Chương 308: 308：Leave No Survivors

The gargantuan body of the [Son of Titan] thrashed a few final times before crashing heavily into the muddy water, sending a massive plume of filth and blood spraying into the air. Witnessing this from a distance as he fought desperately to survive, Zagar felt a profound, ice-cold terror grip his heart. That was a [Son of Titan]! It was the Orc Alliance's ultimate ace—a monster possessing enough individual combat power to effortlessly steamroll an entire squad of human knights!

Yet now, in brutal, close-quarters melee combat, a standard frontline elite from Greywater Village—a man who wasn't even an officer—had actually relied on flawless martial technique and terrifying, monstrous strength to execute a one-on-one frontal decapitation! This bloody reality proved one undeniable truth to the entire continent: the individual combat prowess of the troops Soren had forged with his own hands had completely surpassed the Orc aces!

Meanwhile, high above the center of Greywater Village, atop a sturdy watchtower built from heavy logs. The freezing wind whipped Soren's black cloak wildly around him. Resting both hands on the frost-covered wooden railing, he calmly observed the blazing combat zone below. Aided by his [Eagle Eye Perception], Soren's vision was so terrifyingly sharp he could clearly track every single drop of blood splattering through the air.

"The Orcs' roars are growing hoarse and fragmented," he analyzed silently.

"The previously fluid, relentless swings of the [Sons of Titan] are now showing attack windows lagging by up to two full seconds. This means the severe physical exhaustion brought on by their [Permanent Bloodlust] is rapidly backfiring on them." He wasn't just watching; he was listening. From the sharp decline in the enemy's counter-attack frequency, Soren made the absolute, pinpoint assessment of a master tactician: Shadow Priest Zagar's combat power was completely depleted.

This elite infiltration unit, sent here to execute a decapitation strike, had officially marched into an inescapable dead end. Down below, within the muddy alleyway.

"No... this is impossible... How could this happen?!" Heavily surrounded, Zagar's hair was wildly disheveled. His shadow mana was completely dry. Stripped of his pride, he could only scramble pathetically behind the wooden pillars to dodge the relentless storm of armor-piercing bolts firing from all directions. His heart was consumed by an incomprehensible, suffocating humiliation. How had Soren detected them in advance?! His infiltration route hadn't triggered a single physical trap!

His shadow magic had flawlessly concealed their auras! Did this human commander possess the divine power to peer directly into the future?! The two surviving [Sons of Titan] were currently resembling massive pincushions, densely packed with heavy bolts. Coughing up chunks of coagulated blood, they roared at Zagar in grief and fury. After attempting to break the siege multiple times and paying a catastrophic price in casualties, the Titans' formation was completely shattered.

"Fall back! Retreat into that building!" Knowing the battle was utterly unsalvageable, Zagar gnashed his teeth so hard he nearly cracked them. He pointed frantically toward a sturdy wooden warehouse at the end of the alleyway, its walls heavily reinforced with black iron plating. The surviving Orcs violently smashed open the heavy wooden doors and scurried into the building, desperately hoping to use the narrow doorway to mount a final, suicidal last stand. The heavy doors were violently barred shut.

Inside, the building was pitch-black, thick with the suffocating stench of blood and the grim aura of impending death. Zagar collapsed onto the freezing wooden floorboards, his expression utterly hollow. Half of an arrow, condensed purely from wind blades, was buried deep in his chest. His life force was rapidly bleeding away. He knew it was over. Outside was an impenetrable siege line. The only fate awaiting him was to be turned into a sieve by a storm of bolts.

With a violently trembling hand, he reached into his robes and pulled out an Orcish communication slate. In the final moments of his life, this once incomparably arrogant Shadow Priest was no longer consumed by his contempt for humanity. Instead, his heart was filled with a profound, existential dread for the future of the Orc Alliance.

Forcing every last ounce of his remaining mental energy into the slate, he transmitted one final, agonizing message to Warchief Blackstone, far beyond the Misty Swamp:"Great Warchief... I have failed. The infiltration I was so incredibly proud of... was completely seen through by this man named Soren." The grief-stricken message pulsed outward through the magical frequency.

"I will die on this battlefield as penance to the Orc Alliance. I will be buried in this foul mire alongside my elites."

"But please, heed my final warning!"

"Soren and his Greywater Village forces... the speed at which their strength is expanding completely defies all logic! It is absolutely horrifying! Their soldiers possess the raw strength of Trolls! They wield highly coordinated tactics that we simply cannot comprehend!"

"He has already become the most severe, catastrophic threat to the Orc Alliance on the continent of Aeresia!"

"Great Warchief, do not hold anything back! You must expend every last resource the Alliance possesses! Even if it takes ten Orc lives to take one of theirs, you must wipe this territory off the map! If he is allowed to grow... he will inevitably bring apocalyptic destruction upon the entire Orc race!" Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Outside the warehouse, the blizzard raged on relentlessly.

At the very front of the siege line, Soren stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Silver-tier Mage, Victor. All around them, the frontline elites had formed a suffocating, airtight perimeter around the reinforced building.

"My Lord, the dying struggle of a cornered beast is exceptionally dangerous. If we launch a frontal assault into that reinforced building, those dying [Sons of Titan] will likely drag several of our brothers to hell with them," Victor advised cautiously, staring at the barred, iron-plated doors.

"A frontal assault?" Soren sneered inwardly. In his previous life, he had been a tactical instructor for special forces. When dealing with an enemy entirely backed into a dead end, he would never be stupid enough to trade the precious lives of his own soldiers in a forced breach. Soren turned his head, his gaze calm as he looked behind him.

"If they love cowering in that building so much, then we'll just burn the entire building down with them inside." He raised his right hand and slashed it decisively through the air, issuing the absolute execution order:"Ilya! Assemble the Magic Ranger Squad! Clear the area!"

"Understood, My Lord!" Accompanied by the crisp, synchronized clanking of armor, Ilya led four handpicked Magic Rangers to the absolute front of the formation. Tightly gripped in each of their hands was a single [Pyroblast Wand], radiating a searing, dark red glow! Five crystal-clear Fire-attribute magic crystals were precisely slotted into the wands' chambers. There was no need for long, convoluted Elven incantations. There was no need for mages to painstakingly draw out magic arrays on the ground.

The five Rangers simply drew upon the minuscule slivers of mana affinity within their bodies, instantly igniting the miniaturized magic array engines housed within the wands. Vwuuuom! The focusing runes at the tips of all five wands simultaneously erupted in a blinding, searing white light! Within a dozens-of-meters radius, the falling blizzard was instantly flash-vaporized by the staggering heat!

"Fire!" Soren commanded. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Five highly compressed fireballs, packing the hyper-violent force to annihilate everything in their path, rocketed forward from five different angles! Carving perfectly straight lines of hellfire through the air, they slammed directly into the reinforced warehouse! Even walls reinforced with black iron plating were as fragile as paper under the direct, concentrated bombardment of Mid-Tier Pyroblast spells.

Amidst an apocalyptic, world-shattering explosion, a massive, terrifying mushroom cloud violently erupted directly inside Greywater Village! A hyper-violent shockwave blasted the muddy earth dozens of meters into the air, while a searing sea of flames instantly swallowed the entire structure! The surviving [Sons of Titan] hiding inside didn't even have the time to utter a single scream.

Under the explosive force of several thousand degrees of heat, their supposedly invincible [Rock Shields] and impossibly resilient bodies were instantly vaporized into countless charred, blackened fragments! Billowing columns of thick black smoke rocketed into the night sky. The choking stench of cordite mingled sickeningly with the smell of roasting meat. The smoke hadn't even fully cleared, and there was absolutely no need for Soren to issue a secondary command.

"Move in! Leave no survivors!" Renn waved his hand. Ten frontline elites, leveling their repeating crossbows and heavy halberds, charged straight into the burning ruins to execute the mop-up operation. Whenever they spotted a twitching lump of meat—regardless of whether it was actually alive or just experiencing muscle spasms—they mercilessly drove their heavy halberds straight through it, pinning it violently to the scorched earth.

Thus, this elite Orc infiltration unit—a squad that possessed an infamous reputation across the continent for successfully assassinating multiple high-ranking human figures—met their absolute annihilation in the mud of Greywater Village. They didn't even leave behind a speck of bone ash.

"Reporting to the Lord!" A frontline elite, covered head-to-toe in soot and ash, briskly marched out of the ruins and reported loudly: "Clearing operation complete! Beneath a pile of shattered timber in the corner, we have located the enemy commander! He is still breathing!" Soren gave a faint nod. Pushing past the soldiers shielding him, he stepped over the scorched, blackened remains and the still-sizzling embers, strolling calmly into the center of the ruins.

Pinned beneath a collapsed, charred wooden crossbeam... lay Shadow Priest Zagar. His entire lower half had been completely obliterated by the Pyroblast shockwave. His chest cavity was heavily scorched and laid open. Only a single, pathetic thread of life force was barely anchoring his deeply unwilling soul to the mortal plane. With agonizing effort, he lifted his mangled, bloody face, locking his eyes onto Soren as the man stopped directly in front of him.

This was the final, face-to-face meeting between the two rival commanders who had endlessly schemed against one another throughout this entire war.