Chương 261: 261：Selling Out Humanity

The grim tactical situation caused Cedric's brows to lock into a deep, heavy furrow. Yet, what sent a colder chill down his spine than the Orc horde was a single sentence that had been haunting his thoughts for days.

"General, when you return, watch your back around your adjutant, Cullen." It was the parting warning Soren had delivered, looking him dead in the eye with absolute, chilling sincerity when they separated at Greywater Village. At first, Cedric had brushed it off. He assumed Soren had simply taken a liking to Cullen's heavy battalion and was employing a bit of political maneuvering to poach his talent. But over the past few weeks, Cullen had stationed his battalion entirely independently at the Sunset Hills.

He had repeatedly defied direct orders to transport supplies to the Broken Blade Mountains main defensive line, using pathetic excuses like "muddy roads" and "logistical difficulties." Now, Cedric's razor-sharp instincts as a battle-hardened veteran finally kicked in, screaming at him that this was a lethal threat. A supreme tactician of Soren's caliber, a man with such sweeping, magnificent vision, would never stoop to playing cheap, petty games of sabotage. It wasn't a trick.

It was an absolute, precise early warning!

"General!" The heavy crunch of combat boots against the snow sounded from behind. His senior tactical adjutant, wrapped tightly in a windproof cloak, marched up to Cedric with a ghastly pale face. In his fist, he clutched a military intelligence brief just delivered by a courier hawk.

"Still no word from the supply convoy out of Sunset Hills. Commander Cullen's sector has enacted a de facto, unilateral communications blackout." The adjutant's voice trembled slightly in the biting wind.

"General! What the hell are you still hesitating for?!" the adjutant hissed, dropping his voice, his tone practically bleeding with frantic anger.

"The war between the Human Alliance and the Orcs has already devolved into a meat-grinding stalemate with catastrophic casualties!"

"You know the ugly, rotten faces of the nobles in the Royal Capital better than I do! That faction of capitulating cowards in the high command does nothing but host banquets, spreading their cowardly rhetoric of avoiding battle! Their toxic defeatism has already infected the very core of the Ironpeak Duchy!" Taking a step forward, the adjutant spoke with raw indignation:"Cullen was born into a family of wealthy merchants. He has always placed gold above honor!"

"Now, with frontline military funds bleeding dry and the high command showing nothing but weakness, the loyalty of many generals is beginning to waver."

"Cullen is garrisoning an entirely indefensible flatland like the Sunset Hills, yet he holds the Duchy's most elite, heavily equipped repeating crossbow battalion! He isn't defending a damn thing! He is treating his own brothers-in-arms as bargaining chips, just waiting to sell them to the highest bidder!"

"Shut your mouth!" Cedric violently spun around. His eyes were completely bloodshot as he glared fiercely at his adjutant. Yet, there was no real conviction in his roar. It was merely the desperate, agonizing struggle of a man refusing to face a brutal reality.

"Cullen has followed me for eight entire years!" Cedric's breathing was ragged, thick clouds of white vapor billowing in front of his faceplate.

"He took a lance from an Orc wolf rider for me! In the Black Mud Depressions, we split the absolute last piece of moldy hardtack we had!"

"He is the adjutant I personally raised up! I don't believe it... I refuse to believe he would sell out the entire human defensive line!" Even though logic had been screaming at him to prepare for the worst, Cedric still clung to a fragile, naive glimmer of hope for his old comrade. Subjectively, he simply couldn't stomach the fact that a brother-in-arms had walked such a dark path. He needed it to be a misunderstanding.

"Pass down my orders." Cedric violently ripped off his snow-caked cloak and drew the heavy broadsword from his waist, his eyes burning with absolute, grim resolve.

"Muster a twenty-man squad of my personal heavy cavalry guard! Strip the heavy barding from the horses. We ride light and fast."

"General! What are you doing?!" The adjutant's face drained of color as he lunged forward, desperately grabbing Cedric's armguard.

"You absolutely cannot go! The Sunset Hills are wide open plains! If Cullen truly has defected, taking a mere twenty riders into his camp is pure suicide! You won't even have a high ground to mount a breakout!"

"Get out of my way!" Cedric forcefully shoved the adjutant aside and swung himself into the saddle of a massive Northern warhorse. His tone was as hard as iron: "If he truly has betrayed us... then I will sever his head with my own two hands! Hyah!" With the piercing whinny of warhorses, the squad of heavily armored knights tore through the blizzard, galloping at breakneck speed toward the Sunset Hills....... Meanwhile. Sunset Hills, the Central Command Camp of the Heavy Infantry Battalion.

While the Broken Blade Mountains were suffering through a hellish, freezing gale, the interior of this massive military tent was a completely different world. Four large braziers burned with high-grade, smokeless beast-charcoal, baking the air inside to a luxurious, toasty warmth.

Atop a long oak table lay a decadent spread: vintage red wines imported directly from the Silvermoon Kingdom, thick, sizzling cuts of roasted meat dripping with fat, and even a massive silver platter of fresh fruits—an obscenely rare sight in the dead of winter. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Battalion Commander Cullen lounged lazily in an oversized armchair draped in the pelt of a magnificent snow leopard.

He was in his thirties, but instead of wearing the steel plate expected in a military camp, he was wrapped in a disgustingly lavish Suraya-silk robe. Several massive, ruby-encrusted rings gleamed on his fingers. Sitting beside him was his deputy commander, Gass, his face plastered with an identical look of unadulterated greed. Sitting quietly across the long table was a figure entirely shrouded in a voluminous grey cloak.

As the figure tilted their head slightly to take a sip of wine, the hood slipped back just enough to reveal greyish-green skin and two bone-white tusks that, despite being filed down, still jutted outwards. It was a disguised Half-Orc Envoy—one reporting directly to the Governor of the Blood Province of the Orc Alliance!

"Lord Cullen, I believe I have made His Excellency the Governor's sincerity abundantly clear." The Orc Envoy's voice was grating and raspy, speaking in slightly stiff Human Common.

"All you have to do is give the order to open the Sunset Hills corridor."

"Once the mighty Bloodbone Legion marches through the pass, your heavy battalion will be immediately restructured into an Independent Auxiliary Legion reporting directly to the Orc Alliance." The Envoy's sinister, slit-like eyes locked onto Cullen.

"You will be officially granted the title of Auxiliary General, with Lord Gass serving as your Deputy."

"More importantly, to display our utmost generosity to our allies, all future armor repairs, weaponry, and ammunition for your troops, along with a daily provision of over a thousand pounds of white bread and meat, will be fully subsidized by the treasuries of the Blood Province! So... what say you?" This filthy, treasonous political transaction to sell out the human faction had entirely bypassed the probing stage. They were now brazenly haggling over the price.

Yet, in the face of such a lucrative offer, Cullen didn't show a single ounce of shame for betraying his species and his nation. Instead, his face twisted into an arrogant smirk of insatiable greed, demanding more.

"Mr. Envoy, I think you are fundamentally mistaken about something." Cullen picked up his crystal goblet, swirling the crimson wine within it leisurely as a mocking sneer graced his lips:"You are not sitting across from some ragtag militia of starving refugees, men who can't even afford a tunic to cover their backs and call themselves an army just because they hold pitchforks."

"This is a fully-manned, thousand-strong Heavy Infantry Battalion of regular, elite soldiers!" He stood up and strode over to the tent flap, violently tearing it open. The freezing wind rushed in. Cullen raised a hand, pointing outside. Through the opening, the Orc Envoy saw the rows upon rows of tightly packed formations, their armor gleaming radiantly under the pale winter sun.

"Open your eyes!" Cullen tilted his chin up with unrestrained arrogance.

"That is Mithril-alloyed Heavy Plate! It weighs only seventy percent of standard steel plate, yet boasts double the defensive capabilities!"

"The weapons gripped in my soldiers' hands are heavy repeating crossbows, capable of consecutively firing ten armor-piercing, refined-steel bolts!"

"And look at those dozens of iron-plated supply wagons bristling with anti-cavalry spikes!" Cullen turned his head, his greedy gaze locking dead onto the Envoy.

"With my obscenely luxurious arsenal, if I form an armored wagon-laager on these open plains, even your ace wolf cavalry would pay a catastrophic price of blood trying to break through!" Deputy Commander Gass chimed in right on cue.

"Exactly! You think you can buy out an elite force—one equipped better than ninety percent of the regular armies on this entire continent—with the empty title of an Auxiliary General and some basic food and board?"

"Your Governor's desire to cheat us out of our true worth is a bit too obvious!" The corner of the Orc Envoy's eye twitched violently as he forcefully swallowed the volcanic rage boiling in his chest. Were it not for the absolute, unyielding order from the Warchief to secure the Sunset Hills without shedding a single drop of blood, his noble Orcish pride would have commanded him to draw his blade and immediately butcher these two greedy, foolish humans.

"Then, Lord Cullen, what are your terms?" the Envoy asked. Hearing this, Cullen settled back into his armchair. Leaning forward, he steepled his fingers on the table, the fat on his cheeks trembling slightly, driven by sheer, unadulterated avarice.

"In that miserable, rotting Misty Swamp, that Lord of Greywater Village, Soren, has been quite active lately, hasn't he?" Cullen let out a scoff dripping with utter disdain.

"To think that your high command was actually terrified by an uncultured, backwater bumpkin like him. To the point where you actually need to borrow my road just to deal with him?"

"Mr. Envoy, let's use this 'Soren's' reputation as a benchmark, shall we?" Cullen waved his finger in the air with megalomaniacal arrogance.

"I have personally visited Greywater Village. That nobody Soren has only managed to scrape together a pitiful seventy sets of so-called 'Black Steel' armor."

"With that pathetic production volume, he can barely outfit his own personal guard."

"In my eyes, that bullshit 'Black Steel' of his is, at best, roughly the same quality as my Mithril-alloyed Plate!"