated strategy.

"Until he can hatch, raise, and replace these astronomically expensive aerial losses, he absolutely will not dare to organize another high-risk aerial bombardment of this scale."

"Therefore, commanders!" Soren abruptly stood up, sweeping his hand through the air with the absolute, dominating presence of a supreme general.

"During this freezing swamp winter, we are about to welcome an exceptionally precious breathing period."

"Seize this window! Work yourselves to the bone! Purify that Black Steel and train these soldiers until they bleed!"

"Sir, yes sir! My Lord!" The thunderous, earth-shaking response echoed upward, piercing straight through the grey, toxic miasma hanging over the swamp. When true night finally fell, dozens of roaring bonfires were ignited across the square of Greywater Village. Massive iron cauldrons were suspended over the flames, bubbling with chunks of stewed Wyvern meat. Rich oils rolled in the boiling broth, releasing an aggressively savory, mouth-watering aroma.

This mana-rich meat possessed an incredibly miraculous effect on restoring the soldiers' physical stamina. Around every bonfire, even the most introverted, tight-lipped veterans were exceptionally animated, talking endlessly. Soren's legendary feat of "slaughtering two Wyverns with two arrows" was spreading like wildfire at an astonishing speed through the entire army, even reaching the elderly and weak in the logistics camps.

"You didn't see it! The Lord Commander just stood there! Immovable as a damn mountain!" A half-elf ranger, wielding a roasting spit like a bow, his face flushed red, was passionately reenacting the scene to a crowd of wide-eyed listeners.

"What was in the sky?! A Wyvern! Bigger than a damn house! Just one beat of its wings whipped up a gale that blew my helmet clean off!"

"But the Lord Commander? He draws an arrow, doesn't even look! Just a sharp swoosh, and that arrowhead, wrapped in a localized azure hurricane, punched cleanly straight through the Wyvern's neck! Blood was violently geysering everywhere!" A goblin nearby, chugging rum and heavily intoxicated, loudly chimed in:"That's only 'cause ten of 'em showed up! If a hundred came, the Boss would've shot every last one of 'em out of the sky!" Absolute, fanatical reverence!

To these grunts who lived and died in the mud, their Supreme Commander's overwhelming martial prowess and godly marksmanship were their sole spiritual pillar in this collapsing, chaotic world. As long as Soren held that longbow, they dared to charge any enemy, in the heavens or on the earth! At that very moment, Soren, holding a bowl of warm broth, walked slowly from the direction of the command post toward the largest bonfire.

The square, which had been boiling with noise mere seconds ago, instantly fell into a dead, absolute silence the moment Soren appeared. Then, with a crisp, synchronized swish, hundreds of soldiers who had just been tearing into their meat simultaneously dropped their bowls. Moving as one, they dropped to a single knee in the mud, gazing up at their Commander with absolute awe. Looking at these subordinates who viewed him as their absolute, undisputed sovereign, Soren felt a trace of genuine warmth in his heart.

Yet, his relentlessly rational mind clearly realized: he could not allow blind personality cults to dilute their understanding of tactical team cohesion. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Get up! You're kneeling while eating meat? What, is the freezing mud more comfortable than a hay bale?" Soren offered an easy, relaxed smile. He casually walked over to a rock, sat down, took a deep gulp of the Wyvern broth, and wiped his mouth. He waved his hand dismissively.

"Alright, enough of the exaggerated tall tales.

'Shooting a Wyvern with my eyes closed'? That was pure, unadulterated luck." Pointing at the pitch-black sky beneath the canopy of stars, Soren casually deconstructed his earth-shattering combat record:"Think about it. The overlapping crossfire unleashed by the ballista battery had already shattered those beasts' nerves."

"That was the suppressive power of six siege engines! I simply waited for them to panic, and while they were desperately pulling up against high-altitude headwinds, I used the penetrative power of an enchanted longbow. It was sheer coincidence that my arrow grazed the gap in their joints." Soren's voice grew stern, anchoring them back to reality.

"The absolute highest merit goes to the men who drew the enemy's aggro! To the vanguard elites who held the line to the death, and the goblin crews manning those heavy ballistas!" His words were incredibly humble, dispersing all the glory among his subordinates' coordination. But which of the seasoned generals or grizzled veterans present was an idiot? In the face of hundred-meter altitudes and violent, disruptive wind shears, who would dare claim they could hit a high-speed Wyvern on pure luck?

Yet, because Soren deliberately downplayed his own god-like feat, the soldiers' reverence for him didn't decrease by a single fraction. Instead, they deeply felt the boundless magnanimity of their Supreme Commander. He didn't steal the glory. He didn't try to forge himself into an untouchable god. He treated the lives and sacrifices of every single brother-in-arms with absolute equality. This was the Lord they had sworn to bleed and die for!

"My Lord! Please, spare us the humility!" Ilya, the Half-Elf Commander, stepped into the firelight, her green eyes shimmering with a complex mix of awe and determination. Her voice was crisp and resonant:"Today, we repelled the Wyverns relying on our anti-air batteries and your bow."

"But My Lord... when spring arrives and we launch our counter-offensive, without aerial reconnaissance, we will remain fundamentally passive within this swamp." That single sentence violently punctured the core dilemma of their future campaign. Air raids could be defended against. But the complete loss of air superiority meant a permanent, fatal lag in battlefield intelligence. The celebratory atmosphere around the bonfires gradually grew heavy. Soren, however, slowly set down his clay bowl.

He raised his head, the roaring flames reflecting in his dark eyes.

"Ilya is entirely correct. Taking a beating and playing passive defense is absolutely not in my nature." He abruptly stood up with his long legs, striding over to the massive Wyvern skeleton piled at the edge of the square. The colossal beast was terrifying even in death. SHING! His fine-steel longsword cleared its scabbard. With a vicious, two-handed swing, Soren violently hacked the blade directly into the supposedly indestructible fangs of the Wyvern! Sparks showered into the night!

Taking a deep breath, Soren assumed an air of absolute, solemn authority, publicly laying down his grand strategic vision:"Burn the image of this beast's corpse lying at our feet into your memories!"

"One day, I promise you, from the fires of Greywater Village, an exclusive, entirely homegrown division of Aerial Beast Knights will be born!"

"I will have you don Black Steel and ride the most terrifying Wyverns in this world! I will have our own men claim absolute dominion over the clouds above!" Madness. It sounded unbelievably, utterly absurd. A ragtag army of refugees and exiled soldiers, treated as disposable trash by the Empire, huddled in acid mud and toxic miasma.

And they harbored the sheer, delusional ambition to establish an aerial armada—a military branch that required nation-level treasuries and centuries of domestication heritage to maintain? Even the King of the Silvermoon Kingdom would have laughed himself hoarse at the absurdity. But! Under the light of the roaring bonfires, the thousands of soldiers and civilians stared at the man standing tall and unyielding atop the Wyvern corpse. Not a single person laughed.

Not only did they not laugh, but every single face erupted with an unparalleled, feverish radiance! Because he was Soren. The Soren who had casually annihilated two thousand elite Orcs! The Soren who force-fed priceless alchemical elixirs to base-born grunts! The Soren who had pierced the throats of giant Wyverns with two arrows! If he said it could be done, then this sky would, sooner or later, absolutely belong to him!

"Long live the Lord Commander!"

"We swear absolute loyalty until death!"

"Dominate the clouds! Butcher the Orc Alliance!" Far to the north of the Misty Swamp. Hundreds of miles deep into the desolate tundra, a gargantuan monstrosity sprawled across the frozen earth. This was the absolute core stronghold of the Orc Alliance's Blackstone Warband: Bloodfang Fortress. Forged from massive black boulders and the bleached bones of colossal beasts, the fortress stood in absolute silence upon the permafrost. Its crude, brutal architecture radiated a suffocating sense of oppression.

The walls bristled with clan totem banners soaked in dried blood, snapping violently in the eternal, freezing gales. CLANG! CRACK! A sixty-pound, double-bladed throwing axe shrieked through the air, violently embedding itself into a granite target at the far end of the grand hall. The solid granite was brutally cleaved open by the sheer, barbaric kinetic force. The massive fissure was inches deep, sending shattered stone and sparks flying in all directions.

"Excellent wrist strength! Warchief, it seems the recent blizzards haven't frozen those powerful hands that once tore human knights in half!" A booming cheer echoed through the cavernous hall. The speaker was none other than the famously iron-blooded Orc Overlord of the Alliance. He stood with his dark green chest entirely exposed, a canvas of old, jagged battle scars. He casually wore a heavy fur cloak stitched from the half-wing of a Royal Griffon.

In his hands, he weighed an equally heavy, solid Black Iron throwing axe. The two were engaged in the most traditional and highly popular pastime among the absolute elite of the Orc generals: Axe-throwing.