Chương 248: 248：Emergency Mobilization!

"Lord Commander!" Lucia amended her address, her eyes burning with an insatiable thirst for knowledge.

"I must know... in a desperate crucible where the enemy forces vastly outnumbered your own, how did you entirely discard the traditional, rigid knight's charge? How did you pioneer such miraculous, unorthodox tactical paradigms? What is your absolute core military philosophy..." BANG! The heavy, solid oak door of the reception cabin was violently kicked open from the outside! A howling gale, mixed with freezing rain, surged into the room, instantaneously extinguishing several oil lamps.

"Who goes there?! How dare you..." The royal envoy jumped up in terror, ready to explode with aristocratic fury. But the exact microsecond he saw the person who had barged in, the reprimand caught completely in his throat. It was Meyer, the Chief Intelligence Officer! Meyer entirely disregarded all protocols. He was panting heavily, his chest heaving violently.

"My Lord! Absolute emergency! Maximum-priority military intelligence!" The quill in Lucia's hand snapped to a halt. The charismatic, relaxed expression on Soren's face was instantaneously vaporized, replaced by a suffocating, chilling surge of murderous intent!

"Speak!" Soren barked, taking a massive stride forward. Meyer dropped heavily to one knee in the mud tracked into the room. Using both hands, he hoisted the decoded intelligence slate high into the air, roaring:"It isn't Warchief Blackstone's forces! It's a coalition from two other major clans of the Orc Alliance! They suddenly shifted their strategic axis!

They've mobilized a main force of over five thousand fully armed, heavy-infantry Orcs, and they are frantically, rabidly assaulting the borders of the Ironpeak Duchy!" Meyer raised his head, his eyes bloodshot, screaming out the absolute most critical location:"Their primary vector of attack... is the mountain pass of the Broken Blade Mountains!"

"Chieftain Talon... and the camp of those three thousand starving, freezing Steppe Barbarians... they are currently being subjected to an exceptionally brutal, apocalyptic strangulation campaign! The pass... is on the absolute verge of falling!" The interview was violently aborted! The atmosphere within the cabin instantaneously plummeted below freezing. The royal envoy was deathly pale, his legs turning to jelly in sheer terror.

Lucia's face was painted with absolute horror—the Orcs had launched another full-scale theater war?! But Soren was the sole exception. A cold, ruthlessly calculating smirk touched his lips. He looked exactly like a mastermind watching his flawless conspiracy fall perfectly into place.

"The Ironpeak Duchy abandoned them, and the Orc Alliance has driven them into a dead end." The exact prophecy he had spoken to Renn had now manifested flawlessly, down to the final bloody detail. That band of peerless, fearless Steppe warriors—men who were treated as completely disposable garbage—had finally been pushed to the absolute brink of annihilation! They desperately needed a "brutal excuse" to entirely forsake their oaths to the Ironpeak Duchy. And now... that excuse had arrived!

"The perfect window! This is the absolute, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to entirely swallow those three thousand Steppe Barbarians!" Soren spun around violently, his black cape cutting a sharp, lethal arc through the air. He entirely ignored the two petrified envoys, facing the door to unleash an earth-shattering, thunderous roar:"Sound the warhorns!"

"Greywater Village, initiate Maximum Combat Readiness across all sectors, immediately!"

"All first-line Black Steel elites, second-line Longbow battalions, Magic Ranger battalions, and Wolf Cavalry! Assemble the entire army!" Soren took massive strides out of the cabin, stepping directly into the torrential storm. Drawing his fine-steel longsword, he pointed the blade straight at the weeping heavens, his tyrannical, Warlord-tier voice echoing across the entirety of his territory:"Brothers! Don your armor! Draw your bowstrings!"

"March with me to the Broken Blade Mountains! We are going to bring our future brothers home!" Meanwhile. The Broken Blade Mountains, Main Pass. A violent gale howled. A torrential blizzard blanketed the sky, but it couldn't mask the thick, suffocating stench of blood choking the air. The wind shrieked through this narrow, critical chokepoint of the Ironpeak Duchy. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The very earth convulsed violently.

Several miles outside the pass, dozens of massive Orcish siege trebuchets—cobbled together from thick, raw timber—groaned agonizingly as their mechanical winches were twisted to the limit. Flaming boulders weighing hundreds of pounds tore through the gloomy, lead-grey sky, smashing mercilessly into the pass's already pathetically dilapidated defensive fortifications.

"Take cover! Get into the crevices!" Accompanying a heart-wrenching scream, a flaming boulder slammed heavily into the wooden watchtower on the left flank of the pass. With a deafening CRACK, the massive pine main beam—so thick a man couldn't wrap his arms around it—snapped instantly. The entire tower collapsed. Several Steppe Barbarian warriors stationed atop it didn't even have time to scream before they were pulverized into a bloody paste.

Severed limbs mixed with splintered wood, raining down densely amidst the roaring flames. Yet, this was merely the prelude to the slaughter. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. In the rear of the Orc formation, dozens of high-tier Shamans draped in crimson robes, their faces painted with ghastly totems, hoisted bone-inlaid staffs high into the air.

"For blood! For glory! Let the flames consume these pathetic worms!" Obscure, berserk incantations in the Orcish tongue echoed. Fire-element mana was forcefully ripped from the air and violently compressed. Clusters of explosive fireballs, several feet wide and radiating blinding crimson light, screamed across the battlefield, violently slamming into the walls of the pass! BOOM! RUMBLE! The magical flames detonated with terrifying temperatures and catastrophic shockwaves right amidst the densely packed defenders.

The Steppe Barbarians—who lacked even scrap-iron armor and wore nothing but tattered animal hides—were instantaneously engulfed the moment the magical fire touched them. They rolled agonizingly in the snow, desperately trying to extinguish the flames clinging to their flesh, but ultimately burned into charred corpses amidst the sickening stench of roasting meat. The casualty numbers were skyrocketing at a horrifying, blood-chilling pace.

"Cease bombardment! Infantry, crush them into the dirt!" Standing upon a safe ridge below the pass, the Orc Legion Commander, Noga, sat atop a massive dire-wolf clad in Black Iron barding, issuing his cold-blooded command. He wore an extravagant, heavily reinforced Black Iron general's plate, a terrifying double-bladed battleaxe hanging from his saddle. As a battle-hardened commander of the Blood Province, Noga looked down upon the battlefield with absolute, unadulterated contempt. AWOOO!

The shrill, blood-curdling blast of Orcish warhorns echoed through the valley. Five thousand fully armed Black Iron Orc infantrymen formed a colossal, suffocating phalanx. Trampling over the corpses of their comrades and enemies alike, they hoisted their gleaming battleaxes and spiked maces. Unleashing earth-shattering, berserk roars, they launched an absolutely torrential infantry charge toward the pass!

"Brothers! The green-skinned beasts are coming! Sons of the Eternal Sky, we die before we retreat!" Atop the ruins of the pass wall, the Barbarian Chieftain, Talon, violently heaved himself out from beneath an Orc corpse. He wiped a mixture of blood, soot, and snow from his face. His heavily scarred features were twisted into a mask of pure fury and absolute, unyielding defiance.

Gripping a massive greatsword—its blade chipped and heavily rolled from endless hacking—he took the absolute vanguard, leaping directly into the widest breach in the wall.

"KILL!" Fueled entirely by boiling, hot-blooded resolve, the Steppe warriors unleashed a deafening war-cry, throwing themselves in a suicidal counter-charge directly into the teeth of the colossal enemy phalanx! SQUELCH! Talon's greatsword hacked viciously into the neck of a charging Orc Centurion. The rolled edge of the blade wedged deep into the bone. Roaring like a cornered beast, Talon tapped into horrifying, monstrous strength, physically ripping half the Orc's neck clean off!

Scalding, foul-smelling blood violently geysered across his face and hair.

"Smash them with rocks! Tear their throats out with your teeth! Shove them off the slope!" Driven by Talon's rabid ferocity, the Barbarian warriors displayed a blood-chilling, apocalyptic savagery. A Barbarian warrior's spear was sheared cleanly in half by an Orcish axe. Instead of retreating, ignoring the agonizing pain of a fatal slash across his abdomen, he violently lunged forward, locking his arms in a death grip around the Orc's legs, dragging the beast down with him as they tumbled into the bottomless abyss.

Blood dyed the blizzards red; shredded meat hung densely from the wooden barricades. What truly made the hairs on the back of Orc Legion Commander Noga's neck stand up was the sheer, terrifying reality: this exceptionally poorly equipped human unit was literally plugging the breaches in their walls with their own corpses, fighting to the absolute last breath!

"This is impossible..." The veins on the back of Noga's hand bulged as he gripped the reins of his dire-wolf. His hideous face was painted with complete, world-shattering disbelief. His tactical mind had rapidly run the calculations: if these were the heavily armored, standard-issue regular troops of the Ironpeak Duchy, after sustaining this level of magical carpet-bombing and a heavy infantry charge, their defensive lines would have catastrophically collapsed in a rout within two hours!

Yet, this starving, ragged band of 'savages'—relying on a genuinely psychopathic level of sheer, unyielding willpower—had forcefully bottlenecked his five thousand Black Iron Orcs beneath this pass for days!

"Is the concept of terror simply not carved into their bones?!" Noga cursed vehemently in his heart.... Leaving behind hundreds of corpses, the berserk offensive rapidly, temporarily withdrew. Night fell, and the blizzard raged with even greater cruelty. During this agonizingly brief lull in the fighting, the Steppe Barbarians atop the ruined walls finally earned a moment to catch their breath. The biting, freezing gale whipped mercilessly across the apocalyptic battlefield.

Chieftain Talon slumped heavily against a shattered stone pillar, panting in deep, ragged gasps. He was currently holding a red-hot iron rod, personally cauterizing a horrific, bone-deep axe wound on his own thigh. The sickening sizzle of roasting meat rose alongside the stench of burnt flesh, yet Talon merely ground his back teeth together. He didn't let out a single groan.