Chương 276: 276：The Commander's Unyielding Shield

"What?!" Leona erupted, her face flushing crimson with explosive fury.

"Those corrupt, rotting scumbags in power! Are they completely blind?! He achieves a battle record like this, and they won't even grant him a single promotion?!"

"It's not just that they refuse to promote him. There is a far more sinister political motive hidden behind this." As a bystander well-versed in the dark arts of court politics, Elena had already seen straight through the Prince Regent's venomous calculus.

"Commander, think about it carefully. Soren has risen too rapidly behind enemy lines. The pension system he implemented has granted him a terrifying level of cohesion—making the bottom-tier soldiers of all humanity willing to die for him."

"His current prestige has already begun to eclipse every single veteran noble general in the Royal Capital." Elena lowered her voice, her tone turning bone-chillingly cold.

"The Prince Regent is terrified of him!"

"The High Command is terrified that Soren will use his military might to break entirely free of their control. By deliberately denying him actual authority and starving him of supplies, while only leaving him the empty titles of Vice-Commander and Deputy Border Commander, they are legally and militarily chaining Soren directly to the northern defensive line!"

"Not only do they have absolutely zero intention of sending reinforcements, but they are secretly hoping for his demise! They want Soren to face the apocalyptic, retaliatory wrath of the Orc Alliance over Mogg's death entirely alone! They are trying to use the Orcs' blades to execute a grassroots general who refuses to bend the knee!" This brutal, clinical political dissection caused the temperature in the tent to plummet. Leona stood frozen, her chest heaving violently.

She might be a rough, unrefined warrior who despised the twisting, treacherous schemes of the royal court, but she understood the most fundamental truth of war: While the frontline soldiers bleed and die, the corrupt politicians in the rear stab them in the back!

"Fuck the Prince Regent! And fuck his political balance!" Leona cursed violently, her red eyes burning with an absolute, volcanic inferno. She paced anxiously around the tent like a caged beast before abruptly halting. She spun to face Elena, the fury on her face transmuting into a breathtaking, fiercely protective aura of absolute badassery.

"I don't understand their filthy, treacherous calculations, and I don't damn well want to!" Leona rested one hand heavily on the hilt of her sword, throwing her head back as her crimson hair danced wildly in the draft.

"The Royal Capital won't promote him? Won't grant him a title? Good!"

"The more they try to suppress him, the more fiercely I will protect him!" Leona strode over to the low table, snatching up the gazette bearing Soren's name once more. She unleashed a bold, roaring declaration:"As long as Soren doesn't mind... as long as he legally remains the Vice-Commander of my Crimson Moon Knights... as long as he is still one of my men..."

Leona let out a booming, wildly triumphant laugh: "Then whatever world-shaking prestige Soren carves out for himself is the absolute glory of my Crimson Moon Knights!"

"Having an absolute, apex badass for a deputy—a man capable of beating the Orcs until they cry for their mothers, a man who terrifies the entire continent... My life as a Commander is complete! I am utterly satisfied!" Leona's roaring laughter echoed once more throughout the spacious tent. Yet... amidst this joyous laughter filled with unyielding brotherhood... Out on the freezing, howling fringes of the Misty Swamp...

A Crimson Moon veteran, his left arm wrapped heavily in blood-soaked bandages, was currently trudging through the freezing muck. Operating entirely under the venomous control of Shadow Priest Zagar, Zim was walking, step by agonizing step, directly toward this very camp filled with joyous laughter....... The Holy Halycon Empire, Northern Defensive Line, Royal Griffin Knights Encampment. The piercing, ear-splitting screeches of massive Griffins cut cleanly through the biting winter wind.

Inside the central command tent. The young Commander of the Royal Griffin Knights, Alaric, stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring intently at a massive tactical sandbox. His signature, radiant silver enchanted armor was still caked with unmelted frost from his recent patrol of the defensive line.

"Commander!" His adjutant threw open the tent flap, striding inside and bringing a gust of freezing air with him. His face was flushed with immense excitement as he presented a gazette stamped with the official imperial crest with both hands.

"This was just delivered via emergency dispatch from the Supreme Command! His Imperial Majesty personally ordered the Empire's official publications to reprint Battlefield Scholar Lucia's exclusive interview in its entirety!"

"You must read this! The entire northern frontier of the Empire is in an absolute uproar!" Alaric turned around, accepting the gazette that still carried the sharp scent of fresh ink. When his gaze landed on the striking headline—A Record of the Heroic Anti-Orc Forces: Soren, Lord of Greywater Village and Deputy Border Commander—profound shock rippled through the eyes of the normally stoic, aristocratic imperial general. His eyes rapidly scanned the parchment.

The vivid, blood-soaked details of the Soul-Severing Gorge ambush, and the flawless decapitations of Mogg and the Oracle, violently shook Alaric to his very core. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Soren... my friend. You actually did it. And the scale of your victory is a hundred times more breathtaking than I ever imagined." Alaric's thoughts involuntarily drifted back to a month ago. He had personally set foot in the toxic miasma and highly acidic muck of Greywater Village. There, he hadn't seen a shred of the typical, rotting aristocratic decadence. He saw only ironclad, unyielding discipline.

He saw the iron-willed resilience of Soren, a commander who bled, suffered, and rejoiced alongside the absolute lowest-tier soldiers. It was then that Alaric had recognized Soren's transcendent potential, forging a profound, unbreakable friendship with him in that very mud.

"Commander, this is the official gazette of the Holy Halycon Empire!" the adjutant added, still marveling at the implications.

"By doing this, His Imperial Majesty has essentially declared to the entire continent that the Empire's supreme echelons formally recognize Lord Soren's battle record! A mere border general of the Silvermoon Kingdom is now the universally acknowledged hero of the entire human faction against the Orcs!" Alaric slowly lowered the gazette. Walking to the tent's entrance, he stared out into the howling blizzard, his gaze locked firmly in the direction of the Misty Swamp.

He understood the current geopolitical reality perfectly. The human faction had been ruthlessly beaten down by the Orcs for so long that even hardened frontline veterans had completely lost the courage to mount an offensive.

"You don't understand. This is far more than mere recognition." Alaric's voice echoed through the spacious tent, his words radiating the profound macro-strategic vision of a true commander.

"In our current chaotic era—where morale is rock bottom, and the high commands do nothing but backstab and suppress one another—Soren's monumental victory has utterly shattered the suffocating deadlock. It is an earth-shattering wake-up call."

"He didn't just slaughter two thousand elite Orcs. He completely obliterated the primal terror crushing the soul of all humanity!" Alaric spun around fiercely.

"With a hero like him standing on the absolute front lines, the over thirty nations of our alliance have finally reclaimed their lost conviction!" As the son of Grand Duke Valentine, Alaric's mind was incredibly sharp and deeply calculating. He knew perfectly well that as Soren's prestige echoed across the continent, the catastrophic, rabid retaliation of the Orc Alliance would immediately follow.

And those short-sighted, corrupt power-brokers in the Silvermoon Kingdom would never genuinely reinforce Greywater Village. For the sake of the grand strategic picture, for the absolute survival of the human defensive line, and to forge an even deeper strategic partnership with this peerless tactical genius, Alaric had to take the initiative! Alaric's gaze rapidly swept across the tactical sandbox. Finally, his finger stabbed decisively into a highly treacherous zone on the eastern fringes of the Misty Swamp.

"Adjutant!" Alaric's expression turned dead serious as he issued a top-secret decree.

"Immediately arrange for an elite Knight Liaison. Disguise him as a common merchant and dispatch him alone and in absolute secrecy to Greywater Village."

"Deliver a special invitation to Soren on my behalf: Three days from now, at nightfall. On the eastern edge of the Misty Swamp, within the capital of the Empire's former vassal state—Abysswater Keep—in a small tavern named The Rose. I will hold a covert summit with him!" Hearing this, the adjutant's face drained of all color, turning ghastly pale.

"Commander! Abysswater Keep fell to the Orcs an entire decade ago! That entire region is an occupied military zone crawling with heavy Orc garrisons! A summit deep inside enemy-controlled territory?! It's suicide!"

"The most dangerous places are often the safest," Alaric replied with a supremely confident smile.

"Absolutely no one will suspect that two high-ranking generals of the human defensive line would be casually drinking ale right under the Orcs' noses. Go, issue the order. I have absolute faith in Soren's courage. He will come." Several days later. The Misty Swamp, Greywater Village. Accompanied by the endless, roaring thunder of the geothermal blast furnaces operating day and night, Greywater Village was currently in a frenzied, hyper-motivated state of combat readiness.

The damp-proof door of the high-stilt Lord's Command Cabin was pushed open. The silver-haired girl, Lyra, slipped inside with phantom-like agility, smoothly bolting the door behind her. Her eyes, which were always naturally alert, were currently clouded with intense gravity.

"My Lord." Lyra walked up to Soren, who was currently scrutinizing a military map, and lowered her voice to a whisper:"A man disguised as a smuggler just arrived outside the village perimeters. But Meyer's intelligence squad verified his ciphers. He is a liaison officer from the Royal Griffin Knights. He explicitly stated your name and insisted that he must deliver Commander Alaric's secret missive to you in person." Soren's gaze shifted off the map.

"Alaric?" Soren lowered his head, sinking into deep thought. Within the sprawling hierarchy of the Holy Halycon Empire, that father-and-son duo were rare, pure-blooded military commanders uncorrupted by politics. Dispatching a liaison officer to infiltrate the swamp at such high risk absolutely guaranteed intel of monumental strategic importance.

"Take him to the secret chamber in the underground anti-air bunker. I will follow shortly."