Chương 27: 27：The Perfect Bait

A translucent panel, visible only to Soren, floated in the air. [Ding!] [Warlord System Quest Triggered:] [Objective: Assist Gary and Meyer in annihilating the Blackstone Clan forces responsible for the village massacre stationed nearby.] [Reward: Basic Troll Serum x100 Vials (Alchemical Extract: Consumption permanently enhances human physique, increases maximum stamina, and grants minor regeneration. Rarity: Rare)] A cold glint solidified deep in Soren's eyes. One hundred vials of Troll Serum.

He knew exactly what that meant. In the Misty Swamps, the fundamental reason human infantry couldn't hold their own against Orcs wasn't their equipment—it was the sheer disparity in size and strength. An Orc could don fifty pounds of scale armor and swing a thirty-pound heavy halberd in continuous combat for an hour. Meanwhile, even elite human soldiers would exhaust their stamina within thirty minutes of fighting in full plate armor. Right now, he happened to have sixty-three blooded veterans under his command.

If he had them all consume this serum, within ten days, he could forcibly elevate them into a company of monsters—a unit that not only possessed superb tactical discipline but had crossed the physical threshold of the human race. Soren stood up. He walked over to Gary, lifting the man's chin to force those bloodshot eyes to meet his own.

"I'll take you in."

"But the Crimson Moon Knights do not harbor dead weight. If you want blood for blood, you have to hold the sword yourselves."

"Do you have the guts to return to that muck, act as bait, and slit some Orc throats?" Gary snapped to attention, a fierce light burning in his eyes.

"I do! My Lord, as long as I can kill those greenskins, I wouldn't blink even if you ordered me to jump into a fire pit!"

"Over the last two days, rumors have been spreading like wildfire through the villages. People saw the butchered remains of Orcs by the puddles and found the Reed Bay stronghold completely empty."

"Everyone knows someone led a force and wiped out over a hundred greenskins."

"Meyer and I tracked the wagon ruts left from transporting timber. We spent three days navigating through the tree canopy just to find this place!" Soren's eye twitched slightly. The wagon ruts had been deliberately concealed, the fact that Gary managed to track them proved that this commoner warrior's [Guerrilla] talent was truly exceptional. Still, the news of his raid on Reed Bay couldn't be kept under wraps forever. There were simply too many villagers in Greywater Village.

In a swamp like this, where food was scarce, refugees would gladly sell information to an Orc patrol for half a moldy biscuit. It was only a matter of time before the elite outriders of the Blackstone Warband tracked them down. His plans for slow, stable development in the rear had to be accelerated. The best defense was a proactive offense—wiping out the enemy entirely. Turning around, Soren walked over to a parchment map and drew his dagger.

"Tell me. The Orcs that slaughtered your village—where are they camped? What are their numbers? What kind of heavy weaponry do they have?" Gary wiped the streak of blood from his face, his mind remarkably clear.

"Gravel Town!"

"It's an abandoned town south of our village. They took our grain but didn't go far, they've occupied that place."

"I saw them clearly. There are only fifteen regular Orc infantrymen wearing black iron scale armor! Their leader wields a massive double-bitted battleaxe."

"The rest are about thirty Goblin thralls, used for hauling cargo and tending the fires!" Fifteen armored infantrymen. Thirty Goblins. Soren instantly built a mental sandbox of the battlefield. His available forces: two experts, Ein and Kyle, plus sixty-one spearmen who had already mastered military formations and were equipped with three short spears each. The Goblins' combat power could be largely ignored, which meant he held a four-to-one numerical advantage. Soren's gaze turned ice-cold.

These blooded veterans needed to chew on harder bones to truly temper themselves. He couldn't rely on activating his Eagle Eye and sniping targets with the Windwhisper Bow every single time. He needed an ironclad army—a force capable of slaughtering the enemy even when he wasn't personally taking the field. Gravel Town would be the perfect whetstone.

"Meyer, get over here." Soren reached out and yanked the scrawny young man hiding in the back to the front. Through the Warlord System's [Appraisal] vision, two talent tags hovered above the young man's head: [Chameleon] and [Vocal Mimicry].

"Just leading us to Gravel Town is pointless. The moment the Orcs see our formation, they'll charge. That would result in heavy casualties for us. We need to lure them out of the town and draw them into a death trap." Soren traced his finger heavily across a gorge on the map.

"Echo Valley. The terrain here is shaped like a pocket. We'll set an ambush right here."

"The task for you two brothers is to walk right into Gravel Town, knock on the Orcs' front door, and lead them straight into Echo Valley." This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Meyer trembled under the sheer weight of Soren's killing intent.

"But... My Lord... the moment we show our faces, those Goblins will shoot poisoned arrows through our necks." Soren didn't bother explaining. He leaned forward. Suddenly, he dropped his Human Common accent. A deep, guttural resonance vibrated from his chest, and the barbaric, brutal dialect of the Blackstone Clan rolled from his throat.

"Fresh meat! I know where the human pigpen is! Give me gold!" Kyle and Gary stared wide-eyed in horror. They couldn't fathom how a human throat could produce a war cry identical to that of a monstrous Orc.

"Did you hear that clearly?" Soren switched back to Common."Repeat those phrases. Mimic the friction of my tongue placement and the heavy gruffness at the end of the syllables." Meyer's talents fully activated. He adjusted his vocal cords for a single second.

"Gah-dar! (Fresh meat!) Gash! (Pigpen!)..." It was a near-perfect replica. He even flawlessly captured that whistling, gap-toothed friction sound entirely unique to the Blackstone Clan.

"Excellent." Soren let go of him and proceeded to teach Meyer a few common Orc phrases.

"Now, put on the face of a greedy, bottomless scum willing to sell out his own race for a handful of coin."

"Go. Lead those fifteen greenskins right into my meat grinder." Half a day later. Echo Valley. Cliffs towered fifty meters high on both sides, the dark brown rock faces crawling with highly venomous swamp vines. The valley floor was a stagnant pool of muddy water littered with jagged rocks. Soren sat atop a jutting boulder, a piece of linen cloth in his hand as he slowly polished the Elven Windwhisper Bow.

Down below, Ein was leading a dozen soldiers, burying barbed wooden spears into the shallow mudflats and covering them with dry moss. Kyle, meanwhile, commanded the long-spear phalanx, hiding them in the deepest shadows at the rear of the gorge. Every ironwood spear shaft had been smeared with mud to ensure not a single glint of light reflected off them. The dead-silent formation lay in wait, like a spiked crocodile lurking beneath the muck. Meanwhile.

At the end of a long, narrow, muddy ancient road, the silhouette of Gravel Town loomed through the mist. This former human waystation had been thoroughly devastated. The signpost at the crossroads had been torn down, replaced by pikes bearing the gnawed-clean skulls of several human villagers. Thirty hunchbacked Goblins, clutching sharpened leg bones as weapons, were rummaging through the collapsed stone ruins, scavenging for leftover iron nails.

By a long wooden table in the center of town, four Orcs clad in heavy black iron scale armor were using iron skewers to roast half a human thigh over a fire pit. Fat dripped into the glowing coals, letting out loud sizzling sounds.

"Halt!" A shrill Goblin shriek pierced the air. Two Goblins wielding short bamboo bows leaped down from a dead tree. The sharp iron arrowheads aimed directly at the two silhouettes emerging from the thick fog. Gary stumbled forward, his arms bound tightly behind his back with thick hemp rope. His clothes were torn to rags, his face was smeared with mud, and his steps were faltering. Holding the other end of the rope was Meyer. Meyer hunched his back, his hair matted with swamp muck.

He cast a fearful, cowering glance at the gleaming tips of the Goblin poison arrows, before violently kicking the back of Gary's knees. Gary played along, collapsing into the muddy puddle. Meyer raised his head, his throat bobbing as he ripped his vocal cords open. A string of impossibly authentic Orcish—complete with the harsh accent of the Blackstone Highlands—roared out:"Piss off, greenskin maggots! I bring news of the highland refugees! I want to see the one with the big axe!"

The Goblins were momentarily stunned by the pure accent and sheer arrogance of the human. From the direction of the fire pit, the heavy thud of iron boots crushed the silence. A three-meter-tall Orc Centurion, wielding a massive double-bitted battleaxe, shoved the Goblins aside and stepped forward. The Centurion looked down at the scrawny human at his feet, snorting bloody, steaming white mist from his nostrils.

"Human bug, " the Centurion sneered in broken Common, heavily laced with Orcish growls. Meyer began to shake uncontrollably. This part wasn't an act. The sheer physical oppression radiating from the behemoth caused his stomach to cramp in sheer terror. But he bit down hard on his back molars, pushing his disguise to the absolute limit.

He dropped Gary's rope and rubbed his hands together, forcing an ingratiating, sickeningly sycophantic smile as he bowed deeply:"Boss, north of Echo Valley, I found a refugee settlement hiding in the caves! There's at least a hundred of 'em, and a whole wagon of wheat flour!" Meyer lazily kicked Gary, who was still on the ground.

"This idiot refused to show the way."

"I'll take you there, boss! All I want is the silver pendant they've got hidden in a clay pot. The meat and the grain—it's all yours!"